FIONA - FALLEN ARISE

#interview

FIONA CREABY - Fallen Arise

💿 Hi, it’s a pleasure for us to have on Hardrockheavymetal Fiona Of FALLEN ARISE! You're Welcome!

Thank you so much, it is my pleasure to chat with you!

💿 On April 10th was out your new album entitled ENIGMA, well-received on our pages. How would you describe this new fatigue in a few words?

I would say... bold, energetic, enlightened and passionate!

💿 Another album out on ROAR-ROCK OF ANGELS RECORDS. Can you tell us somethin’about about this partnership?

ROAR is a deeply valued partner of Fallen Arise and has given fantastic support for our activities over the years. ROAR’s enthusiasm and support for ‘Enigma’ has been tremendous and we are very proud of the great relationship we enjoy.

💿 Can you tell us somethin'about your early times as musicians? Who impressed you the most?

We are quite an eclectic bunch of musicians, spanning different generations, cultures and backgrounds and this brings us the joy of discovering each other’s different influences as well as sharing our mutual love for metal.

Gus began with Piano at a young age, and is deeply inspired by his love of the orchestra.

Similarly, I enjoyed the symphony from a young age, however, I only came to perform voice at a later age as a young adult after beginning to enjoy the live metal scene.

Collectively, we are influenced by many great classical composers as well as rock, metal and pop legends in addition to underground artists.

Although there are diversities in our influences, you will see a combined respect of artists such as Dream Theater, Amorphis, Paradise Lost, Within Temptation, Iron Maiden, and Rammstein.

💿 There's a great return of format such as vinyl and cassette. What's your thinking about these classic format..love for vintage or is it impossible a future for music outside digital?

I believe that many people still love the feel of holding musical art in their hands.

There is something very special in first opening the cassette of a CD and handling the inlay booklet or teasing a Vinyl from its sleeve.

In my youth, exploring both the visual and audio elements of a new physical release was such a treasure. I feel it is a real privilege to have had that experience in my life.

I think many people from across generations feel as I do about that, and for those who have not yet experienced this pleasure, or are not able to, I hope that one day they can.

I do miss the more widespread presence of the ‘record shops’ or ‘vinyl stores’ we had decades ago but I do see places throughout Europe where this is rising again, which is great!

However, I also enjoy the accessibility and portability of digital music, just as many people do, and I am also thankful I have this in my life.

Radio is also still a great way to discover new artists and have variety beyond my own preferences, but it is nice to have your favourite albums travel with you on demand and to stream – we are very lucky to have such variety as not everyone in the world has this privilege.

Overall, the way we consume music has evolved and will continue to do so and I believe that a variety of formats can cater to different preferences and help more people to access music.

For us as band, we always see how much our fans love to have a variety of formats and merchandise on offer.

Many people come to shows and want us to sign physical CDs, Vinyl and other things and we think this is likely to remain a preference for many too.

So, overall, we see many people enjoying both the physical and the digital aspects of our work and we appreciate that a variety of media can help us to connect with many people who perhaps cannot access the physical world so easily – especially now in the global pandemic lockdown situation.

💿 Inside your songs what’s the role of lyrics in the composition process? Words follow music or vice versa?

This is a very interesting question, and for this album overall, the music was a key inspiration for the lyrical composition process. I think that lyrics are an important part of the overall composition as they help to tell a story and people begin to make strong connections with words as they ‘feel’ the music and voice as it takes them on a journey and they begin to interpret the lyrics in ways that has meaning to them individually. During the writing process, the music often creates a journey or scene in my mind based on how the it makes me feel.

So as a lyricist, I prefer to move with the rhythm and the feel of the song and mostly create lyrics as I build the vocal melodies. Hence, with ‘Enigma’, the music was predominantly a guide for the inspiration of the lyrics.

Although, I did already have some lyrics that I felt would be a perfect match for some songs, such as the title track ‘Enigma’, and ‘Reborn’.

Yet other songs were more of that collaboration between music and lyrics during the early writing stage as Gus would send me a part of the song and lyrics would begin to emerge in my mind as I played with vocal melodies, like with ‘Forsaken’, ‘Without Disguise’ and ‘Released’.

And there were songs like ‘Forever Winter’ where the music gave such intense feelings that it was like a story playing out in my mind which led to the chorus lyrics taking shape, which then led to collaborative versus with Paul, our bassist on the album, or with Vlassis, such as with ‘Embers’, ‘Enigma’ and ‘The Storm Inside’.

💿 How much is complicated to make music at the time of a global pandemy? Are you scheduling some concerts for the second part of the year or is too soon?

The situation is indeed a considerable challenge in many ways and our foremost thoughts are for the safety and well-being of everyone – our bandmates, partners, crew as well as our fans – and we appreciate that across the world the situation is still so uncertain and constantly changing.

As we are not located in the same country, we see the differences between our own situations and appreciate the restrictions in physical movement will remain longer for some of us than for others.

So, it is a bit complicated and too early to think about shows or concerts for Autumn but we are constantly reassessing the situation and certainly intend to have plans in place for 2021.

As our efforts for this period were planned to focus on the release and promotion of ‘Enigma’ with activities to support this, which did include live shows, we had not planned to have a full song writing phase again so soon but we are talking about all sorts of possibilities now, and as Gus never stops composing, there are things already going on in the background so we are still quite active and communicate often.

The geographical spread of the band does have it challenges in the song writing process, but we have some technology to enable us to share ideas and we hope it will not be too long before we can come together for both live shows and writing purposes.

💿 You shared stages with many bands and artists..Who were the craziest?

Hopefully not us! Yes, we have been fortunate to share the stage with some fantastic bands and artists. Touring is hard work and you need to respect the boundaries that life on the road presents in order to perform well, stay healthy and support each other so it is important to have good balance between working hard and enjoying downtime when you get it - a sense of humour helps too, and this has often been made easier by those we have been lucky to tour with along the way! I often think back to lots of fun times on our European tour supporting Fates Warning, alongside Armored Dawn from Brazil – we enjoyed some good laughs with both band and crew! When we toured with Paradise Lost in Russia in 2017, they were great to work people to with too and it was a privilege to be asked to perform on stage with them as a guest on their hit song ‘Erased’. That was certainly a ‘crazy’ moment for me and the audience were wild. But I think overall for all of us, supporting Nightwish was a very unique wonderful experience, and probably our most memorable as a huge amazing outdoor show with a such a great audience.

The stage and backstage areas were built over a couple of days and even though we played when it was 35 degrees Celsius with killer humidity for the lungs and no air conditioning, with mosquitos everywhere, that didn’t stop us from giving it our all! I personally remember Floor Jansen being so kind and holding such poise and elegance on stage which was truly an inspiration to me and I will never forget those moments we shared.

💿 We love the cover of ENIGMA..Can you tell us somethin'about?

We are very proud of this cover. It was created by Paul ‘Kull’ Culley, our bassist on the album, who is an excellent graphic artist and also a guitarist and songwriter – so he is a rather multi-talented guy!

From the very beginning when getting the feel from the music that this was a very positive and passionate album, as the lyrics emerged, the idea of fire and flames as a symbol of rebirth and passion was discussed early on.

There were many different ideas along the way but with the naming of the album came the inspiration for the clock and Paul evolved these ideas every step of the way into the amazing visual cover art we have, we are very grateful to him for all the hard work he put in to make it happen.

💿 Thank you so much for your time! See you soon on Hardrockheavymetal!

It is our pleasure, thank you very much for taking time to learn more about Fallen Arise and we hope to see you again soon too!

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