Interview with Brage (Bass) of Feleth and Pete Devine of Pete’s Rock News and Views (http://petesrocknewsandviews.com)
PD: How would you describe yourself or your band as an artist?
B: As band Féleth is a diverse group, that consist of 5 dudes that enjoy beer, BBQ, and metal. Pretty straightforward in other words. We usually joke around with everything, wearing Hawaii shorts live, having the weirdest live intros, and stuff like that, but our music is something we never joke about.
PD: Can you tell us briefly about your background – i.e. where you’re from, how you came to make music, etc.
B: We’re from a small town located at the top of Norway. It’s a small town called Alta. You’ve maybe heard about Tromsø? We’re further north than that. Long winters and cold summers… yeah, that’s here.
Getting into metal was a journey for each of us in the band. I believe everyone in the band discovered metal in junior high school. Fortunately, all of us wanted to play metal and it kind of started a race of who could become the better instrumentalist.
Féleth started originally out as a trash-metal band named “Iron bound”. After some change in the line-up and having Espen joining in on vocals and Brage on bass, the band started changing in a new direction and we’ve never looked back since.
PD: Who and what inspires you to make music, both in terms of musical and other influences? What do you like to write about in your songs?
B: I don’t think there are any people that inspire us to make music. Of course, we all got our inspirations, but mostly it’s that a riff or a song sounds cool that’s the real kicker for us. Nothing like when Thomas (guitar) shows us a new song in guitarPro and it sounds lit. Shit, that feeling is great, but then you realize you actually have to learn to play the song… and Thomas rarely makes anything easy to play…
Espen really explores the dark sides of human nature in his lyrics, but he also takes inspiration from certain movies and events. I.e. our song Arise is actually about Frankenstein.
PD: What are your aspirations as an artist?
B: We want to put the Northern-Norwegian metal scene on the map. There are few metal bands from our part of the country and most people feel like they must move south to chase their dream of doing music. We want to show that it’s possible, even in the far-out districts.
On a more personal level, it’s of course to be able to tour and meet our idols on the road. Doing a full festival summer, traveling Europe, even making the budget hit zero… That’s the dream. But first Espen must overcome his crippling flight anxiety.
PD: What is the proudest moment in your music career so far?
B: We won a huge band competition to play at the biggest metal festival in all of Norway. Espen had signed the band up for the competition and jokingly asked us to save the date. Of course, none of us believed we were going to be chosen to play at the festival. After some time, it was decided that we were among the top 10bands to play at the festival, and we were shocked. Seeing who we were up against, we didn’t believe we’d make it as the finals were determined by votes from the audience. Against all odds, we won. I remember being at work, taking a shit, when Espen messaged us that we won. I was so shaky after that you wouldn’t believe it. One month later we played at Tons of Rock. It was a huge difference playing for 5000 when our biggest gig till that moment had been for 200.
PD: Promoting one’s music is such a challenge these days, especially with so many new artists emerging from bedrooms
in the day of the home studio. How is that going?
B: Yeah, that’s hard. Being able to stand out while still being interesting for a longer time period has been challenging. Quite quickly we found our “promo-style” to great dismay for some but great entertainment for most. We’re usually doing promo as cringy as possible, and with (on purpose) really bad English. Our rule before posting is “If you’re ashamed to post it, then it’s good”.
PD: And how do you book and promote your live shows and tours? Any performances coming up?
B: We usually try to make some videos in front of each gig, and Instagram posts the very week before the actual gig. As for the upcoming show, we have some shows planned for our new album release in November. They will be played in Northern Norway, in and around Oslo.
PD: What do you think about downloading music online? What about streaming sites like Spotify?
B: As a consumer it’s great. It is amazing in the car, on easy to put on when you want other people’s sick riff or etc.
As an artist, it’s a bit different. I think it’s a natural development of the world, but music loses a bit of its charm this way as well. You usually pick your top songs from an album and put them into your playlist. It breaks with the artist’s intention for the album in many ways. Being a certain number in between those exact songs, if you know what I mean. I guess the album format is struggling nowadays.
Luckily vinyl is back and going strong. That is a victory for the album format.
PD: What song do you wish you'd written and why?
B: For me, it had to be Spawn of Possession’s – Apparition. No doubt. It’s the most complete song of all time for me. It has this weird neoclassical, yet dissonating sound that I find really intriguing. If only I could wrap my head around songwriting like that.
PD: Is there anything you don’t like about the music industry, which you would change if you could?
B: It’s the way artists make money nowadays. I hope that in the future it will be easier to make money off touring and especially streaming services.
PD: So, what are you working on at the moment?
B: Right now, we’re working on nailing the release of our second album “Divine Blight”. We’re really happy with how it turned out and can’t wait to release it. Hopefully, this album will open some new doors for us.
Of course, we’ve also got some songs almost ready for album 3 as well, but we’ll save that for later
PD: Where can we learn more about you and buy your music/merch online?
B: You can check us out on Facebook or Instagram at @Felethband. We haven’t got a merch site or anything like that yet (coming soon hopefully), but as of now, shoot us a DM, and we’ll get to it!
Our music is available on all platforms!
Feleth links:
Band/Artist location – Finnmark, Norway
Facebook – You Tube – Twitter – Instagram –
Apple – Spotify – Amazon – Deezer –
Checok our page for Feleth
