-‘ Revengeance’ came out last January. Are you guys happy with the end result and fan response?
Yeah ! The end result is exactly what we hoped for… we recorded ourselves in our own studio, in the basement of our bass player Chris ( Skyhammer Studio ). He is our producer so he recorded the album with us and yeah! it’s just what we wanted it to be heavy and faster Things have been really fast and It sounds really cool, heavy riffs…
It’s exactly what we wanted, the response is really good as well
– These new songs are more aggressive and faster than we’re used to hear from Conan. Especially the song « Revengeance » that you chose as official lyric video… Is there a death metal influence? Is it deliberate or was it just the mood of the moment?
Well I think it’s just the mood…. we listen to a lot of different sort of music, and we’ve released a few albums now so we are conscious of not re listen, it’s more natural we need to jam a lot and a little hear what we already released we just don’t want to just keep repeating ourselves… so yeah! Revengeance is little bit more agressive, little bit more faster, little bit more direct than « Blood Eagle »… we needed to do that, we don’t want people to get bored and we need to be excited too… you know, we need to play music that we enjoy to play!
– Is it hard for you to recreate live this sound and this heavy atmosphere ?
Oh no! it’s quite easy! when we write the songs we just play them live in the jamroom, so we just practiced them like that … We don’t have any problems playing live and you know we tour a lot so for us it’s actually quite easy to recreate the feeling live
– How has your new drummer, Rich Lewis who also plays in Intensive Square, contributed to the band?
Actually rich is in the band for a little while now… We don’t think he is a new drummer anymore. Revengeance was the first album with him, and he’s a great drummer, we wrote this album as a group and all of the three members contributed to the same. He’s a very powerful drummer, perfect for us and he’s also a good friend.
I also know that Renata from Samothrace is playing bass with you on this tour, why her?
Well, She played bass on the summer tour, We played with SAMOTHRACE many times and Chris ( bass ) wasn’t unavailable to play with us on some shows so we asked her if she would play on these show as well
Many bands play doom now, they use and abuse of the style, the sound, even the word DOOM is « everywhere », sometimes being ridiculous… As you know Doom is a « bit trendy » right now… Are you not afraid of becoming a kind of caricature? and what do you think about the actual doom scene ??
Yeah ! there are a lot of bands who played this sort of music, there’s some cool bands like in any scene, some bands will rise to the top…
I think it’s normal, certain types of music will be trendy it’s much of a circle … so eventually when this music isn’t trendy anymore, you’ll see a lot of bands will stop playing or maybe change styles again, go back to what they were playing before, or decide to jump on another band wagon but it’s fine for bands like CONAN, BONGZILLA, SLEEP, HIGH ON FIRE and lots of other bands in the UK or in the rest of the world… We keep playing because we’re not here to be trendy… We are quite serious I think bands should always tried to be original… that’s my best advise! Trying to be original and don’t listen to… when you’re writing music, walk your own way, don’t walk on what everyone else is doing
– According to you, what does CONAN bring or can bring to this style??`
We are quite serious about what we do, we are very very committed to playing our music, as original, we don’t compromise with our sound or with our approach of writing music… The band works hard everyday, we don’t ask for lots of help of people, everything we’ve achieved so far it’s by and for ourselves. And I think the music scene specifically the heavy metal scene needs bands who are organic… We don’t have lots of help from people in the industry, you know we’ve worked really hard to get here so we just keep playing and see how things go
And it works??
I think people respect that!
– Why did you choose to call your band CONAN?? Isn’t it a little bit « cliché » ??
Maybe it’s now, but not when I chose the name in 2006, no one was interested in so I chose the name CONAN, I was listening to HIGH ON FIRE, SLOMATICS etc… And I thought what name would work? what name can I choose for my band?? CONAN!! It can be like a silly name but I love it cause but it’s heavy like our music and It refers to swords, warriors, dark sorcerers and kind of mythological things…
and because it sounds like a simple name…
– Now, What’s next for CONAN??
Some more shows, we’ve got some shows in Europe, and then next year we probably gonna start writing some new material and an album again when we will be happy with the sound and everything… We need to keep going, I think a lots of bands release music but don’t really work hard, they don’t tour much… We like to tour, keep recording, working hard and keep playing …
Thank you Jon !
Thank you too !
