Metal Shock Finland (World Assault )

Russian gothic metal band ROSA INFRA was formed in 2006. Band’s newest album “Smena Dekorazii” (“Change of Scenery”) came out on february 21, via Sound Age. Some days ago MSFinland‘s Kostya Aronberg had a change to interview band’s vocalist Nikolay, please join the conversation…

1. Hello, Nikolay, welcome to Metal Shock Finland. How are you doing?

-Hi, Kostya! Nice to meet you. I am fine and very busy…

2. Let’s start with the history part. Tell us about the creation of Rosa Infra.

– At the beginning it was only an idea. It was in 2006. I had played the bass-guitar in some metal bands before the start of Rosa, but the music of those bands did not interest me. I wanted to have my own creative work, and I wanted to say my word in the music world. It was interesting to me to start as a vocalist. I have an education as composer and arranger which was very helpful for this purpose. I composed a few songs (the first ones were “hope of the morning” and “Chime of the sin”) after that I looked for the musicians and the band was ready, but it wasn’t the current lineup.  I must say that it was very difficult to find the right persons. The initial and basic idea of my work in Rosa Infra was a low-pitched, high-power sound for the guitars and bass-guitar first of all. But my co-workers at that time didn’t understand the main idea and didn’t join to my ideas of the creativity. They didn’t like the instrument parts, composed by me, but they hadn’t any another valid ideas. Furthermore they were too mercenary and at the same time they hadn’t any mind to do something for the band. Therefore, some serious conflicts appeared and the structure of the band was changed completely (exept of drummer – Vsevolod Akimov). I’ve had a creative and human understanding with Vsevolod as we are friends since the childhood. But at the end, we found the good musicians to the band. Now they are all my best friends and comrades, thinking first of the common idea. The current lineup is besides me and Vsevolod: Evgeny Beliaev (guitar) and Zinaida Azarova (piano). We are in contact also outside of the group, and the spirit is good among us.

3. Which musicians/bands inspired you and were the reason for the current band style?

– The bands as Type O Negative, Sentenced and Poisonblack inspired me. The dark sense of theirs songs was very close to my creative point of view. Peter Steele (Type O Negative passed leader) his strong charisma, deep voice inspires me. This man was a pattern of metal band leader for me. His unusual style of the bass-guitar playing and sound philosophy (that were like mine) inspired me strongly. On the whole I like outstanding bands. Besides “Type O Negative”, I like industrial metal band Die KRUPPPS. I like very much Fear Factory, EMB-band Front 242. I am enchanted by Pink Floyd touching of old school music. From the another hand I liked Depeche Mode since the childhood. Diary of Dreams and Unheling are the modern bands that have made a strong impression on me. An impact of these bands is felt in our album “Change of Scenery”. Recently I’ve taken a great interest in Meshuggah band. It will a new page for Rosa Infra history I think.

4. Can you describe your new album “Smena Dekorazii” in a few words to our readers? Why should they check it out?

– This album has various styles and it’s very intense. It includes all my musical tastes as was mentioned earlier. Existence items considered it’s very close to many people despite the language barrier. The meaning of the words in songs is pointed by my voice and by music itself. The language of the music is universal. Let me give you a shot understanding of “Change of Scenery”..The track “lie for the rescue” is a rapid and powerful action with contrast of romantic feelings and strong push of guitars and drums partly in death-metal style. A deep infernal sound of keyboards makes a dark impression. It is a rich fusion. A track “Forgiven” is one of my favorites. It is dark and true gothic-metal, it is conseptional and mystic at the same time. Here’s a short quotation:

“through the swears of the sworn friends
through the advices of the true enemies
I must live my life all through
But I can’t be like you!”

I think that words like this are very close to many persons. Tracks “hope of the morning” and “Chime unity of the sin” were the first ones, as I sad earlier and they’re related with the impact of the my favorite gothic-metal bands. I wanted to waste the track “hope of the morning” during the recording of the album because it wasn’t harmonized with all material. And I would like to thank Evgeny (our guitarist), because he suggested a new reading of arrangement for the track, we changed few parts of guitar and the bright melody was composed. “Alone again” is the dark-wave ballad and it was a header composition in our single with the same name. It was enriched by the electronic arrangement during the album recording and it turned even more depressive. The next track of the album is instrumental. The name of the song is “Sonata di dolorum”.

