1. Hail! That long awaited album is finally here, entitled Odyssey and it's a concept one. Tell me, did you expect such a delay? As you know, the Odyssey concept is a very big and serious opus. We had to treat it with as much professionalism as we could. We also had some health problems but as you know it is now out and we are very happy about it. 2. How hard was it to gather your lyrics and reduce them within your songs. Which were your sources in this quest for knowledge & ideas on the whole story? I would like to inform you that we did not reduce any lyrics. Everything is in. We wrote some of them some years ago and we kept on working on this part of the album very hard. You can not write bad lyrics in a concept album about the Odyssey. As long as the second part of your question about the resources, we studied many books that analyzed the characters, the places and of course we read the Odyssey many many times. 3. What about the recording process? What gear was used, where Once again we recorded our album in Reflection studios. George uses Pearl export drums, Gabriel snares, savian cymbals and dw drum pedals and Evans drum heads. Johns uses Jackson basses and Peavey amps. Kostas uses Alesis and Ensoniq keyboards. Stathis uses Clover guitars, Marshal pre amps, Peavey heads – equalizers, and Marshal cabins. I use AKG microphones. 4. I was really impressed to hear a tenor's voice within your songs. It fits extremely well with your style and I guess you think so the same, because I realized you'd taken advantage of this "tool" many times on this album. Was he a friend of yours? There are 2 tenors in the album. Mr John Filias and Mr Panagiotis Milonas. They are both good friend of ours and they agreed to help us in this attempt. If you have such good musicians with you it is normal that you will want to put as many parts of them as you can. I believe that they fit with our music. They add epic elements by using their voices but they do not alter the nature of our music, which is Epic Metal. 5. Any other guest musicians except the tenor? We were glad to have many guests in our album. That gave a different ”color† in the whole concept. The two tenors as I told you before are Mr John Filias and Mr Panagiotis Milonas. We also had Mr Peter Panagiotou (Lost Fate) in backing vocals. The war choir was consisted by Mr Fotis Karagiannis, Mr Mike Vendouris, Mr Kostas Traiforos, Mr John Psarrakis (ex- Reflection member), Mr Jim Kokorakis and Reflection. Guitar professor Mr Nick Politopoulos performed Kalypso’s acoustic guitars. Mr Nick Anastasiadis performed percussion and finally all the theatrical narration was written and performed by theater professor Mr Greg Anastasiadis. 6. I know your drummer is also the drummer of another Greek band Swan Christy. Do you face any difficulties with that? We do not face any problems. We are not professionals so that we tour the whole world and there is no time for another band! 7. Does any of the band members planning to follow a solo career or join another band along with Reflection? We are happy with Reflection. We are all friends for many years and we have the band because we love it. So why join another band when you can do what you like in Reflection. As long as the solo career... what can I say!!! This question is only for very famous bands!!! 8. We see many musicians taking part in lots of bands at the same I believe this question goes for someone who has done it already! 9. How hard have you been rehearsing to reach a remarkable quality of performance on the new songs live? Have you played any of your new songs live yet? When you grow older you gain more experience and you become better musician. The band is out there for 12 years. We do not have problems perform our new songs live. Do not forget that "The return of the King" is played live for more than 5 years while "Cyclops" is played for 2 years. We also performed live twice "Who Will Dare To Bend The Bow" and once "Beware Of The Night". That means that we will not have problems with the rest of them. 10. I can tell you are a live band mostly. And it's widely recognised that your presence on stage is really good. Would you ever think seriously about recording a live video clip to release as a multimedia enhanced CD or even a DVD? Look, Heavy Metal is mostly a live music. It has a lot of power and that power must be shown in live shows. It is a good idea to make a live video clip or better a live CD or video. But as you know our budget is not unlimited and every step we make must have the best profit for the band. If only a few people buy your CD, fewer will buy the DVD or live video. These things are only for bands with big labels supporting them. 11. Were there any odds you had to go against in order to achieve your targets? I do believe that if you work hard and really believe what you are doing then you can achieve your targets. You can achieve almost everything if you believe in your self and in what you are doing. 