Interview:


Xakol is a new name on the scene, but its history is perfectly presented in a video on your YouTube channel. Do you think presenting your band's work on video one way or another is important nowadays?
First of all, thank you for having already watched our video which was just released last Friday, and for having patiently followed the story, which has Portuguese audio, but is subtitled in English to become understandable for most of the World.
Telling XAKOL's story in a video was an old idea I had, because although I am a text guy, I love to write and play with words, nowadays most people don't have much patience to read long texts, such as a band biography. People prefer watching movies than reading books. So I already had this idea for a while, but when a festival we were going to play asked for a brief video introduction of the band, I just thought about doing something different, telling the story in an unusual and funny way, and use it for a YouTube video. And I was very proud of the result we got. I think videos are the great trend of the moment, it's very hard for bands out of the mainstream to earn anything with music only, and if you have a YouTube channel only for lyrics and music videos, it doesn't get as many subscribers or as much engagement as it should. In this age, it is important for artists to search for new ideas, including unusual video concepts, that can bring them closer to their audience.

Is Xakol a real band, or more a personal studio project? What bands influences the most your compositions?
It all started as a solo project. XAKOL is a pseudonym I created when I was 13, even before I started learning music. It was also the name I used to sign my compositions. I had an 80-minute full-length album ready for recording even before I recruited a band to play my songs live. It was supposed to be just a personal studio project, because I would either have to hire musicians to play my songs live, while I wouldn't get paid as much for playing unknown songs, or I would have to find really good friends who would join my project for believing in me, and they would also need to be skilled enough to play some technically not trivial songs. Luckily, that second alternative happened sooner that I thought it would be possible. I decided to play my songs live once for fun in 2015, then more people became interested in my project and joined the band for believing in its potential. Since then we have played live regularly as band on our "Rise of a New Tour", supporting our singles.
My main influences are late 90's and early 2000's Power Metal and Prog Metal. All my absolute favorite albums were released during that time-span. From the Prog Metal side, my main influences are Dream Theater, Symphony X and Pain of Salvation. From the Power Metal side, I'd say Sonata Arctica, Stratovarius, Angra, Royal Hunt, Rhapsody, among others. However, I use elements from many different sub-genres of metal and rock, like black metal, thrash metal and even punk rock. Also, there are some experimental parts composed using mathematical algorithms.

You have 2 singles released, but there are major differences between the two, Rise of a New Sun seems much more serious than Metal for Demons, so what's the "real" path Xakol will develop on in the future?
That's right. Metal for Demons and Rise of a New Sun have nothing in common. Metal for Demons is a tribute to a very known Brazilian MTV-created satire metal band called Massacration and it's sung by their lead singer, a fictional character called Detonator. Massacration writes songs whose lyrics are mostly in English, but are not fully understandable to English speakers, because they mix variants of Portuguese words mistranslated to English in a macaronic way. The difference is that Metal for Demons is fully understandable in English alone, but still one would need to know Portuguese to understand the real meaning hidden in the song, which is based on similarity of words between the languages with completely different meanings. For instance, the last verse of the song is "For them you're so cool", which makes perfect sense in English, but it's pronounced as one would say in Portuguese "Fodem o seu cu" which means "They fuck your ass". So it is a funny song, that was intended to be played by Massacration or Detonator himself, but we have decided to release it as a XAKOL song anyway, although the musical and lyrical styles don't fit our real purpose.
Rise of a New Sun is more on the path we are about to follow, although it is not quite there yet. This song was the first Power Metal song I wrote back in 2003, and although it is 8 minutes long, with some tempo changes and rhythmic variations, it is all 4/4 and not progressive enough. The real sound of XAKOL will be exposed in our second album, which will be a mix of very melodic and fast power metal with odd time signatures progressive music, influenced also by lots of metal sub-genres and songs whose structures may be unpredictable.

Do you also prepare a full-length release for the near future? Do you plan on inviting established names from the Power Metal scene to play on it?
Yes, we are currently working on two full-length albums. The first one is already mostly recorded and we expect to have it released by our next winter (which is your summer in Europe). This will be a short album, more like a preliminary release, with songs that are not much related to each other, with some different approaches and ideas. Songs that did not make it to the next album. The second album will be called "Chaos Lit a Soul" and is my masterpiece that I have been writing for more than 12 years. It will be an 80-minute concept album with all the absolute best material I have ever written in my entire life.
Yes, we plan on having special guests from the Power Metal and Prog Metal scene. Edu Falaschi, former Angra singer, will be the producer for our second album. Detonator, which is a character by Brazilian singer and comedian Bruno Sutter, who was also voted the best singer in Brazil twice in a row, has already recorded our song Metal for Demons. Besides them, some international guests with a huge name on the Power Metal scene have been contacted, but I will not confirm anything until I have their recorded parts in my hands.

Your two singles were also released on CD format, which is really impressive. How come you've decided not to remain to digital only and how many copies have you sold/distributed? There are many bands that release entire albums digital only nowadays.
You are right, nowadays even full-length albums are mostly digital only. To release singles on CD format at this moment seems like a crazy idea indeed. Metal for Demons was released on CD, because it features Detonator as singer, and he has a great legion of fans here who would collect everything with his name on, so we thought it would be a good idea to release a physical version for collectors. Rise of a New Sun was a physical release intended to be distributed to Europe as a small showcase of our music. The physical version allowed me to play with the track orders from the single, which will puzzle those who read them for the first time. Track 1 starts on the song's part 2, just to "cut the crap" and go straight to the heavy part that matters, because most people that are listening to a new song for the first time from a band they have never heard of will not be patient enough to wait a long and slow instrumental intro. So the idea was that the listeners would turn on the CD player and get punched in the ears by the first chord. Then, if they like the song, and are curious to know the rest of it, the full song is available as a bonus on the single, together with the first parts as isolated tracks, making some kind of 3-piece puzzle for beginners to assemble the song in the correct order.
It was made 1000 copies of each single, 500 of each were delivered to our label and 500 of each to us. They were the best sellers in our label for 3 straight months, and they say their copies are already sold old. We also have sold well, specially during our concerts. But we have also shipped some copies to some countries in Europe and North America. We still have a few copies left, which can be bought from anywhere in the world at our Bandcamp store: xakol.bandcamp.com.

What's your main goal with the band? How far would you like to reach, and how far do you think it's possible to reach?
Conquer the world. Is it probable? Not much. Is it possible? Only time will tell.
Anyway, if I ever have fans from the other side of the world, that had never heard of me before, and they get touched by my music in a way that it inspires their lives, make them happier, or help them through difficult times, it will bring me the feeling that I have accomplished my goal in life.

December 2017


xakol.bandcamp.com
www.facebook.com/XAKOL/
www.xakol.sc
www.youtube.com/XAKOL