Band Interview: Fires of Freya
Games, Brrraaains & A Head-Banging Life are pleased to bring you an interview with Cheryl Reynolds, lead vocalist and keyboards player for Fires of Freya. An emotive rock band from the North East of England!
1. How did you get started as a band?
Originally it was meant to be an all-female grunge band, but we had no luck finding a female bassist so that idea soon fizzled out, we’ve had a few member changes with Dan and myself being the original members of the band as it is today. Shaun came in May 2018 and James a year later. Join my band was used to find our members, great website for finding musicians, we didn’t know each other prior but came together due to a mutual love of music and song writing.
2. How would you describe your sound?
Eclectic Rock, we range from soft rock to blues rock to grunge and a whole host of sub genres in-between those! We like to keep it interesting sound wise and try not to tie ourselves to heavily to any genre/sub-genre. We make use of catchy riffs, big solo’s and keys and synth elements in placed to lift the music.
3. What bands/artists would you say have influenced your style of music?
Too many to mention them all, we all have different influences which helps us with our eclectic sound. I love a good powerful vocal and strong melody to my music so bands like Halestorm and Evanescence are definitely influences. I grew up listening to bands such as Bon Jovi, Journey, Fleetwood Mac and Roxette so these also have had an influence, to a certain extent, too. You can also here some HIM influences in our music, which was my favourite band when I was a teen and some earlier stuff has hints of Alkaline Trio, so yeah very mixed and that’s just my own influences! Shaun loves John Frusciante & The Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Foo Fighters and these influences can defiantly be heard in his playing style also!
4. Has the rise of YouTube & music streaming helped or hindered you as a band?
It helps in some respects; we can release music on our own and direct fans to it. We can try and get onto playlists which reach thousands of people, something that would be hard to do on our own, especially when just starting out but it can be difficult to get people to listen to your music and with streaming being so easy for people to use they don’t buy your singles or albums anymore, so trying to make money to make more music and your is very very challenging! There are pro’s and cons.
5. What do you enjoy doing when you’re not making music?
Shaun our guitarist and Dan our drummer is heavily into motor racing and do that together as well. I love anything creative; drawing, painting, graphic design, gardening or decorating the house etc. Like to play games on the PS4 or switch, binge watch Netflix, Amazon Prime and Now TV for the films and love the cinema so most of my interests are relatable.
6. What are your future plans musically? Tours?
We are currently in the process of making our debut album, we are 3 tracks in to date and plan to release this at the end of 2020 or beginning of 2021 all going well. We are still a small band and have played the North East of England a lot so our plans for this year is to branch out and increase our profile elsewhere. We plan to do mini tours where possible and play festivals where we are able.
