Interviews

Aenimus Interview

Hi, this is Seth from Aenimus!

Hi, Seth! How are you today?

Doing well, how are you?

Fine, thank you! I’m Zsuzsanna Muszka and welcome to Kronos Mortus metal magazine! Is everything ok.?

Yeah, everything’s good, sorry, the kid’s in the background! (laughs)

Can we start the interview?

Yeah, totally!

Ok., fine! Firstly, I’d like to ask you: what’s the correct pronounciation of the band’s name? Here in Hungary we can say it in several ways like „animus”, „enimus”, „ēnimus” maybe „ainimus” as well. What’s the correct way to pronounce it?

(laughs) „Enimus”!

I see, thanks! As we know, Aenimus was formed in 2011 in the place of Bay Area and your enthusiasm and love for music brought its fruit soon because your first album called ”Transcend Reality” was published already in 2013. How was Aenimus’ early life and what has happened then to the band?

So we… sorry, just one second, my daughter wants my interest for just one second! … Sorry about that! I attend to her today! (laughs) So yeah, we wrote the album Transcend Reality for two years and released it independently in 2013. It was really well accepted by fans and definitely helped to build a pretty good following for us and being like DIY-bands. And the one thing about the album is I feel like if we had released it a year earlier like somehow that’s possible, it probably would have took us to a whole other level. I feel for that album that when we’re writing it we’ve seen like everything’s so fresh and new to us and then like halfway to the album like bored and sore was came out the discovery and we’re like ”Crap! They’re doing exactly what we’re doing right now and we’re already released it!” (laughs) So I feel like if we would have been put out a year earlier, it far way would have been better but I’m still happy with that album which definitely set us in a soft and good direction considering when we’re right now, you know, being signed with Nuclear Blast and releasing our second album. It was such a huge inspiration cause the label is pretty crazy, so…

There is a huge gap between 2013 and 2018. What was the reason of this long missing?

Yeah, there is a really big gap. That was simply because we kept having members get after join bigger status bands. You see, in 2013, when we released the album we did two tours and on album release tour on guitarist, Brian told us he was gonna be leaving because he was gonna join another band. And so was like ”Alright! (laughs) That’s good to know! ” And then, shortly after that we had got a new drummer and he ended up joining Rings of Saturn. He still toured with us and with Ring for the same time for a while but we got to the point where he could no longer developed so he left the band to do Rings. And then, shortly after, our new guitarist joined Rings of Saturn, too and he left the band. And it was quite hard to find players that were good enough to play our material very well and we can tour with and get along with. In 2015 we found Jordan, Cody and Alex. We knew they were amazing players so we did like some tours together to see like how it’s gonna work and if we can co-operate really well because we didn’t know each other at all. We all lived in different states and so it was kinda like we had a mixture that worked for touring so we did some tours over that course in 2015 and 2016. And then when we liked that this was working really well, we decided to start writing the record. But it took about one year and a half. And now it’s coming out in 2019, next week! (laughs)

Your music is quite extreme as for the style and the lyrics as well, one could say. How does a songwriting session run at Aenimus?

So, being that we all live, scattered across, you know, the country from each other, we essentially one of us who write the foundation of the song and sends to everyone via e-mail and usually I will put it in Guitar Pro. And then we keep sending addeds back and forth, then one of us shout like ”Hey, why don’t we try this?” until we get a super solid-structured song together, mainly in the style of starting our guitar. And then Cody would do his drums and I would do the bass and once when these things are altogether, we are at that point where Sean, Jordan and Alex took care about the lyrics. They will be in the back, kind of writing all the lyrics, you know. And then we all together come together to do the vocals. Everyone was kinda funny on this record cause everyone was really had an opinion on the vocals and how it would place in the songs and the melodies and it was a very kindly process just all getting on skype and talking ideas about the vocals, going through each song. And then kindly just came together!

You contracted with Nuclear Blast last year that means new chances and new plans for the band, I suppose. What does it mean for Aenimus in practice?

