Please tell us a few words about the new release, about the music on it as a whole or a few words on each track in part. How are you happy with the final release?
I couldn’t be happier with the release! I know bands say that all the time, and we’re no different, but I really feel this is our strongest work to date. Everyone in the band feels that way, we’re very proud of the outcome because we did everything we wanted, we didn’t hold back at all. We mixed everything we like: heavy riffs, energy, intensity, beautiful arrangements, balancing anger with musicality, switching from catchy melodies to screams… we didn’t use growls, but there is a lot of anger in the music. We’re not an extreme metal band, but we do like the energy of extreme metal, so we did our best to capture the best of all the music we enjoy listening to, and play it in a way we find fun. 

How would you describe/label the music on it? Does it sounds like anything we might have heard before?
I suppose so, as I wouldn’t dare say we are reinventing the wheel in any way, however I do believe we have something unique going on. That’s because we like lots of different stuff and we’re definitely the type of band that will NEVER break up or fire a band member because he or she has different tastes or a different vision in music. We embrace that. Our drummer enjoys Slayer and I enjoy Skid Row while our guitarist enjoys Pantera and our bassist used to be in Hammerfall a few years ago, so you can see how we are used to listening to completely different things. So you’ll hear a little bit of all of that in our music, but when we start writing music together, it turns into something else because we have to find a way to please everybody and to come up with an album that the four of us enjoy. So you’ll hear it all: you’ll hear a little bit of thrash metal and power metal, you’ll hear some hard rock and 80’s pop music, and then you’ll hear modern metal, but in the end all it sounds like is Metal and nothing else. We’re not reinventing the wheel, like I said, nor did we create a new subgenre in Metal, but I do feel that now, with our new album Shades of Humanity, you can hear the band’s identity.

Where was it recorded and how much time did it take you to record it? Any interesting stories from the recording/producing the material?
Shades of Humanity was recorded in Gothenburg, Sweden, and it was produced by Fredrik Nordström and Henrik Udd, they both worked with bands such as Arch Enemy, Architects, Evergrey, Dream Evil and others. It’s the second time we work with them. The recordings were very quick, it took us only 20 days to record the whole album, but we spent a long time in pre-production working with Fredrik from a distance. We are from Brazil, except for our bass player Magnus, who is Swedish… so we’re not used to the Swedish summer and their long, long days! So we all suffered from insomnia while we were recording. Maybe that’s why we recorded so fast. We couldn’t sleep anyway (laughs). 

What can you tell us about the cover artwork? Is there a link between the artwork and the lyrics? What are the topics of your lyrics?
There’s definitely a link between the album cover and the lyrics. The album title is “Shades of Humanity”, and the idea behind it is that there are lots of shades of grey in human personality. We have an incredible ability to destroy the only home we have, but at the same time we are also capable of noble and selfless acts. We are contradictory by nature. We are good and evil at the same time. There’s no such thing as purity in mankind and the cover reflects that. It’s four unfinished, flawed paintings, making it clear that we are all unfinished and imperfect inside. And we used our own faces on it to also make it clear that we include ourselves in all of that. Mankind is not perfect, but we’re not pointing fingers. The imperfection starts with ourselves and the lyrics are all about subjects related to that… depression, the issue of abortion, hope, the Mariana dam disaster in Brazil, which was basically caused by greed and lust for power… it's all about the good and bad in our society.

What do you expect to gain through this release? What are the band's aims at the moment?
All we want is to play live as much as we did with our previous album, Inner Monster Out. We played about 60 shows on the last tour, so hopefully we’ll be able to play live just as much with the release of Shades of Humanity. 

Is there a special format the material is released in? Or is it released in multiple formats? How many copies were pressed?
The album was released worldwide in CD and digitally. I don’t know how many copies were pressed as that is up to the labels. The album was released in late July in the US and Europe by EMP Label Group, owned by Megadeth bassist David Ellefson, in Asia by Spiritual Beast, and it’s going to be released in Brazil in early September by Furia Music Records.

Where and how will you promote this new release?
Probably on tour. A band belongs on the road! We also have a brand new music video out now, for the song called “Alive”. It’s available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF9Tv5USAYg

Where can we order it from?
Shades of Humanity is available at several stores, such as Amazon, EMP-online.com, the Nuclear Blast web shop, HMV, Best Buy, and it’s also available at Spotify.

August 2017