Interview by CriX
The Finnish progressive rock/metal ensamble Embassy of Silence is back with the third album “Verisimilitude”, we had the chance to talk with the energetic Ines about it, the making of the new video“Shame, Spin and Click” and the future. Let’s see what she said!
Hey Ines, welcome to Femme Metal Webzine! How are you doing?
Hey again, I’m doing pretty good, thanks for asking!
Your last album “Verisimilitude” has been released on September and I really like it because you have put together a lot of different music genres, would you mind tell us something about its genesis and lyrics?
Glad you like it, always good to hear. Well, we slowly began working on “Verisimilitude” a few months after “Antler Velvet” was out. Tero Kalliomäki composed the cores to a couple of songs, so I followed suit and started writing lyrics and composing the vocals and choirs for them around the same time. It must’ve been within the following year that Make Lievonen recorded the drums for all 8 tracks at the D Studios. The rest of the music on the album was recorded at Tero‘s home studio, including the additional instruments by our guest musicians. Everything was finally ready and mixed in the late spring of 2015, so the entire process took us a little under three years at a fairly relaxed pace. When it comes to lyrics, I had some fun with them, you might have noticed I have a bit of a flair for sneaky sort of humour. It’s quite evident in such songs as “Flamer”, which is a superb transition from tango to 90’s powerpop. I and Tero are massive Type 0 Negative fans and the death of its frontman hit us both pretty hard, so it was only fitting that the last song on the album is a tribute to him. I think, for the first time, there is more story telling and less hidden and undecipherable metaphors in the lyrics.
What are the main differences between this album and the previous ones?
We describe the album as “a time journey from the 70’s until today” and it certainly has a wide variety of influences from past decades. If “Euphorialight” was rather melancholic overall and “Antler Velvet” was thematically somewhat mental, “Verisimilitude” is well-balanced and even optimistic, letting the music speak for itself without a need to tie everything together and defend its existence. We’ve been more experimental and free-form, and it shows our progress as musicians and composers.
The first single “Shame, Spin and Click” is very catchy and the video is funny, especially when you take the guitar and hit the guy, what can you tell about it? Did happen something special or fun during the making of?
Making the video was a whole lot of fun. The fighting scenes between me and DC (Stonesoul) playing my ex-fiancee had everyone else laughing off-camera, because none of the stuff was audible in the final video, of course, and we just went full comedy on the lines we delivered. We also had some trouble with the classic American car we had in the video, Tero wasn’t able to drive it successfully, so we had the owner as a stunt driver for some of the shots! At the end of the three-day shoot we were all pretty much sleep-deprived and running on steam and coffee, so it’s needless to say we probably got on our director Anne Rajala‘s nerves a bit there. But we got it done!
What’s on plan for Embassy of Silence now? Are you planning a tour?
We are trying to make a European tour happen for next year, if it’s possible! Our Czech Republic tour in 2014 was such an amazing experience, we really want to travel more. EoS is also trying to book some festival gigs for the summer of 2016, and we’ve already began planning a 10-year anniversary DVD for 2017.
Let’s talk about you; what are your hobbies beside music?
I watch a huge amount of movies and binge on TV-series as well. In addition to visual entertainment, I play tabletop role playing games, write (that novel that may or may not ever be finished) and try to get my hours of regular exercise in, like everyone else.
We’re at the end, thank you so much for your time. Would you like to say something to our readers?
Thanks for reading, check out our improved website, like us on Facebook, listen to our stuff in Spotify or Bandcamp, and order our album online. You deserve a treat!