An interview with Empyrean a Progressive Metal band from UAE : "most people leave the country, and so it's a vicious cycle, as the older ones leave, younger inexperienced people take over, which brings the scene back to where it had been a couple of years prior"

Please start the interview by giving us a brief history of Empyrean?
Luca: In the last couple of years Empyrean has been a way to release our creativity by doing something we love. Music is at the base of our daily lives and we hope someday we will be able to live off our music, then again, I guess that is every other musicians' dream. For a detailed Empyrean biography, check our website out.

Empyrean was formed under the name of Impure. Can you tell us the reason?
Luca: That was a creation of one of our previous drummers, Adam Armstrong. It suited our Nu-Metal style then. With time our style has changed, as has our views on music. This is why, at the beginning of 2005, we decided to change our name to Empyrean. We believe this name represents our music better.

Your keyboardist is named Natasha Mukhi. Is there any familiar relation between her and the twins guitarists of the UAE death metal band Abhorred?
Amrit: Yes, they're cousins.

How do you view your music, I mean how do you label the genre you play?
Amrit: Its basically melodic metal with progressive tendencies, but then again it varies from song to song.
Luca: After listening to our EP, we felt there were traces of various types of metal. Ranging from Melodic Death Metal to Thrash Metal, we really couldn't come down to deciding what genre we could fit under, which is why we opted to be labelled as Progressive Metal. We feel this was the only sub-genre of Metal which would accommodate the variety of styles present in our music.

How would you define progressive metal?
Amrit: Obviously with music its all about personal opinions, views, and expression. But the way we see it, progressive metal to us is a way in which we can write our music without any limitations on where each piece will go. It allows us complete artistic freedom and we wouldn't have it any other way.

Almost two months have passed since the release of your "Ancient Skies " EP and I guess that it is not too early to ask about the response to this stuff. What are the opinions about it?
Amrit: So far the response to the EP has been good.
Luca: Never really thought we would sell as many EP's as we have. We're really looking forward to hearing professional opinions.

We notice that you used drum machine for this record, why don't you engage a drummer?
Luca: We have had various drummers; some unfortunately left the country as often happens here in Dubai, others we didn't feel gave a positive contribution to our music. At the time when we recorded our EP, we could find no-one to fill in, so we decided programmed drums was the best solution. We now have a session drummer to fill in for our live performances, but he too is leaving the country soon. We will look for a permanent drummer once we settle down in university as in the UAE it is hard to have a stable line up.

Are you satisfied with the sound on the demo? Do you find it representative of your sound?
Luca: I am quite satisfied with the end result of this demo; it is the first demo I have ever produced, learning how to mix while we were recording. Listening through I can now hear flaws in the mix, but I think the job was done decently and it will hopefully be a starting point for improvement in the years to come. As far as our sound goes, it is still much undefined. Our songs really have hardly anything in common with each other, each having a very different feel. This EP is representative of what we were when we recorded, we didn't have a definite pattern or sound and this is probably why our songs resulted so diverse. We are working on new tracks now, and I feel we have set out a signature sound which hopefully will be easily recognizable once the tracks are heard.

Did you ever play live? I suppose it'd be easy to play concerts in your country?
Luca: Yes, we have played live, Evolution and Revolution probably being our two most successful shows. It isn't as easy as it looks to play at a good concert in this country, the scene is still young, but growing strong. We're looking forward to playing Absolution in late June.

Is there any band you would like to play as a support act for?
Amrit: I'd love to support Children of Bodom, Dream Theater or Symphony X. I'd give anything to meet members of the bands!
Luca: Probably the same bands, and Machine Head.

How you see the metal scenes in Arabic countries at this time?
Luca: As far as the UAE is concerned, the scene is growing but still at a very early stage, main problem being that after high-school or university, most people leave the country, and so it's a vicious cycle, as the older ones leave, younger inexperienced people take over, which brings the scene back to where it had been a couple of years prior.

Do you have side projects?
Amrit: I had an Industrial metal project going for a while, but I had to leave it to work on the EP and getting it out. At the moment none of us have any side projects and we're giving a 100% to Empyrean.

Can you tell us something about your future plans?
Luca: I am going to be out of the country this coming year, but we have nearly completed recording more tracks, and this will be completed before I leave. We will be releasing our first album around October 2005, and rejoining next year in Canada where we will promote and record new material.

Do you see your band active in 10 years?
Amrit: Its too soon to say, but we can assure you this much, we'll give it everything we got and see where it takes us!
Luca: Hopefully.

Final words?
Luca: We would like to thank Lelahel Metal for their time. Keep Metal alive!

Interview by Lelahel

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