French post hardcore band Empreinte talks about new single, “Gray”!
Hello, Empreinte! Thanks for taking time to answer a couple of questions for us. Would you mind introducing your band to our readers? Hello, first of all we’d like to thank you for having us in this interview. We hope this would help people to get to know us. So, Empreinte was founded almost three years ago with a completely different name. We decided to switch to Empreinte earlier this year. We are a post-hardcore band from the north of Paris. Our main influences are bands like Northlane, Wage War and more. Basically everything within the wave of modern metalcore. How would you describe the post-hardcore / alternative scene where you are based? It’s quite alive. A lot of things are happening in France. First of all, we have lots of talented bands like Novelists, Betraying The Martyrs, Landmarks and there are more that aren’t popular but deserve a lot of attention. As for events and gigs, Paris is really the place to be for metal fans. There are plenty of shows in the city each month. Unfortunately, our genre of music isn’t very popular outside of Paris, especially in Amiens (where we’re from). People tend to listen to thrash metal or even hard rock. But that’s ok, because at the end of the day, they know how to stay open-minded and curious about what we’re doing. You just revealed that you have been working in silent on new songs, “Gray” being the first preview of what's to come. Would you mind introducing this song to our readers? « Gray » means a lot to us. It’s the first time that we actually succeeded in talking about death. Especially how you feel when you lose someone you cared for. What we like the most about « Gray » is that it’s not completely negative and it’s not completely positive. It’s not black but it’s not white either. There’s always bad things that haunt you down when you’re at the top and good things at the bottom when you’ve hit your lowest low. What we’re trying to say is that you can find hope and love everywhere. The song also points out the judgement of others trying to tell you how you should feel in these moments of pain and mentioning them is something we always do in every of our songs ‘cause we want to feel however we want. « Gray » is a song that synthesizes the songs that will come after. Those ones will deal with more specific subjects, that’s why we wanted to release Gray first, we like to think of it as a summary. Where did you find your inspiration for this single? Yannis (vocals) and I (Thibaut, guitar) recently lost two relatives. We first wanted to talk about the feeling of being alone and not knowing how to react and what to do when this kind of things happen. Then a lot of different ideas came to our mind and we ended up writing about several topics. What’s your usual writing process? Yannis is one of the most creative guy there is! He always writes melodies on his own and always has something to suggest to the band. Sometimes we like it, sometimes we don’t. And when we do, we meet to add more to the song. But most of the time it really depends on who gets the idea first. Nathan likes it technical and takes more time to write songs but it’s always very good and we barely modify anything. Actually that’s how « Gray » was written. As for the lyrics, we usually add them along the melody we first recorded. I’m the one who writes most of the lyrics and Yannis usually has the main subject on his mind. Most of the time, we start writing the melody and drums. But it sometimes starts with writing down catchy sentences or words going through my mind at any time and it often gives me the main theme of the song. Writing a song can take several days or even weeks just as it can only take one afternoon. Our writing process has no precise rule, it’s all about having an idea and sharing it with the rest of the band. How many new songs can we expect in the upcoming months? Do you guys plan on releasing an EP or an album? We can’t really say how much songs exactly are about to be released because we’re constantly writing new things. Just know that we’ve been recording 7 songs with our producer. Two of them are already available (Lead Me Nowhere, Gray), three others are mastered and two more are still in the writing process. It’s only a matter of how we want them to be released. We don’t think we’d like to release an EP or an album at the moment, even though we know that we have enough material to do it. The only problem is that we seriously doubt the efficiency of releasing an EP or album at our level. If people aren’t receptive, then it’s not worth it. As a young band we think releasing one single at a time remains the best option to create an audience that would eventually be waiting for an album in 2 or 3 years. The last words are for you. If you have a message to convey, here’s your chance! We’d like to thank our closest friends and family for their constant support. We hope the songs we’re about to drop will satisfy those who will listen to them and we can’t wait to play them live as well. Thanks for having us, see you soon!
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