Line Up:
Pieriv Ruys On Vocals
Fabien Claes On Guitar
Adrian Verdier On Guitar
Arthur Bercovitz On Bass
Lucas Joly On Drums
Well,Friends Of Aristocracy!
We speak again of our newsroom, where in a little while, we will have in all its emotions, the interview 198 of the Aristocracy.This time, we talked to a Hardcore band that is very intense with samples of strong songs full of fury. It's a debut album, but it pulses with chaos.
Make no mistake, you will feel more alive listening to this band. So much so that the base of the band is well stretched, but knows how to combine complexity and simplicity in a balanced way.We're talking about the French band Lugosi and this is their debut titled as Inconsolable. We thank the band for their album and for answering our humble but important questions.
Let's go to one of their songs for this unprecedented interview to happen.
A1:Talking about the composition work in Inconsolable?
Adrian:Composition is a collective process for us : someone comes with an idea and shares it to the others.Sometimes the songs basically write themselves, but it usually takes time to complete a track, with trials and errors, tests, and a lot of discussion.Pieriv writes all the lyrics. Pieriv :My writing process is a bit weird. Lyrics come to me bit by bit, in no particular order. Then I assemble them. Some songs contain parts that were written 2 years apart from one another. There's probably 2 songs on the album that I wrote in one go, and funnily enough they're not the ones I love the most.
A2:How to bring vivid colors to a totally chaotic sound?
Pieriv:I actually don't really know, I don't perceive our music as chaotic. We just work really hard, some songs on the album were written in 2016, so they've matured by themselves. Lucas :It’s easy to perceive our songs as rather dark, but there are a few elements scattered across the album that seem to bring some colors. Blame it on the Weak is more musically upbeat, and more classical in its structure for example.Then you have the album’s final chord, which ends inconsolable on a brighter note, nodding to our hope that things could get better than they are.
A3:What kind of modern polish is given to this album?
Adrian:We do not try to sound modern, nor vintage, but you could say that some of us are very much inspired by the modern scene of punk/hardcore/metal bands.
A4:Some literature or film inspire the band and album?
Pieriv : Yes, we're avid cinema fanatics.Maskenfreiheit contains a sample of one of my favourite movies,Eyes Without a Face.Movies and music are my two biggest passions, and I've also studied literature.The Naked King is a reference to a tale by Charles Perrault,The Emperor's New Clothes, but the biggest literary influence on the album, I reckon, is the book Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade by Kurt Vonnegut..That book fucked with my brain and my heart like no other. Adrian also borrowed a sentence from the book Karoo by Steve Tesich.
A5:Why is complexity a good way to describe the band's sound?
Pieriv:Well you said it yourself, some people could describe our music as "chaotic".It doesn't fit the mould of most "traditional" punk/hardcore songs. The rhythms can be quite puzzling, the sounds keep changing and I never learned how to properly scream, so it may sound as if we lost control sometimes.
Arthur:I don’t think we write songs with an intention of complexity but we can be picky listeners and sometimes we just want to challenge each other with stuff that seems a little difficult to play or surprising. These kinds of “complex” moments are like spices in a meal for me, it adds a lot but it’s not necessarily the whole thing.
A6:Why the song Naked King have two parts?
Pieriv :We wrote the two songs separately.Part One first, obviously, and then we had this song that had similar sounds and lyrical themes,such as the constant lying and half-verified news that just keep us on the verge of madness. So when time came to name it, it seemed almost natural to just go for “Part Two”.
A7:It is said that you do not practice a musical Frankenstein, how and why did this decision come about?
Pieriv:It was never a conscious decision. We all come from different backgrounds,so we just didn't have a choice.We had to make do with what we had in common and what specificities we could each bring. As an example, I for one only started listening to metal after I joined the band. Before that I almost exclusively listened to pop, hardcore/punk, soul and Jamaican ska. But we had to find our sound, otherwise it would have been terrible.I think that's what this idea of "not playing Frankenstein" means, because although our music is a patchwork of our different influences, it still doesn't sound artificial.
A8:Why the band have this name?
Pieriv:It was Fabien's idea. He started the band with Adrian.As I said we love cinema, and Béla Lugosi is an icon.
Arthur:To me,it’s just a short and efficient name that sounds pretty much the same internationally so I think it’s a good one! {hehe!}
A9:What´s the idea behind artwork´s album?
Pieriv:We were looking for a powerful painting, and we found Jérôme on the internet. We sent him a message with a raw mix of the album,asking him if he was interested in working with us. He painted the artwork while listening to the album. We fell in love with it.
