Pic courtesy of: The Grief "The Grief is what we worship and at the same time what frightens us. We respect it and worship it, but we are afraid of it"

CR: Lets Star with a Basic question… why the name The Grief, it sure goes hand in hand with the genre you guys are playing but is there anything else begin that name?
Sohamel: The Grief is the concept of the band; it’s our source of inspiration and what we sing to. The Grief is what we worship and at the same time what frightens us. We respect it and worship it, but we are afraid of it. It’s big and it’s inside every living creature, it feeds on us while we are alive it eats us from within.
We live the pain every day, and even when not everything is painful in live, the great majority of times it is. That’s why we use the gift that has been given to us, to try and interpret with the heart all that pain so that we can transmit our message to the listeners and try to get them to feel the pain inside them.
The Grief is the hard road that we must travel in order to wake up from the deceiving addiction to matter.

CR: If I understood correctly The Grief started back in 2005, can you perhaps explain a little about the beginning of the band because I don’t have a clear picture of what happened with a previous singer you guys had?
Sohamel: Well the last evolution of the band was in 2005, when our then singer decided to quit Kybalion that was our name when he was on the band. Before Q-sao left we had already started to experiment with painful rhythms, even thou those previous projects didn’t involve anything with the idea that we have now for The Grief, as a matter of fact we use to approach our music in a more epic way, placing sound before philosophy or the message we wanted to transmit.
The Grief is the sum of many years of work and development, since 1994 approximately and it has always been approached by us under the same style but not the same concept.

CR: On your myspace web page there is a list of bands that have influenced the band, there are a couple of names there that really caught me eye, like Michael Jackson, Bjork and Radiohead, can you perhaps explain a little more exactly how this bands influenced a metal band?
Sohamel: Music is wonderful, it’s not necessary to lock yourself in just one genre in order to create dark and sad riffs. We appreciate good music. When the music is good, it can take you through different paths and states of mind that will help you discover those represent emotions inside you; it may help you find that grief inside you, even thou you may not be aware of it’s existence. Good musical arrangements are able to makes us feel the sadness and crudeness of the human being.
Radiohead is a band with a very melancholic sound, they adjust to part of the concept that we handle with The Grief, with less aggressiveness off course. Jackson’s music show us just how versatile this art form can be; just knowing that his “beats” are played by musicians is a great victory for human kind over machines, because machines cannot feel and bring those emotions to music, that is a privilege only man holds. Bjork simply transports us.
Music is a tool that makes us more vulnerable to The Grief.

CR: The band definitely plays a sort of mix between doom/black metal with symphonic touches but, how would you explain your band, your music to someone that doesn’t have a change to actually listen to it?
Sohamel: The purest manifestation of the grief is when a love one dies; what we try to accomplish is to make the listener experience that pain.
We have felt it, but instead of let it go, we manage to channel it through our instruments and pour that grief into the amplifiers; we have become strong enough to face it and mix it with melancholic aggressiveness, hope and despair.

CR: The label placed by many doom/black/symphonic metal, do you think that this label will eventually become to simplistic to explain the music of The Grief?
Sohamel: Our music cannot be labeled that easy, we have too many influences for someone to actually do that; but in the other hand is the specialized media that is responsible to place a description of our music.
We just use rhythms that help us express what we feel and which we feel comfortable with. Certainly The Grief doesn’t try to do music based on one genre, the idea is to transcend and accomplish that sound fruit of the pain.

CR: Listening to this Demo a lot of feelings come to mind, a lot of very personal feelings start to arise from listening to it, rage, despair, and maybe reflexion; exactly what feelings would you say gave birth to a band like The Grief?
Sohamel: Sadness, loneliness, anxiety. Pain is the tool that will set humans free.

CR: The symphonic elements of The Grief are very well placed and performed in the second track of the album; in your opinion which song has the most black in it, which the most doom and so forth?
Sohamel: “First Stumble” has more black elements than the other two tracks. “The Realm of The Grief” has the most doom on the demo. While “Regret” will be a good balance of the elements you mention in your question.

	Pic courtesy of: The Grief
	"We just use rhythms that help us express what we feel and which we feel comfortable with. Certainly The Grief doesn’t try to do music based on one genre, the idea is to transcend and accomplish that sound fruit of the pain."

CR: The realm of The Grief has received some pretty good reviews, in fact Chronicles of Chaos gave it a pretty good review, I mention this magazine because they tend to be very hard critics. How do positive reviews have affected the “fan base” of The Grief in Ecuador? In a more personal way, what does it mean to you that someone that doesn’t know you have a very positive opinion about your work?
Sohamel: A lot of people around us like what we do, they sort of identify themselves with our music; sadly the Ecuadorian public is not aware of what happens with their bands outside their borders, and that’s something we are trying to change.
It’s extremely gratifying knowing that you can reach people with your music, and that they really enjoy it; it’s a very inexplicable feeling, its helps you to keep working hard.
Every opinion deserves a certain level of respect, been this negative or positive, and it’s really and honor that our work has earned some good reviews; its also important to remember that some people might not like the album because that helps you to grow as an artist.
As a matter of fact I think the bad reviews are the ones that help you the most since they make you work harder to improve in every aspect.

CR: Have you guys had the opportunity to play outside Ecuador yet?
Sohamel: Right now we are trying to tour our country as much as we can, but we are planning and international tour for next year. Any offers to play outside Ecuador is welcome since is our mission to spread this message of pain around the world.

