| Interview for Doom-Metal Portal (2005) | Jun 21, 2008 |
Gloomy promise of the Six It's time to talk about the Ukrainian metal stage and one of the most interesting Ukrainian bands for the time being - GRIMFAITH, who managed to create their own style, successfully combining doom-metal with other styles of modern music. Who hides under the enigmatic name GRIMFAITH, what does the band live for and what plans do GRIMFAITH have for the future? I succeeded to question the band's leader - Igor Cherepanov. Hi, Igor! First of all, I'd like to point to the original name chosen for a band! Have you put a special sense into it? Generally, at first I thought of the name GRIMACE, but it appeared that there is a band with such name in Brazil. As a result our drummer offered GRIMFAITH. The name was not accepted at once, but when the time passed we understood that it is memorized well and scanned comfortably. Personally I like the meaning of faith as "promise", however everybody can interpret it the way he likes. Speaking about our band, you should search meaning and sense in our lyrics, not in the name. Is the line-up of GRIMFAITH permanent? Who are the members of the band now? Members of the band changed often enough, but now, I hope, the band is finally formed. GRIMFAITH are: Ivan Cherednichenko - vocals, Igor Cherepanov (actually me) - guitar, Natalia Nazarova - keyboards, back vocals, Igor Ryabtsev - drums, Eugene Titarchuk - guitar, Denis Tkalichev - bass. What inspired you to create GRIMFAITH? Is it possible to consider the band as a hobby of yours and other musicians of GRIMFAITH? In the beginning it was a hobby. Now it is not a hobby, although not a professional activity too. All GRIMFAITH's musicians work in addition to the band activity and the money that we get for the concerts are hardly enough cover the cost on rehearsals and records. I am sure, that many great bands had the same stage of their careers and the secret of future success lies in our capacity, our desire to do something great plus in having good relationships with people. Personally I am a fan of band and I dedicate every free minute to GRIMFAITH. We create music together, and lyrics are written by me. When we began, music was composed by me and Natalia (keyboards), and now a lot of ideas are brought by Eugene Titarchuk, who joined GRIMFAITH about half-year ago from the well-known thrash metal band UNERASE (Kiev). He likes oriental music and you might feel that on the new records of GRIMFAITH. Speaking about lyrics, I treat them very carefully. It is awful, when bands "spit" on the lyrics of their songs, saying something like "Oh, no one will understand what we are singing about - the music is loud". Speaking about me, when I listen to music, I like to plunge into it, and it is impossible without having lyrics on the PC screen. You can find our lyrics on our web-site www.grimfaith.kiev.ua so that you can listen to the music with lyrics in front of your eyes. And, it is necessary to add that our lyrics are in English. Many bands use female vocal to widen the audience. Is it a binding "instrument" for you or this is a contribution to the fashion? The band uses female vocal from its very beginning, it sounds well and fits our music. There are less female vocals on our new songs but we don't know how it will be used in the future. Is concert activity a necessary part for you creation work? Is it possible to say about GRIMFAITH as a studio-band? Live acts are very important for us now. It is such an inexpressible feeling, when people shout the name of the band - you receive some sort of energy which you send back to the public. And after the show I feel pleasant calmness, which is hard to attain by other methods, except as with a girl. To say shorter, live shows are "sex" for me, and studio work - masturbation (joke!). Our promo-CD is named "Sex in Heaven" by the way :) Live music rules!!! Speaking about Kiev, our audience is a mixture of both Goths and metal-heads. Gothic-community in Kiev the in its majority is formed by metal-heads, and such people like our music. And, thanks to our vocalist, our band has a wide girl audience :) Speaking about girls, I'd like to give a tricky question: don't you consider that metal music is just for men? Why do think that I consider it so? The metallic music fits every ear. A female audience is specially appreciated by us - girls, as a rule, perceive our music very emotionally, and it inspires a lot. On one of our shows two Gothic girls imitated snakes and so frankly crept on a floor, that I hardly restrained myself :) Yes, it is amusing! :) But we will get back to your music. There are several songs of GRIMFAITH accessible on the official web-site of the band. How did the records of these compositions pass? It is possible to get two tracks that we recorded a year ago - "Vampire to Become" and "Funeral of Last Hope" and 2 tracks from a promo-CD (there are only six songs on a disk) - "Sex In Heaven" and "Ruins of My Heart". How did all the recording sessions in former soviet countries pass? Continuously, boring and the result is always no as good as you expected before :) Did you have difficulties with your record? There were no difficulties with the recording itself. I had problems because I solved all the organization tasks. Our promo-CD was recorded on a cheap studio, and the row of technical adaptations was missing. Do you spend a lot of time on your rehearsals? Usually we have rehearsals twice a week, and before concerts we do one or two additional ones. Now I search the place to make our own premises to rehearse with couple of others bands. Some people noticed that GRIMFAITH sounds a lot like Portuguese band MOONSPELL (especially vocals). What do you think about this? I like MOONSPELL and such comparison is very nice for me, but Ivan's vocal differs from Fernando strongly. We played cover for "Alma Mater" when our band was formed and that's why people compare us with them, but new GRIMFAITH tracks are just a different piece music. Will GRIMFAITH play covers in future? We think about a couple of songs to re-make. But we do not really want to play well known metal- or gothic- bands. We are thinking about VACUUM's "I Breathe. What bands did influence GRIMFAITH? What band/musician would you like to play with? Probably Peter Steel (TYPE O NEGATIVE), Jurki (THE 69 EYES) and guys from EVEREVE. This is what I wish - other musicians have another tastes and wishes. Do you see the future of the band in Ukraine, or GRIMFAITH has targets in the Europe? We do everything to make foreign labels and big Russian ones pay attention to our band. It is impossible to have success with hard music in Ukraine - I know many Ukrainian bands that play high quality music boiling in their own juice, playing quarterly. It is the only possible way for us to get to Europe and that's why we have to be ready for competition. What can you say about the studio work of the band? Are you recording any material, or you are concentrated on live-shows? We recorded "Sex in Heaven" Promo-CD and actively send it to different labels and organizers. We want to have more live shows now, and we will start the recording of the debut album in autumn, or in winter. To record the whole album in Kiev is an extreme variant. We want to make the record either in Poland, or in Germany - we will not be greedy considering the first album of the band! In Kiev, for example, there is no high-quality sound producer to record metal music. Good studios cost a lot, and there is a risk to get the wrong result there without a good sound producer. I don't know much about Russia, but our friends recorded their CD in Poland and advised one exact studio there - well known band Vader did records there for example. If you can advise something indeed good in Russia I will be very thankful. Well! I hope this not last your the interview for www.doom-metal.ru! Thank you Igor for interesting answers! We are waiting for GRIMFAITH in Moscow! And, in the end, your wishes to all the fans of your band in Russia? I think that people in Russia don't know a lot about us yet, but I wish everyone love, embodiment of desires and good music. Do not use drugs. See you soon!
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