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4 questions for 4 upcoming Moment of Collapse bands

Moment of Collapse records asked me to come up with four questions with four bands from their roster. Since I reviewed a bunch of amazing vinyl editions from the label it was pretty easy to find four bands and ask the questions.

Since your band is not so well known at SWNK. Can you tell us a short story when things all started, how the band evolved and what the current plans are?

Maudlin

Well, it all started in November 2004, that’s when the first rehearsal took place. All of it happened after the previous band of Kris, Jasper and Davey called it’s quits in summer ’04. We still felt the urge of playing together, because writing songs together got some kind of chemistry. Pretty fast after that first rehearsal, where we had Munchie on drum and Thijs Goethals on bass, we had our first show: January ’05. The response was amazing and we kept on playing. We recorded a demo that ended up as an ep on Offerandum Records. We toured with our ep called “Solitary Echo” and played out on a weekly base. We wrote new songs and I felt that playing keys and singing didn’t felt natural, so we added Tim Gyselbrecht on keyboards. The new songs got recorded and released in may ’08 as our conceptual album “ionesco”. Again we played out a lot for the next 2 years and we toured Europe twice with this album. But it became difficult to rehearse on a steady base… so writing new material went slow. After we finally got enough songs for “A Sign of Time”, we recorded them ourselves and they got mixed in the US by Andrew Schneider (Unsane, Shrinebuilder, Cave In) and mastered by Dan Coutant (The Gaslight Anthem, Coliseum). Shortly after we recorded everything, Tim & Thijs decided to quit the band, since they had other priorities as rebuilding houses, their children, etc. The other 4 members felt we still had to try to bring this album out, because we felt it was the best every single one of us had ever done. Luckily we found Yannick Dumarey (known from Death Before Disco) to play the bass. And I ended up doing keys, samples and vocals. We sended out the recordings looking for new, motivated labels and both Consouling Sounds & Moment of Collapse were extremely positive and they both felt like some kind of family.

Shrine

Shrine

Shrine took form in 2010, with the goal to play heavy and intense metal with psychedelic overtones. In the past, a lot of members has been coming and going, but the four of us has always been seen as the core of the band. There’s been a lot of struggle and at a time Gus left the band. This dark time resulted in a lot of experimentation musically, and that’s when we created the structure to our sound. Our current plan is doing a tour starting in Sweden the 29th March, then through Denmark and end in Germany at the 5th of April. After that we’re going to find a suitable studio to record our first full-length album.

Sundowning

We do exist for nearly 4 years now. Started everything in the mid of 2009 and recorded a demo which was released in October 2009 followed by a lot of shows, tours and the “Of Aging Stones and Rotting Leaves” 7 inch EP in April 2011. We played shows in most parts of Germany as well as Czech Republic, Austria, Belgium. Afterwards we spent the winter 2011/2012 in our rehearsal room to write our first full length “Seizures of the World” which was released by the nice guys in Moment of Collapse in September 2012. We have almost finished two new songs which we will record at the beginning of April and will later appear on two splits which both will be released by Moment of Collapse during summer.

Alaskan

The band was actually a combination of two projects that started roughly around the same time. Scotty (drums) and I (Gary Guitar) were jamming with a few friends on a hardcore project while Cory, I and our other roommate at the time were jamming something along the lines of Noothgrush. We used to jam in our house and Scotty was hanging out one day and I showed him one of the songs I was working on with Cory. He wrote some drums to it and after discussing how we were frustrated with the lack of commitment in the other project we decided to focus on that song. Alaskan was supposed to be the name of the hardcore band so we just used it for this new project. We started out as a four piece with a dedicated vocalist. He didn’t really enjoy the amount of work and time we were putting into the band. Music just wasn’t a priority for him so we had a talk and he left on good terms and we’ve been recording and touring pretty regularly ever since. At the moment we’re in the writing phase. We’re currently working on another full length record which is about halfway done. Along with the full length we’re planning on writing and recording a few extra songs for potential splits that will be collaborations with other musicians. Once the release for the full length is solidified we’ll be planning a few tours, possibly west coast of Canada/US and definitely another trip to Europe.

The city/village and surroundings you are living and grew up, do they have an influences on your music and how do we hear that?

Maudlin

We all come from the coast, so the sea is always present in our life. And I guess the sea is somehow an influence on our music, certainly since for “A Sign of Time” we talked a lot before writing the songs. We somehow made an imaginative painting of how a song should feel and sound like. The sea came back a lot in those thoughts, as did mountain peaks, but where we’re from it couldn’t be any flatter. So, next to our surroundings, our travels also had an impact on our music. But, the biggest influences are without any doubt, thousands of amazing bands and musicians we listen to on a daily base. Music is a constant in our lives.

