SOURCE – What financial impact has COVID-19 had on you and your band? Have you had to cancel or postpone any tours or festival appearances or postpone an album release because of COVID-19 and how will that affect you in the long term?
Daniel Insley (Bass) – COVID-19 hit us at the start of a nationwide tour supporting Blindspott. We were just building up to the release of our debut album SYNÆSTHESIA that was released May 1st. The first three shows we were doing better than expected selling merch and building hype for our release and own shows… and then level 4, no more shows. It hit us hard! That income from shows and merch was air marked to help promote our album and make videos.
That was March now Aug 28th we can start again. So Five months of lost income, we can’t get that back.
I guess focus gets shifted to online sales & performance etc, which is working really well for us.
Nothing beats being at a live venue watching and feeling the real thing though. Now we are grateful we live in NZ and can get back out and tour to support our album.
We also lost the opening slot for Deftones.
SOURCE – Are you perhaps preparing some new video for the promotion of
Synaesthesia, can you tell us something about it?
Trajan Schwencke (Guitar/Vocals) – Visual aesthetic is very important to this band, in the works is a video that showcases who we are as independent musicians. There is no shortage of excellent ideas within the ranks, there are plans to make more videos for as much as we can, hopefully for everything. It’s all a matter of seeing how we can go about creating everything in-house. With the release of SYNÆSTHESIA we included visuals showing the colours experienced by guitarist Steve who actually is a synaesthete, it completes the experience and means he is able to present the music more than just sonically. As artists we are always trying to find ways to make people feel something more.
Corey Friedlander (Drums) – Since we got lucky here in NZ we are able to live kind of normal again.
Lockdown was in effect just when City of Souls released our album ‘Synaesthesia’. We had to reschedule the tour that we had started and our gig with Deftones was cancelled. I had to cancel all my drum students coming in for lessons and went to online teaching.
But now that lockdown has ended, I’ve been going out every weekend to gigs and events (I love Electronica dance parties) and trying to finish my second EDM album, titled Izo. The band is now back in the room rehearsing again and this tour should be really fun and good for our fans who haven’t heard the album live yet. The response has been amazing and people are loving the limited edition Vinyls. I’m very happy to have such great support from fans, local and around the world.
SOURCE – If a metal fan comes to visit Auckland, what would they see and do?
Marcus Powell (Guitar) – You would need to connect through the live scene and facebook groups to find out where the metal shows are. The scene is very underground here and basically we create our own. Mainstream media is very much pop and hip hop. But nothing can replace a good metal show and the energy and community it provides.
SOURCE – Anything else you’d like to mention or promote?
Marcus Powell (Guitar) – The only thing we would like to mention is our gratitude. For everyone who has supported us from countries like Brazil we want to say thank you. It is an honour to have music played and enjoyed. We hope that one day we can perform in Brazil. Hopefully if we can tour locally we will stream that to you. Tuku aroha (sending love) to all that read this. Tuku aroha to your whanau (family). Tuku aroha kaitiaki (we are guardians of our land)
Tuia te runga – Unite from above
Tuia ki raro – Unite from below
Tuia ki waho – Unite from the outer
Tuia ki roto – Unite from the inner
Tuia ki te here tangata – Unite as one
Ka rongo te p?¯ – Listen to the night
Ka rongo te ao – Listen to the world
Haumi e… Hui e… Taiki e! – Together United
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