Xaon interview

Bass player Flo of Xaon (pronounced Sion) kindly granted us an interview.

You premiered your new song ‘How we become Ephemeral Birds’ at the beginning of September, how do you feel this has been received by your fans?

I noticed it’s always a difficult and perilous work to interpret some words from some unknown persons. Some complete strangers who know everything about metal music and some persons who like AC/DC and smooth, light stuff like this kind of band and understand nothing as soon as there’s a singer who uses a more versatile kind of singing. In a huge majority, I felt that people like our sound, our melodies and more globally: this song. However, I read some very interesting post from doubtlessly some weak and simple minds that were complaining about the strange forms that lyrics can take.

I like to write with the help of metaphors, semantically pictures and aphorisms and I have to concede that sometimes, my writings could be mysterious and vague but everything is normal. Xaon’s lyrics never have the aim to speak about a tangible situation in a very real world. It seems logical that the skimpy minds could suffer from some vexing situations when they will read Xaon’s lyrics but maybe, I can advise them to close their Dan Brown’s book and take time to try to understand an another manner to describe a state of mind.

Your new EP ‘Face of Balaam’ being your first EP was released just a few days ago, you guys must be on a high about this release, what responses have you had from this?

Pretty difficult to know; simply because we’re at the beginning line for this promotional journey.
We hope that every metal heads will be able to find in our musical streams something that resounds positively in their inner cloisters and bring some power, courage, strength for his everyday life.
We are just at the inception of our story.

How did it feel being announced that your EP made it in the top #10 for albums with ‘We Love Metal Dot Com’?

For me, to be in this top 10 it’s a huge source of pride but I can’t see that as an achievement because in the Xaon’s process of construction, we can hardly speak about the concept of achievement, because I continue to see Xaon as an entity in constant gestation and in constant movement.

We’re some perpetual learners and we continue to dig into the cave of knowledges. Knowledges about ourselves and about Music.
Why to wish one biggest achievement?

Why can we wish a superb achievement for every day?

Don’t contain, don’t hold yourself. Don’t be an unwell shiny star, be a majestic stellar burst, a cosmic explosion, a supernova that floodlights your depths for years after years.
But more pragmatically, I hope all the best for Xaon (the common wish of all band’s members). To simply and humbly compose the most beautiful song that we are able or to write the most coherent album that we never made.

Life is too weird, too vast and too rich to aim one single achievement, (or one single Top 10 (but even if we’re totally proud of it!)).
Even the biggest-one.

You guys played the Explosive stage – Exit Festival, how did that go?

Usually, we work a lot with some video screenplay behind us, changing, moving conscientiously and methodically during our show.
For the Exit Festival, on the Explosive Stage just before Paradise Lost, we felt a complete liberation because we had no screen and no moving images behind us. Only some cool backdrops and some rude and sparkling light shows.

Of course, we played as heavy and as loud as possible in order to perform our song like a simple rock band, headbanging, sweating and chanting with the crowd.
It was a marvelous experience!

Some rememberings that I will hold in the depth of my brain for the rest of my life!

You guys go out on tour with Sirenia, Tyr, Unleash the Archers and Relicseed in November. Are you guys excited about this?

Yeah! Absolutely!
But we’re working with all of our strength in order to improve us as beings and musicians.
For example, as I said, musically, we’re working in our future set-list in order to gain some freedom and some fluency when the instant to play it in front of a crowd will come. We already do it some numerous times (last time was in overture for the great At the Gates and Paradise Lost) but every time we play together, we realize that we could do something better and special during the show.

To do something real, something pure, something authentic in order to show to our crowd that without all of these headbangings, these screaming banshees who’re throwing beers, these guys who’re sweating and moshing, we’re a bunch of melancholic and lonely guys. Some scrawny mavericks, some square pegs face to some round holes who would be engraved under depression and isolation, all alone in our cold and silent nirvana. Alone in our rehearsal room, knitting like old ladies, drowning under an aqueous bitterness, some long and vaporous strings of reverie, dreamlike compositions, oneiric musical acts, living some existences that we couldn’t even bear.

So we’re working in order to appear on stage better than the last time and to give to you and to them a feverous and rumbling show, as if we had to die just after having switch off our instruments and gears.

We really can’t wait to sweat again, to let pour blood and tears upon the sonic maelstrom during this tour in November.
It will be a majestic blast!
We hope to find you on the road!

How do you promote your shows to your fans?

By the “normal” way, I guess.. Maybe, we’re a little pauper in our mind and regarding our creativity to establish some new manner of promotion but we have faith in the well-known methods. Methods like by promoting the coming show on the social platform and sometimes, we could see especially our singer Rob who makes a cool and short video (as he did for the Romanian festival in Bucharest: Metalhead Meeting, when we played in overture for Rotting Christ and Eluveitie) where he can speak about the kind of this coming show, if we will do something special and when we will play.

