Hemina (August 2012)

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Although some may argue that progressive metal is twenty years going past its expiry date, there are bands like Hemina to prove those naysayers wrong. Coming from the land down under, Hemina fuse stirring melodies with the sort of cerebral madness you may have come to expect from the genre. Douglas Skene (also in the neo-prog band Anubis- check 'em out!) answered some questions I had about them, their craft, and their new album "Synthetic", released at the dawn of 2012.

Introduce
yourselves!

Hey dude, This is Dougie from Hemina. I'll introduce the other
guys. We have my main man Mitch Coull on guitar and backing vox, Jess Martin
schlapping und backing vox, Phill Eltakchi providing the textural keys and Mat
Irsak who is the brains and balls behind the groove. You may have noticed a
different drummer played on Synthetic and that was Andrew Craig. Whilst we had
a great time playing together, we had to move on for the typical musical
differences that happen unfortunately in bands. You can be sure to keep an eye
out on the new flavour that Mat has brought to the band giving a lot of
finesse, dynamics and groove to our sound.

Hemina is an
interesting name. Like your contemporary prog metallers in Haken, it is a name
that intrigues me, but not one I�m all too sure how to pronounce, much less
understand. What�s the story behind it?

Ok, to end the pronunciation issue which is probably my fault for
not coming up with a commonly used word as a band name, it's pronounced as
Heh-mee-na or for you in the know of IPA (hemi:nʌ). It's a Proto-Germanic word
for Heaven which was chosen for its relevance to our ethereal sound palette. I
also like the end of the word conveying for of a female touch (it's actually a
semi-common female name in the Indian subcontinent) and a gentle underpinning
unlike the very aggressive and metallic names many bands have. It was possibly
was my mindset at the time trying to distance myself from Metal which I was
feeling very disenchanted with throughout the compositional process of 'Synthetic'
between 2007-2010.

If you were
given five or ten words to describe your sound to a stranger and convince them
to listen to Hemina, what would your answer be?

Beautiful, Melodic, Emotional, Pure, Textured, Dense, Challenging,
Confronting, Dark, Light, Balanced.

One thing that
really stands out to me with Hemina�s music is that there is a balance between
the melodic, and cerebral elements in the sound. How do your compositions come
together? Do these disparate elements spawn from different musicians, or is
there a sort of understanding that you want to pursue this �balanced� take on
progressive metal?

Really the whole compositional process is very natural. Balance is
always in mind. As the album is a concept piece and everything I seem to do has
a very gestalt approach of understanding things as a part of the whole, our
songs would not worth without the light and shade, and respect to the dynamic
curve of especially such a long album. I like to think that the melodic
elements come at the forefront and that any perceived cerebral elements are
just there to serve the melodic backbone of the music. I will often have whole
music structures or melodic ideas in my head which I must transcribe. We
actually get all of our songs down in guitar pro so that we can refine
everything til we are pleased. This will then form the skeleton of our songs
which will be elaborated upon and ornamented throughout the recording process.
Whilst the album I do consider to be "thinking man's" music to a
degree, I believe the themes and harmony hit the listener on a visceral and
natural level. The disparate elements could be seen as the band member's
contributions to a degree but I think it's more about the vision I/we have with
having balance and we do not see it as being disparate.

To date, Hemina
has released two albums: the EP �As We Know It� and the first full-length,
�Synthetic�- an album that�s earned some pretty heavy acclaim since it�s been
released. Although it wasn�t a great deal of time between the release of the
two albums, there�s a noticeable improvement on �Synthetic.� What do you change
or refine in the band in order to climb this plateau?

Most of 'Synthetic' was close to being completed in a bear-bones
kind of fashion prior to 'As We Know It' but we just wanted to have something
out there that showed were serious about releasing music. It seems as though
many live Australian bands here on our rather weak scene do not ever end up
releasing something. We needed to have something to start building the name and
anticipation for 'Synthetic'. Our understanding of production and our technical
competencies were not as strong on the EP and we did things on a very tight
time and financial budget so it does not sound as good as it could have in
retrospect. I can't even listen to it anymore to be honest except for the
opener which I still adore. Those vocal harmonies invoke something almost
subconsciously Lynchian in me. 'Synthetic' sounds far more mature to my ears
and I am really proud of it even though I hear things that are a bit dense or
could have been been better from a production perspective, ignoring that it
really touches me on an emotional level. It was never meant to be something
that people are supposed to be impressed with in terms of chops or instrumental
wankery. It was meant to evoke the empathy inside of all us and to cause you to
look at your life from some sort of foreign perspective. We all became much
better players after playing live for some time after the 'As We Know It'
release and I was most certainly a better singer coming into record
'Synthetic', just as I have vastly improved since the release of the album
also. I'd like to think that the overal package of Hemina will be improved by a
greater margin than between the first releases with our upcoming album 'Venus'.
We'll lose some fans too which is always the case if there is even a slight
change in sound between albums. The new one is going to be Synthetic's obese
tastier cousin.

