|
|
|
Welcome To Unbound Zine |
|
| Album Review |
|
Candiria-What Doesn't Kill You...
(Type A, 2004)
Candiria are back with a new album that shows the band stripping down and coming out with their most powerful and memorable album yet. The band is still heavy and technical, but the songs are much more structured and things just flow much better now.
Long time fans might be a bit let down by the lack of diversity. The music is still technical but the band mainly sticks to their heavy guns. There is one rap song and the closing instrumental throws a curveball, but you won't find any jazz songs, or strange interludes. Just mainly heavy riffs, breakdowns and for the first time extremely catchy choruses. The vocals are also much more melodic at times, which adds a lot of diversity to the music. They really seem to be coming into their style with this new album. They have always been an original band, but this album really nails down the Candiria sound.
In the past the band has sort of been a musician's band. A lot of people just don't get the technical nature of bands like this. With this album they really manage to keep things interesting and explore weird timings, but the riffs still manage to be memorable. They now sound like integral parts of the songs and don't sound like technical exercises. It's one of the reasons why Meshugah is still such a boring band. They stay technical but don't manage to be catchy at all. Candiria don't have that same problem. They are heavy, technical, and still very memorable.
I think this album shows the next logical step for the band and with the more streamlined approach Candiria will probably make the biggest impact of their career thus far with this album.
|
|
|
UN: Things have come together fairly quickly for the band. Do you think that just getting the bands name out there with shows helped the band start to gather a following?
John: I think that it was a combination of, shows, and strikefirst. We started playing and touring really early after starting the band, and Jason, Virginia, and Katie over at StrikeFirst have been working really hard for us as well.
UN: How did Strike First become interested in the band? They must have been exposed to the band fairly early on. After all you were together for only a year when they released the CD.
John: We recorded a 2-song demo, and handed them out for free at our first show. A local kid from our area sent the CD to Strike First and they came out and saw us at our third show. When we started it was just going to be a fun side project band that we did locally with a lot of cover songs, and all fun, but things have moved so quickly it has just taken over, and become virtually full time.
UN: You guys have now moved on to Facedown Records. Are you guys excited to know that your music will get to more people now? Did you guys always want to make the jump to Facedown? After all Strike First is basically the farm club for Facedown.
John: We are really excited to be on Facedown. It was definitely the place we wanted to end up. Facedown works so hard for their bands, and really makes us feel welcome and at home.
UN: "They Attack at Dawn" is a brutal and unrelenting album. Was it a conscious decision to keep things fast? A lot of hardcore these days just isn't as fast as it used to be. I'm all about the speed myself.
John: Yea, when we were writing we really weren't thinking of a record or any of that stuff we were just thinking about playing shows. The band wasn't serious when we were writing, we weren't trying to invent anything new or anything, we just wanted to write songs that were fun to play, and kids could dance and sing along too. After teaming up with Facedown we will definitely put more thought into the next record, but over all we enjoy playing fast and heavy hardcore.
UN: I was wondering if you could shed some light on the album title. Who exactly is attacking at dawn?
John: To be honest when the title for the record was conceived it was going to be the title of our demo, and we came up with the title before we had any real songs or anything so it was going to be about the media controlling public opinion and how peoples perceptions of things are shaped by what they hear on the news everynight, but none of that really ties into what the album is about anymore, but we kept the title.
UN: Would you guys consider the album a full length? It does have 10 songs but it's still less than 20 minutes. Possibly a longer MCD?
John: Yeah it’s probably a long MCD, the next record will be longer.
UN: Are you guys excited to have a vinyl version of the album available? I think the cover will look awesome in the larger format.
John: We are really excited about the vinyl, none of us have ever had vinyl before but we all love it. We just got it the other day and it came out great.
UN: You guys definitely don't tip toe around your faith with Bloody Sunday. Is it important to make it a big part of the bands sound?
John: Definitely. It is important to sing about things that really mean something to you, and our faith definitely impacts our lives in every way.
UN: When do you think we can expect the Facedown debut? I'm sure it's still quite a ways off yet. Anything in the works yet though? New songs?
John: We are working on some new songs, and actually playing one of them on this tour. After this tour we are heading back out in August with our friends in The Killer, and Blood in Blood out for a west coast tour, and then we are taking some time to write and would like to be back in the studio in December, with a new record coming out on Facedown around spring of next year.
Thank you so much for the interview we really appreciate it. Go to http://www.bloodysunday.net for tour dates and news.
|
