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After (according to me) one of the best debut albums ever (Angels Cry), and a spectacular follow up (Holy Land) the brazilian progressive speed band Angra is now back with another album, Fireworks! Leadsinger and composer, André Matos gave me a ring and told me some interesting facts about the album. |
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| Mark: |
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On "Fireworks" you had a different producer, Chris Tsangarides (Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Helloween). Explain why and what you think he brought to your sound? |
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| André: |
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We have, thanks to a big tour, become experienced musicians and recorded the album more analog and more live. We didn’t use our time on technical stuff this time, but went more straight on. That was the reason we chose Chris, which is a little more "old school" than Charlie Bauerfeind who has been working more with the modern heavy metal. |
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| Mark: |
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How did the recording go? |
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| André: |
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It went OK, with the thought of that we used a new recording technique in mind. |
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| Mark: |
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You got the opportunity to work with a full orchestra. Tell us about it. |
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| André: |
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That was a great experience which I will never forget. It’s me who composes all the classical pieces in our music, so I was the only one present from the band. It was a big orchestra with 30 members and it was actually the famous Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. We used Abbey Road Studios, Studio 2, which was the one that The Beatles used. |
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| Mark: |
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I guess it was kinda expensive? |
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| André: |
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They recorded for three hours and it cost $10 000. Our budget wasn’t bigger than that but the orchestra is so professional that the time was enough. |
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| Mark: |
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Compare "Fireworks" with the two previous albums. |
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| André: |
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I think that it was a natural development that we mixed the best elements from "Angels Cry" and "Holy Land". The album is not as progressive as "Holy Land" but yet not as straight as "Angels Cry". As I mentioned before, we have matured as musicians and recorded it more live, so the natural feel was there. |
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| Mark: |
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Tell us about the lyrics. It’s not a concept album this time, is it? |
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| André: |
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True. Let me tell you abbut osme of the songs. The title track "Fireworks" is just about fireworks. I got ispired when I celebrated the new year at Coca Cobana Beach where they had this great firework. It was interesting to see how it affected the people. The reason for choosing it as the title for the album is because fireworks describe our music very good; powerful and explosive but still colorful and delightful. "Metal Icarus" bring us back to the days when we started listeing to Heavy Metal and were the HM kids, haha! "Paradise" is inspired by the Soccer Wrold Championship and the engagement that the crowd shows. You can see parallels between them and the old romans and the gladitorial games. I got inspired to write "Lisbon" after a concert we did in Lisbon.As you may be aware of, they speak portugiese I Brazil so it was a really grat experience to come there and get to experience a part of our roots. The cembalo riff in the beginning of the song is typical Portugiese music. |
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| Mark: |
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You had some songs left over from the time when you wrote for "Holy Land". Where any of those songs used on "Fireworks"? |
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| André: |
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No. Vi had 18-20 songs to choose from anyway. We managed to pick out ten songs that felt somewhat together. The songs you mentioned is pitful unfortunately available on a bootleg. |
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| Mark: |
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You said you had a grat amount of songs to pick from. Why did you choose to put "Make Believe" (acoustic. version) and "Angels Cry" (demo) on the Lisbon single? |
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| André: |
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It was a matter of time relly,but I think that those are interesting B-sides for the fans. We did the "Make Believe" version for a French magazine which included it on a CD, so it has only been available there before. The "Angels Cry" demo is completely different that the album version. We have been asked to release that verison so many times. When we recorded that songs it was the first time Angra was in a studio together. |
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| Mark: |
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What are your tour plans? |
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| André: |
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During the spring and beginning of the winter, we’ll play in Brazil, remining South America and Japan. Europe is probably set to January and we really wanna visit Scandinavia thi time. There are actually thoughts of doing something together with Stratovarius. |
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| Mark: |
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You have changed record company in Europe. Why? |
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| André: |
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Simply, we weren’t satisfied with Rising Sun. In France and Italy we have separate companies, and there we’re really making progress, and also in Greece. In Japan, we sold gold and in South America we’re doing very good too, but in Europe it wasn’t as good and that very much because that no one knew about us there. |
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| Mark: |
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Manowar has a reputaion of being nice guys, but I don’t think that you agree on that? |
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| André: |
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So, you heard about that. It was on "Gods of Metal", the festival in Italy where Manowar was gonna be the main attraction. Unforrunately they didn’t treat the other bands, including us, very well. I got veru disappointed at them, since I’m a big fan of their music which still hasn’t changed. The problem was that they were bound to have 100% of sound and light show, while we got about 40% of it. I also wanted to do an interview with Eric Adams but never got to do it because they were busy. I think that one has to trust your own music as much, so you don’t have to fear that someone else is better. If we reach that greatness I really hope that it won’t get above our heads so that we’ll have to treat anyone like that. We’ve met a great amount of other big bands such as Stratovarius, Blind Guardian, Gamma Ray and Dream Theater and they were never a problem. |
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| Mark: |
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It has almost become some sort of trend to blend classical music with Heavy Metal. What do you think is the reson why? |
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| André: |
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I think it’s a reaction of people that don’t want wanna play too simple music as it was during the "Thrash Metal Wave" in the beginning of the 90’s. New Wave of British Heavy Metal was melodic and at intervals quite complicated and it’s starting to appear again. Classical music is pretty hard to play and we’re only happy to belong ot the pioneers in this new wave. |
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| Mark: |
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You have any fun tour memory you wanna share? |
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| André: |
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We do a lot of fun stuff, just to bare and feel secure during a long tour. An example is when the air conditioner of the bus broke, in the middle of a f*****g desert. To ease the pain someone got the idea that we only got to watch porno films in the bus. We also got a lot of pictures up on the windows, tables and….well almost everywhere. When we later on got the place where the gig was there was this female fan standing there waiting. When she approached the bus to take photos she got to see all these pictures. She got really embarresed and stepped back. That was really funny and we blame it all on Virgin Steele, because it was their idea, haha! |
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| Mark: |
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What is the worst memory then? |
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| André: |
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It was when we reached the middle of the Croatian war. We got stopped by some soldier who demanded a duty when we barely had any money. |
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| Mark: |
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Anything you wanna say to the swedish fans? |
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| André: |
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I really hope that we’ll meet as soon as possible. |
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 Comments, remarks or ideas? Please mail us. |
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