Your record has just been released. Is there a concept to Carnival of No Tomorrow?

Carnival of No Tomorrow is not really a concept album. There is more or less an idea behind the title however but the album itself does not revolve around one single concept. It is more a collection of songs with different themes to them.

Where does this name/concept come from?

One of the first songs I wrote for this album was “Carnivores at Carnival”. While writing this song I came up with the thought that; What would you do if you knew you had only one night left and not only you but also everybody else had just one more night. What would that final party of humanity look like? I think we would let go of all our inhibitions and restraints and probably for the first time show our true colours. Because there would be no regret afterwards for there would be no more you. Now with that in mind I came up with the title “Carnival of No Tomorrow” and I still find it an intriguing thought for it also kinda represents our name as a band. Sin7inS stands for leading your life the way you want it without all those rules, regulations, social pressure, etc. So if we would go out with a bang it will probably be a loud one.

How long have you been working on this album?

I have been writing on this album for a period of about 6 months. Within this period there is also a lot re-writing, adding/ deleting, etc. With the recording process and mixing included it took about 10 months to realize this album.

Do you like going to carnivals?

Not really. The Dutch variant of Carnival does not appeal much to me and the part of Holland where I come from we do not celebrate it at all. If there would be this Venetian version of one I might visit it and if it would be a Carnival of No Tomorrow I’d definitely be present

The cover was shot by Natascha van Poppel. How did this collaboration came to be?

I know Natascha van Poppel very well, I consider her to be a personal friend. I met her about 10 years ago during a photo shoot with a previous band and since then we stayed in touch. The contact over the years became a real friendship and by the time we started Sin7sinS there was no question to who would be our photographer/ designer. She is a talented lady who provided and still provides us with awesome artwork. (studiomystica.nl)

How did you come up with the image for the cover?

We wanted this deity for the Carnival title but it had to relate to the idea behind it. There for we chose a naked god with a party-mask in one hand and a knife in the other. Symbolizing the naked truth, the masks we wear and the knife presents the lowering of our guard.

Summer is coming up. Are there any festivals you will be attending?

Yes we will be attending a number of festivals. For information about this and for other tour dates, latest news, etc;

sin7sins.com

Additional information

Deaht Angel – Headliner Friday – The Ultra Violence set – Only NL show
Arch Enemy – Headliner Saturday Large Realm Stage – Only NL show
Jon Oliva’s Pain – Headliner Saturday Large Rockhand Stage – Performing Savatage Hall of the Mountain King – Only NL festival show
Moonspell – Co-headliner Saturday Large Rockhand Stage – Vintage Set (Wolfheart/Irreligious) – Only show with this set in NL
Obituary – Co-headliner Saturday Large Realm Stage – Only NL festival show
The Gathering – performing in 1992 line-up – Always set

On the 27th of April Moonspell will release their latest album Alpha Noir. Alpha Noir seems to be a less subtle album then the ‘usual’ Moonspell album (if there is such a thing). The more you listen to it though the more detailed and intricate the songs prove to be. The album opens with a great build up in intensity, immediately sucking you in to the album. Fernando’s grunts are great and the pieces of clean vocals in between bring depth to this song. The delicacy of the album is found in the opening and the final instrumental songs.

Lickanthrope has been released as a video already and it gives a good impression of this album. Raw, heavy and dark. This will be an awesome album to experience live especially if you like to mosh.

Cover by: Seth Siro Anton, the Greek artist who collaborated with the band on Night Eternal.

On the 2nd of June at Park Brakkestein Nijmegen!

For tickets click here.

23rd of March 2012

Tivoli, Utrecht, The Netherlands

With her new album in the making Emilie Autumn finally attended the Netherlands again. First she was supposed to play at the Helling but the concert was moved to Tivoli Oude Gracht, perhaps due to all those fans asking for tickets. Even though the upper floor was closed it was still quite busy. Emilie’s plague rats are very devoted and barriers were placed outside to keep the fans on the curb.

When the first lights appear on stage and Emilie and her ladies’ shadows appear one by one behind their screen the crowd starts to scream. Not so pleasant to the ears since it are mostly girls making themselves heard. Emilie has a wonderful mask on and long nails to enhance her ratty look. The show is off to a good start with ‘4 o’clock’. Veronica, Captain Maggot and Contessa set tea bags on fire for a sparkly effect. It is a shame that the sound is bad because it doesn’t do the music justice at all. It sounds overly bombastic and the vocals are hardly audible.

