You’re probably thinking to yourself, “Brainfart. Who the fuck is The Great Discord?” Well, I was asking myself this very same question when I was approached by giving this band a listen. The band’s forthcoming debut album Duende is without a doubt one of the most unique listening experiences I’ve heard in a long time. On Duende, The Great Discord has found a way to combine all the elements of progressive metal, psychedelic occult rock, and subtle touches of industrial in there for good measure.
All in all, this was a fantastic, thought provoking album and I couldn’t’ wait to get to learn more about this mysterious band. I recently had the opportunity to talk with lead vocalist Fia Kempe and drummer Aksel Holmgren who are the nucleus of this band. They were both extremely cool people and very excited to discuss the visual and musical concept of the Great Discord and their overall excitement of sharing their music with the people. This was a really great interview and I hope you’ll enjoy getting to learn about The Great Discord.
Hey there Fia and Aksel. Thanks so much for taking the time out to talk today.
Fia: Hello!
Aksel: Hello, Don. Thank you for taking the time to do this.
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Wow, what a great sounding bunch of happy people over there!
Fia: [laughs] We are happy! Very excited!
Aksel: Very much so, Don!
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It’s press day! You two must be very busy today!
Aksel: Don, you’re the 2nd one actually and we have 7 more after this.
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That’s great. That means I get you guys before you get tired of being asked questions!
Fia: [laughs] Exactly.
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I have to tell you, I really didn’t know what to expect but I absolutely loved The Great Discord album. The Great Discord is a new band in the eyes of my readers so what can you tell us about you? What is the Great Discord?
Aksel: Well, we’re a band [laughs].
Fia: The Great Discord is a band that just really enjoys, loves, and breathes music. Me and Aksel grew up in musical families and music has always been the greatest passion of our lives. We have always been playing in different bands but we never really took the time to just sit our asses down and write something together even though we’ve talked about it for 10 years. When we finally sat down to write, it just came to us. The first song was “Deus ex Homine” we wrote in just a couple of hours and the next 3 or 4 songs that we wrote together just came to us in a few days. I think it’s because we had so much inside of us that we just wanted to write. We had so much music and emotion inside of us that we never really had the time to write or the chance to play in other bands.
Aksel: Yeah, we’ve always been involved in other bands that just stood in the way of this and when we finally sat down to do this it was like opening the floodgates really. It just sort of happened and it was really interesting. It just happened without any preconceived notions of what we were going to write or anything. We just wanted to try and make music together for the fun of it. We never anticipated it to work so well in this context. When we had those first 3 or 4 songs, we just knew we had to make this into a band. We had to start finding members and finding a way to present this to people. Everything just clicked in those departments as well and we found people that shared this particular interest in this music with us quite quickly. We wrote the remaining of the album together as a band.
Fia: We felt that early in the process that we needed express this in some other way that to just go on stage and play this music. We wanted it to be a bigger concept, something with bigger visuals as well so that’s the theme and the concept of me looking like I do on stage and the band acting like we do on stage.
Aksel, you said you were both in different bands that kept you from doing this thing that you really wanted to.
Aksel: One of the main factors for me was a frustration that makes you feel like if you have ideas or thoughts in other bands you’re in, it always feels great initially because you have this idea and where you want it to go but when you present it to people who might not share the same goals or ideas, it just kind of ruins it and falls to pieces. With this band, that has never happened and it’s probably the first time I ever experienced that. The relief of finally working with someone that finally understands what you want was immensely gratifying.
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Fia, you used the word “concept” when discussing The Great Discord. Just what is the concept behind the band that you can tell me about?
Fia: I think that we have some problems explaining it [laughs].
Aksel: The concept is something that is not something that is easily described because sometimes things get lost in translation but we’ll do our best [laughs].