12. How do you feel by producing lyrics inspired by ancient Greece? Some bands just write ordinary lyrics just to exist & the vocalist to have something to sing. Some others give the same importance to the music and to the lyrics. In what category you belong? Of course we give the same importance to our lyrics as to our music. If it is not like that then why not play instrumental music! Our lyrics have to do with Hellenic history and mythology. And this is the most normal thing for a Greek Epic metal band. We have a great mythology and history thus we can sing about our heroes and our legends. 13. If you had to choose only one song to represent your band in a radio show, what would it be? My opinion is that "When Immortals Die" is our trademark for many years. It is the song that stigmatized us for more than a decade and became something like a cult hit. I do not say that other songs are not well known but "When Immortals Die" is attached with us. 14. Can you compare "When Immortals... Die!" with "Who Will Dare To Bend The Bow" or any of the rest songs on the new CD? How can you compare songs that were composed 11 years ago by teenagers and songs that were composed by grown ups with 12 years experience in the same field. I believe that we have changed all these years but our music style is the same. Epic Heavy Metal. This is the only thing that will not change. 15. What is changed and what remains the same for you as individuals & as musicians? You said there would be no "progress" for your sound, just pure epic metal in the veins of Candlemass, Memento Mori, Warlord, Manowar, Solitude Aeturnus... Of course there will be absolutely no progress in our music. And when I say progress I mean the "progress" that all big bands say when they want to change their music style. It is obvious that we progressed as musicians. We are better and more mature. We have much more experiences than 12 years ago but our music is still Epic Heavy Metal. We still love Warlord, Candlemass, Memento Mori, Solitude Aeturnus. That is one thing that will not change. 16. Do you like progressive metal bands such as Queensryche or Dream Theater or Fates Warning? Or you rather prefer to listen to doom/epic metal? We do not like progressive metal (Only George and Kostas listen to such bands). Me and Stathis like some albums of Queensryche (The E.P., Empire, Operation Mindcrime) and of course all the Fates Warning albums until ”Inside Out†. I think that this is not the progressive metal music the magazines promote. It is technical, but I think it is more progressive in the feelings, that music create. We are more into classic Heavy and Epic Metal. We adore bands like Warlord, Candlemass, Solitude Aeturnus, Memento Mori, Manowar and of course classic stuff like Scorpions, Malmsteen, Iron Maiden, Accept, Twisted Sister, WASP and of course Melodic Hard Rock/AOR and bands like Ten, Cinderella, Praying Mantis, Poison, Motley Crue, Steelhouse Lane, Firehouse, Danger Danger, etc. 17. Any Hellenic metal band that impressed you lately? Do you check out any new releases from Hellenic metal bands? There are bands popping out every day. The new blood in Hellenic Epic/Power Metal is worth checking. Sacred Outcry, Battleroar, Raging Storm, Lost Fate. There are also the old caravans like Mystery, Marauder, Sarissa, Powercrue, Inner Wish, Dream Weaver. Their albums are very good and some of them are even better than some albums of bands with "big name". The problem with the Hellenic bands is the limited budget that causes to a not so good production. 18. If you had a serious proposal from a big company, would you stop your cooperation with Secret Port records? I do not believe that we would change our label. We are happy with Secret Port Records. Theodosis believes in our band and we know that he tries his best for us. Thus why change if we are happy with that situation? I do not say that if we had a very good proposal from a big label we wouldn’t think about it. But with these conditions it is very difficult to make any change. 19. In what grade did/does your current label is helping you in every way? Are you satisfied?
