Self Made God Artist- Azure Emote Interview is up
1. 1st Question is Azure emote what does the name mean and what is the history behind it?
Well "Azure" is a particular color that seems to be a recurring theme throughout my art subconsciously over the years, in my artwork and everyday life. I picked up on that one day and remembered seeing my aura as that color too when I was a kid, so I guess I thought it might be cool to use that word in the band name, also seeing as this primarily started as a one man project for myself musically, I thought that maybe it was symbolic of something personal. "Emote" means “to express emotion, in an excessive or theatrical manner.” So Azure Emote is pretty much summing up what i'm doing here with this project – expressing my personal emotions and passions, emanating the colors within. I thought it seemed cool and different from the standard or generic band names out there, so i rolled with it. Azure Emote was formed in 2003 after the breakup of my other band Divine Rapture at the time. I needed a personal outlet for my all my negative emotions, so I got together with my friends Ryan and Pat from Rumpelstiltskin Grinder and made something crazy happen. “Chronicles of an Aging Mammal” was then recorded and put out on Czech based Epidemie Records in 2007. I then put Azure Emote into hiatus though as I was primarily focused on touring with the bands Vile and Monstrosity until i got the itch again around 2011 and started working on the second album “The Gravity of Impermanence” which came out in 2013 on Selfmadegod Records out of Poland. Fast forward a few years of singing for Monstrosity still and then also joining “Hypoxia” for two brutal death metal albums, I once again got the itch to get crazy and do something personal, so then “The Third Perspective” was created which is the third and most recent album that just came out again through Selfmadegod.
2.Prog, Symphonic, Ethno, Oriental, Eastern, Tech Death, Sci Fi, Viking, Black/Death and Bizarre Electronics is how I described the band in my review . What 5 words would you use to do the same?
Haha yes I guess it’s hard to sum it all up. I would say “Misanthropic Avant-garde Progressive Death Metal”. It’s really hard to describe to people what Azure Emote sounds like, because each song is different really. It doesn’t really fit into any steady category. I guess it’s a mixture of experimental, progressive, avant-garde fused with traditional death/black/doom. If you only listen to one song, you can’t really say you know what Azure Emote sounds like. You’d have to listen to them all. I make sure to put Misanthropic in there too, to stress what the overall lyrical vibe is about. Nihilism, Anti-natalism and the general venting of negativity is what the lyrics are all about. I guess you can say it’s more personal, like dark introspective poems centered around pessimistic philosophies. Basically the bands all about freedom as long as it’s dark and creative, so people can label it whatever they want.
3. Why 7 years between The Third Perspective and The Gravity of Impermanence?
I’m a busy guy, I always seem to take on too many projects, Vile, Monstrosity, Hypoxia, while also doing artwork for my website visualdarkness.com etc. It’s hard to find the time. Since The Gravity of Impermanence album in 2013 I had also recorded 4 other albums with other bands and done a bunch of guest spots on different albums as well as touring or playing shows with Monstrosity.
4. Love the strings, Eastern elements and mix of Choirs, Death Vox and etc. I hear bands like Sigh, Bal Sagoth, Melechesh, Borknagar, Chthonic and Arcturus. What bands have inspired you?
That’s a compliment cause I do like all of those bands, thanks. Other bands that inspire me are bands like Bethlehem, Thy Catafalque, Dead Can Dance, Kovenant, Masters Hammer, Laibach, Lux Occulta, Samael, Strapping Young Lad, Thy Disease, Khonsu, Red Harvest, And Oceans and other bands not afraid to let their ideas go beyond what is expected of them in certain genres. It's not about gearing yourself towards any style of music, but letting go and letting whatever flows inside you to come out.
5. Coming from bands like Monstrosity , Malignancy Divine Rapture where did such a left of center sound come to be?
I’ve been playing in straight forward death and black metal bands since the mid 90’s, so as an artist I feel the need to do something different ya know? I love death metal first and foremost but every once in a while I feel the need to get crazy and often feel limited in the other bands I sing for that definitely have distinct roots in only traditional death metal. So Azure Emote was created as an experiment to get all that other stuff out with the complete freedom to do whatever I felt like and not give a shit ya know. I love all kinds of metal music, not just death metal, it just so happens that the majority of the band’s I’ve played in are death. That’s where my roots are.
6. This is your 2nd release with Self Made God. What makes it such a good partnership?
Karol is a great guy and he’s down to earth. I’ve been working with selfmadegod in one way or another since the XXX Maniak Days back in day. They put out a lot of great bands, and also diverse bands, They put out what they like so it’s not like most labels where they only focus on a particular style or very similar bands and aren’t so willing to branch off from that nitch too much ya know. When you find something that works stick with it they say, so most likely for any future albums I’d be very happy to go with selfmadegod again too. By the way SMG also put out the newest HYPOXIA album that I sing on as well, called Abhorrent Disease. Go check it out!
7. If you could make a video for anything track off The Third Perspective which would it be and how would you want it to look?
That’s a great question, I’m actually working on a music video right now with Nader Sadek who has worked with Morbid Angel, Inquistion, Mayhem and many more. This video will be for the song “Curse of life” off the new album, and will hopefully be completed sometime very soon. I posted some sneak peak screenshots to the Azure Emote facebook if your interested to go see. It’s definitely going to be some insane and wild stuff! I’m super excited. Super artistic and like a bad acid trip.
