Before the debut show of the Immortals tour I had the pleasure to Manimal for a chance to discover what this new unique band is all about!
Tonight is the first night of this tour with Firewind, how do you feel about the show?
It’s really good, I mean it’s always exciting to be on tour and we’re expecting good things from this tour. Plus we’ve never been in Glasgow with this band. It’s going to be fun to see the response we get.
Have you done many tours playing your new album before this tour with Firewind?
This is our second tour on this album, we did a tour last year with Orden Ogan but that was mainly , Switzerland and Austria with no shows in the UK so this our first time here.
Was playing with Firewind something you really aspired to as a band?
Well of course. Meeting Gus was very cool, he’s an insanely good guitarist. It’s an honour being here with him. They all seem like nice guys, we have only met for a day but they seem like nice people. We’re not fighting yet, so we’ll see!
How did you end up ing Firewind for this tour?
We ed Firewind’s tour manager. We got the through Orden Ogan when we toured together, their tour manager recommended us to their TM, and he thought we were good enough to go with them so that’s how it went.
How do you feel your second album differs from your debut record?
It’s darker and heavier, definitely more straight forward, and maybe a little bit more old school heavy metal than the first album. The first album has some progressive elements and we have less of that on the new album.
Do you feel this album fits the style of Manimal better?
I think we will keep this style for our next albums, we liked this kind of music. What we play and what you hear is the music that we like to listen to ourselves.
What are your musical inspirations?
I think our music taste now is different from when we were young. Now we’re doing more of a mixture of all the bands we like, bands like Judas Priest, Rammstein and Queensryche. My inspiration when it comes to writing, lyrics come from everyday life, things we see on TV.
Is there a general theme behind your music?
I’ve reflected on that question before because when I looked through my lyrics I can see some things coming back, not in every song but in many songs. One of those things is mental illness. I was also inspired by Dante’s Inferno and things like that, but that was for one song, the song we did with Udo Dirkschneider who was a guess vocalist for one of our tracks.
What are your favourite Manimal tracks?
“Irresistible”, “Psychopomp”, “Trapped in the Shadows”… That’s it, every song is good!
Are those tracks also your favourites to play live?
Oh, that differs, like we mentioned “Psychopomp”. That turned out to be a good song on the record but live it’s insane! People go crazy, it really takes off the show and that was a surprise we did not expect. And we have the other way around as well, but we won’t mention those!
What sort of have you receive from previous tours?
Really good! After the shows everybody wants to take pictures with us. 90% of people who come to the shows haven’t heard of us so they weren’t expecting anything and we deliver our shows and people are surprised! I didn’t expect people would be so easy to get to cheer and us in our show so it’s really great. Everybody listens to heavy metal in our audience, or mostly, and they will like one or two of our songs at least!
How would you describe the style of your music?
Old school heavy metal, with some modern influences? Maybe not so old, when you say old school I think about the 80s, we’re more at the 90s heavy metal then!
Do you have any power metal influences in your music?
Yeah, we’ve been listening to a lot of German power metal back in the days like, Helloween, Gamma Ray, Primal Fear, so yeah I would say that we have been inspired by those bands.
What advice would you give to bands starting out?
I think playing music that you like to listen to yourself because if you fake it and do something that you think is what people will want it will show. If you’re sincere it doesn’t matter if what you’re doing has been done before. Of course it’s always good if you can be unique, but not everybody can be unique so at least you’ve got to do something that you believe in yourself. That will show and hopefully if it’s good enough people will appreciate it. So always follow your heart and never be satisfied. Try to polish the songs as much as possible, just do it over and over until you really feel like this is the best. Many bands just write songs like “yeah, that’s cool” and it doesn’t turn out good.
Live photos by Amy Harris-Abbott, CE Photography
