Please tell us about the history of your band and its members.
Brief history of Deadscape coming right on! We are a melodic death metal band, based in Sofia, Bulgaria. Somewhere back in 2014 our lead guitarist Ivan Bratoev composed rough versions of some of the songs we play today. What initially was supposed to be the solo project Aesthetica Morti, grew into a band in late 2015 with the joining of the bassist/clean singer Alexander Trifonov. The two have spent quite the time trying to find like-minded people, meanwhile creating more and more material. Ivan Kolev, the drummer, joined in 2017 and in 2018, when the band was actually renamed to Deadscape, Mirela Kaneva took over the harsh vocal duties. The second guitarist’s spot remained quite unstable until 2019 when current member Ani Dimitrova joined. In fact, it was Ani’s first band, but the rest of us had previous experience in other Bulgarian underground thrash, death, melodeath, black, heavy metal and metalcore acts.
How would you describe your style? Which bands influenced your music?
Each one of us has their own separate influences but in general Deadscape was inspired by Scandinavian melodic death metal, both Swedish and Finnish, and bands such as Insomnium, In Flames, Dark Tranquillity, Before The Dawn, Wolfheart, Omnium Gatherum, Eternal Tears Of Sorrow, Wintersun… Just to name a few. Probably people can hear those influences in our work but we hope we have managed to craft our own unique sound and to compose music which is successfully balancing between being emotional, atmospheric, entertaining enough and hard-hitting at the same time!
What have you released so far and how were your releases received by the public/media?
On January 16th we have officially started the recording of our debut full-length album, called “Of The Deepest Shade”. It’s going to contain 12 tracks, but 4 of them we have already released in August 2020 as a DYI demo EP. Although it was just a demo, it really helped us reach to a broader audience and even find some fans along the way. Of course, we are still in the deep underground but we have received some positive reviews locally and internationally which is more that we had even hoped for. Overall, the reaction of both public and media was great and so is knowing that people actually enjoy what we do!
Do you play live as well? How's your live activity so far?
There’s no need to tell you that last year was a total disaster in regards of playing live. Our last show was back in January and before that we had regular live appearances but 2020 was… You know. Yeah, okay, the truth is we were not that affected by the pandemic – we only had to cancel a bunch of local concerts while other bands had to do this for entire tours across Europe and the world but still… Hopefully, everything will be back to normal at some point in the near future. We really miss live shows as a band and as fans!
Why should a metalhead buy your demos/albums?
Well, there is no such thing as “should”. We are just 5 people playing the music we love and being extremely invested and passionate about it. If not right away, at some point we will bear the fruits of our persistence because fans can tell if you are doing your best or not. And it doesn’t matter who you are – if our work speaks to you on some level, you are more than welcome to our family.
What plans do you have for the near future as a band?
As we said before, we have just started recording our debut album, so definitely this is what we’ll be busy with in the next… 3-4 months, maybe? No promises, as we don’t want to compromise on anything. And then… You know, it’s a pretty standard process – we hope we will be able to find a label willing to work with us, to release a couple of singles and videos, and then the album itself. In the meantime we’ll try our best to grow our audience and fanbase as much as possible, to increase our online presence as this is essential these days, and, of course, to improve ourselves as musicians.
Where can we listen to your band and where can we buy your stuff?
We are not on Spotify yet but you can find us on other traditional channels. Here are some useful links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deadscapeofficial
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm7vR_zCSANBH78bQf4F-fQ?
Bandcamp: https://deadscape.bandcamp.com
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/deadscape-official
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deadscape_official/
January 2021