Ne Obliviscaris is a progressive metal band from Australia. I had the chance to make an interview with Matt Klavins the guitarist of the band about their news, tours and their path .
1-Let's start by a brief history of the band.
Haha brief… Ne Obliviscaris was founded by Xenoyr and
he quickly joined up with Tim Charles after meeting on a forum. There were a
few different guitarists back then and then I finally joined in early 2004. I look
back now and laugh because I nearly didn't go to the audition. It just shows
that you should take whatever opportunities are thrown your way! Shortly after,
we recruited Corey King and Brendan Brown.
In 2005 our songs were starting to take shape and we
started to talk seriously about the band, what we could achieve and what
commitment was needed. On that note, our then drummer Corey Baker stepped
aside. We auditioned a few drummers and then Brendan said that he had a friend
who had just started to play drums and was coming along really quickly. We
auditioned Dan Presland. He hadn't been playing drums for more than a year and
showed real potential. We could see that if he kept up the hard work he could
be a phenomenal drummer. Dan went on to claim the throne of ‘Australia’s
fastest drummer in 2006’.
This was the same year we first hit the live scene
after numerous set backs, line up changes and other life changing things. We
got to play with some of our favorite local bands and played our first show
alongside Be’lakor. In 2007 we felt we were ready to record and went into the
studio with Endel Rivers to record ‘The Aurora Veil’. We were all shocked at
the reviews that we were getting from it and the exposure was fantastic!
This threw us into the underground spotlight and paid
off when we got to support Suffocation, then got an offer for Nevermore that
then got cancelled but we got to play the last Metal for the Brain festival
instead which was amazing. Just as we felt we were on a roll and ready to record
our first album Corey King quit the band due to personal differences among
other things. We nearly gave up but thought that we would stick it out for a
bit and see how we went. We felt there was too much potential in the band to
just give up. We continued writing songs such as Xenoflux and Plague during our
search for another guitarist. After countless auditions we began to look
offshore and in 2008, 9 months after we started auditions we found Benji Baret
in France. He was amazing. Everything he played was brilliant. We arranged for
him to come to Australia and went to work teaching him the songs and getting
ready to hit the live scene again. We played a lot of shows all around
Australia and then in 2010/11 we recorded ‘Portal of I’ with Troy McCosker at
Pony Music in Melbourne.
Just as we felt everything was going to plan we were
hit with another setback. While Benji was back in France visiting family his
Australian Visa was cancelled. He was stuck in France and we had no lead
guitarist again. We applied for another visa which was denied. This started our
petition to get him back in the country which after 15 months and with the
support of our fans, other bands and industry heavy weights we won our appeal!
Benji came back to Australia, we released our album and toured Australia
extensively. Dan had left the band briefly and did not play the initial album
tour so we had Nelson Barnes from The Schoenberg Automaton for these shows.
It’s definitely been nice to get Dan back and start looking ahead to our next
album though.
2-How did you come up with the band name?
Xenoyr came up with the band name and the band was
named before I joined.
3-How do you describe your music? Especially
that Ne Obliviscaris is one of the few bands with a violinist.
Progressive metal is the best description I guess. We
use so many different styles and sub genres in our music that when we try to
describe our sound to people it is genuinely hard to do. Our main elements are
Prog and Death but we also use Classical and Black.
4-What are your songs mainly about?
Life. Meanings are up to your interpretation of the
song. One thing about Xenoyr’s lyrics is that they aren't so in your face and
straight forward. They can mean different things to different people depending
on how you interpret each song. We prefer you to make up your own mind.
5-Is there any other kind of music that
inspires you ?
It depends on the kind of mood I am in. Recently bands
in my playlists have been Animals as Leaders and Devin Townsend. Whilst bands
that are different and ‘out there’ can inspire new ideas and ways of playing,
sometimes just listening to music that is straight forward can be therapeutic
or spark a new concept.
6-You're now recording a new album, can you
tell us a bit about it and its release?
We are really looking forward to this release. We feel
that we have matured as musicians this time around and can’t wait to add the
new songs to our live set. We will be recording the new album at Pony studios
again with Troy McCosker. Studio time has been booked in for the end of the
year and will be released mid 2014 through our new label Season of Mist.
7-What makes it different from the first?
We feel we are much stronger players than when we
wrote the songs on Portal of I. Benji really gets to shine on this album as
well. The songs aren't finished yet though. They won’t be 100% finished until
they are tracked. We are constantly changing and improvising on the basic song
structure until we are fully happy and feel we have the best we can get out of
the song.
9-What is the writing process?
This really differs from song to song as we don’t
really have a set song writing process. Portal of I was mainly made up of
expanding ideas on one riff that someone comes up with and we just go on the
journey and see where we end up. This time around Benji has a lot of ideas that
have been pent up since recording the last album. I don’t think anyone could
ever really just bring in a full song without it being completely ripped to
pieces and put back together in a Frankenstein of its original form.
10-And
finally, tell us more about your upcoming events and your hopes for the near
future.
We are off to Asia
in August for a string of headline shows in Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan
& Thailand and when we return we will be knuckling down doing pre
production for the new album and starting to finalize leads and solos. We will
take a couple of months off in the beginning of the year once the album has
been recorded during the mixing process and then once the album is out we hope
to tour Australia again along with Europe, the USA & more!
