Interview: | UNLEASH THE ARCHERS |
Title: | Human + AI = AI human? |
Since 2007, the globally acclaimed Canadians around singer Brittney Slayes have been delighting more and more fans every year with their exceptionally high-quality version of modern Power Metal.
For their new and sixth studio album "Phantoma", the five-piece from Vancouver came up with a lyrically fascinating high science fiction concept inspired by AI, or artificial intelligence - a topic that is currently on everyone's lips anyway. Singer Brittney Slayes is happy to answer my questions about the new album.
Congrats for the 6th album, entitled "Phantoma" - how does it feel for you?
„Thanks! We’ve been working on this record for a long time, and it feels great to finally be able to let the world hear what we’ve been up to!“
You released "Abyss" in 2020 - and not only won a JUNO Award for Metal/Hard Music Album of the Year, but debuted at #1 on the US Current Hard Music and Top New Artist charts and shone in the trade press. Bandcamp called Unleash The Archers a "must-read", Loudwire crowned you guys a "gamechanger of the genre" and named "Abyss" one of the best Rock and Metal albums of the year - what a great list! How do you deal with so much praise as a band?
„Hahaha well the Juno certainly was an honour and a welcome surprise. As for the praise, we were just happy that people were enjoying the album! The pandemic was in full swing, and times were pretty tough, so we were just doing our best to bring a little light into the darkness.“
Did you feel under a lot of pressure for the new album because of the previous success?
„A little, yes. We were mostly thinking of our long-time fans and hoping we could come up with something new for them while also staying true to what we’ve done in the past. Honestly, I think we felt more pressure when we released Abyss because so many people loved Apex (our 2017 record) and had actually discovered us because of that album. We still have a lot of fans that hail Apex as our magnum opus so we figured there wasn’t really much we could do to disappoint anyone that we hadn’t already done on ‚Abyss‘. We tried to do something new regardless and experimented with a few more genres on ‚Phantoma‘ that you definitely won’t have heard on our past albums!“
What do you consider to be the biggest musical differences to the previous album?
„Well as mentioned above we played around with a few other genres on this one; we’ve got some Hard Rock on there, a bit of a hair Metal power ballad, and a more straightforward traditional Metal opening track. Also, our first single ‚Green & Glass‘ is almost entirely in major scale and though we’ve had choruses in major before we’ve never had almost an entire track dominated by it. Our song ‚The Collective‘ has quite a few riffs from our new bass player Nick Miller that have a style I don’t think we’ve ever done before either so we’re excited to hear what everyone thinks of that one! It’s one of my faves on the record for sure.“
How did the idea for a new AI concept first emerge and mature?
„After we released Abyss in 2020 the pandemic was preventing us from touring, so we decided to just get started on the next album. I had a couple of ideas already sitting around that I pitched to the boys as storylines and my brief synopsis of Phantoma was the one that everyone agreed would lend itself best to a full-length record. I went to work on the track-by-track overview that basically turns each song into a chapter of the story, figuring out how to build an album around this character that I had created. My stories always seem to start with the characters, so once I had Phantoma fleshed out (ha, no pun intended) I focused on coming up with the antagonist of the story, which then led me to ‚The Collective‘. I also knew that I wanted one of the themes of the album to focus on the deceptiveness of humans, so that propelled the story forward and next thing I knew I had ten tracks!“
"Phantoma" … great title, regarding our AI future. Are there any things, books, games, movies, etc. that can/have influenced you for the new lyrics?
„I have been in love with fantasy and science fiction since my father first took me to see the movie ‚Willow‘ in theatres when I was five. I am definitely a cinephile, I am an avid reader of both books and comics and have been gaming since I discovered Duck Hunt and the NES. All those things have contributed to the subject matter of each our albums. ‚Phantoma‘ is part Aliens (Bishop was always one of my favourite characters), part ‚Terminator 2‘, part ‚Star Wars‘ and just a dash of ‚Star Trek‘. The whole ‘android becoming sentient’ premise has been done in so many ways already, but I wasn’t aware of any concept records that had tackled it yet, so I thought I’d give it my best shot!“
Record company info: "The Canadians are using artificial intelligence for the first time to create "Phantoma"" - how exactly is that to be understood?
„I posted a short video on my Instagram that explains how I used ChatGPT when I started the lyric writing process and asked it to ‘write a song in the style of Unleash The Archers’. It didn’t come up with anything too original, but I wanted to be able to say I used it, so I took some words and worked them into a couple songs. We also used an AI program to ‘paint’ our music video for ‚Green & Glass’ with the artwork we licensed from our graphic designer. Lastly, we included a couple of AI images in our earbook to take a ‘snapshot’ of the current capabilities of programs like Midjourney and Dall-E.“
Further PR info: "Unleash The Archers wrap up socially critical topics such as negative social media behavior in a unique mixture of Power Metal, traditional Heavy Metal and modern prog and pop influences." - how have you learned over the years to deal with all the social media in the best possible way for you individually?
