Interview By Alison Booth
Athens based modern metal band SCAR OF THE SUN formed in London back in 2005. Following acclaim of their demo material by the Greek Metal Hammer, the band went on to record their first album “A Series Of Unfortunate Concurrencies”. The album was released in 2011 via Scarlet Records, under the production of Rhys Fulber (FEAR FACTORY, PARADISE LOST, MACHINE HEAD).
SCAR OF THE SUN released their second album “In Flood” in 2016 and earlier this year completed their first UK tour, as well as some European dates, as special guests on FIREWIND‘s “Immortals” Europe and UK Tour, along with Swedish metallers MANIMAL.
Metal Shock Finland Senior Manager Alison Booth recently caught up with vocalist Terry Nikas and guitarist Greg Eleftheriou to discuss the current album and new developments from the band. Alison‘s radio show Blackdiamond’s Metal Mayhem (every Tuesday on http://www.totalrock.com) also featured the interview this week, along with tracks from “In Flood”. The show will soon be available to listen to again here. You can read some excerpts from the chat below and listen to the full interview on the audio player:
On creating “In Flood”, guitarist Greg stated:
“Compared to the first album, it’s more guitar oriented I would say, because the guitarists of the band took a more vital part in composing this album. So we’re really happy about this evolution that the band had. We changed some small things here and there and with discussion, that’s how we formed In Flood.”
Vocalist Terry described working with producer Rhys Fulber:
“I’m a sound engineer so I was familiar with the work of Rhys Fulber – initially with FEAR FACTORY and then with PARADISE LOST and other bands. The sound that these bands have was exactly the sound that we wanted to have, ’cause we believe that we play modern metal, that’s what we think and that’s what we’re trying to do actually. All the productions he is involved in have this huge and clean sound and that’s what we wanted to have, he’s the master on these things.
We worked together on both albums and we were very satisfied with the result. Rhys likes our music very much and he’s actually involved in the songs, putting in ideas here and there and all this works very well, we’re very happy about it.”
Moving on from discussing working with FIREWIND‘s Bob Katsionis and any future collaborations, Terry revealed:
“We’re actually now recording our third album, which is completed obviously from a composition point of view and we decided to work on this album almost completely on our own. Although there is one more song where there is an input from Bob again. At the moment there are no other guests on this album.
It will be ready during the summer, it will be mixed and mastered, by the end of the summer it will be done. We don’t know yet about release date, we have to talk with the label about it.”
Greg described the music for the new album:
“I think the next album is gonna be the heaviest one, it’s more aggressive, it has many aggressive guitar riffs, Terry has more brutal vocals. There are some faster songs, but we keep those melodic elements that we love to hear and we love to write. So imagine our melodic stuff with a lot more aggressiveness and heaviness.”
Terry explained:
“The vocals will be quite different to the first two albums. Other than that, we just wanted to make a heavier album for some reason. You can say we’re a bit more angry and that comes out on our new album.”
More information on SCAR OF THE SUN:
This year’s HAMMERFEST IX took place from March 23-26th at Pwllheli, Gwynedd, North Wales. Cycle 3 of HRH United involved a huge variety of bands such as ALESTORM, HAMMERFALL, GRAND MAGUS, VENOM INC, NAPALM DEATH, ARMORED SAINT, DESTRUCTION, EVIL SCARECROW and many more!
