Latest / HEAVY Music Interviews / A Thousand Little Deaths, A Thousand Real Emotions With BLACKBRIAR

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A Thousand Little Deaths, A Thousand Real Emotions With BLACKBRIAR · HEAVY Music Interviews

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: My name is Sora. I am the singer of Blackbriar
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: and the songwriter and co founder together with Renee and.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: Everything else and everything else.
• 0:13
  Speaker 3: Your music is known for its vivid, fairytale like storytelling.
• 0:17
  Speaker 3: Where do you usually find inspiration for your lyrics and themes?
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Oh? That could be almost anything, yeah, but mostly I
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: get very inspired by books, history, folklore, those types of things,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: but also my personal life. I just use it as
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: a metaphor.
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, beautiful. And is there a lot of Dutch sort
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: of folklore in there or is that just by accident?
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Not really Dutch. I think I wrote one song, not
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: on this album, but previously, specifically about a Dutch folklore story.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Yea fairy of the book?
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: Was it?
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: That was it? But other than that, no, not really?
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. And your aesthetic bills very cinematic. Do you
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: picture visuals as your writing songs or does that come later?
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: I think the lyrics come first, and then I pretty
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: fast I can see official with it.
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah yeah. And before you go on stage, do
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: you have an incredible range with your voice? Do you
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: have to do a lot of warming up or does
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: that kind of come naturally for you?
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: I do bor them up a little bit, but I
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: could do it better, like warming up, I just do
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: the sing. I just sing a little before the show,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: and then I hope for the.
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: Best you do a good job. Did you always did
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: you always know you could sing? Or was that something
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: you discovered at it like a young age.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: I think for me that point was during our musical
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: on how do you call it the basus hole?
• 2:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I want to say pre school or pre school? Yeah, preschool?
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: I guess the musical you do when you leave the school.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: We always do that. And then I got a couple
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: of songs I was allowed to sing, and then I
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: found out that I really wanted to do this.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but you were quite little, Yeah, yeah I was.
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: That's amazing And until Until Eternity was a major turning
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: point for the band. How did it feel when that
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: song started to go viral?
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Well, it didn't at first, No.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: It took a while. Yeah, yeah, I think for us
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: this song also was the point where we found our
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: direction which we wanted to go with the band. And
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: then every day we looked at the video again and
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: somehow thousands of fuse were coming every day. It was
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: very strange. We couldn't believe it.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I still remember that.
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: The first weeks or maybe months, I don't really know anymore,
• 3:10
  Speaker 4: but nothing happened.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, we're happy.
• 3:13
  Speaker 4: We were We were happy because the the video was
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: exactly what we wanted it to be. And then all
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: of a sudden, the skyrocketed, like the fuse went up,
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: and we were like, how what's going?
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: This can be right?
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: So we refreshed the day later it was still going,
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: still going, And so for example, the first four thousand
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: fuse it took I don't know, two months, but then
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: it was like a couple of thousands. Every hour, something happened,
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: something is wrong, this can be right, and that's what
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: we I mean, these days it almost cannot happen anymore.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: But we did put a lot of effort in the video,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: so it was very nice that it, Yeah, reached so
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: many people.
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so crazy. See, do you guys get sick of
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: having that connotation that that's that's that's the song that
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: went viral? Do you want to get your other work
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: out there and be like, hey, we've also got these
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: other great songs or is it like that?
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Of course, But I still love that song so
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: much and I love playing it live still so it's yeah,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: we always put it in a set list still, So yeah.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: That's good. It's going to be my other question. If
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: you got sick of playing it live?
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, I.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: Don't no no. We close every show with it, almost
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: every show.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we might we might change that up for
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: the next tour. Yeah, very good.
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: That kind of brings me to my next question. Are
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: there any plans for an Australian tour?
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: We we had We had plans last year, honestly, and
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: somehow that didn't work out, or we know why it
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: didn't work out, but it was a lot of pressure.
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: At least I felt a lot of pressure for the promoter.
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: So they actually made us a very good offer and
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: we were, you know, over the moon, very happy with it.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: But it then it hit us like, okay, wait, we're.
• 5:11
  Speaker 4: Taking care of so well, but we need to fill
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: the room and it would be the first time we
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: go there. But it was also three shows and or
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: then we started feeling it and I talked to Zura
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: about us, I don't think we should do it, because
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: if we do it, then it should be good for everybody.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: And not just for us.
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: And so we canceled that because we were like, hmm,
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: I don't. We're not sure we can feel it that
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: well because we don't know nothing about Australia and our
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: Australian fans.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: It's very fad to estimate support.
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: Maybe first would yeah, maybe first go there for as
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: support band, or do a festival or something like that,
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: but you know, dive in deep doing a headline show
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: or shows, that would be very.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: Rich ski for the promoter. So we it didn't feel good.
