With:	AnachroniA
Conducted by:	wrathchild
Published:	30.11.2005
Band profile:	AnachroniA

AnachroniA's debut album "The Endless Agony" is a such a brilliant piece of work that we had to know more about this young and promising French band. You can check the review of the album here.


Could you introduce the band in a few words?

AnachroniA is a Melodic Metal Band from Lille (North of France - near Belgium) which is composed of a female singer (Fay), a keyboardist (Tony), two guitarists (Nath and Thomas), a bassist (Sylvain) and a drummer (djp). The first autoproduced album of the band, "The Endless Agony", was released in November 2004.

How did the changes in the line-up influence the music of the band? For instance, did you adapt your music to the voice of a vocalist or was it the opposite?

Indeed, there was a lot of changes in the line-up of the band during the first part of its existence. Actually, AnachroniA was created five years ago by Nath, Thom (guitars), djp (drums) and Sylvain (bass). Many singers (male or female) joined them but without success. These changes in the line-up did not influence the music at all because, since the beginning, the four guys who were the founders of AnachroniA composed the songs together, the singers had to adapt themselves to it. The goal was to make an original Metal which is on the one hand melodic (with a female singer and with melodic choruses) and on the other hand progressive as well. The music has a very important part and the voice is considered as an instrument.
The band has been complete for about two years now: Fay and Tony joined AnachroniA. They are now well involved in the composition and are entire part of the band.




It's obvious that you care about the quality of what the band offers. The design, the equipment, the production, the legal stuff, etc. Is there something you would like to be able to improve but you still can't?
So far, what do you think of the feedback you get compared to all the efforts, the time and money you invested?

It's right that we care a lot about the quality of what we offer to our public; not only the CD but also on stage, or the website too. We're "a bit" perfectionnist and want to be considered professionnals by professionnals.
We wanted to be proud of our first album "The Endless Agony" so we took the time to make it well. Concerning the music and the lyrics, we were sincere when we composed them and we wanted to offer the people a part of our emotions and feelings, and to make them understand what music and Melodic Metal means for us. Our first album was entirely made by ourselves, from the composition to the recording and the mix. That's why we say that we were sincere with this album because nobody but us interfered in its making from the first song we composed three years ago to the release of the album in november 2004. In order to make this album available for the most people as possible in music stores in France and Belgium (for the most important part) we wanted to care about the legal stuff. For sure, we know that our sound is not as good as big metal labels' releases but it's our first album and we made it with "our hands", our money and our recording equipment. Maybe we have to improve our sound for our next album (for example by entering a real studio for the recording sessions), and we know we have to improve our music too.
Actually we are quite glad of the feedback we get, even if it's not big for the moment. We don't have much monney yet to do a promo all over France and Europe but maybe for the second album...

Let's get back to the album, "The Endless Agony", which is probably my favorite album released this year. There's a whole concept linking the songs, dealing with mind disorder, man's fate, etc.
Somehow, both the lyrics and the music seem to be connected to this concept, however I bet some songs were composed at different times.
Did you change some songs to fit the concept?
Did you decide not to include some songs because they were out of the concept? Or did you stretch the concept in order to include some songs (I'm mostly referring to Sailormen)?

Well, first of all thank you for your compliment (we hope the public will think the same)!
The whole concept of the album, as you said, deals with mind insanity and the ability of Mankind to destroy itself. You bet well: the songs of the album were composed at different times. The oldest ones are more heavy and melodic, such as Time' So Long, Around My World, Lost Time and Sailormen. The others, which are the latest in term of composition, are more progressive, gloomy and obscure (maybe it's the dark side of AnachroniA) such as Lunacy, Endless Agony or Eternity. When we decided to cut the album, we chose only the best songs (for musical reasons only) and we noticed that even if they were composed at different periods, they all dealt in their lyrics with the same subjects. Mankind is symbolized by a character which goes from strange situations to strange situations in his own mind. That's why we elaborated a whole concept that fit to the songs and not the contrary.
About the concept of the album, the readers can have a look to our website http://www.anachronia.com, in the page called "The Endless Agony" and then "concept of the album", for more details.






The band is part of several associations such as "Au C?ur Du Metal", "Inno", "Inner Quest", and your own creation "Atom Music". What is the purpose of those associations and what did they bring to the band (or what will they bring)?

