Interview with Pete Devine of Pete’s Rock News and Views (https://petesrocknewsandviews.com)
PD: How would you describe yourself or your band as an artist?
Lazywall: Our bio describes us as a Moroccan Oriental Rock/Metal Hybrid band, a tagine of traditional Arabic time signatures and instruments and powerful alt-rock. We sing Rock in Darija which is an Arabic dialect from Morocco. We are a 3-piece band that plays with unique instruments. Our guitarist has a custom-made double neck guitar. One neck is a 6-string guitar and the other a 12-string Oud (Arabic luth). Our bass player has a custom-made bass guitar, with 2 bass strings and 3 strings of guembri, which is an African traditional bass. Our drummer has replaced one of his drum toms with a Darbuka, and added a tribal Moroccan drum called Tbal. He also plays the Bendir. We are not a world music band. We just play heavy guitar riffs with a distorted Oud.
PD: Can you tell us briefly about your background – i.e. where you’re from, how you came to make music, etc.
Lazywall: We are three brothers from Tangier, Morocco. We grew up influenced by western rock music, bands like Led Zeppelin up to System of A Down. As for any musician, we started music as something fun to do, but quickly realised our passion for writing songs. The band was formed in Reading, UK where we attended university. We moved back to Morocco in 2006 to continue the pursuit of our musical identity.
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?
Lazywall: Writing songs is a form of communication, we can express ourselves through music, it’s a better way of being heard. Our songs create a utopian world, the way we see how the world should be. