“Visions of Atlantis” Interview
The Austrian symphonic metal band “Visions of Atlantis” from Styria, was founded in 2000.
Before they visit Latin America, Clémentine Delauney (Lead Vocals), Michele Guaitoli (Lead Vocals), Thomas Caser (Drums), Christian Douscha (Guitar), and Herbert Glos (bass) take their time to talk with us about the band career, new Album “Pirates” with Napalm Records and give us a little advance about what we`ll enjoy at their concert here in Argentina next October 8 at the Uniclub, and LATAM.
SUNRAY: What’s the story behind your band’s name?
VoA: It’s a long, long story that goes back to 2000 when the band was founded in Austria by Thomas and 4 completely different other band-members compared to the actual line-up.
They loved the myth of Atlantis and the all sea-related universe. Inspired by this concepts, they chose Visions of Atlantis also because the letters V and A were connected to the previous name of the band when they were playing a completely different style.
When they decided to write own music in the Symphonic Metal jar they wanted to set a new beginning with a name change…but they kept the V and the A as initials…
SUNRAY: Who Are Your Biggest Influences?
VoA: If the question is related to the songwriting, the right answer to this question is “ourselves”. We really don’t want to write music in the style of this or this other band.
Our way of writing our music is spontaneous and pure, we follow our inspiration and this leads us to the melodies that you can hear in our records.
If the question is instead related of the overall growth that we had as a band and as musician, I think it would be hypocrite not to mention the inspiration given by Nightwish to the overall Symphonic Metal scene.
Basically every Symphonic Metal band has roots in what Nightwish initiated back in the days. In our case I believe that we also have some power-metal influences in several songs.
But one important thing to mention here is that we also ai at making our music cinematic, and a lot of influence in our arrangements comes from movie-scores. Jon Williams and Hans Zimmer definitely are point of reference for us.
SUNRAY: How does your creative process work, do all members contribute equally or is there one main songwriter?
VoA: It’s mostly a team work between Michele, Clémentine and our producer – Felix Heldt. Michele can totally be defined as the main songwriter of VoA as he writes the most of the songs and melodies. Clémentine is responsible of 100% of the lyrics, Felix wrote some of the tracks of Pirates and contributed essentially in the arrangement of all the songs we wrote down. This is not a strict rule though. There are songs written by Clémentine and arranged by Michele (as for Pirates Will Return for instance) ecc. ecc.
For the vast majority of our music though, we start from a full-band demo wrote by Michele, we proceed with sending the song to Felix who “scarmbles” it, arranges it maybe changing a few notes here and there, or re-adapting the structure and in general working on the track, and lastly when the song is 100% defined Clémentine takes care of putting down the final lyircs.
SUNRAY: During all these years, you released several albums and singles, What is your favorite song to perform?
VoA: I think that if you ask this song singularly to each one of us, you’ll get five different answers. Legion of the Seas is a fantastic live song, a banger that makes everyone shake their heads…it has just a beautiful live impact. Master the Hurricane is one of the most complex tracks for us, with a lot of different sections and atmospheres: playing it live is a pleasure. Melancholy Angel is pure fun, with all our crowds always jumping in the choruses…it’s really not easy to pick one song only here.
SUNRAY: Please, talk to us about your current released album “Pirates”
VoA: Pirates is a record that has been blessed by the winds. It really took us (almost) everywhere in the world. With this record we made a lot of changes: we changed producer, cover artwork designer, photographer, mixing and mastering engineer, we finally embraced the pirate universe that we’ve been flirting on for years (songs like Silent Mutiny and The Deep and the Dark were already really close to this theme…). It has basically been a little revolution in VoA’s world and it truly paid off. We embraced a cinematic universe where romantic pirates are fighting for their freedom, for a life without rules if not the ones that we want for ourselves. We brought this messages and this ideals in our music, still staying loyal to the Symphonic Metal soundscape, reaching something that, especially after 2 years on the road we feel like we’re allowed to say this, touched our listeners in a deeper and stronger way.
SUNRAY: You are coming to Argentina next October! with a Latin America tour. So, I won´t spoil too much, but, What can you tell us about the next concert?
VOA: Stay assured that it’s not gonna be “just” a concert. What Visions of Atlantis are bringing on stage now it’s a real show. For 1.30h we will make you forget who you are and we’ll take you on board our ship, making you become real pirates. We’ll make you become part of the show, as there will be real interaction between us and the fans. We’ll make you sing, scream, jump, row our ship and much much more in what is not only “musicians playing on stage”, but a real experience with acting, jokes, fun…we promise you it will be a memorable night!
SUNRAY: How’s The Tour Going?
VoA: Extremely well! We’ve been basically touring non-stop since February 2022 when we started this adventure as support acts for Firewind and Dragonforce in the United States.
Now we’re again in the US, this time as special guests for Delain, and we’re having another wonderful experience with great crowds, a lot of enthusiasm and so many new sailors ready to join our crew..
SUNRAY: What is one message you would give to your fans?
VOA: Coming back to South America it’s just fantastic. We love your countries, and Argentina in particular gifted us with beautiful memories the last time we came. We still remember the fans throwing a football shirt to Clémentine during the show, and singing chants non-stop until the end of the concert.
In 2020 with the pandemic and everything we lost the chance to come back to promote “Wanderers”. Now that we’re so close to be back with PIRATES it’s exciting. We’re counting the days.
Don’t forget that we are also organising a Meet & Greet session where we can spend some time with you, take some pictures together, sign items that you’ll bring with you or the merch that you can buy on location.
We’re literally enthusiastic about what’s going to happen!!
SUNRAY: What’s next for Visions of Atlantis?
VoA: We already wrote several songs for the next record. We actually have more than what we need, so we’ll have the luxury of being able to choose the best tracklist for what we’re calling – this is NOT gonna be the title obviously – PIRATES 2.
The next record is gonna continue what we started with Pirates, taking it to an even further level. We’re extremely excited about the songs we’ve chosen as singles and we won’t hide the fact that we can’t wait to start bringing them live on stage.
The release date is still to be defined, but it will surely happen next year so that we can start another cycle and renew our show. This is also something we’re working on. We want to make our show even bigger and more intense, with more props and a stage that will truly look like a pirate ship…
..let’s see where we can go!
“Visions of Atlantis” will be performing in Argentina next October 8, at the Uniclub.
Tickets are on sale
https://www.passline.com/eventos/visions-of-atlantis
Interview by Maria Fernanda Capici
Special thanks to Mónica Quiceno CKConcerts
Produced by California Sun Producciones – Hellnoise Booking
Press HP Prensa