8. What is the theme of The Third Perspective And how does the artwork tie in?
Basically the concept of the album is to look at life and the origins of life and the overall meaning of everything from a different light then you would instinctually do given the learned scopes of thinking that we pull from our closed environments we are raised in. It’s like, do the ants in the earth know what’s really going on outside of their toiling self-made bubble? Humans are very similar. What if we could step outside the universe or even this dimension and look inward and outward at the same time, all our woes and troubles and definitive opinions melt away and your left with a truth that is more mind boggling then you would ever think. No one really knows anything for certain and if you think you do, then you’re in for a surprise. The duality of light and dark, right and wrong, left and right, good and evil, god or no god, etc, is a narrow scope of thinking and often far from what's really going on. The cover depicts these copulating reptilian creatures, entwined by serpents, the all seeing eye, a river of monotonmic gold, and the universe as a whole, as well as symbolism about the philosophy of three, six and nine within the "mathematical universe hypothesis” and Nikola Tesla’s “key to the universe” theory. The artwork and concept begs you to step outside the proverbial "box" and see things from a fresh perspective (The Third Perspective), and the entire album is very much filled to the brim with symbolism and hidden meanings, so it may take a while to absorb it all to understand the full picture. There’s a lot going on and it’s a lot deeper then you would think.
9. Is Azure emote a live project and if so how does or would the visuals and aesthetics differ from studio side to a live performance?
Unfortunately We've never played out with Azure Emote. I thought about this for a bit, but it would be very expensive since there are so many members, and flying each of them from their own areas around the world. I would most likely have to play with a backing track and put all the keyboards, sound effects, saxophone, violins, female vox, etc into the backing track, Kinda like Septic Flesh does since they are unable to bring the whole orchestra, and do something similar. I had a few festival offers but nothing feasible yet. I’d consider it, but at the moment this whole corona virus thing has the whole world on shut down, and traveling is going to be fucked up for long time now I think. The future is bleak.
10. How does this Digital age change a band like Azure emote and the way you present your craft ( Youtube, Twitter, Soundcloud, Podcasts, Bandcamp etc)
We have a bandcamp page where we post most of our merch etc. Youtube spreads our music a lot too, I'm not one for twitter or anything really though.
Social Media is exhausting and can be both a good promotion tool but also a time waster. If you’re interested to keep on top of what is going on with the band, please visit www.azureemote.com or our facebook page. I hope that more people go to stream our music to learn more about the music, I just hope that they also actually buy the physical media. Too many people today think music is free and the only way to keep the scene alive is to buy merch and music and not just stream it. The digital age in my opinion is both a blessing but also a curse. You get exposure to more people around the world, but with the overflow of available music, people get spoiled and complacent when it comes to supporting actual artists. Back in the day when everything was mail-order it weeded out the people that are only into it because it's readily available, so when it comes to digging up music and going out of your way to get it, most people don't bother these days which is a shame.
11. If you could ever have someone cover a song by Azure emote . What band would you like to try and why?
haha, that's a very interesting question. I actually would love to have Laibach do a remix of one of our songs, or the industrial metal band Circle of Dust.
If someone was to do a cover I would want them to put their own spin on it. A lot of people when they do covers, they gauge how good it is by how closely it resembles the original. In my opinion what's the point of doing an exact cover if you can just listen to the original. It should always have a personal twist to it and be different slightly like more of a homage then a total copy. If there are any bands out there that would like to remix any of my material I am totally open to it, so just get in touch! haha I am open to collaborations.
12. Philly has a very storied metal history esp with labels like Relapse being there. What bands are impressing you for the home city and is there a vibrate extreme music live scene there?
Yes philly was also the home of Nuclear Blast USA back in the day too when I was younger. The scene has changed so much over the years in each pocket of the city though, I would check out IN THE FIRE, SONJA, POLTERCHRIST, VECTOR, RUMPELSTILTSKIN GRINDER, MORTAL DECAY, ENBLUGENMENT, etc. I currently live outside NYC though and have for the past 10 years or so, so I don't get down there as much as I should anymore.
13. Does the music normally come 1st when recording or does a theme or idea come then musical visions?
Well actually the theme or artwork for this new album actually came first, then I started writing music for it after. The previous albums I was working on the music first before coming up with the cover art concepts. Usually when creating songs though I create each song individually, and i like to give each song it's own unique theme, I don't try to narrow down the same theme to each song, I like to give it freedom. I create most of the time without a vision in mind, and i give birth to it, and let it sculpt or become it's own feeling. Each song adapts over time and I like to let them go off in whatever tangent it wants to, without keeping it tied down to a specific theme if it doesn't fit. I guess that's the opposite of most bands, maybe that's why this project is so different. Each song is it's own theme and I purposefully want each song to sound different then each other. With a lot of bands once you hear one song, you can tell what you’re in for, and that the rest of the album will sound very similar. With Azure Emote you can't really do that.
14. Did The Third Perspective turn out as you thought or did it become something else all its own ? As this is a might adventurous journey for sure ?
Overall it came out how I envisioned, and I'm very happy with it, of course there is always things i'd probably change here or there as with any of my albums, but at one point you just have to put it to bed, and move on or else you'd be obsessing over it forever and it would take forever to put out haha. So it becomes a sign of the times at the moment, it is what it was meant to be for the moment in time that I was working on it. My next endeavor might be totally different depending on what I'm feeling at the time, who knows.
15. Thank you for the time and any closing thoughts here.
Thank you so much for the interview and for the interest! I appreciate it and glad to see when people actually give more energy back into something that took so much energy and time and sweat to create. Thank you.
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