SPLICE: "We love brutal music that is still comprehensible with storytelling"
With their affinity for theatrical epic, several French bands have won me over in recent months, and SPLICE quickly lined themselves up in this context with their new EP “Crypsoria’s Echoes”, which is the quintet’s first release since their debut album 10 years ago. Don’t let yourself fool by the colorful cover artwork, this is neither Disney- nor Powermetal, but brutal yet melodic Death Metal!
Band-Links: BANDCAMP / INSTAGRAM / FACEBOOK
Glad about them becoming part of our journey, welcome to learn more about the band's background, inspiration, and future plans here:
Hey, thanks for making time to answer my questions. Could you please introduce yourself and Splice to our readers?
Splice is a band from France, near Paris. After 10 years on break we came back to play Death Metal again with the original members. Between 2009 and 2013 we released an obscure demo and an album under the band name Syphilis. Then we changed the band name to “Splice” and released a record called “Mythological Deviance”. We still play some titles from this last one during our shows.
I’m Med, the guitarist, and composer of all the songs. There is also my wife Ely on drums, Fuch on vocals, Fab as second guitarist, and our bassist Seb.
Nice to meet you :-) Congrats on the release of your new EP “Crypsoria’s Echoes”, which is just epic! How do you feel about it, and how was the reception so far?
Some of the songs were intended for my wife's and mine studio project called “Ogarya”, which is more seen as a continuation of my work as a composer. But especially for this EP I tried to add more orchestrations and choirs to give an epic dimension to the songs. The theme of the album is clearly dark fantasy oriented, and the feel of these instrumental parts gives this particular mood to the EP.
I don’t know if this specific orientation is the reason, but the reception is good, and I have the impression that a lot of people love the orchestral parts - It’s the final touch to the songs, and they complete them perfectly.
Awesome! Let’s take a look at the stunning cover artwork: What can you tell us about its origins, and how does it reflect the album thematically?
You can find all the basics of the fantasy theme in it: A knight on the left with unknown origin, good or bad, a cavern with magical artifacts and treasures, topped by a huge dark castle certainly hiding many traps, and also some references to games like the focus point created by the light effect on the mountain, etc.
The visual and lyrical influences for this EP are based on the things we love. Ely likes fantasy, movies, games, anything really, and my recent work on the Diablo 4 game as vfx artist allows me to better understand the keys to this universe. A strong inspiration were the Dark Souls-like games too: Elden Ring, Mortal Shell, etc, but also Zelda and The Witcher.
I see :-) Could you dive a bit into the record’s story with us, please?
The narrative takes place in a dark, fictional world, and is divided into short stories: A quest about a magical relic, a journey about the meaning of life, an artifact of power to win a war, a battle of knights and sorcerers… Clearly it will speak to the fans of this genre.
Your music is brutal and beautiful at the same time, and I love how you melt the different stylistic elements to a mighty, new whole. What is your musical background, and where do you draw your inspiration from?
I have played guitar for more than 20 years, but back in the days I was more influenced by Black Metal bands like Emperor, Mayhem, Dimmu Borgir, etc, then Behemoth, Belphegor (leaning towards Black / Death), and finally 15 years ago, with my wife and her influence, I started to mix things up with more Technical and Melodic Death Metal. A great inspiration for our music are also bands like Fleshgod Apocalypse, who deliver a perfect blend of epic, beautiful melody and extreme music - We love brutal music that is still comprehensible with storytelling. Meshuggah or djent style is clearly not what you can find in our music!
Could you briefly describe your writing and recording process, please?
We always use the same workflow: I record all the instruments in DI during the composition process, for some extra solos Fab records his own part. When everything is done, Ely takes care of her parts on a drum with an electronic kit for the kick, snare and toms, and real cymbals captured with overheads and mics. Fuch, our singer, can finally record his tracks, and right after that I add some backing vocals. At the end, we sent it all to HK at Vamacara Studio, a great sound engineer that has been following us for a few years.
Let’s make a little time trip, as behind every band, there’s an individual story. When and how did you guys get together?