The translation means “Sonata of pain”, it is the clear sequel of “Alone again” but it has more tragedy and pathetics. The leading instrument of the track is piano. The difficulty of the rich parts played by Zinaida rises from the beginning and reaches the apogee at the high point of the track. The question of forlornness, despair, disappointments in some people and the hope is reveled completely. I tried to express the emotions and experiences felt in me for some time before the beginning of the album recording. The track “Snow angel” sounds tentatively and unusually enough. It is a fusion of dark-wave, old school gothic-rock and funk. The last is expressed brightly in my bass solo. The following track is special and favorite like “Forgiven”, a tragic gothic-metal ballad named “Letters from the nowhere” which has a lot of ancient russian romantic elements.
I am attracted to the splendid and noble genre of ancient russian romantism which is typical for the russian soul. It is a history about a democrat and revolutionary person, lived in second half of the 19 century in Russia. He was deported for all the rest of the life in Siberia to do hard labour. He returned to father’s house after the death in the form of ghost. He looks at his adored wife who became the inconsolable widow. She is very old and she is waiting for the end of her life, playing the piano old romances and listening to the gramophone. The twentieth century has come, it is eve of the revolution, it is autumn, The ghost is waiting for the moment when she can see and hear him too. At last they leave our world towards a new life with joined hands and accompanied by terrible noise of future factories. I had pointed the sense of old time with help of thestringed trio parts (cello, viola and contrabass). The parts of cello, viola and contrabass were performed by the sessional musicians: The viola player Evgenia Kasatkina (folk-metal band Beer Bear), the cellist is Angelica Vinogradova and the contrabass player is Grigori X. The brief instrumental track “Sunrise” is an intro to the following track which is called “Wings”, it’s at the same time a beautiful industrial and psychedelic composition. It shows the possibility of the personality evolution if it is devoided on several patterns. And then “ Change of Scenery” is the title track of the album. It is slow, tough and powerful. It resumes all the passed roads. It is accompanied by the full psychedelic keyboards and it puts us into the sense of deep knowledge and ancient life memory. The hero of the composition is coming through the desert of time, sorrows and miseries. But through that he has opened the inside of himself, the talents and the steps he had done in new Age. It is the Age of the Awaked Human.

5. Why you chose “Smena Dekorazciy” as a title track? Is it a concept album?

– Each album track is the whole history, certain set of life with definite moods and shades. Each person changes the decoration set during the life time and tries to lose worst feelings (desires), prejudices, fears. That’s why the album «Change of Scnery» has a sorrowful and dark sound but it ends with the hope for the future. The cover of the album is the man looking far away on the parting of the ways. From the one hand there is the high-tech city of the future and from the another hand there is a temple. Scientific progress and spirituality…The way of the free man should be in the middle of these things. The stairs of him, walked up are the stairs of ziggurat. Each person should walk up on his ziggurat (from babylonian “the peak of a mountain”). After that he will be able to see the start of unlimited aspects of his soul. Stylistic variety of the tracks (compositions) points this concept.

6. Who created the cover art work for the album ? And who write your lyrics and music?

I compose the music and I write the lyrics. The cover for the album was created by our designer Demetra Melodit. Several versions were discussed. We stopped on the version that you see now on the cover I would like to say the special thank to Ivan Arty Pavlov for the photo spread of the album.