That's right, AnachroniA is member of some associations. All of these associations want to develop the Metal in France and give young bands the opportunity to have their CD sold in some music stores (Inner Quest), to be part of compilations or to find gigs here and there. For example, Au Coeur du Métal (ACDM) has many projects such as a compilation of some Melodic Metal french bands, or a big festival with them.
We also created our own association entitled "Atom Music" in order to promote AnachroniA and Melodic Metal, by organizing big concerts by ourselves for example.

AnachroniA also belongs to a famous booking agency, Shockwave, which deals with melodic metal bands and already works with female-fronted bands like Epica, Autumn, Asrai, Visions Of Atlantis... Did you contact many agencies or did you focus on that one? What are their plans for the band?

We did contact many agencies like Shockwave at the time of the recording of "The Endless Agony" but none of them answered us back (even Shockwave Agency!). It's only many months after the release of our first album that Shockwave has contacted us. Shockwave Agency will especially find us some good gigs in Belgium and Holland, hopefully next year.

As I've just written the names of many bands featuring female singers, there's one important band that recently announced a great change: Nightwish. It seems that Tarja was not involved enough in the band.
What was your reaction when hearing about this?
Do you think that the media focus too much on the girl rather than the band as a whole when it comes to such female-fronted bands?

As everybody we were surprised when we heard about that change in Nightwish. It's true that the media focus too much on the girls in female-voice Metal bands. As we said before, we think that nothing would sound without the music composed by the musicians, even if the girl is surely more attractive to the eye. We don't want the people and the media to see us as another band with a girl. We're a band, we're AnachroniA, that's all!


AnachroniA performed at some small venues but also some biggger venues and even a festival (Metal Female Voices Fest III). What did you learn and what do you still have to master on stage?

We indeed performed at Metal Female Voices Festival III in Belgium thanks to Philty of Metal Organization who organizes the festival. When Philty called us, we didn't believe a single word of what he said! (and we do not believe yet that we really played on the stage of MFVF III with some of the famous bands in that kind of music : Lacuna Coil, Epica, After Forever and others!). It was incredible (2500 people in front of us!) and we really enjoyed (as well as the public, hopefully!). We learned many things; to play with the public, to make them feel our emotions, but we know we still have to learn how to move on a big stage, to control our fear, to play more precisely... we only did about twenty concerts before this one.
NB : Philty of Metal Organization is now our manager.

Have you got some concerts, or even a tour planned for next year?

For the moment, no tour is planned but we hope to make some concerts everywhere in France -not only in the north- and in Europe.
We already have some big concerts for next year: we organize a show on Saturday the 15th of April with Epica in Le Splendid (Lille - France). This will be the opportunity for our association Atom Music to organize a concert, and for us as a band, to prove the people that we are able to play with a big band. Mind that there will be another talented French band during this concert : Amartia (http://www.amartia.com) which members are friends of us and which second album "Marionnettes" will be released a month before the gig.
Else, we will probably play with Leaves Eyes in Brussel and perform at MFVF for the fourth edition in Autumn 2006 (but it's not sure for now).






When will you record a new album? Any differences to expect from "The Endless Agony"? Are you thinking of composing the songs around a new conceptual storyline?

We will record our second album at the end of the year 2006 and expect to release it at the beginning of the year 2007. We are now composing the songs (we already have about ten songs) which will be different from the songs of "The Endless Agony". We think we found our style: really melodic, really Metal, really progressive, really psychedelic, really vitaminated, really eclectic... well, really AnachroniA! We think that the people who like the diversity in our songs will like the next album but... surprise! We can only tell that we already play some of the new songs on stage.

Some random questions now:
What would be the greatest Christmas gift for the band?

We asked Santa Claus to give us a World Tour!!! We believe in our dreams...

What would be the resolution of the band for the new year?

Sea (we need holidays), sex (don't you? ;-)* and fans (we need them).

Thanks a lot for having replied to this interview. I'm quite confident about the future of the band and I'm sure we'll hear from AnachroniA sometime soon; your talent can't be ignored.
The last lines are for you to say whatever you want to our readers!

Thanks to Metal Storm and to you, Wrathchild. We also want to thank all the people that support us and, for the people who don't know us yet, do not hesitate to have a look on our webpage http://www.anachronia.com. There are two songs which can be dowloaded. And let us know what you think about our music in our Guestbook! And hopefully we will meet during one of our shows!





*wrathchild: How did they know that??