For Ely and myself, it's simple: we are married. At the beginning, Ely played with me as bass player in the first version of Syphilis (without the actual members). It didn’t last long because we lost our drummer, so Ely tried the drums, and it was a revelation, she could perform the songs really quickly. After switching some members, Fuch, Fab and a bit later Seb joined us. Fuch is a school friend, Fab my cousin, and Seb a friend we met later.
How did you come up with your name, and is there a deeper meaning behind “Splice” for you?
Due to the different styles between Ely (Death) and myself (rather Black), it sounded like a good idea, and if we take a look at the other members, it's clearly a mixed bag of all the possible genres. Fuch loves Stoner and Trash Metal, Fab leans towards Metalcore, and Seb enjoys… Punk!!!
But the original idea came from the movie “Splice” that follows a scientist mixing human and animal DNA, and in different ways this idea is always about mixing two elements together and finding the links between them. In our music we can feel this notion through the blend of different styles, which might seem subtle for some, but nobody really knows what our style is. Death, that’s for sure!
Let’s talk about Splice live: What was your most memorable show so far?
The “Chaulnes Metal Fest” in 2012 was really great! We played with Vader and Benighted, on a great stage, with a lot of public, but it's more the back side of this show that was memorable. We met a lot of amazing musicians backstage and shared great moments with them.
Another one was “Les Zicophonies” in 2013, with the biggest stage we ever played, and the sound was amazing!
How would you describe your local rock / metal scene, and is there anything special about it? Did you notice changes over the past years?
Our local scene got a new gain of energy post-covid, a lot of new bands came up, and it allowed us to organize more shows with several of them. What we can also see is that the styles are much more diverse than they were 10 years ago. We now have deathcore with orchestration, electronic metal... Some of these genres were never seen in the previous years.
That's awesome! As an independent band: What are your experiences within today’s music business regarding the biggest chances and challenges?
It’s really different than it was 10 years ago, no more Myspace! You need to keep an eye on all the new trends, Bandcamp is still a standard for every band, but you need to be active on all social platforms, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Tiktok, etc. It takes a lot of time, and all the bands do the same things, so you need to follow the trends otherwise you stay in the abyss.
Band-Links: BANDCAMP / INSTAGRAM / FACEBOOK
The visuals are also really important. It's the first thing that potential listeners see, and a bad artwork, or a band's visual that is too ugly, won’t give one the chance to be listened to. It’s sad but there are too many bands, the possibilities of recording at home and sharing your music are getting easier and easier, so anyone can do it. And now with AI, it’s the same for visuals. Everybody can generate the artworks for their band. I’m not against these new technologies, I used them too and it’s a revolution, but this pushes the standard of art to a new level. Only the originality and the vision / concept can win, a good opportunity for everybody with a good idea, and at the expense of real artists unfortunately.
What can you tell us about your future plans?
We have several shows planned at the beginning of 2024, and some others not yet confirmed. We have the opportunity to play our new EP live and share the stage with a lot of friends’ bands.
Regarding a future album or EP, we have a surprise awaiting for 2024, but I can’t say more about it yet, it’s a secret that will be revealed during the year. Otherwise, I constantly work on new songs, but we never anticipate new material usually, since we don’t work with a label (our label is actually “Dark Tanuki Music”, but it's only an association we created). And it’s so much better that way, no pressure, we do what we want, when we want, it's more based on feeling that we manage the band and its releases. When I get enough songs with a theme that we like, we can think about a release, EP or Album. We are not fixed on anything, it depends on the coherence of the songs, how many there are, if we need new stuff, etc.
Looking forward to hear what you're working on :-) Before we wrap things up, do you have any further thoughts you’d like to share here?
Yeah, we released a first video clip available on YouTube for "Guardians of the Bones Chapel"
We plan to release other music videos during 2024. I made many clips for other bands (Gorod, Exocrine, DeathAwaits, DropDead Chaos, etc.), and it's an opportunity for me to try new techniques and styles for these future music videos. I hope you like this first one!
Awesome! Thanks again for your time and these amazing insights into your work :-)