„It’s still a struggle every day; there is so much cruelty and negativity on the internet, we try to focus on the positive but mostly I just don’t even read comments anymore. I stick to discord for the most part and do my best to interact with our fans that comment on Facebook and Instagram but that’s about it. The album has two major themes; the strength to go on comes from within, and pretty much nothing that you see on the internet is real hahaha. Phantoma falls in love with humanity because she can watch them through the ‘netaverse’ but when she meets them in person, she realizes they are vapid and selfish. I am tired of seeing my friends crushed by the unattainable goals that are flaunted on social media regarding how to be fit, successful, wealthy, the perfect parent, the best musician, have the nicest house, etc; it’s all just posturing. I don’t reveal a lot about my personal life on social media, but I am certainly not going to make it look like something it’s not. I would also never comment negatively on the creative work of others; little by little I am trying to do my best to make the internet a fun place to be again hahaha.“
The mentioned musical mixture - an explosive cocktail! How do you mix all this together so harmoniously and tastily? I'm sure it's often rather tricky!
„Every song is always written with all the other songs in mind at the same time. We take a look at the riffs we’ve got and make sure that they fit not only the emotional tone of the song but also the record as a whole. Each track is written so that the one that comes before and the one that comes after won’t be out of nowhere. We try to shift the dynamic gradually and in a way that makes sense musically but also continues to reflect the story. It’s all very much intertwined throughput the entire writing process.“
Your variable vocals are impressively multi-faceted and can really guarantee me stimulating enjoyment at every level - how much training etc. is actually involved?
„Thank you so much! I’ve always worked very hard to use as much of my range as possible on every album, but I also make sure I never do something in the studio that I wouldn’t be able to do live. It takes me about six weeks to get my body and voice to the place where I can really push it to the max. I start slow and easy and then work my way up to the long, high wails and then putting the grit into my voice is the last thing I do. Diaphragmatic control is extremely important, so a lot of my vocal exercises and warming up focus on that. Preparing for the studio is the same as preparing for tour, if not more intense. On tour I only sing for an hour or two every night; in the studio you have to be ready to work for eight hours straight so it’s important that you are in the best shape you can possibly be. I actually really like hitting the studio at the end of a tour because my voice is usually at its peak after I’ve been working it out every night for weeks on end!“
How well and smoothly did the songwriting go - were there any ups and downs?
„The song writing process went really well. All the boys contributed riffs and solos, but Andrew was an absolute madman on this one. He had endless ideas and was sending us completed songs that needed little to no edits which is not normally the case. I always send the boys the track-by-track overview of the story to use as inspiration for the riffs, then they send me their demos and I decide which ones fit for which songs. After the order of the songs/riffs is worked out we go through each track and do edits or add parts that are missing or tweak riffs that don’t quite feel right. Once that is done then drums and bass get written, then I write my vocal melodies. The melodies came easily to me on this album, but because I was up at all hours with a new baby, I was having trouble finding the time to get everything demo’d out. Nick helped me with some lyric ideas on the opening track, and he also came up with the end of the chorus in ‚The Collective‘ too. I was struggling to find the words and he was just sitting there practicing for his session the next day and I sang to him ‘A banner that waves in the fierce winds of change, we march…’ and he finished it for me perfectly with ‘with one beating heart!’ and I absolutely loved it! He such a multi-talented guy!“
Are there any topics in the new lyrics that are particularly close to your heart, that always move you a lot?
„Besides the social media thing mentioned above, the other main theme is one I tend to sing about a lot. We all battle in our daily lives with feelings of hopelessness and with not knowing if we’re doing what we were meant to be doing with our lives. Personally, I prefer to comfort myself with the knowledge that the universe is much larger than us and that it doesn’t really matter what we do, so long as we are happy. I don’t think there is a path you are supposed to be on, or a destiny or a fate that you are tied to. Every person is in control of the direction their life will take and so when Phantoma is at her lowest, she finds the strength to carry on within herself, and nowhere else. The fact that our existence is completely random and that there is no grand or divine purpose is a scary thought, but I love that I am a tiny speck of dust in an infinite universe; I alone can choose my happiness and I alone must account for my failures. Knowing this I choose to make music because it makes me happy, and I choose to be kind to all those that I meet along the way.“
Five headstrong, determined and individually thinking personalities in one band - many musicians find it quite difficult to deal with a rather demanding style collectively and harmoniously on a long-term basis, or is the exact opposite the case with you?
„Hahaha we are actually all great friends and take a lot of joy in playing on stage together. It took a while to find a line-up that resonated so perfectly like this, but we have a lot of laughs, and we are all motivated by the same things. That really helps the band stay together and move forward into the future as one. We have the best time on tour and writing music together is a blast so there really isn’t too much that causes tension. We all play to the best of our abilities every night and if someone screws something up then it’s not the end of the world. We are all human and everyone makes mistakes, and the point is to have fun, not to be unmoving statues playing every note to perfection. We want to sound good of course but we also want to put on a great show and sometimes you just can’t have both and all five of us understand this.“
Anything you would like to add?
„Just hope you all enjoy the album and we look forward to seeing you on tour in 2024 or 2025!“
© Markus Eck, 14.03.2024
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