7. Can you tell us about the process of the album?

– The recording of the first album is the difficult process especially for a young band. To be honest we had quite a rich experience during the recording of the single “alone again”. I would like to thank the soundman of the “DAY-Records” Evgeniy Vinogradov for that. No doubts, it helped during the album recording, which took more than one year. But frankly the process itself was not so difficult. I mean vocal parts or keyboards parts were recorded quite rapidly, the sound matching was the most difficult thing. Sometimes splendidly played guitars parts were re-recorded because of the incompatibility of sounds and bass tembres. Here I would like to thank Evgeny Beliaev (ours guitarist). He is an esthete in the world of guitars and he seeks for the best instrument sounds. The unserious conflicts were appeared from time to time because it took for him a very long period of time. Through the supervision of each other, now we have the thing that we wanted it to be. I would like to single out our drummer Vsevolod. The drum parts during the recording of the single “Alone again” were recorded by the session drummer Alexandr Vethov because we had not sure that Vsevolod is able to do that. But at the time of “Change of Scenery” recording he had arisen extremely as musician that is why we hadn’t any doubts that he could do his parts perfectly. Which he did, and I am proud of my friends. They are purposeful and talented persons. It is a great pleasure for me to have they as friends.

8. Are you planning to release any video clips for this album?

– It is very difficult situation. Basically I have ideas for scenarios but I wouldn’t like to make a cheap second-class video. In terms of video we are the connoisseurs of deep and serious stories. The clip should uncover the meaning of the track and of couse it shoud be accompanied by the good actors’ playing, good sets  and etc. From my point of view a clip should be a short and very deep film. We try to follow by the rule “do it perfectly or don’t do it”. But if we will find a chance then we will do it on the perfect level.

9. You opened a concert in Moscow for TO/DIE/FOR, and quite after that for PARADISE LOST. How was it to meet these guys and play with them in front of thousands of fans?

– It was a new positive experience for us. Obviously the fact of joint gig with such remarkable bands was a real privilege for us. We had a slight agitation on stage during the Paradise Lost support. Because we had a show in front of the mob of many thousands. We were completely unknown for those people. First they had an unfriendly response to us but they changed the opinion during the second song. They understood that we are a serious band and we can do the good music of  high quality. We proved it!

10. What do you think about the Russian underground metal community, and why here, in Europe, most metalheads never hear about bands from Russia (besides Arkona, Ariya, Amatory and the Suicider)?

– It is very difficult and dismal sometimes. From one hand there are a lot of creative and talented persons. But from the another hand there are a lot of botchers thinking that they are genius commercial talents. The full absence of heavy music industry deepens the situation. There are no producering institutes, bands marketing, specialized producers in heavy music. Some bands deal with the foreign producers. By the way, the excellent russian industrial band Oblivion Mashine (I like them) deal with Hiili Hiilesmaa. He is a known professional of this business. But rare are the bands that can get into contact with him.
Recently most of the groups are obliged to make a low-grade production. Why? The answer is the following: they are not able to say “good bye” to the legacy of the Soviet Union mentality. They are irresponsible persons with lack of understanding of the instrument playing standards and sometimes they haven’t any primary musical knowledge. But those guys caught the superficial figures and they imagine themselves to be the “rock-star” all of their life. In some another cases the situation is even more difficult. There is a talent but there is no money for the recording in the professional studio with the good equipments. The mp3 technology and the possibility of free downloading destroys completely the CD-production. Russian musicians are obliged to have only the fees for the gigs, which are not a very big value even for well-known bands. Therefore there is no point to talk about the beginners. At last the free niches are occupied by the wealthy people rather than talented people. Consequently they have enough resources to promote a protégés. Maybe for somebody in Russia the undevelopment of heavy music industry is profitable, without giving possibilities for talented bands to promote their product in the world. How many russian heavy bands have got famous worldwide awards? The answer is clear. As was mentioned earlier the reason of that is not the absence of the good bands. There are a lot of genius classic composers like Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky. So, there are a lot of talented persons also in our days, and I hope that in the nearest future they could have a possibility to realize themselves.

11. Thank you Nikolay for your time. Any last words for our readers?

Thank you Kostya. It was nice talking to you. After all I would like to say that the golden age of humanity have begun. It is the age of world culture and technologies. The changing has happened rather difficultly, but it is inside of our expectations to do big changes. We should be able to think freely and independently without any relation to political or religion system. This is the question of the spirituality and human progress. Humanity has not a full realization of the noble potentiality. But it is within our possibilities.

Interview by Kostya Aronberg

ROSA INFRA-Promo CD’Change of Scenery
http://youtu.be/6dTOdaJtFMY