Peter: Since many of the readers are unfamiliar with Viathyn, would you mind giving a brief history of the band?

Jacob: I should probably start with introductions! Tomislav Crnkovic is vocals and rhythm guitars (6 & 7 string and acoustic), Alex Kot is bass (5 and 8 string, fretted and fretless), Dave Crnkovic is percussion (he’s got roughly a million cymbals), and I do lead guitars (6 & 7 string and acoustic). Our backing tracks are arranged and written by us and performed by Dave.

Seven years ago I approached Tomislav in a local music store about potential part-time employment opportunities. I started noodling on guitar and he actually got me hired there as a guitar teacher. We ended up having a lot in common musically and tossed around the idea for the better part of a year about jamming together.

Eventually, in fall of 2006, I got together with him and his brother Dave (who conveniently happened to be a drummer that was into power metal… go figure, eh?) and we started hashing out ideas and bouncing riffs off of each other. They had done some jamming together in the past and we started writing all together pretty soon after our inception. We casually wrote songs for a while before deciding to record an EP, Demagogue. Up to this point, we were lacking both a bass player and a vocalist. We recruited Alex on bass and Tomislav decided to step up to do vocal duties as well as guitar. We made our live debut in May of 2009 and got some decent stage experience at a handful of shows following that, including playing with Stratovarius.

Over about a year we finished writing and self-recorded our first full-length album The Peregrine Way. We ended up getting quite a large number of reviews and exposure despite not being signed or on a distribution label and played the Noctis 4 festival (put on by Scarab Productions) in our hometown with the likes of Sodom, Manegarm, Incantation, The Devil’s Blood and many more. Progress was kind of slow for us as I went to University for four and a half years in a different city from the rest of the guys. For the last year or so (that we have been living all in the same city), we have been writing new material with the intent of building on what we did right the first time around and improving on the areas that were needed!

Peter: What are some of the band’s influences?

Jacob: If I were to go super far back, it would probably be similar to the answers you usually receive for this question; bands like Led Zeppelin, Megadeth, Iron Maiden, etc. I think we’ve drawn from a deep pool of influence: Euro power and folk metal, Scandinavian death metal and American progressive metal. The bands that I personally think have influenced our sound the most would likely be Wuthering Heights, Falconer, Angra, Manticora, Ensiferum, Orden Ogan and Symphony X.

Tomislav: I personally have a lot of non-metal influences to add to the mix. I love great song writing and melody. I grew up listing to a lot of Brit Pop/rock, remixed music and anything that was catchy but not cookie cutter. A good song is a good song no matter what style, Metal just seemed to make the most sense to me.

Peter: Currently, Viathyn is without a record label.  To this point, has there been any record labels showing interest in the band or has the band tried to reach out to specific record labels?

Jacob: We’ve actually been playing rather coy as far as record labels are concerned; we really like doing things on our own terms! There are certain appeals of being on a record label, mind you, that have been motivating us to pursue some sort of distribution on our upcoming album.  I’m anticipating that our next album will be attractive to labels, especially considering that we will have self-recorded and gotten it mixed and mastered independently. That really cuts down on label involvement and financing. As for if we’ve gotten any offers, there have only been several mild discussions; none have gotten to the point of us actually receiving an offer. Hopefully there will be some label interest in our next effort!

Peter: Even with the unsigned status, Viathyn released their debut The Peregrine Way over a year ago.  How did the recording process go and would you mind saying a few things about the cover art?

Tomislav: LONG! Too long for a first album. But it wasn’t planned like that. We started from making a short demo for recruitment purposes to writing new songs for a short EP for promoting the band. Finally we had enough songs for an album and decided to complete it. All this was over a 2 year plus period. Some songs on the album were recorded earlier and we finish writing other songs later in the recording process. We are extremely happy with the results but our next album will be planned and executed a lot quicker with better results for sure!

Jacob: We kind of had Tom doing triple duty on the recording front, by tracking pretty much everything except his own vocals (he certainly was patient when I was recording solos) and by performing the vocals as well as some guitars. There were times when it got a little frustrating, as we were all working full time and had personal lives as well (I know my girlfriend wasn’t too pleased with me being away recording most evenings!). We’ve certainly learned from our experiences, though. This time around I’d say we’re going in to the studio much more prepared than before and hope to have the actual recording finished up over a period of about 4 months rather than the 8 months of tracking we did last time. I have to admit, though, that when we recorded amongst ourselves and at our own pace it was likely a lot less stressful than when you’ve got a producer breathing down your neck!

The cover art shows an expansive (and rather colorful) landscape sprawling away from our album’s unnamed protagonist, with the intent of eliciting the feelings of what the path of an ever-wandering man would feel like. The dying leaves and grass around him suggest a sort of malevolence emanating from his character.

Peter: What are some of your favorite songs off of the album and why?

Jacob: Our personal favorites are probably “Sirenum Scopuli,” “Through the Orchard,” “The Oracle’s Prophecy” and “Frail Titan.” “Sirenum Scopuli” was one of the earlier songs we wrote together for this album and once we recorded it we decided it was going to be our first released single. Sacha Laskow from Calgary bands Divinity, Enditol, Walk as Chaos, etc. contributed a wicked guitar solo after mine at the end of the track. I originally wrote “The Oracle’s Prophecy” and “Through the Orchard” together as a really big, epic song that had most of the parts present. We kind of made a mutual decision that we should split them apart, with the more aggressive riffs going to “The Oracle’s Prophecy” and the more relaxed riffs going towards “Through the Orchard,” so I wrote both of those tracks pretty late in the game (we were already in the studio) and they both became favorites of ours to play; when they’re played together it’s about 17 minutes! Other notable aspects are the female vocals present in both “Sirenum Scopuli” and “Through the Orchard” that were contributed by Camille Austria. “Frail Titan” was predominantly written by Tomislav and Alex and I think the main appeal of that one is the intense juxtaposition of fast and heavy in the first half to slow and almost ambient in the second half (with some really cool bass work by Alex).
We generally include 3 out of these 4 tracks in every one of our live performances.