Ah! It’s a good occasion if we’re speaking about promotion: don’t hesitate to take a look on these links:
https://www.facebook.com/xaonmusic/?fref=ts
http://www.xaonmusic.com/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCodn1neAuxH866DiuWTLmQw/videos

Who has the most annoying habit?
Who ? Do you mean: Which members of Xaon possess the worst habit?
I’m sorry but I couldn’t be able to answer correctly because we’re some musical colleagues and we play music together.
Time’s fleeing so quickly that we don’t have time to notice this kind of.. details.

We prefer to compose, to share thoughts and to play music together. We are as the Nature made us and to have the luck and the opportunity to play music together and to share some luminous moments of our life is infinitely more precious than take time in order to isolate some tiny and unpleasant details that compose each of our personalities.
Moreover, it is likely that those annoying habits build up the most interesting and richest particularities that are used to create our music.

What song do you look forward to playing the most?

I don’t know. I like every songs that we’re playing in Live.. But actually, following my mood, I can say that our song that’s called “Veins Like Burned Trees (The Awe That Walketh In Obscurity part.1)” brings tears to my eyes when I realize that the blend of our efforts has created something so special and so beautiful.. but don’t be worried, we’ll not stay blissfully benumbed. I know that our next release will contain some jewels and maybe I will forget this aforesaid song and I will have the feeling that the more sumptuous song of Xaon is a song on the new record. The past tunes were cool but not as the same intensity that the actual songs of the new release (and I will say exactly the same thing when we will release an another new opus).

Is there anywhere venue/festival wise you haven’t played that you would like to play?

It’s a good question! I dream to play in many different places in the world like anywhere in Iceland, even in a small boathouse as a band like Sigur Rós did it face the Ocean or anywhere in Norway or in China or in Australia, Russia, Faroe Islands, on the African continent, Sweden, Finland, or some other exotic countries or in a little bar near of our home but filled with some dedicated metalheads that would begin to headbang as some maniacs at the beginning of our show.etc..etc..
My feeling face to your question isn’t a question about a perfect venue/festival but more a perfect inner journey when you will prepare your package, your mind, your hope face to this challenge.
To travel to a venue isn’t just a question of the moving of bodies toward a place where they can play. The real journey begins before. Often, it’s the better part or the most intensive and complete moment. After this first part of the journey, seeing some new and marvellous landscapes is only a bonus upon the whole experience.

What music do you guys listen to when out on the road?

We like to hear some different bands but years after years I’m still fascinated by the sentimental power that some formations are still able to bring in our hearts when you’re in a Tour-Bus all alone, on the road from a country that you don’t even know. Some bands like Moondog, Current 93, Fire+Ice, Forseti, Death in June (I like to listen these five bands on the vast, plain landscapes near the huge German highways), Suffocation, Thergothon (when you’re alone and your bus’s riding through the profound night. You colleagues are sleeping and you’re finishing your drink alone.. Like every time in your own life: alone.. By the windscreen of the bus, you see the night’s profound texture and this band fits well for this special and enthralling moment), Dissection, Burzum, Totenburg (Have you ever drive through Ukrainian winter with these three bands? If never, don’t miss out on this occasion!), Death, Forteresse, Horna, Crisis, Acherontas, Incantation, Funerus, Darkthrone, Enslaved, Immolation, Solstafir, Bauhaus, The Cure, Pentagram, Rozz Williams and Christian Death, Trouble, Premature Ejaculation, Genocide Organ, Merzbow, Alien Sex Fiend (these four bands: only when your bus stops at a little restaurant near the highway and you only will to eat and to return to sleep, without to forget to damn, to curse and to warmly hate every breathing creatures in your proximity), Mgla, Joy Division, Lamp of Thoth and some highskilled and more “classical music” composers as Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa, Claudio Monteverdi, Olivier Messiaen, John Dowland, Henry Purcell and some jazzmen: Ornette Coleman, Thelonius Monk, Avishai Cohen and Charlie Mingus.

I can’t survive the day without energy drinks, what aids you most throughout the day?

Ah! Energy drinks! What can I do without this strange concoction too?

But I still can’t mute this little voice in my head that says: Does it has another purpose than to have a particular (by particular, I wish to mean: chemical) taste and to be contained in a can with bright colors? Because I still don’t know if the process of “revival” (the effect of caffeine, in short) is induced by this beverage and its ingredients or by the power of our mind face to a stimulus (that said to us: Hey! You’re drinking a drink filled with caffeine. You will feel better and more efficient) and your “revival” is self-induced by your mind.
After this little questioning, I can say there’re some things that help me throughout the day like listening music, taking time to do some meditation, eating some fruits and of course, drinking a plenty of these goddamn’ energy drinks!

Is there anything you would like to add?

Oh Yeah!
I just want to warmly thank you a lot for these interesting questions and this interview!
Never give up and be never totally sated, always ask/search for more!
Stay totally proud and strong about what you are and became!
Long Live Metal!