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Establishing Your Own Musical Identity With JAKE E From CYHRA · HEAVY Music Interviews

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  Yeah. Yeah, So this is Jake from Syrah Swedish metal Swedish melodic metal
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  man. But we are also based in Sweden, Switzerland, Germany and also
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  part time part of Finland because Oiga is from Finland but lives in Switzerland.
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  So yeah, but we're we are ready to release our brand new album,
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  The Vertico Trigger now August eighteenth, and uh, I can't wait to get
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  it out there because it's been it's been cooking for over a year. So
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  yeah, it's been done for quite some time, so I can't wait to
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  get it out of you. Jaanks for joining us today, maybe, but
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  a few guys at this so it's good to say you finally got it right.
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  Yeah, so you mentioned that Sara releasing a new album, The Verdico
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  Trigger on August eighteenth, made. But what's experience like for you, mate?
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  Like you said, it's been done for a year, You've been sitting
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  on it for ages. As it gets closer, you get nervous, you
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  get anxious, you get excited. No, I am there's absolutely some anxiety
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  lingering on, absolutely because you don't want it to completely flop. The problem
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  nowadays is you know, like you cannot say that an album is flopping or
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  in the sense because like, you can release a fantastic album, but the
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  problem is sometimes that people don't get it, they don't know that it has
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  been released, they can't find it because it's a fucking jungle with releases.
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  Nowadays, there's so many bands releasing at the same time on you know,
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  and people are listening to platforms, and it's really hard to understand how well
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  an album pass progressed because you have Spotify, Spotify, title, YouTube Music,
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  Deezer blah blah blah, and there's different platforms in all the world and
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  you tend to just look at the Spotify numbers while you know, like a
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  band like Syrah, We're We're pretty, You're big in Japan, for example,
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  but the Japanese people they don't even use Spotify. So when we go
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  in and check, like, okay, how many how many people are listening
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  to us in Japan? Oh it's forty eight? Wow, what the fuck
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  is happening? And then the record label comes back and you know, two
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  three months later and say that, oh you sold ten thousand albums. Okay,
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  so they are not listening to Spotify. Then you know understand what I
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  mean. But absolutely you're a bit anxious about the reception from your fans,
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  and especially now when when it's gone three four years almost since we released the
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  last album, and we've been gone for too long. So it's almost like
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  a comeback album in a way, even though we haven't been gone. It
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  feels weird. But yeah, I'm not nervous or anything like that. It
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  is what it is. But I really hope the fan basing fans will in
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  the album, but they will love it. Oh, I tell us a
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  bit more about the album from a musical point of view and what you were
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  done for with it up the album. The good thing of this album and
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  the bad thing with this album is that it's self produced, so because we
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  were writing it during the pandemic, and the good thing would being self produced
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  is that we had all the time in the world to do whatever we wanted
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  to make and what we wanted to create. The problem with having too much
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  time is that you're going back and you revisit everything and you're changing stuff and
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  you're like, maybe we should do and all of a sudden, you are
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  dismantling your songs that what's good from the beginning into small pieces and you're trying
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  to rebuild them again for no specific reasons, just because you have the time
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  to do that, which would sucks, so pros and cons absolutely, but
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  it was really really nice to have the time, you know, to be
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  able to spend probably six months on both writing and producing and recording. The
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  cool thing with this album, as I said in another end of you the
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  other day, was that this album usually you make demos and then the demos
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  to real studio. But the stupid thing with yusts that we all own real
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  studios. I work in my studio every day, that my work and all
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  you get us the same in Switzerland, but we always go somewhere else to
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  get like a second opinion when we're recording. But this time we wrote the
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  songs and we also recorded them properly from the beginning or from the get go,
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  so that was nice. It was new. It was a new experience.