You know, we’re still kind of working on the rest of this year. Right now, I think the goal is to Nuclear Blast realises you know with how long it’s look to get this new record out. So it’s kinda like a fresh start. We’re trying to kinda starting in the bottom right now and kinda work our way out. Right now the goal is to just get this album into the hands as many people as possible. That means right now for us to focus about the touring, trying to sell the record and I just really think, quality content to get the on our fanbase engaged and growing. And we are artists starting, like the very beginning said it is a writing for the new record, for our third album, so hopefully we’ll have that together within two years. I mean that’s the goals, definitely. Having ready released within two years, so that’s kinda where we’re right now but now we’re mainly busy with tours.

The name of your upcoming album is ”Dreamcatcher”. What could we expect from this new disc? What was the main concept for the album, lyrically and musically?

I think you can expect a little bit of everything with the record. The concept based on several horror novels and movies, I mean so our ideal approach is driving musically… Hold, one more second! Sorry, I’m watching my daughter today! She’s just two now… (laughs) Because of the concepts in approach, it really allowed us to write a really diverse album which can be a kind of interest for everybody. So I think that’s one thing you can expect is the songs can be really different. It’s not a straight forward deathcore or death metal. We take it down a lot to really have progressive sections and we introduced singing into the album and it’s really cinematic sounding because we got a lot of influence from the movies’ horrors and yes, there’s something for everybody. Lyrically, the stories are the Shining, It, the Hannibal Lecter series like Silence of the Lambs and Dead Zone and to these rough Stephen King novels that were turned into movies. We took these stories and we retold them from certain characters’ prospectives. Our goal was to show these stories in a way that people can make understand what these characters were thinking in these stories and how they were feeling and also try to relate to them. So even if you don’t know the concept, lyrically, you can dive into the record and probably find stuff that you will relate to your own life! So that’s lyrically and musically what we were kinda going for.

The cover artwork is amazing! What does it refer to?

It refers to our album title ”Dreamcatcher”. Because that like the focus point of the artwork is a dreamcatcher which is, in the Native American culture is something that people would hang above their beds to capture their nightmares and like the bad spirits. And it kinda way hand in hand with the album because our album is about these horror stories which are nightmares and evil spirits in so, calling the album a dreamcatcher in composing or holding these nightmare stories in itself. On the artwork the main focus would be the dreamcatcher and we also happy are this take certain like nuts from each story and include them in the artwork. So you’ll find there is a mask which is a representation of Hannibal. There is the spider which is from the movie or book It. There is an axe and a stump which represents the Shining and then there’s a clock which represents Dead Zone. So we had them, adding all these nuts and we wanted the artwork to be kinda dark but something different than from the standard manner upon. So it turned out to be pretty dark and gloomy but it’s also really like pretty artwork and definitely not your typical metal cover.

Back to the present, this summer you’ll be a part of Death Is Just The Beginning USA tour beside bands like Hypocrisy or Fleshgod Apocalypse. What are your expectations about the tour?

I’m really excited to tour, I think it’s going to be a great step for the band’s growth. To play in front of a new, much larger audience than we used to and an older crowd, you know, Fleshgod and Hypocrisy have been around for a while, they have fans that are older. Our demographic is usually like 18 to 25. It will be certainly nice playing some older crowd and when some of them older. So I’m just looking for to having a great time with these legendary people. But then I so just really growing our fanbase like playing in front of a new audience, I think it will be really good for us.

Will we see you in Europe as well in the near future?

We are just started to talk with an agency in Europe so you will see us! There’s no set time yet but the band’s ideal time would be the fall.

That’s good to hear! What about the deathcore scene in the USA nowadays?

I think it’s doing pretty good! Metal will never be the biggest genre in the US. I don’t know why but I do know that it will never be the biggest genre. But from where is, I feel like it’s doing pretty good. I think there’s still a great load of people who are in the metal community. It’s not like the cool thing anymore but I think metal was never really made to be the cool thing, you know. But there’s still a lot of people come out to the concerts and we all have a good time and there’s a very supportive community and I love being a part of it.

That’s good to hear also! Thank you for the conversation! I wish all of you much more great success in your career! Bye!

Thank you so much, I appreciate it! Bye!

WEB: https://www.aenimusofficial.com/

The interview was taken with  Seth Stone on 15.02.2019.

Contributed by: Zsuzsanna Muszka

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