By: Tanya Vasquez

Most of my friends know me to love symphonic metal but I have never really found any bands in the USA that have piqued my interest until recently. Dremora is the brainchild of Thomas.  Here is what he had to say about his band.

GAW: How did you come up with the name Dremora?

Thomas: Actually it was a long process that took over several weeks. I wanted a name that as soon as you seen it, you would know what kind of music it was. I wanted something easy to spell, easy to remember, and also sounded cool without being to masculine or feminine. I started searching the Internet for lists of names of things, everything from items in nature, to astronomical phenomena, to Greek and Roman names. I literally read thousands of names and chose the top 50. Then I went through the task of seeing if they were taken by other bands, or trademarked, and if it had an available top level domain. Of course most were already taken in some way. I narrowed it down to a list of 5 available names, one of them being Dremora which I got from a list of ancient Greek surnames. The name seemed to fit the best with the idea of the band, as it sounded dark and mysterious. So I finally chose this name as the one I wanted, and went from there.

GAW: What made you decide to form a female fronted metal band?

Thomas: Well I was a huge fan of European female fronted metal for many years, and many of these bands never really toured here until recently. I really enjoy the sound of metal mixed with orchestration and operatic vocals, and there just is not a lot of that here in America. It’s really an emotional experience for me to create music so I wanted for many years to start another band, but I wanted to do something different than what anyone else here was doing. In fact I wanted to do something different than what anyone was currently doing. Many of the bands I liked were starting to change their sound, when I preferred the sound of their first albums. So I decided to take it upon myself to get the ball rolling and find some way to get everything I needed to start my own band. One of the reasons I moved to Los Angeles was for the metal scene and pool of available talent. I knew if I could put together a good album to show my ideas and feelings about this kind of music, I could get others to join in as well. This is of course the next direction for Dremora, as right now it is just myself and Juliana.

GAW: What made you decide to court Juliana Novo as front lady?

Thomas: It is an interesting story actually. Nightwish at the time was my favorite band of the genre and after they fired their singer Tarja, I was curious as to the direction they were going to take. So I frequented the Nightwish forums and they had a thread there where women from around the world would show off their singing talents by posting their own original songs or cover songs. It was mainly to show off some of the things they were sending in as demos for the open Nightwish singer position, and in return they would get feedback from other singers. I initially went just out of curiosity and checked out a lot of them, as I was just starting to write the first Dremora song and was not yet actually looking for a singer. Some of the girls were already in bands or projects, and some were available for new projects. I seen some bands/solo artists there starting to collaborate with some of these singers to do their songs, as they were also looking for singers for their original material. I was not interested at first as I wanted a local singer to work with, but to find a good unique operatic voice in Los Angeles isn’t an easy prospect. There were literally dozens of female singers on this thread, and after seeing how it was working for some other musicians there I gained more interest in finding someone to do one song for me to which I could advertise to help look for someone more permanent. Posting on this thread about what I was doing with my music, I got an offer from a girl in Sweden to sing on a demo version of Alone. So we collaborated on that and I posted the results to the forum. There was a good response and it caught some attention from others. That is when I noticed some posts from Juliana. She seemed different than everyone else there in her attitude. So I checked out her profile and her cover songs. She was truly into metal, not just Nightwish and she had the appearance to match this which was different from the others. I seen she was in many bands in the past and sang in a popular choir in Brazil so she seemed experienced. What really got my attention were the videos she posted of her old Nightwish/After Forever cover band. She sounded great live and was really emotional and professional in her performance. This is when I started taking serious interest in her. That and the fact she said in her profile she was willing to move from Brazil to join a good band. So I replied to some of her posts and we started trading MySpace messages. We then spoke some and she sang acapella over messenger. She was talented, really had a great attitude, and seemed eager to work on some original material. At that time I was still writing the track Martyrs and Madmen, and she offered to sing on it. Her trial performance on the song was amazing on every level and from that point on I knew she was perfect for Dremora. The rest is history.

GAW: I understand Juliana lives in Brazil..so is the distance a problem to
record the songs?

Thomas: It’s not really a huge problem, it is just time consuming. She records her parts in Brazil and sends the raw tracks to me via the Internet. At the beginning there were some technical issues with recording vocals on her computer as she needed some new equipment and a place she could setup where the room wouldn’t influence the recording. The first song we did together was “Martyrs and Madmen”, and she recorded this in a friend’s studio and it came out great. We actually did the recording for “Alone” twice, as the first time there were some technical issues. However she resolved that with some upgrades and from the second recording of Alone on, the quality was no longer an issue. Probably the most difficult thing with the distance is to how to convey ideas and opinions. Juliana will sing parts live over messenger, and we will then discuss any changes. Then she does the recordings of many tracks and then we will choose the best ones. The other problem with the distance deals with the songwriting factor. I know her abilities and range much better now so it is less of a problem than it was before when deciding how to create parts of songs suited to her voice. See I believe it’s easier and more productive to include the singer as part of this process to get the most out of it. Many bands say it is not important to have the singer involved, I don’t agree, as vocals are a major role in this style. I would like to write a part and have her sing to it in her own way so I can work with those ideas to continue the song. When she moves to America I expect this will really contribute positively to how the songs are created.

