This time on The NAS 10 Questions, we get to know Underealm,a four piece metal band based in Porto, Portugal consisting of GonΓ§alo Figueiredo – vocals, Norberto Ribeiro – guitars, Nuno Silva – bass, and Bruno Cunha – drums. Influences include Megadeth, Evergrey, Slayer, Jinjer, Architects, and Children of Bodom to name a few.
The track “In Me” is featured on NAS Playlists.
Link To New Artist Spotlight Playlists:
https://www.newartistspotlight.org/playlists
1. Tell us a little about where you are from and what you are currently doing.
We are a band from Porto, Portugal, and although not all the members are from that city, we live in nearby cities and have a rehersal room in Porto, so we gather there to play and compose our music.
At the moment we are rehersing with a new member, Miguel de Oliveira, a needed second guitar player, so we had to go back to the learning process of the songs, taking some time to play them and teaching Miguel all the parts and nuances so we can be ready to play live when the time comes.
The next step will be the composition, where we will focus our attention on making more songs. It would be great if we could have another EP out this year and that’s something we will try our best to do.
2. What inspired you to start playing and making music?
We all like to hear music and that’s part of our lives, so playing and then making new songs came very naturally.
Seeing, hearing other bands playing music and perform in a way that we like made us all pick up an instrument and try to play their songs at first and then transition to create some riffs of our own that could be used to start making original songs.
From that to start a band was the next step to all. We all like the heavy riffs, the melodic choruses, lead guitar parts and vocal transitions and it all kept us inspired all the way from our beginning until now .
π―. Who are your biggest musical influences? How would you describe your style or genre?
We all have different likings but our influences are mainly Megadeth, Evergrey, Slayer, Jinjer, Architects, Children of Bodom, etc.
As for our genre, we are a metal band, period, but it’s kind of hard to place us on a specific style of metal, because we try to mix our influences together and they happen to be from many different styles, so there much going on.
It’s funny because we recently had a portuguese webzine reviewing our EP and they too mentioned the difficulty in placing us in a specific metal style.
Maybe in the end we have something like metalcore with heavy and thrash metal all glued together and we don’t know how to call it, but we don’t care too much. Metal is enough.
4. What are your goals in the music industry or as an artist?
Well, right now being heard is the main goal we have.
It’s kind of hard to have many people hearing our music, and we know metal is not the most popular genre, so it’s even harder, but nevertheless it’s the type of music that we like to do and it would be great if we could reach even more listeners from all around the world who can relate to the music we play, so that’s the main picture for us.
5. Tell us about your creative process when you make new music.
It all begins with some kind of a guitar riff that someone brings to our rehersal room, sometimes a bass riff, then we go from there by adding the drumming and the vocal parts to see how to enhance that riff.
We don’t have a fixed method to make music at all but we all take part in the creative process by trying to add, change or remove some parts, depending of what we like personally and what it makes us feel.
What we do is we give each other inputs of the things we like and don’t like about any given instrument or vocal part and for example we can have our drummer suggesting a different guitar solo part, or the bass player asking for a different drum beat or the vocalist adding a guitar or bass part, anything that we think that make sense to all.
6. What is your all-time favorite song by another artist and why?
Nobody has a specific all time favorite song, we like many songs from many bands but we can’t name one as being the best of the best.
7. What is the best advice you have either given or received in terms of music?
The best advice we were given was from a known portuguese guitar teacher and metal player. A really cool guy.
He told us that music has to be made by heart and we need to make people feel our songs, express ourselves through music in a way that others can relate but also think about and understand what our audience wants, so we don’t end making music and playing only for ourselves.
8. Proudest accomplishment?
We are always proud of sharing our music to the world and this EP was even better for us because it’s a 5 track album instead of only a single as we did in the past.
So our proudest moment was the release of our EP “Second”, especially because we took a bold step in the making of it, as we didn’t want to polish it too much so it feels processed, instead we wanted it to keep it as natural as possible. Not only that but releasing the power ballad “In Me” in it was also kind of risky as it contrasts with the other heavier songs and we didn’t know how people who like metal would react to it.
The feedback was good though and we had some nice reviews out of it.
Still we don’t know if anyone understood that the ballad is kind of a second part of the song “Skeleton”. It picks up where Skeleton ended and there’s a story to it. Even the agressiveness of that first song linked with the calm of the ballad was though of.
Of course every song can be heard on it’s own and still we are proud of all of them individually.
9. Just for fun! What’s been your most embarrassing moment so far?
Underealm was formed by our drummer and our bassist through the ending of a mutual band that they had, so it’s almost a phase two of that band. One of the songs of our new EP even began to be made in that period, so two of the things we always recall as embarrassing but funny moments were from that time. At first we had a three band gig where we were the first ones to perform and when we were rehersing for that, our guitar player suggested that we began the concert with an instrumental intro, so he took some song and put it on a pendrive to give to the sound man at the concert and ask him to play that when we were entering the stage.
He did that but our guitarrist forgot that the song was 7 minute long and seemed to be playing forever, so we were at the stage looking at everybody watching us just standing there while some neverending instrumental music was playing. It took our guitar player 4 or 5 minutes to shout at the sound guy to end the song ASAP so we could start playing. Needless to say that everybody in the audience was like “what is happening? When will they begin to play?”
The second thing we recall was also at that time when we sent a demo CD to a concert bar and they booked us to play there.
The bar had many bands that played there before, pop rock bands, rock and roll, acoustic but never a metal one, so the audience expected something else. It was also a place where people were seated to attend the show.
We still remember that some people literally jump scared of the chair at our first chord and when the vocalist started the scream parts, that’s when we lose the audience for good and the seats started to become empty.
π0. Tell us about your lowest and highest points in music so far.
Our lowest point was the lack of time for the band that some members had previously, mainly because of personal things happening at the same time, which almost led to the end of Underealm.
We put the band on hold for a long period of time and then got back together when everyone was ready for it.
Our highest point was when we did an interview for a magazine and they wanted to put a compilation CD with songs from featured bands and they asked us if they could add our track to the compilation.
We said yes and the magazine came out with an interview with us, a review from one of our songs and another song in the compilation CD.
Stream “In Me” now
https://open.spotify.com/intl-pt/track/5XlMrO19JLGZHLUnLJKVvp?si=00deed3fa8b04393
and follow their socials
www.facebook.com/underealmband
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