VESUVIAN – interview with the band

Vesuvian is an up and coming Melodic Death Outfit based out of Seattle. Primarily a Melodic Death band, Vesuvian integrates harmonic Progressive Metal Elements onto their music. Their debut album Lahar reflects their stylistic approach well. Being a fan myself I was fortunate to Interview them where we discussed, probably everything relating to their debut album.

How did you come up with the name “Vesuvian”?

Well, we had started out under the name Ocean of Obsession, based on a song title our singer had written and we didn’t have anything better to call it at the time. After our drummer Josh joined the fold, we kind of wanted to change things up and leave the old band and the old sound in the past, Josh actually came up with the name. After Josh came up with the name after a while in the band, it had a few meanings but we chose to take it at it’s roots under the definition of “Of Vesuvius” in which our singer RJ took this and ran with it starting to create a concept and story that all the bands songs and subsequent albums would follow along to at least to a loose point. The “hero’s” of the story reside within the great Mountain after a great plague has taken the world as it’s own, the survivors are known as the Vesuvians, which we also call our band members and close inner circle of the band as well, as a fun homage to the concept and to give our fans a name and something to get behind!

Your debut album “Lahar” was killer and really made an impact on a lot of Death Metal Fans, including me. How was the recording process and promotion, being an Unsigned band?

The recording process was very interesting, and unlike anything we had done before, it was recorded in two different sessions throughout 2016 with Jason Dagget of Avoid and Ahren Lanfor of Decade Sound Studio finished it out, mixed and mastered it. It took most of the year as we would record, save money and play shows to get more funds and then go back in, some human elements were left in this one for not only an aesthetic feel, but to help with the overall cost, as for an unsigned band rolling on their own, this got a bit spendy just to record, not to mention the art and distribution.

On your debut album, “Lahar” there are these lines:- “We Know Who We Are, But We Lose Ourselves..”. While analysing these lines one can come up with a lot of stories. What is the actual meaning behind these lines?

The whole song Lahar is about losing someone close, the song was originally called “mantra” as these lines were a mantra used to deal with the losses our singer RJ had been through in his life. It is meant to be an uplifting and to never lose yourself to sorrow self loathing or hatred that comes along with loss, sometimes losing yourself but even in the darkest of times, always remember who you are. It is also a chant for the Vesuvians to survive and never lose themselves to the infection that plagues the lands outside of their “walls”

If you were to pick the your favourite and least favourite track from your latest record, what will be your list?

As a talks about this were a little divided but as a collective our The end of what we knew, was a stand out for the album, it was the lead single for the album, but we also love the dynamics of the song The Infection 1: Disfigured Archangel.

The one we did have a consensus as our least favorite was, world builder, yes it is an intro track, but it originally was intended to be a full song but in all of our writing process nothing beyond what when on the album came out, it just feels like there was a wasted potential great song that we just could not pull off.

You guys play Melodic Death Metal at its finest. What is your take in Arch Enemy’s latest track? Are you looking forward for their album?

Their newest track at this point was “The world is yours”, upon listen we were a bit divided, some of us like it’s catchy anthemic feel to the whole song which is a very Arch Enemy thing to do as some of us like that fact you can almost chant along with every tune. Though there are sever in that band who were either indifferent or was not their cup of tea, they like the band as a whole just not that song overall, but as a band we all thought it was an overall great song and could all agree the guitar lead for the chorus was awesome and really catchy. But overall it leaves us super hopeful for the rest of the album as it will most likely be a stand out in a very strong year in metal.

2017 is probably the best year for Death Metal or Metal in general. Care to share your favourite albums for this year?

As of this interview some of the albums we are really enjoying are: Mastodon – Emperor of sand, Rings of Saturn – Ultu Ulla, Once human – Evolution, Fit for an Autopsy – The Great Collapse, In Reverence – The Selected Breed, Rope Sect – Personae Ingratae, Fen – Winter, Code Orange – Forever and With Our Arms to the Sun – Orenda, Ghostbath – Starmourner. Some of the albums we are really exited that are coming out are: The Contortionist – Clairvoyant, Mastodon – Cold Dark place, Gwar – Blood of the gods, The Black Dahlia Murder – Night bringers and Trivium – The sin and the sentence and the as yet unnamed Toothgrinder album

I ask this question to most of the band mates, If you were to pick 4 bands that might fit into the Big 4 of Death Metal. What will be your list?

This actually sparked some crazy debate among the band, of Flat out Death metal the easy one was Cannibal corpse then the debate started it was all in good spirits but it was a bit heated at moments, Death came up but we decided for a big 4 all the bands would have to be able to be active so after all of this the other three we came up with were Obituary, Morbid Angel and Suffocation!

What are your future goals and landmarks? Any plans for a sophomore album?

For now our future goals from Lahar, are very basic yet very complicated, it can be summed up very easily, “Bigger and better” but the processes will be long and the most challenging we have done so far as we are really maturing as a band and defining what makes us, well us! There are as we speak, large changes happening behind the scenes, Lahar is going to have a follow up, we have several singles being written to release to the fans sooner than later, while we find the right team to create our first full length album, at the time this will most likely be published it is just over half written, the concept is almost finalized, it has a name and there is art in the works for it (this will be hard as Lahar’s album art by Alejandro Comesana was nothing short of amazing) Lahar will be hard overall to follow up, but we are currently shopping for the team to do it, so this next album is going to be as huge as we can make it!

As for non album, our live show is only getting better from the look to the live cohesion to on stage props and other fun things. Tours may wait till later 2018 but we are doing long distance one off shows for the rest of the year before ending it of right by playing a show with two huge influences in Ne Obliviscaris and Allegaeon!

Hope you will fulfill your goals anytime soon. And We are very much excited for your upcoming album as well. On behalf of Metal Centre, I wish you all the very Best for future. Thank You for devoting some time to give us an Interview. Cheers!

Thanks so much for featuring us on this, and once we get some new releases you all will be the first to hear it if we can! Thanks to all involved and keep it METAL \m/

– Vesuvian!