The show is amazing as always. It is good to see that there are actually some new elements this time. Such as the tom boy outfit of EA and her pretending to sell her partners in crime in a cabaret act. The Asylum is still their platform but other acts are added now. It is a shame that they seem to loose their sincerity. At times their show seems very American and too much over the top. It has always been over the top, but in a good way.

As the evening continues we see a parade of the most amazing outfits. Lovely ladies and great entertainment. I wonder if we should still call this a concert. It doesn’t seem fitting enough since it is such an overall experience. And that is a good thing because the music didn’t cut it tonight.

Photos by: Monica Duffels

Your last album was released in 2008. Before that you released an album almost every year. Why was there such a long time between albums this time?

Gerit: The main reason is that our first singer left the band in 2008. We found a new one after that and she also left us one year later. At this time we already started the songwriting for the new album so you can imagine that it was a hit in the face to loose a singer again. Then it took a while, until we found our third an actual singer Manuela. As she joined the band, we had to do a little finetuning with her and the new stuff but finally I think all that happened had its reason and now we are very proud of the new album.

Philip: Yeah, the road was long, rocky and sometimes painful. It feels good that we finally got to this point. Sometimes I still can’t believe that we finally released this album.

Do you have any special plans for the release of your new album?

Gerit: If you mean the release day I think we all will be very excited about the reactions from the fans. Nowadays it´s a real-time feeling with stuff like Facebook and Youtube. Sometimes it feels as if you are in the living room of your fans, experiencing how they react after they first heard your new record .

After the release we have three shows in Germany together with Epica and by the middle of April we´ll support Epica on their tour across Europe together with Stream of Passion.

What can you tell us about the title Neverworlds’s end?

Philip: It deals with the dreams that you have as a child, where you imagine that you can become anything you want and that the world is a playground, your playground. Many of the lyrics are inspired by things that can happen to these dreams, how they get endangered or how you can keep them alive. But it is not a concept album where the songs are musically or lyrically connected to each other.

What does this new album say about Xandria?

Gerit: We are back!! To be honest, for us it is kind of a restart of our career. We have a new singer and the new songs are much more metal than ever before. I think if you listen to “Neverworld´s End” you will notice that we paid much more attention on our instrumental work. We have really cool, heavy and sometimes muddy guitar riffs and great solos from Philip and Marco. Nils and I tried to give the new CD a whole new feeling of the rhythm section. The orchestral Sounds are very bombastic, epic and soundtrack-like. And this all paired with the great voice of Manuela is in some parts that what we always made, but in most parts it´s kind of a “new” Xandria.

Philip: For us as musicians, it is more fun than ever because we all love metal and with the new songs we can enjoy this without limitations!

What would you like to accomplish with your music?

Philip: We hope that our listeners can enjoy the trip on which we are trying to take them. You can dream and enjoy the soundscapes or just rock with us.

Do you have any dreams for Xandria?

Gerit: In the hall of my flat I have an extra space on the wall which is waiting for a gold record. So that is a personal dream for me but to speak for all of us, we are very thankful for the entire career with Xandria.

Philip: I hope that we can go on doing what we do for quite a while! But in my opinion we don’t have to grow too much. I don’t need to perform on national television, I prefer the clubs…

Photos By Stefan Heilemann

25 February 2012

Anneke van Giersbergen, The Jacks

The Jacks

Since the evening is sponsored by a very famous brand of alcohol The Jacks is quite an appropriate opening act. They have just released their new EP called RAW & GORGEOUS. This could well be a description of these band members. A raw and gorgeous looking front lady, ladies on guitar and drums and the only man in the band plays the bass (Joost van Haren).

In honour of them being an up and coming band The Jacks had performed in a Dutch TV show this week (DWDD). Because of this the band is know by most of the audience. They are warmly welcomed with applause and cheers.

Singer Marcia Savelkoul has an amazing voice. Nice and raw. The Jacks give a memorable performance that seems to take us somewhat back in time. Besides songs from their former and new EP they treat us to some covers. Covering Zeppelin takes some guts but The Jacks do it with style. Hot Stuff from Donna Summer seems to fit them as well.

The song Go From their new EP seems to hit the spot with the audience (perhaps because this was the song played on TV). It is a fun and energetic song.

Their stage presence is great; the energy seems to fly off the stage. The audience is quite enthusiastic, especially for an opening act. The evening is off to a good start!

Anneke van Giersbergen

Since Anneke is performing solo her audience seems to have changed. From headbanging metalheads to a more aged, general audience. But then again her style has changed as well. The one thing that is constant is her amazing voice. The voice that got her the title, best female singer of the Netherlands. Anneke is a joy on stage. A happy, bouncy lady full of energy and love for her music.