Lyrics don�t
seem to be nearly as important to the overall scope of Hemina as is the music
itself, but there are some interesting themes that leave enough ambiguity to
make a listener wonder. Is there some sort of concept going on in �Synthetic?�
What is the writing process behind lyrics? For that matter, do lyrics come
after the music has been all written?

Well for me the lyrics are actually a huge part but they nearly
always come after the music has been written. The music builds the atmosphere
or world for the lyrics to breathe in. Often melodies are written with the
music that call for particular lyrics. I always have in mind a direction for
lyrics and the words seem to come to me reasonably fast usually.

I thought I'd include the story of the album on the website so
that people could analyse the lyrics in the context of that but obviously some
ambiguity will always be there and that's desired. I hate things being too
literal, music needs to tap into the subconscious in some ways and provoke new
thoughts. 

I see 'Synthetic' as a part of at least a 3 album world without
necessarily being a trilogy as such. 

I think great conceptual lyrics stand alone as well as working
effectively in a narrative context - that's just good songwriting to me.

Here is the synopsis of the Synthetic concept from the Hemina
website (www.hemina.com.au) - hopefully
it will give you a new perspective to live through 'Synthetic' on relistens.

"Lost somewhere in the space that exists between fantasy and
reality, life and death � a young angel makes his way onto the Earth after a
young pious woman is violated by a lowly thug on the streets. Crossing the
planes of existence by means of a horribly violent birth, the young boy is born
into our modern world with an innate feeling of confusion and disgust of where
his journey has taken him. Why is he here and will he fight �till the end for
the answers?

Disturbed from his seemingly infinite rest, the child is forced to
live a sheltered and indoctrinated life in an isolated shack somewhere in the
desolate mountain ranges with his mother, who despite her horrible
circumstances stays true to her vehemently strong religious convictions. The
years pass by rapidly and the boy loses the childhood he needed and so
desperately deserved.

Older in age, he manages to snake out of the home in hope of
finding his crowd. For all the wrong reasons, he resorts to petty thievery,
murder and the battery of children in gangs as this is the only time he truly
feels as though he belongs. In spite of this, he still feels lost in his
insecurities and wonders what it is truly like to have friends.

Bored with the gang�s previous acts of violence, his buddies use
their powers of persuasion to make him break into a car for them. To their
dismay, a police vehicle patrolling the area had come after the crooks after
hearing the glass of a car shatter. Displaying their true character, the others
run off and leave our angel apprehended by the law. The boy is forced to
remember all the warnings his mother gave him about friends and why he did not
need them. These thoughts are disturbed by the as he is taken aback by the
beauty of a golden-haired, green-eyed police officer that is taking him to be
questioned. The angel senses a sense of depression and incompleteness in this
enchantress and in a brief moment of illogical heated passion through
connection of eyes, the two flee to start a new life together without the
worries of their pasts. They seal their deal by making love together on the
beach under the light of stars. A new child is born.

Life goes on and the once young boy is now a father himself.
Plagued with guilt for simply leaving his mother to her own devices in their
mountain sanctuary, he wishes to return to at least cure his curiosity of how
she is living without him. He travels to come clean to his mother about his new
life, only to find her lying dead before his eyes. In complete cold shock of
what has happened combined with his past history of run-ins with the law, he
escapes before anyone has the chance to confront him.

The angel take his wife and son out to a distant forest to clear
his mind with some good old-fashioned family bonding, teaching his boy how to
hunt and sharing his philosophies on life. The helicopter circle the skies
looking for signs of a killer as someone must have tipped the police off about
someone suspicious leaving the mother�s secluded mountain sanctuary. Fed up
with the pressures and unfairness of his existence, the angel puts his son and
wife to bed so that he can finish up some of his own business. He kisses his
son on the forehead and says his last goodbyes before executing himself upon
the pile of animals that had managed to hunt that day. His wife watches still
from through the cracks of their tent door and goes back to sleep ignoring the
sounds of gunfire.

