Alex Frey
DeVicious
I have been doing fine, thank you for having me.
We weren't out of breath, we got more bookings than ever, sold more albums than ever, when things are moving into the right direction you want to keep going. The pandemic didn't just take the foot off the gas, it was a full hit on the breaks because there was nothing we could do, tours got cancelled several times and while we should have been out there playing shows the success of the third album was basically worthless because we weren't able to built up on it.
Well, as I said before it brought us to a stop which was sad but there have been lives at stake and we are all very rational people, we knew we would have to wait it out, our time would come again.
I personally am great with spending time alone, what really messed me up were these discussions about it all. So many high-level experts of a virus that was just a few weeks old while at the same time you receive the news that someone you know just died of it. This was hard because I really didn't have an outlet to vent off except for putting the anger into new music.
Pride & Joy was the road not taken, the first album was more of a re-release instead of a planned Pride & Joy album, we were extremely inexperienced when we offered "Never say Never" to labels, we got tons of offers and too the worst one. One that never ended up being released properly. Birgitt the Big Boss of Pride & Joy has been kind enough to take it under her wings when it was about 6 months out, it was supposed to be released 18 months prior to that. After the third album we had a lot of options and decided to go with Pride & Joy because Birgitt was also involved in all of our releases on the promotion side and there was never even the slightest problem with her, she is the most reliable person there is. We thought we owe it to ourselves to go with her.
Obviously the album was influenced by the events around the world. There has been devastating fires in Australia, an attempted coup in America, Racism and protests and also a lot of lying and misleading from people that are supposed to serve their countries and not themselves. I don't know maybe these are normal events, but I had to experience them sitting at home with nowhere to go with my emotions, so I basically ranted my heart out on most of the tracks. Black Heart is most certainly a symbol for the stacked-up emotions I had but it is also a villainous character in our upcoming Comic Book Series "Dollhouse DV" (late 2023 4 years in the making)
No, because I am not driven by fear. I have channeled by anger and funneled it into the Lyrics. I even had to ask my band mates if they are okay with it because it was clear that once people understand the message, they will hate us for it. I am beyond hope when it comes to the future, I know things will run out of steam eventually and we will return to normal again.
I have to admit, that is a very fun interview, I was ready to give you my copy and paste answers, but this is so much better because we are actually talking about the music. Thanx for that.
In Germany the fairytales for children always end with the sentence "and the moral of this story is…" and then they explain the metaphor. I wasn't really using any metaphors and I don't think there are general morals to the album, it has 2 Soundtrack pieces with "Heroines" and "Black Heart" which are completely fantasy based and there are songs like "Welcome the Night" that are about the relationship with the fans once we hit the stage. There are also some deeper songs such as "Afterlife" written from the perspective that all climate related issues have been ignored by humanity and the worst case has already happened.
Is there really a moral to that or is it based on the believe system of the individuals? There are quite some political songs on "Black Heart", I wouldn't be able to say what I am saying if I attack morals to these lyrics. This is my point of view, I believe some people in world politics are extremely bad and I believe I can read them like an open book, while the supporters of these individuals believe these persons are playing some sort of high-end Chess. I can't tell people what to think or who to support. All we can do as a band is using our music to deliver a counter argument. That being said, this might not be what a band such as DeVicious should do in the first place, but these were strange times.
We were fed up indeed. That being said, we have gotten significantly harder on each album and with a young front man such as Antonio things had to go into a direction where he becomes more believable for a younger audience. I'd say the music would have happened without all the drama in the world, the lyrics not. It was a fantastic experience and it is a great album, one wonders if it is the album our fan base wanted.
What is mature songwriting? To deliver a beautiful straight forward melody driven song or to add 4 minutes of progressive Drums Bass and Guitars? I would answer the question with a strong no.
Mature music is when you have a vision and can deliver it the way as you intended it. Bands like Europe have never been less mature as Dream Theater or Rush, they just had different priorities. Our Priority on this album was to lose the music corset and do what is fun to play.
The process is always the same. When I have an idea in my head I hear the full song, mixed and mastered with every little detail. I start recording bass on a click, program some demo drums and lay down the basic keyboards and send it to our guitar player Radivoj who usually comes up with some killer Riffs and once that is done, I write the Lyrics, get some Demo Vocals going, in this case it was Carsten Lizard Schulz who recorded my ideas and then everyone else gets involved detailing their parts.
The title track describes a very particular scene from the comic books, it is basically the 5 protagonists first attempt on a boss fight early in the series. The environment where the fight takes place is quite dark and gruesome and I was trying to transport that into the lyrics. At this point I can't really reveal more why the chorus goes "NA NA NA NA" but it has a meaning and quite a good one.
This song introduces the 5 girls from the comic books, they are very different by character and each part of the song describes a character without really talking about it. The concept was clear to me from the start, describing the girls as a Team but making the effort to give each of them their musical spotlight which will once again make more sense once we start advertising the Comic Books in videos.
Nope, been there, done that, literally got the T-Shirt. We are kids from the 80ies. Antonio who was the singer on "Phase Three" and "Black Heart" was 20 years younger, we wrote songs like After Midnight for his younger audience, we love the song, we love the energy but with "Baol Bardot Bulsara" (TNT) joining the band we knew instantly what we want to do which is going back to our roots as a band and to our roots when we started making music. The times have never been more favorable for this kind of music as it is now.
Our guitar player Radivoj wrote the basic concept of the song, he came with the Riff and we added the rest together. I guess it has a bit of a Dokken touch, you are right. It was a very intuitive songwriting process to be honest. I don't think it took us longer than 1 hour to record the demo after recording the basic Riff.
If you use "soon" as a very elastic term then yes it will be coming soon (End of 2023). The Series is about 5 young women from another planet that are sent to earth to save us from evil forces. While that sounds like every single comic book, it is combined with a lot of research and an extreme effort of character development. There will be 6 Books for the first series, each with 100 pages of content and each page has 8-10 parts. Everything will be rendered photorealistic in Hollywood Quality. It is a gigantic project that was never planned to become this big but now there is no way back 😀 The Idea was spontaneous and we though the synergies would be fantastic since the CGI Girls could be in our videos and we could be in their Environments. This however is something for Album 6, Album 5 will have nothing to do with the comis.
Each concert we do with our recent album will contribute to support "Black Heart" The concert market this year is weird, we will focus more time for live shows on next year and who knows, maybe we'll have a new album out by then.
Thanx again for having me, it was a very fun interview. Feel free to listen to the other 3 albums as well, they won't kill you and maybe you find yourself singing one of the songs in the shower 😀
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