The show starts with Feel Alive, a song from her new album Everything is Changing. All but one (I Wake Up) song from her new album are performed tonight. Of course there are also some songs from former albums. Even so far back as Saturnine, which never ceases to captivate the audience.

Most songs of the new album are quite energetic, some you might even call heavy. And then there is Circles. The crowd goes quiet after a small “shhhh” from Anneke. For a few minutes (almost) everyone holds their breath and all you see is Anneke in a spotlight singing this amazing song.

Anneke and her band give two encores. After this they all take a well deserved bow at the front of the stage and under loud cheers they leave. Until next time the album will have to do.

Setlist:

Feel Alive
My Boy
Take Me Home
Beautiful One
Fury
You Want To Be Free
Circles
Down So Low
Saturnine
Stay
Slow Me Down
Too Late
1000 Miles Away From You
Everything is Changing
Hope Pray Dance Play
Hyperdrive
Witnesses

 
Photos by: Erik Schepers

The venue will open at 19:00 and the show will start at 20:30
Tickets cost 25 euro’s.

It is said that your new album is a conceptual album. Can you tell me more about this concept?

ZA: Yes, it talks about a girl who has something ‘special’, ‘different’ and somehow feels isolated. She wanders searching for a place where she can finally be accepted.

The whole concept is an allegory of Mother Earth, the future of humanity and human corruption and the shock among people who stay ‘pure’ or are still especially linked with nature and modern society. It is not easy to reconcile this way of being, with all the changes that society is suffering, and above all, with human corruption in all its sides. All these ‘special’ people are unfortunately starting to disappear and in my view, they are the last hope to change the World. It is so sad that human beings are forgetting where we come from!

It is also kind of odd that after thinking about the concept, I’ve seen many artists talking about something similar in their works. It seems that many people perceive that society is not walking towards the right way… It is clear that some of us have these kinds of ‘apocalyptic’ thoughts… Maybe that’s a good sign and we can still change?

What made you decide to make a conceptual album?

ZA: We wanted to try this new way of working; we thought it would be a cool experiment. For us it is very important to work all in the same wave, that’s why we all gathered one day to decide how we wanted our next album to be. This way you can focus better on the work you have to do. We thought that having a story before writing the songs would help our inspiration and will also help to communicate and transmit the feelings we wanted to.

For the new album you have worked with many great names such as Maite Itoiz and John Kelly.  How did you meet and how was it to work together?

ZA: Maite and John are some of my best friends since years, we live in the same city and we are together almost every day… We have so many things in common! One of those things of course is music. Maite already sang on our first album ‘Secrets’. For me it was very special to have Maite & John together this time. We have also sung together live many times, so it was like a natural thing to have ‘Elfenthal’ again in the new album.

We also are honored to count with Mark Jansen’s grunts and screams in one of the tracks of the album.

Do you have special plans for the release of the album?

ZA: Yes, we will play the new songs for the first time in Brussels the 27th of February, where we will be opening for Tarja. The same week we will open for Leaves Eyes in Spain and the 31st March we will play a very special show in our hometown. It will be The Wanderer official release party

Where do you see Diabulus in Musica in five years?

ZA: Who knows? We would like to see ourselves at least living on Diabulus in Musica, but we don’t know if it would stay only in a dream or if it will be possible one day, the music industry is changing so much nowadays!…

You are from Spain. Can you tell us a bit about the metalscene there? Is it alive?

ZA: Metal in general is not the most popular style in Spain. I guess the same happens in the rest of Europe. Maybe Spanish metalheads like better the national ‘old school’ heavy metal. Nevertheless, there is a rising new metal scene, although these bands aren’t well-known.

Photos By Stefan Heilemann

29-02-2012 – Esp/Fin/Swe

02-0-2012 – G/A/S, Benelux &Ita

05-03-2012 – Rest of Europe

06-03-2012 – USA/CAN

This is the second album of this symphonic metal band.

Is it an album that brings new sounds? No, not really. We’ve heard it all before. But it is a pleasant album. The Wanderer is quite diverse in its songs. There are heavy pieces, ballads even some songs with folk influences. Probably due to the cooperation with John Kelly and Maite Itoiz (Elfenthal).

Diabulus in Musica is not a pioneer in this music scene but they provide good music with great variety. It is with reason that Diabulus in Musica was booked as co-headliner for MFVF 9.

The Wanderer is a conceptual album. More about this (and other topics) will be discussed in an interview with the band coming up soon on this website. For now enjoy their new videoclip: Sceneries of Hope