In an attempted to be reunited with his one true love, his mother,
the angel makes his journey back to his origins in the world that exists
between life and death; the conduit to the sky. He is confronted with his fears
of being alone, and stuck forever � never knowing where he truly fit in. This
angel needed answers as to why he was here and this was the only place he was
going to get them. Taunted by an unrelenting drive to see his mother once
again, he travels heaven and earth to find her, only to find himself back in that
mountain cottage he grew up in. But where were his answers? who will answer
them? In the midst of his angst he felt a strange sense of purpose and clarity.
A baron mirror stands on a hill outside his window. Lying in the glistening
reflection cast by the grand mirror, the answers to all his questions are
found. With urgency he glanced into the mirror to be flooded with memories of a
love once known. Lost somewhere in the space that exists between fantasy and
reality, life and death � a young angel makes his way onto the earth after a
young pious woman is violated by a lowly thug on the streets."

What�s the
metal and progressive scene in Australia like? I�m certainly aware of your
black metal scene- Bestial Warlust, Drowning the Light, and Woods of Desolation
(among others) are all fantastic.

The metal and progressive scenes are small and as a whole not
overly supportive in my eyes. I find people in bands often try to support other
bands but most people can't muster the energy to get their arses out to see you
even at ridiculously cheap costs like $10 for a show of 3-4 talented bands.
There are some bands doing great stuff here though - I play in Anubis whose two
albums seem to have gotten good reviews from the Prog Community, we've also got
Unitopia and Ben Craven on more of the standard Prog stuff. In terms of Prog
Metal, there are great things happening for Caligula's Horse (My fav of Aussie
Prog Metal), Voyager, Chaos Divine, Arcane, Avarin, Vanishing Point, and if you
can track down 'Silent Atonement' by now dead Western Australian Band Noctis
you would be doing yourself a great favour.

Where do you
think the progressive metal scene stands today, as a whole? Are there any bands
(besides yourselves!) that stand out to you as being exceptional?

Well it seems pretty thriving in a way but support is not overly
grand for it. In Australia, barely any Prog Metal bands tour here which totally
blows. Apart from Dream Theater who have come twice (and graciously to my
delight brought Pain of Salvation once) and Opeth who are thankful regulars -
we don't see a lot. Bands that I love at the moment are Pain of Salvation,
Caligula's Horse, Leprous, Periphery, Tesseract, Anathema (seriously one of the
best), Haken, still waiting for another Aspera/Above Symmetry release!,
Voyager, Ayreon. I'm honestly digging a lot of "djent" music and
there are a lot that are doing that great.

Although the EP
received a good amount of underground acclaim in its time, �Synthetic� has
really taken off in terms of how the prog world has received it. What can you
attribute to its success?

Hard work and a good album. We also went for a lot more PR through
Nightmare Records with this album. I wish it had taken off more which would be
cool but people should keep spreading the word!

What lies in
the future of Hemina? Come tour past Vancouver, we�ll sample Canadian craft
beers before the show!

We'd love to tour North America and Canada - put us in touch with
someone who can arrange something and we'll polish off those beverages, mate ;)

Although Hemina
is still a relatively young band, there�s no doubt you�ve picked up some tricks
with the development of an album like �Synthetic.� What advice, then, could you
give to upcoming and unknown musicians or bands- words of wisdom to ease
their course? 

Seriously, make the music for you. If you hear your product and
you wouldn't wanna listen to it at least as much as your favourite bands, what
the hell are you wasting your time for? Each musical creation I work on, it's
exactly what I want to listen to. There is no point creating music at an
attempt to be something someone else will like, if you make something that you
adore then you know it's pure and potentially receivable as non-contrived and
fresh by others too! People need to hear your music also so my above statement
is not saying that fans are unimportant. They're really everything at the end
of the day that separates you from being a bedroom strummer and a musician.
Work hard, have a band where people pull their weight and be prepared for a slog
and a half if you want to get anywhere because at the end of the day - not many
people do.

Is there
anything crucial I may have missed? Would you care to discuss the finer
intricacies of potted plants?

Potted plants... Well you've gotta start with a nice, moist
soil... what are we doing here? :P

Lastly, do you
have a favourite sort of cheeseburger?

Preferably one with nicely seasoned meat, lots of it and with some
sort or hot touch like chili. Pretty much rather a nice vindaloo when it's said
and done!

Cheers!

