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Contrasting Emotions With MICHAEL SPREITZER From VERONA ON VENUS · HEAVY Music Interviews

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  This is Mike from Devil Driver and Verona and Venus. Beautiful Mike, thanks
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  for joining us today. You're welcome, Thanks for having me my pleasure.
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  So you recently announced your new band of Verona on Venus, with your debut
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  single Roaded, coming out on December first, So firstly, tell us a
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  bit more about the project. This is something I've been wanting to do for
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  a while, and when I was in high school, I really grew up
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  on more. I kind of transitioned from heavy metal more into like industrial and
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  diet and Verona Venus is the result. This is something that's kind of taken
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  me back to my roots and just gives me an outlet for that genre of
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  music that I can't really do with Devil Driver. You had a mysterious campaign
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  leading up with a single mate I drop and teases on social media before the
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  official drop, Like you obviously put a bit of planning into that, Like
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  it didn't work the way you wanted to say. Yeah, so far,
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  it's been good, I think a little piece. Some people have been a
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  little bit shocked some of the content that I've put up there. You know,
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  it's quite different than anything that I've done in the past at this point
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  tells me more about the actual song writer. My seals met it music played
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  what You've done for it. It was one of the first songs I wrote
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  for the album. It was also by far the hardest one to write lyrics
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  for. I must have written. I rewrote that song a bunch of times,
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  and the reason I released that one first. I had a bunch of
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  people listen to that record beforehand, and it wasn't overwhelmingly the favorite song,
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  but it was definitely one of the favorite songs from some of the people that
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  I let listen to the record. You know, very few people have heard
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  the record at this point. I've only let about ten people hear it,
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  but the few people that have released it seem to really like. That song
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  been one of my favorites. It opens up the record, and that was,
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  you know, one of the reasons why I decided to release it first.
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  Yep. Yeah. It comes with an epic music video, largely setting
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  a desert with flashbacks to a tortured soul with a crown of thorns on his
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  head. And there's a soul when the characters coming and going as it progresses
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  might but what's actually happening there it's too but it's it's a favorit going on.
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  Well, you kind of need to watch the teasers that I put out
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  on social media and they're also up on YouTube and they're just labeled Verona on
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  Venus Part one and Part two, and it kind of follows the story about,
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  you know, I'm carrying around this dead body with me throughout the desert,
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  and the dead body is a character that I created for the teasers that
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  waterboards me and the song is more or less about you know, mental torture.
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  And the lot of the inspiration for that video, I you know,
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  it ties into the album cover. I wanted to bring the album cover alive
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  for the video, right, and I just a lot of this came about
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  it just me and girlfriends sitting in bed. We happened to be watching the
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  cell one day and that definitely kind of helped some ideas pop into our head.
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  And I wanted it to tell a story. So you know, obviously
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  you have to watch the teasers to get the full story, but you got,
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  you know, the character from the teasers in there, and as you
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  noticed that I had this odd character without a face coming up to me and
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  handing me a shovel and then handed me a gun and then handed me a
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  bullet. And you know, at the end of the video kind of speaks
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  for itself, where it's playing a character that is basically putting himself or how
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  should I put this, He's stopping the torture through suicide. But it's more
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  of a dream rather than reality. You and Missus must have some pretty weird
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  bedsline conversations, mate, if that compit came out of that, I'm just
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  getting started. Man, it's gonna get weirder. I got another I got
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  another video coming out soon and it's uh, it's it's quite a bit different,
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  but yeah, I would say equally as weird and wonderful. Of course
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  most people know him. His lead guitar is from Devil Driver made. But
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  with the writer on Vantasy, you assumed vocal duties, like is that something
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  you've always wanted to do? What did you sort of come I to follow?
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  Not something I really wanted to do, but I'll be doing Vorona on
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  Venus for the rest of my life, one way or another. And I
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  didn't want to rely on having a vocalist that could possibly leave the band in
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  the future, and then I would be forced to replace them either with somebody
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  else or myself, and to protect myself from that, I basically had a
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  conversation with myself and I was like, I'm going to have to do it.
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  So I I've always been under the impression that I think anybody can sing
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  for better or worse, as long as you can find the pitch. You
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  just need to figure out how to use your voice properly. And I did
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  do a little bit of singing in college because I was a music major,
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  so I kind of started to get my feet wet in the whole thing many
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  many years ago. I mean that was twenty years ago at this point.
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  But you know, I didn't know what I was going to go for.
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  I didn't really know what it was going to sound like, but just sat
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  in my studio and I figured it out until I got it. And I'm
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  really happy I got it because it was kind of a brutal process. And
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  now that I've got the direction that I want to go in the next of
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  a run On Venus record is going to be a lot easier for me.
