Please tell us about the history of your band and its members.
Everything started back in 2016. I was coming out from a project that couldn’t happen in the way I wanted and I felt the need to keep making music so I decided to create a new one. The thing is that TRAGUL born few months later… on November to be precise, I had a bunch of musical ideas almost finished so I started to focus all my time and energy on them. The process was very natural, I mean, I tried to work on the ideas with no rush and once I had them ready, I started to hire some musicians to consolidate it. For the drums and bass it was kind of easy because I’ve been working with the Holzwarth brothers (Alex and Oliver) for about 8 years now, so we made a good relation all these years and they immediately accepted to work on this new project. Steve was the guy who I contacted after that, I wanted to have the rhythmic section ready to prepare some demos and start looking for a singer, probably sounds weird when you think a thrash metal guy to come and play in a female fronted melodic metal band but I always liked very much the aggressiveness and rhythmic lines from the thrash metal and as I was aware that Steve were available for sessions, I invited him and fortunately he accepted to join Tragul. After that, I started the research for a singer, I had some in mind but at the end I decided to invite Zuberoa because I always liked her work with DiM, also, I was looking for a singer that can easily sing with operatic voice or natural voice, I needed this kind of versatility because when I write music, I don’t want to feel “artistically tight“… Another plus is that she is a native Spanish speaker just like me, so we can work fluently.

How would you describe your style? Which bands influenced your music?
I think we can “label” Tragul to Symphonic Power Metal or Melodic Power metal, you know, it’s kind of hard to stablish a specific genre, but I feel comfortable with those I cited above J
The most influential artists to me are Tuomas Holopainen of Nightwish, Luca Turilli of Rhapsody and Timo Tolkki of Stratovarius, as a composer I was very influenced by these guys. Also I would like to mention two more bands, Dionysus and Sonata Arctica. The mix of all of them ended in Tragul’s music.

Why should a metalhead buy your demos/albums?
Tragul’s music is a spectre of many genres, so if you are into metal, you definitively have to listen to our music. You can find operatic vocals and natural singing, heavy riffs, progressive stuff, power metal elements like keyboard and guitar solos, and a little bit of symphonic metal arrangements too. Give it a shot to our music and I’m pretty sure, you’ll like it!

What have you released so far and how were your releases received by the public/media?
We have released 4 singles so far, yes, it’s weird when you put it like this but I was looking for a good way to make the band known before to think about an EP or LP so I decided to put the songs on Youtube first as individual singles with a strong visual support as the lyric videos are. I consider this is the best way to spread our voice as an independent band at the moment. I have to be honest here, I was kind of scared about to “jump” to this way of working, but I trusted in my intuition and for my surprise the public received the band and the songs very well, they constantly interact with us since the first release, like 6 months ago. The media played a significant role as well, they shared a lot our releases, some of them asked for interviews, well, everything is going great with the releases so far. I think this was a great half-year of Tragul.

Do you play live as well? How's your live activity so far?
At the moment we have not played live yet, until now I focused TRAGUL on the releases. But of course I have in mind to start playing live soon. It would be great to meet all the followers out there.

What should labels/zines/promoters know about your band? Why should they be interested in it?
Tragul features a great team of very talented musicians, I believe we have a unique sound and I think we are starting to have an audience, I mean, we have around 20k streaming on Spotify, our Youtube views are not bad for a band with 6 month of life… We have only released 4 individual songs, it’s crazy! We are not promoting an album, we haven’t played live yet! And the most important thing we are very cool guys! Haha :P

What plans do you have for the near future as a band?
Right after the release of our latest single “THE TREE OF LIFE”, we are starting to work on new stuff. The plan is to have an EP ready in early 2018 and then start looking to book some shows if possible but we’ll see how events will happen. We’ll have some changes in the line up too. But I can’t reveal anything about it yet, it’s a surprise! Stay tuned to our social media to see the updates

Where can we listen to your band and where can we buy your stuff?
Find our music on the major streaming platforms such as Spotify, Deezer, Google Music, iTunes. If you want to download a HQ mp3 of our releases visit: https://store.cdbaby.com/Artist/Tragul. You can find all our lyric videos on: www.youtube.com/tragulmusic, as well.

December 2017