Hi and thank you for sparing time to chat with us.
Could you first introduce yourself and the band and tell us how the project started?
Hi, I’m William!! Guitarist of The Risen Dread. An Irish band based in Dublin. The whole thing started with me and Colum (Drummer) around summer 2018. It took us a few good months to find a vocalist, Colum found Marco towards to the end of 2018 and Mat (Bassist) joined us around January 2019. After that we had a brainstorm to decide the name. We had a second guitarist (Robbie) for a few months. He recorded the EP ‘Delusions’ with us in May 2019. We always wanted a second guitarist. It never worked though.
How would you define not only your sound but the creative character of the band?
We always wanted to do something different from what we’d seen in the Irish metal scene. We respect all of them, but we’re different!! As much as a dickhead I may sound, that’s how I feel. Our sound is a mix of everything from Black Metal to Metalcore. It wasn’t intentional to sound like that, but the reviews we got of our album ‘Night Hag’ says that and we got similar feedback during the tour we just came back from.
Are there any previous musical experiences for band members and how have they been embraced in what you do now?
Marco and I were in previous bands. I was in a band from my 17 to 22. It was a Thrash/Death metal band and we played a lot. I remembered we played every Fri, Sat and Sun for almost 2 months. I was too young when I was in that band and never thought about the business side of it.
With The Risen Dread is different!! As much as I like our songs, I’m constantly working on the business side of it and I think that’s the main difference.
Is there a particular process to your/the band’s songwriting?
Not really!! I usually have some riffs or structure idea and we start jamming around that and see what works and what doesn’t work. Marco begins to write the lyrics once we have a rough structure done. It usually takes around 2 to 3 months to get a song done. Because we review it all the time… sometimes we overthink it. That doesn’t mean we work one song at a time, we sometimes work on 3 songs at the same time. They’re in different stage of the writing process
Would you tell us about your latest release?
‘Night Hag’ is our first full album released in January. It’s a conceptual album, we talk about Mental Illness in all tracks. We’ve got tracks about depression, PTSD, cotard delusion, sleep paralysis and so on. We mix all our influences in our tracks.
What are the major inspirations to its heart and themes?
Inspirations comes from everywhere actually. Musically, we’ve got a lot of influences from different artists. Lyrics wise, Marco does his research to write the lyrics. But some of the songs in the album are personal to some members. We’ve got members with depression, anxiety and sleep paralysis. Those songs come from our own experience of dealing with those illness.
I am always intrigued as to how artists choose track order on albums and EP’s and whether in hindsight they would change that. What has been the deciding factor for you or do songs for the main do that organically?
It’s never an easy thing to do. We’ve got to decide which tracks are going to be the singles before we decide the track order. In our case, we wanted to have a good dynamic throughout the album. Things we considered when we were choosing were:
1. We can’t have all singles together
2. We can’t have all either fast or slow tracks together
3. ‘Psychoses’ is going to open the album
4. ‘The Night Hag’ is going to close the album
The intro in ‘Psychoses’ is a part of the intro/orchestra arrangement we have in ‘The Night Hag’. It’d make sense to have them as an opening and closing tracks in the album. Also we mention the night hag figure in all tracks. Then, having ‘The Night Hag’ as the last track of the album would bring the concept of the album together.
What do you find the most enjoyable part of being in a band and similarly the most cathartic?
Playing live… be on a stage is something that I can’t describe. That’s the most enjoyable thing.
For me the most cathartic is when things on a stage happen the way it supposes to and when you see people actually enjoying your songs.
For anyone contemplating checking you out live give some teasers as to what they can expect.
A live performance full of energy. We leave everything on the stage. Every gig we play is unique for everyone (crowd and ourselves). We don’t play with click, what makes our gig being unique. We’ve just come back from an EU and UK tour with Vader and Marduk. We played the same setlist and we never played the tracks in the same way. Sometimes we play faster, we make mistakes that we didn’t make in other gigs. All those things make our performance unique in that gig.
What has been your most thrilling moment on stage to date?
We’ve got some good memories from the tour we just finished. But two things I’ll always remember.
There was this woman in Marsberg/DE who needed an walker. Usually, people wait for one or two songs when you’re a new band before they start enjoying or not your gig. But she was banging her head from the moment we started. After the show she came to talk to us to say she went to that gig to watch us. This was unbelievable, since we were playing with Vader and Marduk.
In Manchester, there was this man in a wheelchair. Just beside of the stage when we were playing. I remember I played almost an entire track interacting only with him.
What else can we expect from the band in the near future?
We’ve got a video clip to release from the tour we did with Vader and Marduk. We’ll also release vlogs of that tour.
We don’t have anything else to release after it. We’ve just released our album. We’re going to promote it as much as we can before we start working on anything new.
What are the major inspirations to you sound wise and as a musician?
I don’t have major inspirations. I like simple things with catchy riffs and choruses. That’s something you can see in our songs. All choruses have a simple riff, but very catchy as well. I wouldn’t listen to Prog for instance. It’s just something I’m not a fan.
And finally what song or release would you say was the spark to your passion for music?
Fear Of The Dark from Iron Maiden. I think I listened to it for the first time when I was 8. It played on a radio and I remember I was in my father’s car in front of a shop my family used to own. I was with that song in my mind for a long time, but I didn’t know which band was. Until later, I got their Live at Donington VHS and I found out they were that band.
Many thanks once again; anything else you would like to add?
I’d like to thank you for space and follow us in our social media as we’ve got some gigs to announce soon.
Pete RingMaster
Read our review of Night Hag @ https://ringmasterreviewintroduces.wordpress.com/2022/02/17/the-risen-dread-night-hag/
Pete RingMaster
Copyright RingMaster Review
Categories: Music
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