CR: How important is for The Grief the symphonic aspect of its creations? How do you relate the crudeness of black metal with the depth and melancholy provided by the doom side of the band?
Sohamel: It’s very important but we don’t depend on it really, it just allows us to interpret our feelings better. The symphonic side helps us create atmospheres that balance and complete our music.
There are a lot of ways to express pain, and one of them is rage and aggressiveness, all of this mixed with melancholy and other adverse feelings help create the music of The Grief. It helps us penetrate the mind and hit the inner self. The music created by The Grief is in other words, crude pain and melancholy without shedding one single tear.

CR: The vocal work on The Grief sounds very familiar to what Dani Filth does in Cradle of Filth; how do you think a band is perceived by the audience when this band has an element that resembles another, bigger, internationally well known band?
Sohamel: It definitely calls a little attention to The Grief that we might sound like another band, but that has never really been our goal.
Since the beginning we had to face comparisons to bands with a big trajectory and with a well develop production, it is very flattering that only with our first production people are already comparing us to big bands, but it is our goal to create a unique sound for The Grief.

“I know that the guttural tone of my voice is very similar to Dani, but I never really tried to copy him, I think my style is borne thanks to influences such as Grindcore, death and gore metal. I think that when someone hears us, some memories come to mind and they really like that, but they are only influences.”

Galeas

CR: Have you guys received some proposals from any record label or are you still on the hunt?
Sohamel: No serious offers yet, by the time been we are still a self produced band which really consumes a lot of the time that we would love to spend on playing and writing.

CR: I really liked the album art work, who did it and what’s the main idea with it?
Sohamel: The cover was created by Li Vincent “Fallnangeltears” of Springville, USA and the original art work is title “Worthless”. It really fits our music and it manages to express with one image what our music is all about.

CR: Doom metal even though it have had many years of exposure, it is quite rare to find many Latin bands playing it (at least over here in Central America there aren’t many) taking this into account, how have you seen the reaction of the general public towards the style that The Grief plays?
Sohamel: The general reaction has been good really, but yes like you said it, the movement is still very small, and it is harder to get the same exposure as bands that play more “recognizable” styles, nonetheless we do come from a culture that sings to its suffering and we have been doing that for a long time now.

	Pic courtesy of: The Grief
	"Its strength lies on the purity of the sound, the strength and desire of all those people that write metal just because they love to do so"

CR: What’s in the future for The Grief? When can we expect a full length?
Sohamel: Yes our next step is the full length for “The Realm of the Grief”, at the date is close to the final days of the third month of next year, the production is pretty much done, we are just finishing some loose ends.

CR: What do you think is one or the one biggest strength of the Latin metal scene and what’s its weakest point?
Sohamel: Its strength lies on the purity of the sound, the strength and desire of all those people that write metal just because they love to do so.
Every country has its unique evolution, but I believe we all feed from the melancholy that exists within our traditional music, making our pain different from what the Europeans might feel. For example we don’t have the money or the media to create high quality products and distribute them around the world, and that’s pretty much because we have other more important problems to deal with, like poverty, education and health.

CR: How has the church behave with The Grief and the metal movement in Ecuador in general?
Sohamel: The Grief stays totally away from politics or religion; we have had a couple of unpleasant “events” with the later one, so we choose not to get involve really.
I think our movement has always been under attack, accusing us of immoral and harmful to our mind, and that’s why there are some ridiculous stereotypes out there; none the less the level of tolerance has increased and we have manage to grab a couple of significant media outlets, that help spread this alternative art form.

CR: Like many other Latin metal musicians you guys probable have “days job” to maintain your art (I really hope this could change some day!!!); what do you guys do?
Sohamel: We really don’t like talking about this Topic too much, but we all participate in other music projects in our country, our passion is the music. What I can tell you is that we do have to suffer like any other human to get to know what grief really is.
We also hope this situation changes some time soon.

CR: I’m sorry to say that I have no idea how the Ecuadorian metal scene is like, I think that perhaps The Grief is the first band I’ve heard from your country, would you mind describing shortly what the scene in your country is like?
Sohamel: It’s relatively small, but day by day it grows a little bit stronger, it has been developing for about 20 years now, but very slowing. Luckily tendencies like hardcore and death metal have gave us very gratifying results, and the media is now a bit more open minded to talk about this art form, nonetheless there are still some that feel a little “repulsion” for our culture.

CR: In your opinion what has been the Ecuadorian metal band that has inspired and help the scene grow over the years?
Sohamel: There are a couple, but the ones I can remember are Blaze, Ente, Jaime Guevara, Basca, Muskaria among others

CR: What other bands from your country apart from The Grief would you recommend?
Sohamel: Right now we have a big uprising of new bands, we incluye ourselfs in this group. I really don’t want to talk too much about it so I’ll mention a couple without forgetting others that are equally important. Well we can talk about. Viuda Negra, Total Death, Sal y Mileto, Ente, Mortum, Murder, Descomunal, Mad Brain, Romasanta, DST, Martillo like I said among others.

CR: Well man thank you very much for this opportunity, if you have anything else to add please do… and yes congratulations on a great album!
Sohamel: Well thanks to all the people that actually enjoyed our music. The Grief is for you and we hope that you just like us, can feel it and make it yours. Embrace the pain because it will make you free, never stop suffering. We really hope to be one day over there showing what we do to you guys.

Sohamel: Give the Grief the pleasure of being inside of each one of your fucking souls!!!