written by Marko Jakob | 21.04.2022 |
Pix666: Hello and thanks for your time. Bobby, how are you doing these days? How are the other guys of Persefone?
Bobby: Hey what’s up! All good over here! We are working hard here, already preparing the future tours, rehearsing, and keeping the mind busy! Everyone is doing good in the band ^^
Pix666: Please introduce your band to the readers in a few short sentences. What kind of music do you make?
Bobby: We are a band from Andorra, 6 friends making honest music. I don’t really like to tag our music, we play metal obviously, but I think we’re beyond that in many ways… We write about spiritual lyrics and self-knowledge and we spend lots of time to write albums haha
Pix666: Did you play in other bands before joining Persefone and who are your musical idols?
Bobby: I played in a metal band called Nami, with Filipe, the other guitar player from Persefone. We knew the guys in Persefone for many years and so it was super natural for us to join the band almost 8 years ago… I like a lot of bands, I still love to discover new music and enjoy doing my research!
I don’t know if the word idol is the best one to describe my favorite artists, but it goes from pop to metal, hxc or electronic music…One of my all-time favorite bands is Radiohead, but as I was saying, there are a lot of artist that I enjoy… Lately I’ve been super hooked to the new Chvrches album! When I was younger I listened to Opeth a lot for example, I really liked their drummer Martin Lopez.
Pix666: Recently the new Persefone’s album “Metanoia” was released. How have the reactions been so far?
Bobby: The reactions have been wonderful so far! It’s our first album with Napalm Records and we’ve reached to a lot of new people with the release. We’ve enjoyed a lot reading reviews about the new album online and in magazines and overall everyone is loving it. You know, when you release new music, you never know how the fans will react, even if we’ve spent many many hours writing it, you always feel a bit insecure with a new release. We write the music we like, and we do it for ourselves, but it’s always nice to read good reviews right? 🙂
Pix666: You made the fans wait five years for a new album – but it was definitely worth the wait. Were there differences in the way you worked on ‘Metanoia’ due to Covid restrictions?
Bobby: It’s been five years since our previous release ‘Aathma’, but we’ve been touring a lot. We toured Europe several times, the US, Japan, a lot of festivals… We’ve been busy! We also re-recorded our first record ‘Truth Inside The Shades’, so, even if it’s been five years, we haven’t spent five years writing the album haha. I don’t think Covid has had any influence while writing the album. I mean yeah sure, we stopped for a few months, but everything stopped so, overall, not that much of an impact!
Pix666: Did the pandemic restrict you in any other way? For example, did you have to cancel many concerts?
Bobby: We basically had to postpone our European tour with Obscura from November 2021 to September 2022… We also planned a tour for April 2022, and we decided to cancel it before announcing it cause it looked bad (way back in January 2022) but well, apparently everyone is touring now so… we didn’t see that coming! We are already preparing the Obscura tour and also closing other deals to tour the US in 2023.
Pix666: Let’s get back to your songs. How do you create your songs and what are your lyrics about?
Bobby: We spent many many hours writing music. We are really perfectionist and we want every note to be the best one. There’s no magic recipe, if there was, we’d make more albums haha, we just spent a lot of time doing it… So, for more specifics, Carlos usually brings some ideas and riffs and we start from there.
We talk a lot during the writing process, we try to share as many as references as possible, not just music, but in general… I mean, everything can influence you, a movie, a book, or even just a sentence from a comic book. Then we try to know how’s the song has to be instead of throwing ideas randomly, and then well, I guess after lots of hours we have a rough idea of the song haha I know it’s not super specific but it’s really hard to explain how to write music for Persefone.
Pix666: So your new album has been released via Napalm Records. How did the contact with the label come about and what advantages could arise for you through the cooperation?
Bobby: Napalm Records is one of the bigger metal labels nowadays and they are really good with us…They contacted us during Aathma… I think we were focused on the plans we had and weren’t thinking on a new album. After that our manager started the negotiations with them and everything went really well. Napalm Records has helped us a lot reaching new fans with metanoia, the promotion we are doing for metanoia has been really good too. They have a big team behind the label working hard for the bands and this kind of impact can be seen on the release.
Pix666: You’ve been on the road with Persefone for almost 10 years now – what have been the most memorable experiences with the band so far…?
Bobby: The band has toured way more since Filipe and I joined the band. We’ve done several European tours, festivals, The US, Canada, Mexico, Japan… I have a lot of good memories, Mexico was crazy, Japan was super funny with Toni, our bass player, complete MVP of the Japanese tour… Also good memories from festivals where you can see a lot of cool bands!
Pix666: … and what are your dreams for the future?
Bobby: Playing live as much as possible! We are working on several tours that I hope we can announce soon!
Pix666: Please tell us a little bit about your home country Andorra, which consists almost entirely of mountains. Would you recommend tourists to visit Andorra, and if so, what should they definitely experience? 😊
Bobby: Obviously yes, I was born here, I love living here. Andorra looks crowded in the main streets because of the shops, but there are a lot of cool stuff to do. I’d recommend to come in winter for the ski slopes and cause the landscape is breathtaking and then also in summer and enjoy some lakes and a nice hike! The food is amazing, there are really good restaurants, a really nice spa too…
Pix666: As a musician, you surely spend most of your time creating music – but what else do you do in your free time when you want to distract yourself – are there any interesting hobbies you pursue?
Bobby: Yeah some of us are really into videogames, more retro or recent, but we love videogames for sure… I mean there’s a time for everything, we are not different for other people, we enjoy reading a book, watch a good movie, hiking… Regular stuff
Pix666: Do you have any other news about Persefone, that you would like to share with the fans?
Bobby: Nothing that I can share at this moment! Thanks for the interview and see you guys soon! 😀
Pix666: Thank you very much for the interesting answers – Good luck and stay healthy!
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photos © by Persefone
