Artist: Serenity

Date: 9 March 2011   

Shortly before their Uk tour with Dutch metallers Delain we catch up with Keyboard player Mario Hirsinger and Bassist Fabio D'Amore to talk about their latest album 'Death & Legacy', recent band changes and what the future holds for Serenity.

 MM - Thank you both for taking time out to do the interview.
MH - You're welcome.

MM - And congratulations on the new album.
MH - Thanks a lot.

MM - The album is something a little different, as it takes in historical figures, why did the band go down this road for the new album?
MH - As you might know our singer Georg Neuhauser has studied History and Geography and is very interested in history, he said why don’t we do an album that is not a concept album but an album that follows the same path.  An album that will feature not only historical figures, but also historical events. We thought that was a good idea so we started doing some research, with books and magazines, and decided to focus on those characters on the record.

MM - It’s quite an unusual topic as Power Metal and Symphonic Metal tends to go more for the fantasy and the dungeons and dragons type topics.
MH - Yes the last two albums we had fantasy songs, science fiction themes and songs about dreams and stuff like that, also songs about ordinary life.

MM - So was it a purposeful choice to get away from the fantasy thing with the new album? 
MH - It was definitely done on purpose.

MM - How long did the album take to complete, because I know you had a few problems along the way?
MH - That was a long process.  We wanted to put the album out in 2010, that was our intention after ‘Fallen Sanctuary’, but it didn’t turn out that way.  We started the song writing right after the release of the second album, but then we had some production problems and we had to postpone the studio recordings and the orchestration production.  We then had some dead time because all the song writing was done for the album.  We got back to the studio and did the orchestration production and the recordings and the artwork.  We wanted the album to be released at the end of 2010 but the label said it would be better in the beginning of the New Year, so it was released in February 2011 instead.  When we looked back we needed that time to finish the album. 

MM - Also during this time Simon Holzknecht the bass player left and Fabio came in.
MH - Yes, naturally it was a problem, but Simon became tired and didn’t have the energy for the recordings and was not interested in the sound of the band itself.  So Thomas recorded the bass for the album.  At that time we didn’t know Fabio was going to join the band or he would have recorded the bass for the album.

FD - It was too late! (laughs).  

MH - After that we had a talk with Simon and he agreed to leave the band because he had other stuff to do. He said he was building a house with his sister and brother. Was it the same day or the day after that you joined the band?

FD – It was the day after I think.  I didn’t just step into the job, first of all the guys wanted to meet me.  Me and singer Georg were on the Fairland production together, but the other guys didn’t want to risk having someone in the band they didn’t know, or didn’t fit in, so Thomas recorded all the bass for the new album and when I arrived we started talking about the rehearsals.  That September I came to Austria and I came to see if it was a good idea for me to join the band. (laughs)  

MH - It was a good idea! (laughs)

FD - We did shows in Holland to see how it would go.  I guess it went well because here I am!

MM - The album also has three guest vocalist on it, female vocalists.
MH - Yes.

MM - Amanda Somerville, Charlotte Wessels from Delain and Ailyn from Sirenia, how did they actually get involved in the album?
MH - The thing with Amanda is we met her at a concert with Kamelot in Tilburg during the 2009 tour.  They had big show and with Amanda living in Germany it was close.  

FD – She now lives in Holland.  

MH - Back then we talked to her and we said we liked her songs and it would be great if she collaborated with us in the future.  So when we were recording the album I contacted her and she said send the song over.  We were really really proud because she liked the song and really digged it.  She said it was one of the best collaborations she had done in the last year.  That was a huge compliment for us.  

FD – I was just coming into the band when she recorded the song and I could tell she was really really into it.  She was really proud of it.  

MH - We are really happy to have her on the album.

MM - So how it this going to impact your live shows, are you having a guest vocalist on tour with you?
MH - Yes we are.  We are doing four dates in the UK starting in Manchester with Delain.  It would be good if she could do that one song with us, but I don’t know if that will be possible, but we have Lisa Middelhauve the singer from Xandra band joining us on tour.