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  I would not know if we're going to do this on our next album
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  or if we're got to go somewhere on the next album, but yeah,
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  it was it was absolutely new experience. Well, we're talking about producing your
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  own album. That was one of my next question. So do you find
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  out how to sort of separate yourself from the music check give what are you
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  producing yourself? Yeah, I think that is one of the biggest problems because
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  I produce a lot of other bands, and I write a lot of songs
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  for other bands and artists, and and then I am the grandfather if you
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  understand what I mean. You know, like I am the controller, the
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  guy that knows a little bit better than the guys and girls that I have
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  in my studio. But it's always the same thing for myself. I mean
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  like I always work with Jacob Hanson, and he has been grandfather. You
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  know, you you know what what you're doing, but you, you,
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  the musician, like to have that second opinion or someone that is beyond above
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  you that is the decision maker that tells you that this take is the final
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  take, this was great. Now we're keeping it, and you're just like,
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  okay, I trust you, and you know you move on. When
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  you're sitting by with yourself or by yourself and you're recording, you tend to
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  record something twenty times more just because you're uncertain about if it's good enough or
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  not. So. Yeah. The press release calls the very God trigger your
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  darkest in my Stampicious album. Yet, I'll say it. First of all,
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  I would like to reverse that question to yourself, and I would ask
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  you, do you believe that that is the way it is? Well tonest.
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  I haven't really heard much of your stuff before this, mate, so
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  I can't really have got nothing to compare to you. So okay, that's
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  that's that's fair. I would say that the lyrics are absolutely darker, but
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  when it comes to the music, it has passages that it was darker we've
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  done before. But general would say that the music, you know, uplifting
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  and Jim friendly and you know, seeing along abol seeing along about I don't
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  even know if I made that word up the other day, but I think
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  that it's a fantastic word, seeing along abol But you know, everything about
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  Cyrus music is to bring joy and you know, to to to make people
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  just jump away from reality a little bit and you don't have a fun time.
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  But but lyrically, this album is more focused on darker themes absolutely.
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  I mean I focused a lot on my death anxiety that has been going on
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  for all my life and I finally decided to you know, write about it
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  for a bit and and that helped me. And I know that there's other
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  people out there that are feeling the same way as I do regarding you.
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  Know, um, you're existence on this planet, that we're only here for
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  a brief moment in time, and when it comes to the music and when
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  you listen to it, and if you just would would just like disconnect the
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  lyrical aspect of things, the thing that you enjoy it does any of other
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  releases, but absolutely may have some darker point, but it's not a metal
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  albummore and it's not a disharmonic and progressive music or any sort. I mean
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  like it's really easy to listen to answer the band out there who got the
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  first two albums letters to myself and know how halos in hell? Sorry,
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  how would you say? There you go? Trigger differs from them. It
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  is a progression of those or is it the same? Nay, it's a
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  yeah, but it's absolutely in progression. I think that the the the Vertigo
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  Trigger now has brought us a bit closer to where we actually really want to
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  go. And I mean like we haven't changed anything of the formula. I
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  mean like if you would listen you said that you hadn't listened to us and
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  before this release, but if you would go back and listen to any of
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  the songs in our first album, you would count you would directly hear the
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  connection, and you would hear directly that, oh, yeah, this is
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  this is the same band. And what we've done in the production space on
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  this album is that we have aimed to get a little bit closer to a
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  bit more modern production, a little bit more modern sound, and and I
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  that this album would all connect to to people and fans of let's say,
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  bring Me the Horizon or I Prevail or whatever I think that you know,
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  we doesn't it doesn't sound like them, but it's close enough for the fan
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  base to you know, connect to our music just as some power metal fan
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  could enjoy us as well, because we have all the elements from from from
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  from quite a bit, quite a bit of different genres, I would say.
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  And you've also played the album live on the tour of Japan earlier this
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  year, mate, which is a long time before it comes out like that's
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  the pretty unusual thing to do, Mate. What was the thought process behind
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  that? Yeah, First of all, the main idea was that by then
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  the album should have been released, right, But we realized we realized pretty
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  soon in September last year when we released the first single, ready to Rumble
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  that the market was completely overcrowded after the pandemic. Everyone was releasing songs and
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  albums. And also we saw that all the festivals all over the world they
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  were lagging behind on all the bookings through the pandemic and they were still doing
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  that in twenty twenty two. So everything was already fully booked. I mean
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  like there's no reason to release an album and you cannot tour on it,
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  like it's suicide. So so we decided to postpone everything, but the shows
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  in Japan they were already booked. So we decided to do something fun for
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  the Japanese fans and also for ourselves to actually try the songs live and you
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  know, make an exclusive thing for our Japanese fans. And as I told
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  you before, we're have a pretty huge Japanese fan base. And another cool
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  thing with the Japanese fans are that you could rely on them. I told
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  them every night that okay, guys and girls, we're gonna play new songs.
