SadDoLLs

Interview with 

George Downloved

 

go to our review "Grave Party"

1 )  Hi George! It is a real pleasure to have this interview with you.  To start, I have to say that after two years SadDolls are back with an unbelievable new album. I feel that the roots of this album were somewhat sowed in the previous one, probably in a couple of songs (Psychedelic Love, Be Darkness). Could you explain us the main source of inspiration that drove you into this new sound?

G: Hi, Salvo and thank you for this interview. Well there is a small story behind the creation of Grave Party. We where just not feeling right with the outcome of our previous album “Happy Deathday” ,yes, it gained us some more popularity, it got us a booking agency deal but we felt that this album was not “SadDoLLs” it was not our sound, and we definitely did not want to make a “Happy Deathday Part 2” – no way! So we sat down and looked through our options. We owed our “fans” a dark album, a heavier album, a more “mature” view to our sound and lyrics. So we said that we will try to give our sound a different direction, and if we where successful and liked the new songs we would go to studio and record the third album, if not we would break up. Thankfully we wrote some cool songs that sounded the part, we were happy with the outcome, so we announced the new album, we recorded it and here you have it.

2) When I listen to your new songs, I feel like you put in less romanticism and more modern metal. I notice like a sort of a shift from an easy-listening “lovemetal” sound, so to speak, to gothic/industrial metal. Is that a simple recipe?  What can you tell me about it?

G: Well no. It’s not simple at all. At least back then when we started the song writing it was something entirely new to us, music wise and lyric wise. But i think now that we feel that this is our sound, it’s more easier for us to take it to the next level when SadDoLLs Part 4 will start pre-production.

3) Let’s talk about you latest videoclip “Lady Cry”. Undoubtedly, it is a very intense video, starring a charming and beautiful woman. May I ask you how did it come out? Who did create the screenplay? Do you think is there any sort of link or correlation between the music and the video itself?

G: First of all the video for “Lady Cry” is our favourite so far, it looks exactly as I imagined and it carries the feeling of the song. The female lead is just a friend of ours, she is not an actress, as well as the male lead. And the screenplay is written and conceived by me, it’s the first time I Was doing this (at least the first time doing this professionally) and with the help of our director Dominik Papaemmanouil the outcome was more than satisfactory. It tells the story of a lady who pays a big sum of money (or at least we thought she did) in order to watch us perform a private gig. She looks strict and bitchy, but when she listens to the song, she gets frustrated by it, then I go to her and seduce her, so I can steal the briefcase with the money, and when I do we open the briefcase only to see that news papers and magazine pages are inside instead of money, and when I turn around to find her she is gone. So actually it is a funny clip after all :P I get betrayed in the end...Never trust a lady :P

4) Let’s talk about your concerts. I have always thought that it is not easy to play your kind of music live, meeting people’s expectations in terms of sound’s quality and accuracy compared to the studio versions of your songs. Do you believe it is necessary to maintain a high standard of accuracy in reproducing songs on a live setting? How do you manage that?

G: Well in our opinion the audience want to see the band – artist play the songs live, so they want the live feeling, cause if they wasn’t they would sit at their homes and listen to the actual album. On the other hand we as a band want to create a hybrid concerning our sound during live shows, so we put the live feeling with live vocals, and drums and basses and guitars but instead of having a live keyboard player we reproduce all the keyboards and loops and beats from an ipod and the drummer hears the click in his headphones, the keyboards are synced with the click, so all the band plays the song in the exact same bpm’s that it was originally recorded and all the keyboards sound exactly like they sound in the actual album. Many bands do that, it is really helpful and the audience loves it.

5) As you may know, in your album review, I wrote that I think there is still a sort of reminiscence of Him’s sound in your music, in particular of early Him, say their 1995-1996 production. Do you agree with that?

G: Well in this album we tried to cast away all the HIM influences at least keep them to the minimum and i think we did, I Can’t hear much of HIM’s sound in this album, but if you do I’m glad that you say it sounds like old HIM, this era was one of their best!

6) Music business is increasingly becoming very tough in the last years and in my opinion, there are too many bands outside and too little opportunities to stand out, even for the most talented ones. Do you think that good music and the music market as a whole will ever find a way to get out of this situation?

G: No I Don’t think so, I think that it will only get worse. There’s just too many bands out there...But in my opinion there are opportunities out there, you just need to be good and have some luck.

7) You are from Greece, a country who passed, and still is passing, through a very hard time due to the recent financial crisis.  Is there something you want to highlight about the approach to rock music, in general, of your home country and your fellow citizens?

G: Unfortunately Greeks don’t like rock or metal music, they find it evil, or just music for children, they listen to traditional Greek music, so there is a really small heavy metal community in Greece.

8) Now, you already had a chance to say what are your favourite bands and those that have influenced you in your life. Is there any new band that generates interest in you or that you think is doing well in the present musical framework?

G: Well I recently discovered the music of bands such as : Lord Of The Lost, Mono Inc., OOMPH and Das Scheit and also the neighbour Italians Black Deep White.

9) How do you generally come up with your lyrics? Is there any “rule” about this process, I mean, do the lyrics come first or do you generally put them on music? Is there any song’s lyrics you “feel more” than others or to which you feel, for some reason, particularly attached? 

G: I Actually listen to the instrumental song and then I compose the vocal lines, and then I attach the lyrics, it’s a simple process actually J Well if I could say that I “feel” a song stronger than others this will be “On The Road 66” and “Bleed Sister Bleed” from the new album, and “Coma Song” from the previous album that is dedicated to my late dad.

10) I would say that the “lovemetal” sound, that one we generally associate to bands like Him, To Die For, is not riding the crest of a wave in the rock framework today. Do you think that this is due to some sort of different trend of the moment? And do you actually think that music (and bands) should follow any trend (be it imposed by the media or just the result of some technical improvements, especially in the electronic and digital sounds)?

G : I think that the “love metal” genre (if there actually is one out there) was popular when HIM where getting popular too. Many bands that sounded like HIM was popping up like mushrooms and I must say that many of them where quite good. But HIM originally did it first and HIM should only be doing this. And this is why this trend died so fast and only lasted for a couple of years. Nowdays Stoner and metalcore are the main trend in metal. I Can’t say anything about this, only thing I can say is that for as long as we exist as a band we will make dark music, no matter how trendy or not it is.

11) Now, can you give us three good reason to purchase your new album? Also, can you tell us where is it possible to find it?

G: Well as you mentioned before, some say that this genre is long time gone or dead or over repeated. I, on the other hand can say that Goth is not dead, it is resurrected – don’t believe me? Get a copy of “Grave Party” directly from http://www.saddolls.net

Thank you!

interview  by Salvo Russo