Lucas:When we researched inspiration for our artwork, we liked this idea of an abstract portrait, a face whose lines would be blurred or undefined, but from which the main emotions of the album could still radiate.I think Jérôme did a fantastic job as I can see anger and sadness on this painting, as well as traces of hope.
A10:How is Lugosi different from your previous bands?
Pieriv:Well before joining LUGOSi,I played bass in an alternative rock / power-pop band, so, yeah, that's quite different.
Lucas :I have played in a “pop-core” band with Arthur for 10 years, so the music was a bit lighter with more melodic singing and guitars. I have played in other metal bands though (Faithless Messiah and Under The Abyss) but we played death metal or modern thrash so it was quite different from LUGOSi’s math-punk-hardcore music.
Arthur :As Lucas said, we’ve been playing together for a while. For the most part of 15 years, I was fronting one or two bands playing the guitar and singing. So picking up the bass and not being stuck behind a microphone was very refreshing for me.
A11:How to make a slightly compressed sound on this album?
Pieriv : I have no fucking idea. We've worked with our sound engineers, Mathieu and Valère, for about a year to finally get to this sound. We used something like 10 different guitars and 5 different amps during recording, we recorded about a dozen minutes of only guitar feedback. Arthur even added keyboards on some parts. We knew we wanted the album to sound rough and ferocious. One good example, I think, is the vocals. We didn't want them to be too loud, to have too much "presence". I like that feeling you get that I'm struggling to be heard in all the noise. Come to think of it, it's reminiscent of real life, haha}
Adrian:The "organic" sound of the album was advised by our friends Valère et Mathieu who took the artistic and technical lead for this album.Too much compression would kill the essential dynamic in our music. We mainly worked with single coil pickups for the guitars for example.
A12:How band arrive to Pogo Records?
Pieriv:We recorded and paid for the album by ourselves entirely and then we had a list of labels we liked and that could be interested in helping us distribute it and POGO was one of them. So we sent a mail to Lionel and he liked the album enough to offer us a co-release with our other label, Out of Thunes Records.
A13:This album is conceptual?
Pieriv:It was not supposed to be at first. But once we'd finished writing the songs we realised they revolved around two main themes:unmitigated anger and unbearable sadness.And by coincidence,side A was more about anger, and side B was about sadness. So it accidentally became an unofficial concept-album.
A14:What kind of maturity did this album bring to the band?
Pieriv:It's our first full-length album, so I reckon it brought us experience as a collective. Adrian:We are more precise with our approach to our global band sound.
Lucas:In a way, given how long we took to launch the recording process,I’d say we took the time to gain maturity before entering the studio, music-wise at least.This album brought other challenges:how to be patient and deal with frustration of how long the process was.
A15:What would the 2022 Lugosi say to the 2016 Lugosi?
Pieriv :"Brace yourselves boys. You're in for a whole lot of pain and disillusionment.
But trust me, it's worth every second."
Adrian:"Don't worry, enjoy, keep at it."
Lucas:Finding yourselves will take about a year or two, but when you do, people will connect to what you have to offer and you’ll feel like it was worth the time you put in.
A16:What kind of subject don´t deserve a Lugosi Song?
Pieriv:That's an unusual question. I don't think a subject is more deserving than another It's your approach that makes it interesting.I could write about a fridge if I thought it was relevant. I don't, of course,but I won't restrain myself,I'm having enough of a hard time trying to write songs I won't be ashamed of.
Adrian:Pieriv is usually more inclined to write about things that profoundly moves him.
A17:Inconsolable is the name of the album, but what would inconsolable be in their private lives?
Pieriv:I've suffered from depression for years now. But even if I were "OK", there's not much to be happy about in the world right now. Global warming will kill us all,fascists are making a big comeback, women and LGBTQ+ people's rights are endangered everywhere,World War III has never been this close, the cost of living makes you hope you'll die young,fuckers eat pangolins, bosses shit on workers, and world leaders just watch and do fuck-all.That's not my idea of a great life by a long shot.
Adrian:The sheer desperation and feeling of injustice, knowing that anything you could do won't be enough. Power is still in the hands of narrow-minded bullies, obnoxious bigots,all of them very proud of their violence and domination.They will crush all beautiful and fragile things in our existence.
Lucas:Powerlessness would be the main thing to make me inconsolable.The way everything in our society is organized so you have no control over how important decisions are being made, and you can just suffer the consequences of what those in power decide for their own interests and the interests of their peers. I feel it’s very vivid in our society, and the hardest part is not letting go of the will to change this.
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