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  Now. Just to clarify, you may like people are going to be uping
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  on screaming about Devil Drive like you haven't actually left there, maybe this is
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  just another project Ignoid. None. Yeah, No, I'm still in Devil
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  Driver. I have no plans on leaving. We're already working on We're in
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  the writing process for a new record right now. Very cool. So you've
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  also announced the writer on Venus's debut album, Popular Delusions, which will be
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  out on January the nine eighth. Mate, So he's wrote in a good
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  sonic representation of what do you expect? Yes, and no. There are
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  some other songs on the record that would fit the style of Rodent, but
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  I didn't really know what direction I was going to go for when I started
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  this record, So I would say the whole industrial aspect of the record.
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  It's not really prominent in the song wrote it, but there As the album
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  progresses, it starts to become a little bit more gothy and a little bit
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  more electronic and has the uh, the industrial aspect of the record grows as
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  you listen to it, and I think I've kind of figured out that that's
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  the direction I want to go in the future. I mean, anything can
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  happen. It's there's always going to be a heavy metal influence with Varona Venus,
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  but there. I think over time, I've finally decided that I've always
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  wanted to be an industrial band. I always pictured myself being an industrial band
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  ever since I was fifteen years old. And it's just one of those things
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  where it's just like, you know, I had to have a conversation with
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  myself, like this is always what you wanted to do, so just go
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  do it. You want to be industrial, go be industrial like. And
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  you know, I've been in Double Driver for twenty years almost, and you
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  know, I've just I guess I suppose I kind of put myself in this
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  groove metal bubble for the last twenty years, and now it's time for me
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  to do what I always pictured myself doing. Hey, pign you br so
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  like is there a central theme or a concept to the album or is it
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  just a slection of individual songs. It's just a collection of individual songs.
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  It's definitely not a concept record. Yeah. The press release calls a crossover
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  album featuring nine songs. Can you elaborate what they mean by crossover? It
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  goes back to what I was saying earlier about it progressing from you know,
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  one more of a metal rock record into more of an industrial record. Towards
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  the end, and so it's seems like to me a little genre is because
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  I mixed things up. Like I said, it was a little bit of
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  an experiment for me, and I didn't really know which direction I was going
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  to go. I just sat down and started writing songs, and I wasn't
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  really I tried to get myself out of the frame of mind of like I'm
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  going to go for a specific genre on this record. I didn't know if
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  I wanted to be rock. I didn't know if I wanted to be industrial
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  metal. So I just wrote like I usually do. You know, I've
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  always had a bunch of stuff that I've written over the years that is not
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  a good fit for Devil Driver, and I just started opening up old projects
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  that I had worked on. One of the songs on the record is actually
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  something that I wrote in twenty ten. Oh wow, it's been around a
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  long time. Just sitting on my computer, completely forgot about it, and
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  I just started going through some old files and just like I forgot about this,
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  use this and that happened a couple of times for the record, and
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  it keeps on happening. And I've got so many songs on my computer that
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  are either just a couple of anything from like a project with two riffs in
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  it to full songs and everything in between. Because I'll start working on something,
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  I'll get bored of it, probably because I've been working on it too
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  hard, and I'll put it away start something new, and then it's just
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  out of sight, out of mind, so or it's just something where in
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  the long run, I'm like, this is just not gonna work for devil
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  drivers, So I'm just gonna put this away, and I don't throw anything
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  away. I keep it all takes out that much space. Yeah, Luckily,
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  hard drive space is cheap these days. Now, You've also recorded a
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  new take on Acid ninety ninety four songs, the Phones that Baby Dolls like
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  how To. How different is that to the original. There's a lot of
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  parts in the original that I did not use. I definitely added my own
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  flavor to it. I would say it starts off very reminiscent of the original,
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  and then it grows into something else as you listen to it. So
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  I would say the beginning is more like the original, and then the end,
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  you know, still obviously the bones of Baby Dolls by Acid. I
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  didn't change that much. But I left out a lot of stuff that they
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  had in there, and I added a lot of my own. Oh right,
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  Michael, thanks very much for your time today. The debut album Popular
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  Delusions is out of January the nine eighth. I believe you've got another single
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  coming out on the fifth eighth of this month. People keep an eye OPhone.
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  Yeah, I got another song coming out on the fifteenth. A video
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  will be out on the fifteenth or shortly after, and the record will be
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  out January nineteenth. Yeah. Ifrom I will look forward here and have you
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  got me in trade after I knock out, I wait to see some moor
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  the videos by the very well done. Thanks for having me, aloys,
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  brother men, joy the rest of the day.