Peter: With an album generally come the live shows.  Since many outside of Canada haven’t seen the band live, what can one expect?

Jacob: Indeed, we’ve never played outside of Canada! We do have plans in the future to get down to the States at least. As far as I understand it’s quite a bit of paperwork, but maybe we’ll join up with some friends (perhaps Shadowblade, Samandriel, or Scythia) at some point and give it a try! A definite goal of ours is to play a European festival; something like Tuska or Sweden Rock. An even better aspiration would be to perform on 70,000 tons of metal! We’ve gone as paying customers for both 70K cruises so far and have had the times of our lives. That festival is organized exquisitely and features comfortable accommodations and the best live sound I’ve ever heard, not to mention an unbelievable tight-knit group of individuals who make up the core audience.

With our live shows, we try to encapsulate the feeling of the tracks off our first album (and our anticipated final result for those unreleased tracks that we do play) as close as possible. Thus, Dave plays drums alongside a click track in his in-ear monitors. This enables us to play along with our backing tracks through the P.A. at the same time, giving us a really rich live sound without the need for a keyboard player. This makes it pretty easy to practice, because all the songs are set in their various speeds and running lengths; there’s no possibility of deviation. The upside of this is definitely how tight we sound live; transitions are always smooth and there’s never a worry about something being played faster or slower. There are two downsides to this, though: firstly, there is not a huge aspect of spontaneity to the songs in their ‘live’ form. It is impossible to extend a solo, get some crowd participation going in a break, or play something a different way unless we program it in to the click track and backing tracks. Second, if someone breaks a string, drops a stick, unplugs their instrument, or has their amp crap out on them (all things that have happened several times to us live), then that person has to remedy the situation with haste, because the song isn’t stopping!

When the lengths of our songs are put into consideration, it’s easy to see why we usually only play about six or seven when we perform. At our longest performance we played 10 (our entire debut album) and with guest musicians, crowd interaction (including a pitcher chug from each of us before the last song) and general transitions we were running close to an hour and a half. Nowadays we split the set in half with old material from The Peregrine Way and unreleased material from our upcoming sophomore effort. Generally there isn’t too much banter in between songs, but we’re all on wireless, meaning that we can go anywhere in the venue and still play; I’ve jumped into the crowd several times to rock out with some fans and buddies.

The best picture I can paint for what our live show is like features a bunch of long songs played very tight, with us furiously headbanging at appropriate intervals, haha.

Peter: Are there any plans for shows in the near future?

Jacob: We’ve been pretty relaxed as far as shows go in the last couple months, having played only once in December with Gales of Avalon (for their CD release) and once in January with Striker. Our next two shows are as follows: Early March with Samandriel in Edmonton and the following weekend in Calgary with Dark Forest for their CD release. I do believe we are headlining a 20 band festival here in Calgary in May, but since we don’t know any more details, that is all I can say! Other than those, we’re looking to get some West Coast shows this summer and we’ll do a large-production CD release when the next album comes out in the fall.

Peter: What goals do you have set for 2012?

Jacob: I am really looking forward to getting this next album out. I feel like it’s my baby, in a way. The other guys certainly have contributed riffs and structure ideas, but I’ve been the primary writer and arranger for all of the songs we have for it currently and I’ve penned all the lyrics as well. I feel like there is a lot of myself in the music and maybe some vicarious-living in the lyrics; all the songs are centered around the experiences of certain characters that I’ve either made up or been inspired by in literature (Greek Mythology, Stephen King, Medical oddities, etc.). I just hope that a fair amount of people in various places in the world really give it a solid whole-hearted listen and that the music or the message or whatever really affects them on an emotional level, perhaps to where it gets their blood pumping or gives them goose bumps. I mean, let’s be realistic: no independent band does it for the money (plus, we don’t make any money anyways!). We all do it for the love of the craft and the joy of eliciting emotion in other people. My goal is that we get modestly recognized for our efforts and additionally that my music and lyric writing has inspired some other people to create. Hopefully I speak for the others in this regard as well, but I feel that I live a very fulfilling and well-rounded life. The musical aspect of it is an awesome form of expression and the very fact that people support our efforts, buy our music and attend our shows is very exhilarating.

Peter: Is there anything else that you would like to add?

Jacob: I just wish that I could reveal the title and track listing of our next album, but we’ll have to wait until we are actually well on our way with the recording to do that! Hopefully we can have this album out sometime in the fall. We have 9 tracks (roughly an hour of music) either completed or in the works that will probably all make it onto the album, assuming we don’t pull some crazy rabbits out of the ether in the next couple weeks!

Aside from that, I just want to remind any potential listeners that they can feel free to torrent our music if they want to give it a listen; our main interest is getting our music out there. Give it a listen, pass it on and if you really like it, please buy it so we can continue to release music for years to come! Lastly, I’d like to say a great big thank you to you Peter and the rest of the Metal Psalter team for your support and interest. Cheers!

Viathyn

Interviewer: Peter

February 13, 2012

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TO THE TOP

(Click on Photo to Enlarge)

Formed 2006
Calgary, Alberta  CANADA
Label: Independent
Genre: Progressive/Power Metal

CURRENT LINE-UP:

Tomislav Crnkovic:  Vocals & Guitars
Jacob Wright:  Lead Guitars
Alex Kot:  Bass
Dave Crnkovic:  Drums

DISCOGRAPHY:

Demagogue (Demo 2007)
The Peregrine Way (2010)

Check out Peter's review of The Peregrine Way here