Band Interview: Slava of Descenery

Games, Brrraaains & A Head-Banging Life are proud to bring you an interview with Slava of melodic metal band, Descenery. You can check out our review of their excellent latest album, Stillborn Monolith right here.

1. How did you get started as a band?

For me it was the natural way of growing as a person. When I felt a need to find something to do seriously, music was on the surface. I was like: “oh, if I enjoy listening to the music I must try to make it”. And when I had some songs written I had a strong wish to record it. I found the musicians from different countries (thanks, useful side of internet), asked them to help me and that’s exactly how Descenery was born! The second life of Descenery started when Leon joined me, he helped me a lot with the project.

2. How would you describe your sound?

It’s really difficult for me to describe the music I write. The album ‘Stillborn Monolith’ sounds like melodic death metal meets heavy metal. The unity of art rock and ambience gives some good advice how to bite better. I really don’t know. I need something blurry to describe it. What about Melodic Extreme Heavy Metal?

3. What bands/artists would you say have influenced your style of music?

I think music in general. The range of the genres I listen to is very wide. It varies from synthpop and neo-prog to black metal. Some elements of the different genres stay in my mind and then such a mix of genres find the output in my music. Uncontrollable process, so, I don’t even know what certain influences me at this moment.

However, the music I’ve already written for ‘Stillborn Monolith’ is strongly influenced by Dan Swano. When I just started writing the stuff for the album, I listened to Nightingale, Unicorn, Edge of Sanity and some lesser known projects of Dan a lot. John Wetton, Devin Townsend, Arjen Lucassen and tons of heavy metal from the 80-90s also have influenced my music.

The same thing with some musicians I’ve been working with. Especially Joni Teppo, Leon Relentless, Jurre Timmer and Sergei Atroshchenko. Very talented and inspiring guys.

4. Has the rise of YouTube & music streaming helped or hindered you as a band?

As we just started, any way of spreading our music is good. I don’t want to be a fanatic who wants to gather all the people uploading and downloading our music for free in slaughterhouse to show them what punishment is all about. Hey, if you want to help us spread a word, go ahead and do it, I appreciate it. The only rule – don’t make money on our shit, haha!

5. What do you enjoy doing when you’re not making music?

I enjoy doing nothing when I’m tired of music. When you’re doing all the stuff related to music for too long it drains you. I prefer to take a break when these moments hit to get the energy back to work fruitfully again. I don’t mean total inaction, of course. Besides music I like reading books, learning something, hanging out with the friends. Just different kinds of «blah-blah-blah».

6. What are your future plans musically? Tours?

Well, firstly, I should say that Descenery is not the only band I’m involved in. There are two more.
The first one is The World Within I’m running together with Joni Teppo from Finland, Igor Plotnikov from Russia and Kevin Tutaj from USA. We play some kind of sympho melodic death metal and the full-length album is on its way to be done. A couple of singles are already released.

If you like Wintersun, you should give them a chance.

The second band is Erase the Edge – the main band of my Descenery bandmate Leon. I’m involved in the band as a modest bassist. But I enjoy playing there, because I like the music Leon writes and it’s the only band I’m in where all the musicians live in Vladivostok. We can rehearse, play gigs, just hang out together and it’s all really cool and funny! And yes, we’re also working on the full-length album right now. I hope, it will be released this year.

As for Descenery, my plan is to complete the second album in a couple of years. I’ve got about 6 new songs written and in my opinion they sound much better than the Stillborn Monolith stuff. Stylistically, it’s going to be heavier than the debut album. As for the gigs, unfortunately, our lineup is currently incomplete to play live, now it’s only me and Leon, but I’m going to find the session musicians in Vladivostok to do some shows in the future. I hope, everything is going to be well with that.

We’d like to thank Slava for taking the time to spea wth us. Head over to Bandcamp to pick up the Descenery’s Stillborn Monolith where you can also give it a listen as well as on SoundCloud. Make sure you pop over to Descenery’s Facebook Page to keep up to date with their goings on.