Edited by Conor Fynes - 26 Aug 2012 at 4:59pm

Author	Message Topic Search Topic Options Post Reply Create New Topic Printable Version Translate Topic
Conor Fynes Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List MMA Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: 06 Jun 2010 Location: Canada Status: Offline Points: 83	Post Options Post Reply Quote Conor Fynes Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Topic: Hemina (August 2012) Posted: 25 Aug 2012 at 7:08pm
	Although some may argue that progressive metal is twenty years going past its expiry date, there are bands like Hemina to prove those naysayers wrong. Coming from the land down under, Hemina fuse stirring melodies with the sort of cerebral madness you may have come to expect from the genre. Douglas Skene (also in the neo-prog band Anubis- check 'em out!) answered some questions I had about them, their craft, and their new album "Synthetic", released at the dawn of 2012. Introduce yourselves! Hey dude, This is Dougie from Hemina. I'll introduce the other guys. We have my main man Mitch Coull on guitar and backing vox, Jess Martin schlapping und backing vox, Phill Eltakchi providing the textural keys and Mat Irsak who is the brains and balls behind the groove. You may have noticed a different drummer played on Synthetic and that was Andrew Craig. Whilst we had a great time playing together, we had to move on for the typical musical differences that happen unfortunately in bands. You can be sure to keep an eye out on the new flavour that Mat has brought to the band giving a lot of finesse, dynamics and groove to our sound. Hemina is an interesting name. Like your contemporary prog metallers in Haken, it is a name that intrigues me, but not one I�m all too sure how to pronounce, much less understand. What�s the story behind it? Ok, to end the pronunciation issue which is probably my fault for not coming up with a commonly used word as a band name, it's pronounced as Heh-mee-na or for you in the know of IPA (hemi:nʌ). It's a Proto-Germanic word for Heaven which was chosen for its relevance to our ethereal sound palette. I also like the end of the word conveying for of a female touch (it's actually a semi-common female name in the Indian subcontinent) and a gentle underpinning unlike the very aggressive and metallic names many bands have. It was possibly was my mindset at the time trying to distance myself from Metal which I was feeling very disenchanted with throughout the compositional process of 'Synthetic' between 2007-2010. If you were given five or ten words to describe your sound to a stranger and convince them to listen to Hemina, what would your answer be? Beautiful, Melodic, Emotional, Pure, Textured, Dense, Challenging, Confronting, Dark, Light, Balanced. One thing that really stands out to me with Hemina�s music is that there is a balance between the melodic, and cerebral elements in the sound. How do your compositions come together? Do these disparate elements spawn from different musicians, or is there a sort of understanding that you want to pursue this �balanced� take on progressive metal? Really the whole compositional process is very natural. Balance is always in mind. As the album is a concept piece and everything I seem to do has a very gestalt approach of understanding things as a part of the whole, our songs would not worth without the light and shade, and respect to the dynamic curve of especially such a long album. I like to think that the melodic elements come at the forefront and that any perceived cerebral elements are just there to serve the melodic backbone of the music. I will often have whole music structures or melodic ideas in my head which I must transcribe. We actually get all of our songs down in guitar pro so that we can refine everything til we are pleased. This will then form the skeleton of our songs which will be elaborated upon and ornamented throughout the recording process. Whilst the album I do consider to be "thinking man's" music to a degree, I believe the themes and harmony hit the listener on a visceral and natural level. The disparate elements could be seen as the band member's contributions to a degree but I think it's more about the vision I/we have with having balance and we do not see it as being disparate. To date, Hemina has released two albums: the EP �As We Know It� and the first full-length, �Synthetic�- an album that�s earned some pretty heavy acclaim since it�s been released. Although it wasn�t a great deal of time between the release of the two albums, there�s a noticeable improvement on �Synthetic.� What do you change or refine in the band in order to climb this plateau? Most of 'Synthetic' was close to being completed in a bear-bones kind of fashion prior to 'As We Know It' but we just wanted to have something out there that showed were serious about releasing music. It seems as though many live Australian bands here on our rather weak scene do not ever end up releasing something. We needed to have something to start building the name and anticipation for 'Synthetic'. Our understanding of production and our technical competencies were not as strong on the EP and we did things on a very tight time and financial budget so it does not sound as good as it could have in retrospect. I can't even listen to it anymore to be honest except for the opener which I still adore. Those vocal harmonies invoke something almost subconsciously Lynchian in me. 