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  Feel for you to film this, but please do not upload it on
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  YouTube. And no one did that, which was fantastic. Anywhere else in
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  the world everything would be up in five minutes or did youry the show exactly
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  exactly, but don't think that was great and that gave us the opportunity and
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  possibility to try out songs and that was great. So yeah, and now
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  we know that songs works, and yeah, I can't wait to go play
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  them live. We're going to play the first Joe this Friday actually Stockholm in
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  front of ten thousand people, so that that's going to be fantastic place to
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  start. This is also your first album to feature new guitarist Marcus Son.
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  I hope I pronounced that right. So tell us a bit about him and
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  what he brings to the band. Yeah, he brings the looks obviously.
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  I mean, like we we we felt that we were stagnating, you know
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  you our looks, and we needed someone to you know, bring bring bring
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  the girl to the shows. So we y Marcus. He but but he
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  turned out that he's also a fantastic guitar player, and it's such a great,
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  such a such a great friend. He's fantastic and he can he can
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  play both leads and rhythm guitars very well, and and he's also a great
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  songwriter. But most and foremost and most important to us is that he's a
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  great person. What all Syra's out, he really focus on getting a bad
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  brother and whenever. So far in our almost seven years now live, never
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  had an argument about anything. We are always extremely it's been I've never been
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  in the band like Syrah before. It's it's fantastic m But Jessper is still
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  on obviously in the band as well. It's just that Jessper put himself to
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  play the bass instead. So now when Jessper is coming coming back to to
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  play live with us, he's going to handle the bass guitar, so that's
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  gonna be cool. Jesper always loved to play a bass and he started,
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  actually, Jesper actually started to play bass, so that was cool. Oh
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  there, Yeah, I speak of Jesper, mate like you started sorry with
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  Jesspa all those years ago. Mate up that both of you have been previously
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  in Amara in Flames respectively. So what parts of those bands did you bring
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  to Sarah sort of stars, I don't think that we ever brought anything from
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  the bands into Siah, but being one of the main songwriters in both of
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  these bands, we have our weight of writing music. If you understand what
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  I mean. So, I mean like that is just a natural progression that
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  it became like a mixture of these different ways of writing music. But it
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  was never ever an intention that we should sound like, yeah, we should
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  have this piece like that sounds like amarand or this piece that sounds like in
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  Flames. I mean, like, listen to any band that Jasper has ever
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  been involved in, like Dimension zero or the band that he had with Alexi
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  Lao and him had a band together, they released two albums. Anyway,
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  Um, but you know Jesper has been part of so many bands or the
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  Halo effect for that K I mean, like you instantly hear Jessper part of
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  it. That's just first way, I'm already music the same to me when
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  we're listening to any of the band I've been writing this for you completely.
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  You probably hear directly that I've had a finger in the game right when when
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  you kid started this band, but like a baranted in playing some both pretty
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  big bands, mate, So how difficult wasn't initially to establisher musical identity star
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  it was it? God? Uh, the identity was never hard. I
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  mean, like the songs came as soon as me and Jesper sat down to
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  write music. We we just broke music. We never had any intention of
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  like how it should sound or whatever. We just sat down with two guitars
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  and just you know, wrote music and we we we were you know,
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  trial and error in the beginning, you know, like maybe we went one
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  way with one song and the other. You know, like you could hear
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  that on the first album that it's a little bit pointy at different directions,
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  but I think that on No Halos in Hell you could clearly hear that,
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  you know, we found our sound what we want to do, and you
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  know, the Vertigo Trigger is just a natural progression of our of our music.
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  But we never had any problems with like finding the identity of what we
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  were going to do. That that was That was probably one of the easiest
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  thing with the band, right music. Actually it's always the all the other
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  things too, you know, establish yourself on the market is probably the hardest
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  thing is a new band. And I would say, all right, da,
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  well that's the album. The Vertigo Trigger is out on August side eight.
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  Um. I'll be doing a review up for probably the next week or
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  so. Brother saw shoot you throw all into that one where she's done,
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  thank you very much. I I hope that it's not going to get an
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  overcrossed. You know, I can't say about what i've heard of a side
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  far I like, so it's not. I think we'll be fun. You're
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  you're you're free to say whatever you want. I just, I just I
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  love, I love honesty, and that was it was fantastic to talk to
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  you man, and I hope that we can have the chat due to meet
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  person I d yeah, my definitely, but we'll keep in contact for sure.
• 17:30
  Bright, it's been not chatting