Cellador - Entrevista

1 – Cellador is a young band but you already had the luck to sign a contract. You opened a show for The Black Dahlia Murder and their singer Trevor Strnad gave a demo to Brian Slagel from Metal Blade. How was that?

Basically what happened was we had been playing live as a full band for about 2-3 months and managed to build up enough buzz to be offered opening slots for several national bands. One of the shows we got on was opening for The Black Dahlia Murder back in May 2005. The guys in the band came out and watched our set and afterwards they approached us saying they really liked our music and our band and they suggested we give them a couple demo's that they could give to Metal Blade Records for us. We had just recently released our first demo then and while we didn't expect to get a response we still went with their suggestion and so I gave them a couple demo's. About 2 weeks after that show we got a call from Brian Slagel the CEO of Metal Blade saying he was interested in signing our band. He met with us several times over the summer of 2005, and after talking with them for 6 weeks or so we ended up signing a contract with them. It was a total surprise for us when we signed to them because we never thought a power metal type band like ours would ever gain the interest of any American labels, especially one as big in the metal world as Metal Blade. Before this point we assumed the only chance we ever had was with smaller European labels that specialize in melodic metal, but after our Metal Blade signing we gained a whole new perspective on our band and how far we can take it, which was great.

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2 – The album was produced by Erik Rutan, well known for his Death Metal bands and productions. He’s not the kind of guy a Heavy / Power Metal band would choose to produce their record. How did he end up working with you in this album?

After we signed to Metal Blade we were talking with them for awhile about studios and where we were to record our debut album at. Metal Blade and we the band agreed that we wanted to go for a natural and aggressive sounding production, and also something that would be a little bit different sounding than production styles that were typically used for European melodic metal bands. We were not very familiar with any studios outside of our region so we asked Metal Blade if they had any suggestions for us to record at. They sent us a bunch of different albums by different bands that were recorded at studios they felt would suit us. The record we liked the best was the Into the Moat debut album, which was recorded and produced by Erik Rutan at his studio in Tampa, Florida. When we found out it was Rutan, a guy known for working with extreme bands, we became more intrigued to use him because we wanted our first record to be very aggressive and intense sounding, to both suit the style of the songs and to perhaps be a unique production style for this type of music we play. At first when we contacted him he told us he was booked up for much of the year, but after he heard our demo he became really excited about working with us and managed to change up his studio schedule to be able to fit us in, which was really great of him and good for us. He really believed in our band from start to finish and put in a lot of time and effort into getting the right sound and production out of our music. He has very high standards in terms of recording and really pushed us to our best performances which we were really thankful for in the end.

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3 – Erik Rutan managed to keep your sound raw and heavy, instead of the clean and not so powerful sound in most of the European records. Are you satisfied with final result of the album?

We were very satisfied with the final results as he managed to really bring out the intensity and energy that we wanted to emphasize in our music. As stated earlier while many melodic power metal bands tend to go for a overly produced, editted, effects saturated production style we wanted to sway away from that tradition with our record by instead having it raw, intense, and aggressive sounding, which Rutan has been known to create in the projects he has worked on and most certainly attained on our record. We really wanted our first album to be balls out, very energetic sounding. We purposefully didn't want to include any slow songs or ballads on our first record, we wanted to be full speed beginning to end and Rutan understood this and gained an understanding of our vision for this record and really brought out the elements we wanted.

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4 – You are from the USA but your style has nothing to do with the American Power Metal but with the European side, which is more into speed and melody?

Yea most of our influences were European bands. I think its just a general preference of ours but we all loved the catchy melodic bands from Europe with big choruses, dual lead melodies, and speedy song structure. Bands like Helloween, Edguy, Blind Guardian really had a huge impact on myself in high school more than really anything from the USA and despite the fact nobody else here listened to these bands or wanted to play music like it I still stuck to it and pushed to form a band influenced by them. In addition to European power metal we also were influenced by thrash and death metal bands as well, so we try to incorporate elements from these other influences into our music as well, such as heavy guitars, high speeds, double bass and blast beat drumming, etc.

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5 – Your lyrics are not the usual fantasy / epic kind of lyrics of the European Power Metal but more into regular day-by-day subjects. Can you tell me something about the lyrics?

For our first album ENTER DECEPTION we wanted to avoid a lot of the cliches and stereotypes that are known to exist in power metal, and one of the things we didn't want to have was fantasy or sci-fi lyrics. Its not because we don't like these subjects, I actually enjoy them a lot, we just knew that it was a subject of ridicule especially here in the USA and we didn't want to spearhead our band into the same classifications. Instead the lyrics on ENTER DECEPTION mainly touch on subjects such as self-empowerment, individualism, being yourself, avoiding manipulation, really just positive themes that listeners can maybe relate to. A lot of the subject matter in our lyrics also really reflect the mindset of our band and the attitude we took on in order to keep going with playing this type of music here in the USA where its fairly nonexistent and where pressure to join the bandwagon or follow the crowd exists.

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6 – Do you have a tour prepared to promote the record?

Yea we are taking off here in a few days for our first national USA tour. It will be about 25-30 shows and it spans all over the USA, first our West, then Midwest, and then out East and back. We are very excited to go out and start playing, we've made so many new friends and fans in the last couple months we really want to meet as many people as possible. I think this Fall we will be lining ourselves up with a wellknown booking agency that will take us to a new level of opportunity for exposure and where we will be playing. We have been in talks with Metal Blade about going to Europe for some shows as well as Japan. I think sometime we will be going international for ENTER DECEPTION but I don't know the specific time frame yet. My guess is it will be late 2006 or early 2007.

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7 – The frontcover is awesome cool. Who made this artwork? What is the meaning of the artwork?

The artwork was done by French artist Jean Pascal Fournier. I had known about him as an artist for awhile, as he has done many covers for various metal bands and is fairly well known in the metal community. He was our first choice for our artwork and we couldn't be happier with the result he has given us. The cover is inspired by the title "ENTER DECEPTION" which is reffering basically to a person entered a world of "self deception" meaning they are entering into a false reality where they think everyone is out to get them and make their life miserable but really its just their own bad choices in life. I got the idea from a book I read that theorizes that many common social problems can arise from self-deception which comes from a person swaying from their own true ambitions or true selves. Anyway I described the idea to JP Fournier and he took what he understood from it to create a symbolisation of a person wearing a blindfold looking very desperate clinging onto a crumbling structure.

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8 – Do you want to leave a final message?

To all the people reading, be sure to check out CELLADOR's debut album ENTER DECEPTION. While we are generally considered to be melodic/power metal its a very aggressive and intense variation of the style, or at least thats what we aim to play. This is not a album just for power metal fans, it has a number of other elements that should appeal to thrash, extreme, heavy metal fans in general. Check it out and see what you think.Many thanks for the interview!!! Keep it metal!!

Questions: RDS

Answers: Chris Petersen – Guitar

Metal Blade Records: www.metalblade.de

Cellador: www.cellador.com