'Synthetic' sounds far more mature to my ears and I am really proud of it even though I hear things that are a bit dense or could have been been better from a production perspective, ignoring that it really touches me on an emotional level. It was never meant to be something that people are supposed to be impressed with in terms of chops or instrumental wankery. It was meant to evoke the empathy inside of all us and to cause you to look at your life from some sort of foreign perspective. We all became much better players after playing live for some time after the 'As We Know It' release and I was most certainly a better singer coming into record 'Synthetic', just as I have vastly improved since the release of the album also. I'd like to think that the overal package of Hemina will be improved by a greater margin than between the first releases with our upcoming album 'Venus'. We'll lose some fans too which is always the case if there is even a slight change in sound between albums. The new one is going to be Synthetic's obese tastier cousin. Lyrics don�t seem to be nearly as important to the overall scope of Hemina as is the music itself, but there are some interesting themes that leave enough ambiguity to make a listener wonder. Is there some sort of concept going on in �Synthetic?� What is the writing process behind lyrics? For that matter, do lyrics come after the music has been all written? Well for me the lyrics are actually a huge part but they nearly always come after the music has been written. The music builds the atmosphere or world for the lyrics to breathe in. Often melodies are written with the music that call for particular lyrics. I always have in mind a direction for lyrics and the words seem to come to me reasonably fast usually. I thought I'd include the story of the album on the website so that people could analyse the lyrics in the context of that but obviously some ambiguity will always be there and that's desired. I hate things being too literal, music needs to tap into the subconscious in some ways and provoke new thoughts. I see 'Synthetic' as a part of at least a 3 album world without necessarily being a trilogy as such. I think great conceptual lyrics stand alone as well as working effectively in a narrative context - that's just good songwriting to me. Here is the synopsis of the Synthetic concept from the Hemina website (www.hemina.com.au) - hopefully it will give you a new perspective to live through 'Synthetic' on relistens. "Lost somewhere in the space that exists between fantasy and reality, life and death � a young angel makes his way onto the Earth after a young pious woman is violated by a lowly thug on the streets. Crossing the planes of existence by means of a horribly violent birth, the young boy is born into our modern world with an innate feeling of confusion and disgust of where his journey has taken him. Why is he here and will he fight �till the end for the answers? Disturbed from his seemingly infinite rest, the child is forced to live a sheltered and indoctrinated life in an isolated shack somewhere in the desolate mountain ranges with his mother, who despite her horrible circumstances stays true to her vehemently strong religious convictions. The years pass by rapidly and the boy loses the childhood he needed and so desperately deserved. Older in age, he manages to snake out of the home in hope of finding his crowd. For all the wrong reasons, he resorts to petty thievery, murder and the battery of children in gangs as this is the only time he truly feels as though he belongs. In spite of this, he still feels lost in his insecurities and wonders what it is truly like to have friends. Bored with the gang�s previous acts of violence, his buddies use their powers of persuasion to make him break into a car for them. To their dismay, a police vehicle patrolling the area had come after the crooks after hearing the glass of a car shatter. Displaying their true character, the others run off and leave our angel apprehended by the law. The boy is forced to remember all the warnings his mother gave him about friends and why he did not need them. These thoughts are disturbed by the as he is taken aback by the beauty of a golden-haired, green-eyed police officer that is taking him to be questioned. The angel senses a sense of depression and incompleteness in this enchantress and in a brief moment of illogical heated passion through connection of eyes, the two flee to start a new life together without the worries of their pasts. They seal their deal by making love together on the beach under the light of stars. A new child is born. Life goes on and the once young boy is now a father himself. Plagued with guilt for simply leaving his mother to her own devices in their mountain sanctuary, he wishes to return to at least cure his curiosity of how she is living without him. He travels to come clean to his mother about his new life, only to find her lying dead before his eyes. In complete cold shock of what has happened combined with his past history of run-ins with the law, he escapes before anyone has the chance to confront him. The angel take his wife and son out to a distant forest to clear his mind with some good old-fashioned family bonding, teaching his boy how to hunt and sharing his philosophies on life. The helicopter circle the skies looking for signs of a killer as someone must have tipped the police off about someone suspicious leaving the mother�s secluded mountain sanctuary. Fed up with the pressures and unfairness of his existence, the angel puts his son and wife to bed so that he can finish up some of his own business. He kisses his son on the forehead and says his last goodbyes before executing himself upon the pile of animals that had managed to hunt that day. His wife watches still from through the cracks of their tent door and goes back to sleep ignoring the sounds of gunfire. In an