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: No, that's fair enough.
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: And even though for us it was good, but we
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: didn't feel it was good for them as well.
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah no, I no, that's understandable. And logistics wise, it's
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: a huge undertaking to bring it uns all here and
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: the cost involved we know. But that that's a good idea,
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: maybe playing a festival first or something exactly. Yeah. Yeah,
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: so that's very nice. Yeah, awesome. And can you share
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: the story behind the title A Thousand Little Deaths? What
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: does it mean to you personally?
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: When writing all of these lyrics, I started to see
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: a little bit of a connection with I've mentioning a
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: lot of death, mostly symbolic. But then I wrote Harpy
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: and it's a line in Harpy and I thought Oh
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: my god, this is perfect. I just the line glew
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: up for me. Yeah, this is the title.
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: That's it. That's it. And with the music video, how
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: did that come about? And how much input did.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: You guys have all the input?
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: We film that our second question?
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's beautiful and really different too. I
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: liked it and it felt almost medieval, like it really
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: dragged us into a story. It's really cool.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Which one are you talking about specific? Harpy was actually
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: because we.
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: You know, we film everything ourselves, so the the official
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: music videos that we did for Floriography, I Buried Us,
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: the Foss Lives Widow, you know, we we produced it ourselves.
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: And then we felt like Harpy was a song that
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: was very meaningful to us, and we wanted to do
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: a single release for that one as well. But since
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: it's so hard to find the real birds, the mythological creature,
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: it was a yeah, we were looking for it, but
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: we couldn't find one, so we had to draw it.
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: So yeah, we have a small team. Our artwork designer
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: Alip he actually hand drew every single frame, and then
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: another person who's also working in our team, Dema, he
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: animated the whole thing, so it's actually crafted by hand
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: and no AI involved or stuff like that.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: So that's something we're very proud of. It could look
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: a lot nicer with AI.
• 8:21
  Speaker 4: But you know, we want to make sure that the
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: creative jobs are still being creative.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: Very important.
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, good on you guys. I know you guys
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: did a lot of work with crowdfunding as well, and
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: you guys are really close with your fans and audience,
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: so I think I'm possibly correct me if I'm wrong,
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: but you guys do want to give back to artists
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: as well and make sure artists are involved, and because
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: that's how you guys started as.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: Well, you know exactly.
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: That's our main objective here is first of all, we
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: you know, we take a lot of time to talk
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: to the fans and we have a very close communities
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: on Discord and so has her Patreon and stuff like that.
• 9:05
  Speaker 4: But for us, what's most important is that everybody who's
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: doing these creative things for us that they are paid.
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: That's you know, very important, but also that they are
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: still able to do their work. So it's very easy
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: to you know, create these animated videos these days with
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: the use of AI. But yeah, I don't want to
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: I don't want nothing to do with that for now.
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: Let's try to keep it, you know, creative and make
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: sure that everybody can still make a living doing this
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: because to me, it feels so much more important if
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: it was done by a person.
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so much more authentic and exactly. It's good
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: to say because we've seen some artists use AI and
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: it's some questionable.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: You also see the listener and the viewer. I think
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: they like it best when it's.
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, they appreciate slightly more, especially when you when they
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: get to understand it was not AI, because these days
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: it's very hard to oh, yeah, you know, is it
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: AI or people literally they think it's a I by
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: seeing it, and that's very bad for us because we
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: were like, oh no, we spent.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: Months of work in this, so days and days and days.
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: So yeah, it's we take a responsibility for the people
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: that work for us, and we want to make sure
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: that they can continue to work.
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, good on you, Good on you. And talking about
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: another video, what was it like returning to the Mansion
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: from the Until Eternity Ends video while working on this
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: new album? Did it spark any unexpected memories or inspiration?
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Oh? That was so much fun. It was actually the
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: first time we did something like this because usually it's
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: just me and Renee who write the songs, and now
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: we wanted to try to do something altogether and go
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: to a place that means something to us. And that
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: was very fun, great memories, And the main song we
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: wrote there was The Hermit and the Lover. That's a
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: group of collaboration and yeah, yeah, I'm very happy with
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: the outcome.
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, lovely. And so you just mentioned a little bit
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: about your creative process with the lyrics. How does that
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: all happen for you guys? Is there sort of one
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: person that decides everything lyrics wise, and then the music
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: gets added or do you all have little parts that
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: you send each other and put together.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: Or usually I write all the lyrics first, so all
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: the lyrics are done by me. Then I record my
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: vocals so without any music still, I send it over
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: to Renee and he creates the music onto my vocals.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: So it's a bit of a different way of writing,
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: but yeah, for us, it really works.
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: It works, Yeah, definitely. And do you ever feel pressure
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: to top your previous releases or do you see each
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: new album as a separate chapter.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: I do see it every as a separate chapter, but
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: sometimes it does. I get these doubts is it good
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: enough or is it better than Yeah? But yeah, I
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: try to not think about those kinds of things and
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: just be creative.