Fia: When I write and when I sing I feel like I’m in a different world. We are trying to bring something to our music that has this deep, dark, emotion to it that you will hopefully get feelings while listening to it. The music came first and we would listen to the music without any vocals to it, trying to feel what the music would tell us then we’d write lyrics after that. Since i’m also a social psychiatrist, I’ve always been interested in people and had a lot to do with people who are in pain and psychiatric conditions. I’ve been around all these extremes of people and for me this is an interesting subject and something everyone can relate to. Maybe not the extreme but always the other emotional states such as sorrow, power, or happiness or whatever. We just wanted to express these kinds of emotions and conditions through the music which brought out the visual concept. We wanted to represent these feelings. We wanted my stage personal to kind of represent these kind of emotions that people go through in daily life. These conditions exist and I think that people are interested and intrigued by these kinds of emotional states or these psychiatric conditions.
Akesel: The concept of Duende (the album title) is a word originated from flamenco originally. It’s basically a word for music or art where the specific piece of art gives you a very specific feeling or heightened sense of emotion.
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The band as a whole sounds extremely tight and it sounds like you’ve been together for a long time. How long has this band actually been together?
Fia: That’s a great compliment. Thank you.
Aksel: There are some different aspects to this. The band itself was formed in 2013 so it was basically 2 years ago. Me and Andre (guitarist) played in another band together for 7 years so we know each other very well musically. We know how to react to each other when playing together so that really adds a lot to the aspect of us sounding so tight on the record. Then we have Gustavo on 2nd guitar and Rasmus on bass and they are both very talented musicians and they adapted to everyone else very quickly. We also rehearsed a lot as well so that might help [laughs].
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The Great Discord, as a band, really combines two of my favorite things and that’s the kind of progressive sound of a band like Epica but with some cool occult rock/psychedelic undertones in there as well. Is it safe to that this is where your influences are coming from?
Aksel: Well, progressive is a word that is like our leading star in the sense of the word. It’s really difficult to pinpoint because we listen to so much different stuff. We listen to a lot of classical music, a lot of jazz, and a lot of pop music. We also listen to a lot of experimental music so prog has always been the focal point of our musical lives.
Fia: I grew up in a house listening to Genesis, Gentle Giant, King Crimson, and Jethro Tull. I grew up listening to that old school prog rock all my life. I started to listen to metal later in life so I feel like I just pulled out the cherries from all this amazing music and all these different bands. It’s never been us to sound like something else. We’re trying to create our own thing but you still can’t avoid being influenced by your favorite types of music like progressive, experimental, and metal.
What do you hope that listeners will take away from listening to the album?
Aksel: We really hope that people are able to connect to what we’re trying to convey both musically and thematically. If we make just one person think a little bit more about life in general, or death in general, than I’m a happy camper. I guess the other part is if someone out there senses that we’re onto something unique, that is also a goal for us.
Fia: I really hope that people will just give it a chance. This isn’t really a record that you can just put on and have in the background and instantly like it. This is more of a record that you really have to listen to and maybe a couple of times to really hear what we’re aiming for. I really hope that people give it a chance and hopefully, like when I was growing up, someone will be affected by this music and use it in their life for when things are just shitty, emotional, or even really well.
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Are there any plans to tour extensively in support of Duente?
Fia: Yes. We have plans to tour the shit out of this album [laughs]. Nothing is settled yet but we have some plans to tour England and Europe in the late summer/early fall with a band called Dead Soul. They’re a great kind of industrial, electronic blues rock band. Amazing singer.
Aksel: We’re looking for tours in any capacity at this point. We have some things that are hopefully going to come through and eventually we’ll have our aim set on the states. Hopefully, sometime next year.
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Fia, Aksel, thanks so much and it was great getting to know you and all about The Great Discord. Hurry to Atlanta and I’ll bring beer!
Fia: [laughs]
Aksel: Oh that would be great! [laughs]
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Best of luck with the album’s release and I’ll be keeping an eye out for you guys.
Fia: Thank you so much, Don.
Aksel: Thanks, Don. It was great talking to you.
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