MM - Oh good.
MH - I have to go and pick her up from Munich airport then we have two rehearsals before the show on the Friday.  She is very excited about it.

MM - Going back to the album, it features a very interesting array of characters.  You have the likes of Sir Francis Drake, Mary Queen of Scots, but it’s the likes of Bartolomeu Dias that make things a bit more interesting because not many people know about him, and as a reviewer it was like a little history lesson by itself as I had to find out who he was. 
MH - It was a little history lesson for me too!  As I said I’m interested but not everyone can know everything about history and there were a lot of people I didn’t know about.  I don’t know if you know that I wrote all lyrics.  The ideas came from our singer Georg, but I wrote the final lyrics, so I had to know a lot of details about the people I’d never heard of before.  

Which was great for me.  I even started to get a little wanderlust for the places and people I was researching. When I was writing the lyrics about Sir Francis Drake, Christopher Columbus and Bartolomeu Dias I could almost smell the sea and hear the waves  

MM - Yes I know as a Scotsman all about Mary Queen of Scots, but there aren’t many songs about her.
MH - Oh yes, did you like the lyrics?

MM - Oh yes, I loved them.  Not just on that song but also the whole album and the idea behind it.  It’s a concept album without being a concept album.
MH - Exactly, you got it.

MM - So where do Serenity go from here? I know you have tour plans but what else can we expect from the band?  Will there be a follow up album with the same theme or was this a one off?
MH - We have already talked about it, we will be taking maybe a different approach but still keeping with a historical theme.

MM - Yes you don’t want to change things too much because this is a terrific album, you just want to keep a flow going. 
MH - Exactly, it won't be very different, but it’s going to be a hard job to follow this album.  

FD – That’s true.

MM - If all my history lessons had been like this I probably would have done much better at school!
FD – Yes. (laughs)

MM - This is the bands third album, how would you compare it to the previous two and how the band have grown from album to album?
MH - On the first album it was more into the melodic rock stuff the songs, with had a little of the progressive stuff and orchestration.  The songs then were very different, they were written over a considerable length of time and they were a collection of songs we had over the years.  On the next album we tried to establish a more orchestral sound and it was written over a shorter period of time.  The songs became quite fluent.  This again is concentrated more on the new album.  

You can tell that the songs were written along a shorter period of time. On the first album the songs are quite progish.  On the first album you collect all the ideas from your formation years, but now we know how to do it, within a shorter time scale.

I think that that’s the main difference between this album and the previous albums.

MM - This album is sonically stronger that the previous albums, maybe this is also due to the production? 
MH - Yes, a bigger sound and a step forward.  I think maybe the production on ‘Fallen Sanctuary' was a little weak, but the production on this album is really huge and it lives.  Done a great job in mixing it.

MM - It has that Film Score quality about it. 
MH - Yes, that exactly what we wanted.  When you listen to it, it's like being in the cinema with a huge sound system.  It's like watching a historical movie (laughs), with the ships on the sea.  You can almost feel the wind on your face.  That’s what we wanted to achieve.

MM - The band have tour dates lined up for now, so are we looking towards 2012 for the next album? 
MH - Yes, sometime around then

FD – As I said before it’s going to be hard to follow this album, but we have to believe in ourselves that we can do this.

MH - So around the end of 2012 would be a good time.  We’ve already started songwriting and putting idea’s together.

MM - Do you have any final words to your fans out there.  What can we expect from the UK shows?
MH - Unfortunately these aren’t headline shows so you won't get the full Serenity experience, one and a half hours of our best songs.  But we will prove we are worth watching as a support act and we will pack those 45 minutes on stage with our most powerful and driven songs.  Everybody who attends these shows will be blown away I hope.

MM - Well thank you both for taking the time out, it was an extra bonus to have Fabio there as well.
FD - You're welcome.

MH - Thank you for the interview

MM - No thank you and best of luck with the album and the tour.  You never know we might get to meet in person.

We'd like to thank Mario and Gabio for taking the time out to chat with us and wish them every success with the new album and the forthcoming tour.

 

All content copyright of The Mayfair Mall Zine unless otherwise stated.