What those people have to say for bands like Iron Maiden??? I know that their manager made them what they are now! Or maybe Ozzy Osbourne! Or Dio! There are many examples of good managers as they are many examples of bad managers. It is like every other job in the world. There are good bands and there are bad bands. I believe that if you act alone the most possible thing is to be a very good underground band. If you want to be in the... "big division" you have to know people that can guide you. These are big business. 21. How important is the Internet for the band? How much do you care about fans opinions through the vote polls, the guestbook or so? Internet and computers are in our life. I believe that it is very important to bands because you can easily communicate with people that live thousands of kilometers away from you. You can promote your band through a site, you can discuss with other fans, and generally you can do almost everything with Internet. As long as Reflection, we care about our fans because they are the people that buy our music and come to our concerts. We want to know their favorite songs so we can please them and make them have fun. 22. Would you care more about a review on a large mainstream magazine or a widely respectful Internet fanzine? We do not care. Everybody’s welcome! 23. With which bands (Hellenic or not) you want to play live? Which Hellenic cities you'd still want to visit for a gig? We like playing with bands that have fun. The most important thing in a Heavy Metal concert is the fun. We play everywhere and with everybody. 24. Tell me a few things about the cover art of your new work. I think it's very simple, but I also think that's the way it should be. Why did it take so long for the cover to be prepared? Most times, simple & nice artwork is the earmark for classic albums. What do you think? I totally agree with you. The whole concept of the album is exactly the way we wanted when we had the idea of Odyssey album. It’s not always good to have a complex or sophisticated cover. As you said some of the most classic albums have simple covers. 25. Which are your dreams, your ambitions as a band, your wishes for Hellenic metal. Hellenic metal scene has some very good bands. But there are many problems. The biggest problem is that there are no fans! It’s very disappointing to see 50 to 100 people watching a concert of 4 or 5 bands!!! It is ever worse to have sales of 500 copies of CD in Hellas only! How can the bands progress when no one is interested? I mean that there are 1500 people watching gigs of foreign bands and pay 30 Euro, and there are not 300 people to pay 7 Euro to watch 5 bands? The other bad thing is that many bands want to be rock starts and complain for everything but they do not work hard to achieve their goals. Last but not least lets not forget about the big magazines, that promote whoever they want and leave the rest to fight for something better. My wish for Hellenic bands is to stop fighting with each other and start working for something better. Labels, magazines, stores, bands and fans must be united. 26. I have the feeling that your new compositions are based on eastern oriented scales. I also strongly believe and I'm glad that you have managed to shape a very personal accent. Your statements please :) Thank you very much about your good words. I believe that my accent becomes better and better because I sing for 12 years and I also was in England for 4 years. I also take singing lessons the past 2 years and it is very normal for me to become better. As long as the eastern orientated scales, it is indeed a sound that we like and we use it in many of our songs. We do not know if we managed to create a personal music style but we like when people say so. 27. Why did you choose the album title odyssey to appear with Hellenic characters "ïäýóóåéá" and some song titles as well? Moreover why the narrations/introductions are in Greek? It is not strange for us when Norwegian bands have some songs in Norwegian language or German bands sings in German! Therefore why not have some narration in Greek? We used in the past some narration in Greek, we liked that, therefore we thought that it will be a good idea to use some more narration in our latest album too. As long as the title... it is very simple! The title of the Epic play is "Ïäýóóåéá"! 28. Would you like to put your career as Reflection on the top and try to live from that? Would you do it if you could? Let’s be serious. There is not space for Epic Metal in the worldwide mainstream Metal scene. What label will pay the wage for 5 people for 5 to 10 thousand sales? Or is there any Epic Metal band (real Epic Metal not the modern "Rhapsody" style) that sells more than 10000 copies? That’s why Epic Metal was meant to be underground. There are some exceptions like Manowar, Candlemass and a few more that can live by their music but the rest of them have their jobs. 29. What do the members of the band do to relax? We watch movies, we go out with friends and of course I have to say that Stathis is a fanatic underwater spear gun fishing! We also practice martial arts for several years and of course we listen to music. 30. Does pain inspire your melodies? Can you come up with a good idea when you are in a happy mood? Every feeling has part in our music. I must admit that we are optimistic and happy people and I can assure you that when we compose we are in a very happy mood. That doesn’t mean that we haven’t compose after some very difficult and uncomfortable situations. 31. Your thoughts on the possible forthcoming war US vs Iraq. Even though I do not want to talk about politics and mix it with music, it is very obvious that USA cares only for oil. They are the ones who sold weapons to Iraq 20 years ago. They do not care if everyone is against this war. They will proceed no matter who agrees or not. 32. What would you do if you could decide for the future of our world? Make love not war!!! Save the seas... and kill the politicians. 33. What do you think about Gate of Lions fanzine, the section with the Hellenic metal bands & general. I believe that you are doing a great work. It is good that many people create good sites and promote the Hellenic metal bands. You see, the mainstream magazines do not support our efforts (except a few bands) and there is a need for promotion. Thus fanzines, and netzines are the only impulsive movement in our scene. That does not mean that you have stop working like that. You have to continue and become better and better every time. Thanks for your support. 34. That's enough I guess, the painful interview process can end here haha. Give a title to it and then say anything you feel right to say (even spit shit on me for this trial :p). I have to say that I do not want to spit shit on you!!! If you really want a title then I believe the appropriate one is... Still Sail On The Sea. I also want to say a very big thank you because of this great interview and I hope when you interview us again you will make questions about, women, food, fish hunting, martial arts movies and b-movies!!!
|