Interview by Tony Cannella
With the release of their new album, ”Volume II”, the band September Mourning have released an album that is visually and sonically striking. To put it frankly the band has put out something that is unique in today’s hard rock and metal landscape. Recently lead vocalist September took the time to answer some questions for Femme Metal.
How are you doing, September?
I’m good. How are you?
I’m doing good. The new September Mourning record, ”Volume II” is coming out on July 29th via Sumerian Records. What can you tell us about it?
It’s kind of a continuation of the story of “Volume I”. It is a musical component to the second issue of the comic book, which is called ”The Hand of Fate”, it continues where the first issue “A Murder of Reapers” left off. It all plays together into the storyline.
Who came up with the concept on “Volume I” and “Volume II”?
I came up with the storyline with my partner in crime, Marc Silvestri, who is the head of Top Cow and Image Comics. He and I created the characters together. It’s kind of a different type of conceptual project because it runs the gamut of a whole storyline all the way through. It doesn’t change storylines every album, it’s a continuous storyline that goes all the way through.
You mentioned Top Cow Productions. How did you become involved with them?
Basically what happened was I contacted Marc and I said that I had a really great idea for a really cool project. And he was intrigued about what that was. Marc is notorious for taking risks and chances on really cool projects and out-of-the-box thinking. I went to him because of that and also because he has created so many great, female protagonists in his comic books, that are strong, sexy, intelligent and kick a lot of ass. He was like: “Let’s do this!”. So we did it.
You were already a coming book fan then?
Oh yeah. Absolutely!
Can you talk a little about the writing and recording process for ”Volume II”?
We recorded “Volume I” and then we took the remainder the songs that we created after we did “Volume I” and kind of put them together. We rewrote some of them a couple of times. We really tried to focus on the energy and the components of the music for each specific song each has their own identity. Although the album is very cohesive, each song has a particular energy to it, so we wanted to make sure that was very present in the album.
On future albums, will you continue this story or do you see yourself taking on a new concept or writing unrelated songs?
For September Mourning its always going to be this story, that’s the whole premise of the conceptual project, is that it is this story, it is this storyline, it is this character. If I want to go outside of that or write other songs, then I’ll do a side project or do something with somebody else.
September Mourning is signed to Sumerian Records. How did you come to their attention?
How does any band get to any record labels attention? You just work really hard, and you make yourself known, you have a fan base, you grow it and they usually come sniffing around. We were lucky to have found them and they found us and get signed by them. We love the label. It’s an amazing label. They’ve been proven to develop bands, which is very rare in a lot of cases with labels. They really put a lot of care into developing their artists, and being very one-on-one with their artists. We like that communication. It’s very important nowadays to have that.
Do you have any touring plans coming up?
We’re gonna be going out in August to September. We’re just waiting on confirmation of dates. We will definitely be on the road more than not.
Will it be a headliner or will you be supporting another band?
Well be supporting.
What can fans expect when they come see you live?
It’s a very visual show. We try to take them into our world, so they became part of the story. We really delve into the characters, and the songs, the feelings and emotions of what embodies September Mourning.
Have you filmed a video for any of the tracks on the album?
We have the “Eye of the Storm” video that you can watch on the Sumerian YouTube channel. We also have a lyric video that we did for “Skin and Bones” which is probably my favorite lyric video that Ive ever seen or been a part of. It takes all the comic book art from the second book, and we made it into a lyric video, with this guy Scott. It really turned out awesome, I think. It really gets the story across, but it also gets the message across of that song, which is a very powerful message of inner strength and not letting people tear you down because the way you look or anything like that. It’s kind of an anti-bullying but more of an inner strength song. That’s really important in today’s world, as weve seen with Dallas and all of the horrible things that are going on.
Can you talk a little about the experience of making the video for ”Eye of the Storm”?
It was great! I did it with a friend of mine, who I’ve worked with before on ”Before the Fall”. We did it together, I helped edit it and piece it together. I developed the story line for it and pretty much was the catalyst for the visual component of that video.
We’ve come to the end of our interview September. Thank you so much for doing this. In closing, do you have any final words for your fans to wrap this up?
I just want to thank every single one of you guys out there that support us. Everyone who have followed along with the story and really get into the characters, and come to the shows, buy the merch, buy the music and buying our pre-order bundles, and really showing support for the project. Sometimes it is very hard to do something different because people don’t know what to think of you. We’ve just been really accepted by so many people out there, and it means the world to us. We hope that the messages that we deliver help you as much as you guys help us.
Links
facebook.com/septembermourning