Shrine

Everything we experienced growing up here has definitely had an impact on our music. But to name something more precise, the foundation of our sound originates from hearing so many other bands in metal and hardcore here repeat the same musical patterns over and over again, and that really sparks us to make sure that we’re creating something unique.

Sundowning

Sundowning

I think it’s pretty hard to name a definite influence but I think that your mind is influenced by every single thing you come along during life so although I can’t tell you about a specific experience or whatever but I am still influenced by my surrounding. I’m sucking everything in to create new music.

Alaskan

Growing up in Ottawa at the time that we all did gave us the opportunity to be exposed to lots of great bands. Not only bands that made it out of Ottawa and made a name for them but also some local heroes that never quite made the transition to touring band were amazing bands regardless. If you ask me Ottawa bands, at least the more original ones, seem to have a signature sound associated with them. Not that the bands are similar in genre or tone but there is something in the song writing that has a signature that shows it’s from the area. These are the bands we grew up seeing every weekend so without a doubt these are the kinds of bands that influenced us. We have had people compare us to quite a few bands in the past including influential bands from Ottawa such as Drift. I think the influence these bands have had on us is more subconscious than deliberate.

Can you give us an example how your music/lyrics has changed someone’s lives?

Maudlin

We played in Slovenia in a town called Nova Gorrica (I guess). It’s a very poor city on the border with Italy. All citizens are poor, but the contrast of how the city looks like couldn’t be any bigger. The center of the city is full with casinos, since that is illegal in Italy and lots of rich Italians cross the border to visit them. So those citizens get confronted with their poorness and lack of chances on a daily basis. So to escape that poverty and depressing situation a lot of them search their joy in drugs, mainly heroine. We played a squat in that town, and we could find needles everywhere. Anyway, a lot of people came to the concert and after the show there was this one guy who wanted to buy our album “Ionesco”. He said, if I can have that kind of music, with all the emotions and the trippy sides, then I don’t need any more drugs. He bought our album but I have no idea how it ended.

Shrine

Surely it has changed our own lives. But we haven’t really got any response of someone telling us our music has changed their lives. We certainly hope it does though.

Sundowning

Well I do not really remember a moment when someone showed up and told us that particular lyrics or whatever has changed his or her life but I can say that Sundowning has pretty much formed the four individuals behind the band, you know? We played a lot of shows during the last four years and every show was a new and individual experience. We had to deal with situations that we haven’t come across before and learned a lot about ourselves which probably nothing else has taught us. I think we are more open-minded towards other things now.

Alaskan

Alaskan

Definitely have a story, although I’m not sure how true or how serious the situation was. Before the release of our album ‘Adversity; Woe’ we had played a show in Montreal. At the show we met a dude who was really stoked to meet us and excited to get to see us play. He was super chatty, which is awesome, we love getting to talk to and meet fans at shows. He eventually told us how our record ‘The Weak and the Wounded’ had changed his life. When pressed a little further all he really told us that was not long before he was in a pretty dark place and listening to that album really helped him out. It was pretty flattering to have someone really connect to our music in that kind of way.

If you were asked to kidnap the guys of Moment of Collapse, where do you want to transport them to and why this place?

Maudlin

Maudlin

Since those guys have been amazing, it would take them to a nice place. My first thought is to take them back to Yellowstone. That’s where all pictures for our layout got taken by me. It’s a wonderful place, amazing, desolate and beautiful. I’m pretty sure they’ll find a lot of things they search in music in the nature of Yellowstone. That might be a bit too expensive to take them all there, but we also could take them to the only Benelux Neurosis show in Antwerp on June 22nd!!

Shrine

Because we’re pretty new on the label, we’d like to just bring them with us to experience the glories of Sweden, like Swedish fika, elk brew and snus, simply hoping to get to know the guys better.

Sundowning

Haha what a question…well, I don’t know but I think it should be a nice place since those guys did a lot for us and kidnapping is a bad thing so they should at least enjoy being kidnapped! Probably South East Asia? I’d love to see this part of the world and I’m totally fed up with winter, so this might be a good decision!

Alaskan

This is a good one haha. I don’t really know much about kidnapping or the guys from Moment of Collapse really, besides the fact that they took a chance on a little band like us and are sweet dudes. I suppose if whoever was telling me to kidnap them were to give me the option of bringing them wherever I wanted to I would probably take them somewhere extreme remote in the Canadian north. Somewhere they couldn’t possibly escape due to the extreme weather conditions which they would, I’m assuming, have little to no experience with whatsoever. Somewhere so remote it would break them down psychologically. Or if this was just some ridiculously over the top reason to hang out with them I’m just bring them somewhere awesome in South America. Get a hotel room at an all-inclusive resort and make them get drunk all day with me for about a week straight. It really all depends on the context.

Moment Of Collapse Records on bandCamp

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