Band Interview: Alan Grnja (Vocals) of Distant

Ahead of the release of their brand-new EP, Dawn Of Corruption, Games, Brrraaains & A Head-Banging Life had the pleasure of chatting with Alan Grnja (Vocals) of Distant. What follows is a transcript of some of the talking points from the interview. The full thing can be heard on YouTube, Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

You can read our review of the new EP here.

Hi Alan. Thanks for taking the time to speak with us. How are you today?

It’s been great so far, been working on some new stuff and cooking, always cooking with Distant.

Is that part and parcel of being stuck at home more?

I would say it’s more of like the motivation this next release is giving us. So, we are on the roll now.

How have you been coping throughout the difficult year that is 2020?

Well it’s kind of hard because I’m used to being out all the time and especially after how we kicked off last year with touring. We were looking forward to what was supposed to be all the touring possibilities, festivals and whatnot. But my opinion is it gave us more time to focus on us and development of the band. So everything bad is good for something, I guess. So we’ve been trying to get the best out of 2020. OK, let’s not cry about how all the tours are cancelled, let’s make the time worthwhile and make the best of it.

It’s no, no easy task for to stay positive, do you think you’ve managed too?

I think we managed it perfectly. We had more time to plan things out properly. I’m really keen on what the future will bring and to release all the stuff we have!

Are you just desperate to get the new EP out now?

Yeah, I’m really on needles now. I really want it to hit the world and really curious about how people will receive the release itself and if they are going to get the most out of it as it’s intended, because it’s a conceptual thing.

Absolutely. It’s one of the more fascinating things you can find out about Distant once you start down that path. Do you feel like that helps you stand out from the pack? Because let’s be honest, it’s more the sort of thing you might expect from, say, a power metal band or something like that.

It’s definitely not something that is common among the scene. But since we are all like into fantasy, anime, video games and all that stuff, we decided to do our own thing. Basically, we’re trying to stand out, to not just be the band that plays heavy music, that we really have a story to tell and to show people that. It’s fun.

I’s not so easy these days to just release a great album and then take off, you have to do that little bit more to stand out. I mean, especially nowadays, since nearly every other day, you have a new band popping up. You have so many releases and the attention span of the listeners are getting tighter. So, you need to be interesting for the listeners to keep listening to you and to interact with you.

And I love when people make theories about the story and stuff like that.

You also have a couple of guests on the EP. Jason Evans of Ingested and Mendel bij de Leij of ex-Aborted. How did those partnerships come about?

With Jason we basically clicked a lot on the tour we had together last year. Jason is a great, solid storyteller. So I was looking to get somebody on the record as a guest, not just to hype the release or get somebody to showcase their vocal range, but to actually tell our story from his point of view.

So it’s not like I just wrote his lyrics. I just told him; this is the lore. This is what it’s about. I want your perception of this character. He’s a master of his craft and he delivered and I was I was really glad that we went with Jason.

With Mandel, the rest of the band, us, me and the drummer are from Slovakia and the rest of the band is from the Netherlands. They’re friends with Mendel. And I’ve been thinking of like, yeah, you don’t hear much solos in deathcore and came to the idea of getting Mendel. I was really, really curious, like how it will sound and will be delivered was perfectly within the concept itself, like it fits so well and I can’t wait to release it because my mind was blown when we heard the solo first time. I was literally laughing at how good it was.

I was like, wow, just speechless.

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