Interview / Solemn Vision

Born and bred in Brooklyn, NYC, Solemn Vision is a progressive melodic death metal band that has developed a name in the mid-Atlantic metal circuit for their eclectic take on the genre. They just released a second single in 2023 following the release of their self-titled full length album in 2019.

I sat down with them for an in-depth interview.

Can you share the story behind the formation of your band? What inspired you to create heavy metal music?

Anthony: It started years ago with Me and Mau hanging out and bonding over our love for music and mutual desire to play in a band. As far as playing metal it was just natural; both of us are die hard metalheads. We met through the local metal scene here in NYC, became close friends and just started a band organically.

How would you describe your sound and style as a heavy metal band?

Carlos: An eclectic form of Melodic Death Metal with strong progressive elements. There are a lot of varying influences between us, but we’re definitely melodeath at our core. Some might think there are too many cooks in the kitchen, but we like it that way.

What themes or topics do you explore in your lyrics?

Carlos: Anything from our internal struggles and frustrations, to sleep paralysis, love, and death. We don't necessarily have a singular theme throughout all of our songs, but we generally match lyrics to the mood of the music.

How do you approach the songwriting process? Do you collaborate as a band or work individually?

Carlos/Aaron: 80% collaborative, but we have songs where one person wrote all the riffs, then we sit with them and make the arrangement together. We mostly jam in the studio then build a song from there. With the exception of 3 tracks, all the lyrics on the new album were written by Aaron, and all drum parts were written by Carlos, but everyone is pretty open to each other's ideas. For example Aaron actually wrote the guitar parts for 3 of the songs on the new album as well, and then we all worked on them together from there. You can almost tell who wrote what on this album if you know each member well enough.

Kadin: Our songwriting process is very collaborative regardless of whether a song gets written organically by all of us jamming and workshopping ideas together, or one of us writing a complete song on our own and then bringing it to the rest of the band. Even in the latter case, everyone still offers their own ideas and perspectives and we end up coming to a final version of the song that, usually, everyone has contributed to in one way or another, which I think is really cool. Our songwriting just happens the way it happens – sometimes it's spontaneous and organic, with all of us in the same room, and sometimes it's measured and carefully planned, with one of us writing on our own – but either way, everyone always has room to contribute.

How do you feel heavy metal has evolved over the years? Are there any trends or changes in the genre that you appreciate or dislike?

Aaron: Heavy metal seems to have a recurring theme. A lot of bands, including ourselves, have matured and changed their sound by adding elements that the earlier material didn't have. You'll hear a lot more synths and clean singing these days, from bands that started extremely raw, brutal, and technical in the beginning of their careers. Sometimes you'll come across bands that started out with mostly blasting drums, fast tremolo picking guitars, and crazy vocals, then after a while, you'll hear them write songs that have more groove to them, which is really cool. It feels like what was once considered taboo by elitists is becoming more accepted. Bands have always taken elements from other bands, but it was usually within their respective genres. Now bands are branching out and taking elements from almost every genre of music, and that is something beautiful.

What challenges have you faced as a band, and how have you overcome them?

Kadin: I think the biggest challenge for us was pretty clearly the rebranding we had to do before releasing our first album. We were originally called Spectral Voices, but there’s a band called Spectral Voice from Denver that released a critically-acclaimed album before we released ours and got much bigger than us. We started receiving hate and troll comments from their fans, getting tagged in Facebook posts meant for them, getting spam emails directed towards them - there were even occasions when fans of theirs showed up to our shows not realizing we weren’t the same band. We ended up taking a break in 2018 to record our album (without making very much noise about it) and when we eventually announced the first single, we packaged it alongside a full rebrand - a new name and new logo. Changing your name when you already have a somewhat established fanbase is never easy but I think we handled it really well. And at this point I think Solemn Vision fits the vibe of our music more than Spectral Voices ever did anyway!

It’s been almost 4 years since your self-titled came out. Has it been hard to regroup for another release or was this just a result of the pandemic?

Kadin: A big part of it was the pandemic, but the not-so-secret truth is that Despite The Rise Of The Sun has actually been finished and in a release-ready state for over a year at this point; we were simply waiting for the right kind of partnership with a label or distribution company to move forward. We’re proud of the first album but we didn’t want to do another DIY release because it’s just so much harder to get your music out there to new listeners as an independent band compared to when you’ve got a team behind you. This is why we’re so incredibly excited to be working with Black Lion Records - they’ve got a great team and seemed really excited to work with us, so we can’t see what we can do together with them.

Can you talk about any upcoming projects, albums, or tours that your fans can look forward to?

Kadin: We just finished a 3-week tour across the east coast and a few southern states which concluded with a 1-day festival that Carlos and Aaron put together through their booking company Visionary Booking, so at this point the only big project we have is gearing up for the album release on October 20th. Pre-orders are available now via Black Lion Records and we just released a brand new music video for the second single, “Gates” - and we’ve got plenty more pre- and post-released content planned for the album. Playthroughs, more videos, behind-the-scenes stuff - can’t wait for everyone to see it and of course listen to the album!

How has your music evolved over the course of your career?

Anthony: Aside from going heavier and faster we definitely matured into our own distinct sound. When we write we have an understanding of what just sounds good and fits into our style rather than just taking a bunch of different types of sounds and mashing them together to see if it would fit. We definitely have trimmed off the fat over the years and it shows.

Aaron: In the case of the first album, those songs and even our live performances could be considered powerful, epic, and even fun. Our new material still has all of that, but now the songs also have darker and catchier elements that our fans seem to really like. We're pretty confident that new fans will feel the same way.

Kadin: It’s interesting; our first album was very heavy on the progressive influences and had a little bit of folk metal flavor in a few spots as well, and this second album is definitely much more in the straight-ahead melodeath direction. In general, this new batch of songs is way heavier and more intense than the first album, and definitely a lot tighter and more straightforward, but not at the expense of the music being cool and interesting. We did manage to fit a few tracks into this album that are wildly different from anything else we’ve ever written, but still manage to feel cohesive alongside the rest of the songs. And yet despite everything I’ve just said, we’ve already got a handful of new songs that are most likely going to make it onto the eventual third album, and a lot of those are SUPER proggy and even leaning into some tech-death…. so who knows what will come next!

Finally, what would guys like to accomplish in the near future? What are some of your targets?

Carlos: We would love to tour more in North America and hopefully make it out to Europe sometime in 2024, it feels long overdue.

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Solemn Vision is made up of Anthony Rafferty on bass guitar, Kadin Wisniewski on guitar, Mauricio Cornejo on guitar, Carlos Crowcell on drums, and Aaron Harris as the lead vocalist.

You can catch Solemn Vision at their upcoming shows:

08/26/23 - The Meadows, Brooklyn, Aarons Birthday Show

09/23/23 - L'Anti Bar & Spectacles, Quebec City, with Aeternam (Hometown show before they leave for their EU tour with Batushka and Arkona)

For more on Solemn Vision, visit the following links: Instagram | Spotify | Twitter | Facebook