attempted to be reunited with his one true love, his mother, the angel makes his journey back to his origins in the world that exists between life and death; the conduit to the sky. He is confronted with his fears of being alone, and stuck forever � never knowing where he truly fit in. This angel needed answers as to why he was here and this was the only place he was going to get them. Taunted by an unrelenting drive to see his mother once again, he travels heaven and earth to find her, only to find himself back in that mountain cottage he grew up in. But where were his answers? who will answer them? In the midst of his angst he felt a strange sense of purpose and clarity. A baron mirror stands on a hill outside his window. Lying in the glistening reflection cast by the grand mirror, the answers to all his questions are found. With urgency he glanced into the mirror to be flooded with memories of a love once known. Lost somewhere in the space that exists between fantasy and reality, life and death � a young angel makes his way onto the earth after a young pious woman is violated by a lowly thug on the streets." What�s the metal and progressive scene in Australia like? I�m certainly aware of your black metal scene- Bestial Warlust, Drowning the Light, and Woods of Desolation (among others) are all fantastic. The metal and progressive scenes are small and as a whole not overly supportive in my eyes. I find people in bands often try to support other bands but most people can't muster the energy to get their arses out to see you even at ridiculously cheap costs like $10 for a show of 3-4 talented bands. There are some bands doing great stuff here though - I play in Anubis whose two albums seem to have gotten good reviews from the Prog Community, we've also got Unitopia and Ben Craven on more of the standard Prog stuff. In terms of Prog Metal, there are great things happening for Caligula's Horse (My fav of Aussie Prog Metal), Voyager, Chaos Divine, Arcane, Avarin, Vanishing Point, and if you can track down 'Silent Atonement' by now dead Western Australian Band Noctis you would be doing yourself a great favour. Where do you think the progressive metal scene stands today, as a whole? Are there any bands (besides yourselves!) that stand out to you as being exceptional? Well it seems pretty thriving in a way but support is not overly grand for it. In Australia, barely any Prog Metal bands tour here which totally blows. Apart from Dream Theater who have come twice (and graciously to my delight brought Pain of Salvation once) and Opeth who are thankful regulars - we don't see a lot. Bands that I love at the moment are Pain of Salvation, Caligula's Horse, Leprous, Periphery, Tesseract, Anathema (seriously one of the best), Haken, still waiting for another Aspera/Above Symmetry release!, Voyager, Ayreon. I'm honestly digging a lot of "djent" music and there are a lot that are doing that great. Although the EP received a good amount of underground acclaim in its time, �Synthetic� has really taken off in terms of how the prog world has received it. What can you attribute to its success? Hard work and a good album. We also went for a lot more PR through Nightmare Records with this album. I wish it had taken off more which would be cool but people should keep spreading the word! What lies in the future of Hemina? Come tour past Vancouver, we�ll sample Canadian craft beers before the show! We'd love to tour North America and Canada - put us in touch with someone who can arrange something and we'll polish off those beverages, mate ;) Although Hemina is still a relatively young band, there�s no doubt you�ve picked up some tricks with the development of an album like �Synthetic.� What advice, then, could you give to upcoming and unknown musicians or bands- words of wisdom to ease their course? Seriously, make the music for you. If you hear your product and you wouldn't wanna listen to it at least as much as your favourite bands, what the hell are you wasting your time for? Each musical creation I work on, it's exactly what I want to listen to. There is no point creating music at an attempt to be something someone else will like, if you make something that you adore then you know it's pure and potentially receivable as non-contrived and fresh by others too! People need to hear your music also so my above statement is not saying that fans are unimportant. They're really everything at the end of the day that separates you from being a bedroom strummer and a musician. Work hard, have a band where people pull their weight and be prepared for a slog and a half if you want to get anywhere because at the end of the day - not many people do. Is there anything crucial I may have missed? Would you care to discuss the finer intricacies of potted plants? Potted plants... Well you've gotta start with a nice, moist soil... what are we doing here? :P Lastly, do you have a favourite sort of cheeseburger? Preferably one with nicely seasoned meat, lots of it and with some sort or hot touch like chili. Pretty much rather a nice vindaloo when it's said and done! Cheers! Edited by Conor Fynes - 26 Aug 2012 at 4:59pm

UMUR Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Visit Members Homepage Add to Buddy List MMA Special Collaborator Errors & Omissions Team / Retired Admin Joined: 25 Mar 2010 Location: Denmark Status: Offline Points: 18250	Post Options Post Reply Quote UMUR Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 31 Aug 2012 at 3:35am
	I�ve added the Hemina interview to the interview index: http://www.metalmusicarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=1115&PID=21252
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