Juliana: I don’t think it’s really hard, I can show my ideas over MSN to Thomas, then get his feedback. All of those songs had my contribution by creating new backings, and in Transcending God I created all melodies, so it wasn’t really hard to contribute with the production of the album. I only had to buy a better gear in order to record the songs at home.

GAW:Who writes the songs?

Thomas: I currently write all of the music, and for the “Martyrs” album I placed sampled choir voices for the vocal lines. Then Juliana will work with that as a basis. However on “Transcending God”, she composed all of the vocal melodies herself which turned out great. For the song “Martyrs and Madmen” a friend of mine who is a studio musician composed the solo and lead guitar parts himself. You may hear him again on future Dremora songs until we can get a full-time lead guitarist.

GAW: Juliana, what made you decide to agree to be Dremora’s front woman?

Juliana: Well I heard the demo version of Alone and liked it very much. Then I thought about offering my voice to collaborate with his band, but he still had another girl contributing, so I kept on my own, till he found out how great my videos were and thought about using my voice on this second track he was creating, so I did and he liked, and that’s it. I do like the direction he’s taking with this mixture of heavy/thrash metal guitars with keys and orchestration, which I think it fits my classic heavy metal voice very well, and I like the way he gives me freedom to explore my creativity in his main melodies.

GAW: What influences do you guys take from?

Thomas: I have many influences depending on what you are talking about. For songwriting and keys my main influence was Tuomas Holopainen from “Nightwish” as his music is what got me thinking that keys in metal is a cool thing, and his writing style of the older albums is just genius. For drums my first metal influence was from Lars Ulrich of “Metallica” up until the “Black Album”. My prior band did a lot of “Metallica” covers so I learned his style. Then from that point it was more the aggressive style of Vinnie Paul from “Pantera”. Since my interest in symphonic metal, I came to admire the former drummer of “Epica” Jeroen Simons, as to me he really made that band, and a lot of my drumming influence now comes from “The Phantom Agony” album. Also “Epica” greatly influences my style of including orchestration in the music, as they have some of the best in my opinion. As for guitars, I started learning from tablatures of classic “Metallica” songs and the style of James Hetfield, the guitar work of Dave Mustaine of “Megadeth” and “Dimebag Darrell” of “Pantera”. This older style of shredding power chords is something I feel left out of a lot of current music so any guitarist we get in “Dremora” we will want to have a similar style.

Juliana: in my singing I have taken influences mainly from male heavy metal singers like Bruce Dickinson, King Diamond, Dio, Ian Gillan, Ozzy, etc. I also admire Dave Mustaine from Megadeth and Nick Holmes from Paradise Lost so I might have a bit of influence by them to create my own style, and Tarja Turunen is the woman who made me feel like singing in a Symphonic Metal band, with her powerful and beautiful voice since early Nightwish albums. She is for sure a big influence to me, that’s when I discovered I could sing in an operatic style, since June/2000. Oh and Sarah Jezebel from Cradle Of Filth was another influence back in that time. And I also listen to a lot of thrash, death, doom and black metal.

GAW:What’s the inspiration for this album?

Thomas: My inspiration was to make something new within the confines of symphonic metal. There are a lot of bands in the genre now that do a lot of really “happy” music, and a lot of bands that do totally depressing or evil music. I wanted to find the middle ground with “Martyrs”. There is a lot of emotion involved in each song, and it focuses mainly on the theme of decisions we make in life whether it is something good or bad. The main theme revolves around self-destruction and how we as humans make decisions each day based on emotions or beliefs that can change the outcome of the world or just our own personal lives. I wrote all of the lyrics for “Martyrs” and there are a lot of double meanings and hidden messages within, so I will let the listeners decide on how to interpret them in their own way.

GAW: My favorite song from the album is Alone, can you tell me what the main inspiration for the song is?

Thomas: Well the main inspiration for this song is from a personal experience from the past that I think a lot of people can associate with. Everyone knows what it is like to be alone, or to be around other people and still feel alone, ignored, and left out of a situation. We each have voices in our heads to tell us what we should do to get out of it and the ending of the song provides the listener with some kind of relief from this loneliness. It is up to that individual’s life experience to figure out what they need to do to change whatever bad situation they are in.

GAW: Is there anything you want to tell the readers of GAW that I didn’t go
over here?

Thomas: I just want to thank you Tanya for this opportunity to talk to you and the fans of Dremora about the band and our music. We will be starting to record our next album soon, and we plan to get some more members and also get Juliana here in the states so we can start doing some live shows soon. We hope to see you all in 2008!

Juliana: Keep fighting for your dreams and stay Metal!! See you all soon in our upcoming tour!!