Cold Remembrance

An Atmospheric Goth Metal Band from Athens (Greece), first created during the winter of 2004 by guitarist V-Angel and keyboarder Romanos. Having departed from former bands, they came with the idea of creating music that would express their inner and deeper emotions, as a mean to balance the ''Damages" daily life does.Here is the interview to subexistance.

Tell us a bit about the genesis of the band, whose idea was it to get things together? Had any of you previous experience in playing with any other acts before this?
Hello Kostas and thanks for the opportunity to reveal some of our ideas concerning our band ΄΄Cold Remembrance΄΄. Well, all started during the winter of 2004 when totally devastated by the dissolution of my former band ΄΄Unselevon΄΄i (Romanos) took some of the tracks i had written and started looking for musicians in order to set a new band. I came across guitarist V-Angel who had departed from a metal band and we started the whole project. The chemistry was obvious. Soon we started rehearsing and writing new songs, but the problem was that we couldn’t find musicians here in Athens playing this particular genre and only after several years we came with the present line up. Before ΄΄Cold Remembrance΄΄we all were in other bands and i had written music for the theatric act ΄΄The Crucible΄΄.

Which is the current line up?
The current line up is: Romanos (vocals/keys), V-Angel (guitars), Christopher (bass guitar) and Jim (drums).

How would you describe your musical sound?
Well, our sound is atmospheric, with strong metal guitar riffs and an emotional Goth essence covering every track. I could spare us some time by saying we play Gothic-Metal but, you see, many bands that tend to categorize themselves, face many problems when they change their sound after one maybe two albums and i don’t want us to go through all that. Also, the term Gothic evolved through all these decades and at some point i think that lost it’s meaning and became trendy. Many listeners especially the young ones tend to name Gothic-Metal every band, whose members wear make-up, have intense guitar riffs and synths. In this evolvement bands like Him, Evanescence, even Paradise Lost and Sentenced considered to be Gothic up to some point giving a whole different meaning to this genre.

You are preparing your debut.Can you give us some more details about it?
Our debut is an EP by the title ΄΄Visions from a World Apart΄΄which is a prelude for our album ΄΄Damages΄΄. It will comprise 5 songs - almost 25-30 minutes of music - covering our visions of the world as we face it every day. The whole EP will be a concept. Music, lyrics, photos and layout are bound together in order to create a concept of the way we think of the world. The crisis of ethics and feelings, the loss of control, the frailty of human relationships and many more are some of the basic ideas we tried to connect in a five-track concept. That is what the song ΄΄Caught in Frost΄΄, we recently uploaded, expresses and this is the way we would like, listeners to face this album-as a concept of our lives.

What were the goals you had in mind when you started to record , any elements you definitely wanted to have on the album?
We tried to create a solid, fresh sound which in accordance to the lyrics, presents our ideas about life in music form. We like to think ΄΄Visions΄΄as an awakening from the state in which humanity lies, a decipherment of our emotions and the faults that brought all of us to the point we stand. What we do, is recording the causes of our faults and mistakes and our emotional fall wrapped in an atmospheric Gothic suit. All lyrics and sounds are bound together in order to express that in every detail and that took a lot of time and work. This is how we want to describe our debut but it’s up to you to judge and make your own conclusions.

Who is responsible for writing the songs and the lyrics on this album and where do you get your inspiration from? What would you say are the main themes in your lyrics?
The songs are written by me and V-Angel and i am also responsible for the lyrics of the album. Our inspiration derives from our feelings and passions but mainly by everyday life, the way people act, face tragedies, make or destroy relationships. There are many times that i lost myself inside big noisy clubs, bars, coffee shops even in transport means, observing people, trying to understand the way they act, their feelings and choices with a piece of paper, or my cell phone in hand writing lyrics about that. What I write is real and springs out of my observation about the world and nothing more. Of course i also get much of my inspiration from personal stuff or people i love. As a result, the main themes in my lyrics are a cover of our daily battles with ourselves an outline of our reality and of the ways we deal with it.

What are the passions that drive you to create?
Love, a very powerful feeling that supports us through all these years and brings balance in our life, but above all the way we are. I mean that if we don’t create music, if we don’t put our beliefs and ideas on the paper, if we don’t express ourselves through music then it’s like we don’t exist.

Do you think that the image of a band plays a big part into breaking into the scene?
I think that good and above all ΄΄real΄΄music still counts and is recognizable whether you have a dress code or not. But, nowadays i think that the global cultural and institutional changes also influenced the world of music. We could say that the image of a band helps a band breaking into the scene because influences the young minds and the record companies, at least the big ones, want that.

What is your view on Social Media sites (myspace,facebook,twitter)
Well, i think that S.M. sites help people come together, exchange views and even make new friendships. I’m not against it, I support it! At least it helped me with my work and the band several times. But, people must learn to measure their time spend S. M. sites because they tend to lose personal contact up to some point. The logic of these sites is to help and bring people together not to create cyber-zombies that tend to live through a pc.

What are the best and worst things about being in a band?
The contact with other people like you, the joy of synthesis, the amazement of playing live in a crowd or even your friends, the agony of recording and the happiness of listen to your work completed the sharing of the same problems and the same dreams and many more are the best things about being in a band. As for the worst, i believe, is when you try to do your job and live all that without having the right associates. I mean people who share the same dreams and sacrifice themselves in order to achieve the common goal.

What is music for you?
I believe that every person has a dark and a bright side whether that means that he is a villain, damaged, or sensitive and romantic. I΄d like to think myself as a sensitive person who needs music in order to set balance in my life and don’t let the dark side consume me. I am appalled and disgust many times by the way people treat to each other and i need music to set things right in me.

Can you tell me some o bands or artists, writers, etc that have been influential for the band?
Well, V-Angel and i come from very different music scenes. I am very much influenced by the whole 80’s, 90’s and 00’ Dark Wave and Gothic scene and he listens to a lot of classic metal, progressive metal and virtuosi guitarists. But we are both open minded listeners so we also tend to listen to a lot of rock and pop artists, soundtracks and anything that sounds good and has beautiful melodies. We are also very much touched by writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, Gustave Flaubert, Hermann Hesse, Kostas Karyotakis, Miltos Sachtouris, ancient and medieval writers such as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and William Shakespeare.

Do you have any live experience?
Of course each one of us has a small amount of live experience with its former groups but we haven’t scheduled any live performances with Cold Remembrance yet, because we are concentrated on the EP and the song writing. We have some things in mind about a live concert but it needs a lot of time and money which we don’t have at the moment.

Would you like to add anything?
I wish you all love, a world we learned to say easily up to the point we lost its meaning.

Thank you very much Romane i wish you all the best to the band and to you.

Kostas Sotiriou