Please tell us about the history of your band and its members.
Alright. My name is Niki and I'm the lead singer and guitar player of Eufobia. This is a metal band from the city of Sofia, which is the capital of Bulgaria. The story of our band is actually quite typical. I was playing in another band, but I didn't really like the style, so I decided to start my own band. I had known the bass player Steff for some time and I knew that he was the perfect candidate for this position. He had played together with the drummer Blago in another band. At that time Blago was looking for a new project, so we invited him to join us. We continued as a trio for some time after that, but our music was becoming more and more complicated and it was obvious that we needed a second guitar player. That's why we invited our friend Ivan to join the band and since then no band member has ever been replaced. Eufobia wasn't very active until 2008, but then we had the chance to go on tour with some truly professional bands, such as the Polish band "Carnal", the thrash metal legends "Onslaught" and the Greek band "Suicidal Angels". That experience changed everything. Before that we had played mainly for fun, but then we saw how a real band should look and act like and we decided to start doing everything professionally.

How would you describe your style? Which bands influenced your music? 
Officially we're a Death Metal band, even though the music, that we're currently playing, is much closer to Thrash Metal, mainly due to the influence of our other guitar player Ivan, who grew up listening to the good old Thrash Metal bands. I don't think that Eufobia has ever been a typical Death Metal band, though. We have never wanted to copy any particular band and we've never been afraid to experiment with different stile combinations. I'd rather not try to describe our music. One should hear it with one's own ears. It comes straight from the heart and it sounds rather vintage than modern, because we've been trying to keep the spirit of the nineties alive through our music. We're confident that that was the best period in the whole history of the world. I believe that our strength and creativity is due to the fact that everyone of us listens to diverse kinds of rock and metal music. I personally listen to rock, grunge, punk, black metal, death metal, hard core, grind core and basically to everything that has a distorted guitar in it. I could easily name hundreds of bands, that have influenced me, like Napalm Death, Morbid Angel, Motorhead, Gojira, Dark Tranquility, Rotting Christ, Vader, Immolation. Behemoth or even band like Korn or Tool for instance, but if I had to name just one band it would be Death. I believe that Chuck Shuldiner was one of the most talented musicians that had ever lived and he's a true role model for me. 

Why should a metalhead buy your demos/albums?
Because for us those are not just some records. We have put our souls in every note that we have ever recorded, so we would certainty appreciate it if people decided to give our music a chance. 

What have you released so far and how were your releases received by the public/media? 
We have released there albums so far. Our debut album was released in 2010 by the Romanian label Axa Valaha Productions. We hired one of the best Bulgarian sound engineers, Deso Velchev to produce the album. It was insane, because at that time we were financially supported by our parents and his services weren't very cheap, but we wanted to achieve the best result possible. The artwork was crated by Costin Chioreanu, who back then was still rather unknown, but later became one of the most famous Eastern European graphic designers. 
A year later, in 2011, we released our second album ''Cup Of Mud''. After the release of "Insemination", we received a lot of attention from both the public and the media, so encouraged by the positive feedback we decided to release a new album as soon as possible, working once again with the same people, with whom we had made the previous one. The only difference was that that time the album was released by the Bulgarian label Wizard, that had been the local distributor of the previous one and thanks to the excellent connections, that the owner of the label had, it was distributed worldwide by Twilight Vertrieb. 
In 2016 we released our third album, which we named simply Eufobia. It took us almost five years to complete. The reason for that was quite simple. While we were preparing our previous releases we had to make a lot of compromises, but thus the final result was not exactly what we wanted it to be. When we started recording this one however, we decided that that time there would be no compromises and that the album wouldn't be released until we were totally satisfied with the result. It was a long and painful process, but it was totally worth it and eventually we were very proud of the achievement. We wouldn't have succeeded, however, without the help of our friend Deso, who recorded the album, our friend Pepinio, who mixed it, our brilliant friend Val Volegna, who created the whole visual concept, the artwork and the videos, and of course Peter from our label Wizard, who released the album.  Most of the feedback has been quite positive so far. We have always been interested in people's honest opinion about our music. I always read carefully the reviews and listen to the comments, which actually helps me to became a better musician. 

Do you play live as well? How's your live activity so far?
Yes we do. We're one of the very few Bulgarian bands, that tour regularly across Europe, so we've got no reason to complain. We have shared the stage with great bands such as Arch Enemy, Dark Tranquility, Rotting Christ,Vader, Immolation, Onslaught, Malevolent Creation, Pyogenesis, Gorgoroth, Sinister, Broken Hope, Christ Agony, E-force, Agathocles, Negura Bunget, Suicidal Angels and many more. When we started the band we didn't even imagine that one day we would share the stage with some of our favorite bands, but we did. We have learned a lot from these great bands. We've got many friends from all over the world, who listen to our music and appreciate what we do. It wouldn't be easy for any underground band to achieve that, but we did. Although we have played in many European countries, we play mostly in Romania and Bulgaria, because that's where most of the people who know and like our band live.

What should labels/zines/promoters know about your band? Why should they be interested in it?
It has always been hard for an underground band to get notice. Probably it was easier before. I don't know and honestly I don't care. We don't want to be famous, otherwise we would have chosen another type of music to play. We just want to make good music and reach the people who would like to listen to it. I believe that there are a lot of them out there, but they still don't know that we exist. As underground musicians our main strategy is to have personal relations with our audience. Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't underestimate the role of the labels or the zines, but I honestly believe that the best way to promote an underground band is to go and play live. The people should be interested in our band, because our music is interesting and a bit unusual, because we make great live shows, because we've been trying to do everything professionally and we're no worse than any other band out there. 

What plans do you have for the near future as a band?
We have just released a brand new video of the song "Graveyard" and now we're promoting it. Next month we're going to Romania, where we're going to play in Cluj-Napoka on the 17th and in Bucharest on the 18th of November, as support to the Irish metallers Primordial. We cannot wait to go back there. We've got a lot of friends and supporters in the country and we're looking froward to seeing them again. We're a band that always looks into the future. I know it sounds like a cliche, but we feel more inspired than ever and we're constantly creating new songs. We've got enough material for a brand new album and we'd like to go back to the studio as soon as we can. We don't want to rush it, so therefore we won't start recording it until we're sure that every little note sounds right. By the way, we've been already playing some of the new songs live, so those who attended our recent shows are quite familiar with them. Judging by the reaction of the audience, they were very well accepted. We cannot wait to start recording them, but of course for now the promotion of the current album and the new video is still our main priority.  

Where can we listen to your band and where can we buy your stuff?
As far as I know our first album is already sold out, so it's practically nowhere to be found. You could order the second and the third one from the official website of our label www.wizard.bg. We'd be happy to see some of your readers in front of the stage, when we play live. Those, who are unable to come to our concerts, can always watch our videos on youTube. We've got a lot of videos. It didn't take us long to realize the fact, that a nice video can help a band to reach more easily its audiences. It's not a secret that nowadays a lot of people are listening to music or looking for new bands in platforms like youTube. That's why we've been investing a lot of effort and money in our videos and I believe that the result speaks for itself. If you don't believe me you can watch them anytime and see for yourselves. I would particularly recommend you to watch the video of the song "Hater"or the one of the song "Graveyard" and I'm confident that you would agree with me thereafter.

October 2017