Interview with Pete Devine of Pete’s Rock News and Views (https://petesrocknewsandviews.com)
PD: What type of artist are you?
A: Ellimist is defined as a progressive metal band; both mike and I enjoy many different genres of music, and bringing different elements together are what make the music interesting, IMO! I try not to be stuck in a box; I love writing songs that are hard to classify and that don’t necessarily fit in one genre!
PD: Tell us the brief history of yourself
A: Ellimist was inspired by a chance reading of “The Ellimist Chronicles” by KA Applegate; it was initially intended to be subsequent Matt Danger album, however about halfway through writing and recording, I knew that Ellimist had to exist as a separate entity, and had tremendous potential to be something completely different. After receiving a blessing from the original Authors, I adapted the Ellimist storyline into a niche prog metal concept album and began the process of creating Ellimist! Now that the album is finally released, I’ve found a Guitarist, and we continue to seek out a drummer and bassist to round out our live act!
PD: Who are your musical and non-musical influences?
A: Musical influences are broad, but some of our favorites include Aether Realm, Wilderun, the Beast of Nod, Exist, Fractal Universe, Orbiter, Pathogenic; to name some of the lesser known ones; Also, we draw influence from The Faceless, Revocation, Dream Theatre, Gojira, Lamb of God, and multiple other acts! Non musical influences include a variety of scifi stories and artwork, including the Halo Novel series, Animorphs (which the Ellimist Chronicles derives), the Ender’s Game series and satellite books to name a few!
PD: What are your dreams and goals?
A: we’re hoping to reach people with our music. We hope that people will appreciate what we’ve done and will feel understood, or at least a little less alone. We aspire to have touring experiences and hope that recognition of our efforts will come. Nothing worse than creating something you’re extremely happy with to have the world ignore it! We aren’t writing pop, but we definitely think there’s something here that a lot of people can enjoy and we want to share that; we also aspire to bring a live show like no other to the northeast! Once we round out our live act and complete the “band” we think thatll all come more naturally!
PD: Who writes your songs, what are they about?
A: Anthony wrote and recorded all of the music for the Debut album. Looking forward to collaborating with Mike and creating the follow up, hopefully with a drummer and bassist as well! The first album details Toomin’s ascendance from a lowly gamer to transcendent being known as the Ellimist, and the various trials and tribulations that lead him down his path. Each song represents a stage of his story!
PD: How do you promote your band and shows?
A: We do what we can. We promote on our various social media sites and we’ve got some quality videos 
that we’ve been pushing in ads. We’ve also posted a few tik tok videos, since that’s where many of the younger generation find new music. Gotta go where the peeps b! We’re focused on spreading world about the album, since we’re still looking to fill out the live lineup before we can play shows; that said, once we have a complete lineup, we will most definitely be playing shows and promoting in any way we can! We were recently featured on 104.1 WMRQ’s homebrew segment; we’ve also been featured on The Circle Pit, a great online metal video promoter, to name some of our more recent promotional works
PD: What do you think about downloading music online?
A: I’m a bit old school when it comes to music, which is why we made the decision to make physical copies of the debut album even though the majority of music is now streamed or purchased digitally. There’s nothing better than the feeling of having music in your hands, in my opinion. Truly makes it feel like you’ve paid for something and gives you some ownership of it. Streaming feels more like borrowing music, to me. I feel that streaming has degraded the artform, while making it harder for artists to earn money, and devalued all that goes into actually MAKING music. That said, we are on all platforms because as mentioned before, gotta go where the peeps b, and denying the nature of reality out of idealism is self-defeating. And that’s NOT to say that we don’t appreciate those who have checked us out or found us because of those other platforms that are popular now (spotify, deezer, etc) because we do! I actually will buy a good CD even if I’ve purchased the online copy (when presented with the opportunity), but I’m also not a normal human haha, so I don’t expect other people to ‘get it’. I’d highly encourage you to get physical merchandise though, both from us and other bands (especially local bands!). It helps us make more music for you directly! No one likes to say “buy our stuff”, but the realities of the modern music industry make it very hard for people in our genre (and even people in more popular genres) to make a living creating music; we’ve sunk a TON of money into our debut album, and don’t ever expect to make it back; and we’re totally okay with that, because we know what we’ve created is worthwhile. I’m coining the term “artisanal” music haha.
PD: What song do you wish you’d written and why?
A: I wish I had written the album “Egoiista” by Exist; it’s so good and the lyrics touch on many topics that I deeply identify with, that really made me think about things. Its rare to find an album so good in so many ways. Definitely wish I could have written that, because it’s a true masterpiece. I feel the same way about Wilderun’s “Veil of Imagination”. In a more practical sense, I wish I had written “To the Hellfire” by Lorna Shore, which is innovative and immense, and brutal, and BLOWING up!
PD:What are some of your pet peeves
A: I’ve always hated it when people sprinkle when they tinkle.
PD: What is your proudest moment in music?
A: We were recently featured in 104.1, which was awesome. We had a few friends reach out and say “HEY, we heard your song on the radio!”. That doesn’t happen often, for progressive metal acts! I think we’re really looking forward to playing our debut show, once we have a solid lineup. But this album has been in the works for 5 years, and now that it’s finally out, I’m happy to see people responding positively to it. Very proud of the work I put in, and what Ellimist is becoming. It’s hard not knowing if something you’ve made is objectively good, especially when you’ve been listening to it for so long. I’m glad to see it doing okay, coming from an unknown band with limited exposure.
PD: So what are you working on at the moment?
We just finished our guitar playthrough video of Crayak: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR0Ti6aAdbU . We are working on putting together a live act, and are accepting drummer/bassist auditions. We also have ideas for the follow up album to Ellimist, and are excited to start putting them together!
PD: What music have you available online and where can we buy it from?
Our debut album Ellimist is available now and it can be purchased from all major online retailers, and is available for streaming. We also have physical copies coming soon on ellimist.bigcartel.com
Ellimist links:
Band/Artist location – Connecticut
Facebook – You Tube – Bandcamp – Merch – Reverbnation –
Twitter – Instagram – Apple – Spotify – Amazon – Deezer –
Check our page for Ellimist