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I also feel like it doesn't have to necessarily
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: be better. Everybody's always talking about is this album? Do
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: you feel like it's better than the last one?
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: But I mean, I.
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: Think I speak for everybody. We love all the previous
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: stuff equally. You know, it doesn't really matter to us,
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: and we could also if we play live, we would
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: still play songs of our first EP, just because it's us,
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: you know. And we never really changed our direction in
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: terms of what do we wanted to do. We just
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: grew as a band and as songwriters. So it's becoming better,
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: I hope, But it's not not like a goal or something,
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: because for us, the music comes separately, like sort of said,
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: so every song is a separate inspired piece of art,
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: so it sort of can be inspired by anything, and
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: then we write the music and that's that. That's that song,
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: and then we go to the next one. It's never
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: a thought process behind it up front, like this is
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: what we're going to do. We were never so it's
• 13:29
  Speaker 4: all inspired separately. So yeah, it doesn't have to be better.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: Better than that one better than that?
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, and the better.
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: It's a weird definition for music for me at least
• 13:42
  Speaker 4: because I is it better?
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: I mean I like it more now because it's new.
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: But I could still put on a previous album, even
• 13:51
  Speaker 4: the cop Shipwreck or whatever, and I will be like,
• 13:54
  Speaker 4: oh my god, these are good songs. And then you know,
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: so that's the only feeling or emotion that I would
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: like after writing an album is that you could still
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: listen to it and I.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: Can of everything.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: Every single song is what defines us as a as
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: an artist. So yeah, is it better? That's for the
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: fan to decide, but for us it's it's it's another
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: part of this band.
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: So yeah, good answer, Very good. And what's the weirdest, old,
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: poolest thing a fan has given you?
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: I have a sword over here. I got it as
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: gift with eternity. Yeah on it.
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: Do you remember where you got that country that was from?
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: I got it sent to me from a girl in Spain.
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah that is so cool.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we got we get so many.
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm thinking we have a closet, you know, where
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: everything because we take everything home.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: If we can, we take it home. I mean, you see,
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: no it doesn't matter.
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: But even if we have to fly, we try and
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: take it home, so everything is still here. And it's
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: literally I got this this very funny. Recently we started.
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: I told people that I used to have turtles, and
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: as a band before we started Go Live, we do
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: the turtle kisses, which is like when turtles when they
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: mate or whatever, they do basically this with their feet
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: and they go like that. So we start the show,
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: everybody goes like this as a band, and people started
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: to realize that we did that because they could see us,
• 15:42
  Speaker 4: and then they started using turtles in our chats or
• 15:45
  Speaker 4: live chats. And then a person from the Netherlands he
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: gave me this coin, which is a turtle coin from
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: the Caribbean, and I was like, oh, that's very cool,
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: thank you. But it turned out it was a very
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: limited edition, very valuable coin.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: And now it means so much to me.
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: It's literally on my desk right here, and basically I
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: started a coin collection. But stuff like that, I mean,
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: it really means a lot to us. But because it's
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: all stuff that affiliates to our music or our a.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Lot of I get a lot of books as well
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: because they know I love to read, which is also paradise.
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: Is it like, let me get stark sort of fantasy.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: Books or yeah, mostly yeah? Or which whichy stuff?
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's so cool. And last question, what do you
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: hope listeners take away after hearing a thousand little deaths
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: from start to finish?
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: That's difficult.
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: I hope they enjoy it just as much as we
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: did when we heard the mixes for the first time,
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: because I remember getting goosebumps all over for I was
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: actually in my bunk in the tour.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: Bus and not gonna lie.
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: I had a few songs where a little bit of
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: tears came because I was like, Wow, this is insane,
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: how how this ended up? And I couldn't believe it
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: because it was a hard hard time getting where we
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: are right now. So to me, it was very emotional,
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: to be honest with you. Yeah, So I really hope
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: the fans will enjoy it and yeah.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: But it makes them feel something, yeah, yeah, And I
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: hope they will let us know, yes, because it's always
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: so fun to read and yeah what people think.
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely from what I've heard already, it's enjoyable and
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: I think fans of you guys are just gonna absolutely
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: love it. And I think you guys are going to
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: gain more fans, which means you can then come and
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: headline a show in Australia.
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: Amazing. Yeah, it's that will be a dream.
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: Actually it's it's in the top two of our to
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: do list for the next year and a half. I
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: think we really want to go and come and visit
• 18:05
  Speaker 4: your beautiful country. But yeah, we'll have to make sure that.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: Even even though it has a lot of spiders, but.
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: Yes, we'll try and keep them away for you guys.
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: You know they're disgusting. We wish you guys all the success.
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: Thank you guys both so much, so much.