ECHOSILENCE

ECHOSILENCE is a good band of progressive instrumental rock coming of the distant ESTONIA, with a curious way , began as band of death metal, had female vocal and now it makes a inspired and traveler  progressive metal. Krepuskulum interviwed Risto Mõtus (drums and percussion).

KREPUSKULUM: How is the metal scene in Estonia?

Sad but nothing special. We don't have any metal-clubs around here where people could hang-out. Most of the bands are some youngsters who are trying to do some basic black-metal or copy some famous bands. But still there are some bands that are original and good. We all like Carnifex they are progish death metal with very original and interesting ideas, great musicians also. there's also worth to mention bands like: o Ignorabimus - melodic sympho-metal, they have CD released soon.
o Diversia - Incredible girl-band playing metal. just amazing. they are techinical and interesting. and look pretty too. :)
o Tharaphita - Estonian pagan music, very popular here. Still the whole scene is going better hopefully.

KREPUSKULUM: Why did you change the musical way going from the Death metal to the progressive?

We have always searched for something new and interesting in music, even in those death metal days. So going into prog or jazz was just natural thing to do for us.

KREPUSKULUM:  Some accuse bands as Dream Theater and Stratovarious were self indulgents and virtuous , what do you think of that?

I don't know. I like both of them quite a lot and they are amazing musicians. That's maybe the main reason i like Dream Thater and Stratovarius. Very many metal bands have gone more indulgents and maybe someone accuses also us not to play death metal nowadays and gone more trippy and jazzy.

KREPUSKULUM:  Which the musical influences of ECHOSILENCE? Do you hear Jazz??

Every member of E has it's own influences. Basically we listen everything from nature sounds to black metal and of course we like jazz music a lot. It still is as a whole new genre to explore. We would like to put to our music besides the technicality and virtuosity of jazz also the spirit of jazz music. Here's are the personal faves of Echosilence members:
Risto Mõtus: I am most into metal from Echosilence. I also have a metalradio-programme called "Metallion" and I'm dealing with metal every day.My personal faves are Cynic (endless source of inspiration), the Gathering, Dream Theater, Terry Bozzyo, Dave Weckl, Anathema, Pearl Jam,Sadist, Novembre and so on. I'm still very much into extreme metal as well
and I also have a side project called Suppuration doing mix of brutal-death and black.
Marek Kivi: Guitarist Marek Kivi is into innovating, technical, interesting metal mostly. He likes groups like Anathema, Atheist, Meshuggah and of course Cynic.
Mart Karu: Guitarist Mart Karu likes music that is technical, weird and different. He likes Erki-Sven Tüür, Chick Corea, Dave Weckl, Cynic, Spastic Inc., Dream Theater, Death, Frederik Thordendal, Masfel and so on. The most technical and weird riffs in Echosilence are from Mart exactly.
Bassist Arian Levin is the guy who actually doesn't listen to metal. He studies electronic music and does mostly this kind of music but he's also playing violin in a folk band!

KREPUSKULUM:  why doesn't have a vocalist??

Because it's f***** hard to find one here in Estonia. We could find a guy who would do some basic death-metal-grownings but we think that it wouldn't fit our style or music. A female voice would be an option but it's still hard [even impossible?] to find a woman here who would compete our instruments with her voice. And the second reason is that we are used to writing
instrumental music thus we just don't know how to use vocals. We would just kill all vocals with our guitar-noodling and the
music would come too sticky :) Third reason is lyrics. We wouldn't want ourselves to be involved with somekind of ideology [satanism, christianity, whatever] or just spread somekind of a message. If we do that the music will become less important. So we like to do just pure instrumental music, to paint sounscapes with our intruments :)

KREPUSKULUM:  Talk about the creative process in the band.

We usually share our new ideas at our rehersals nad try to toy around with them. so we just improvise or do something weird with our ideas [use different sounds, different guitar-patterns, moods etc]. everyone adds his ideas into it and sometimes the original idea changes totally. some of the riffs are composed with computers and sometimes we just try to write down really weird rythms and try yo play them. But basically all our music comes from jamming around.

KREPUSKULUM: Did ECHOSILENCE already find a label interested in your music?

There have been some promising offers but still nothing final.We are still waiting. and sending our CD to labels.

KREPUSKULUM:  Has the CD been having good acceptance?

Yes. We haven't heard any bad review :) Actually we have got very many very good reviews all over the world and many zines have given their full support.

Contacts : madox@tpu.ee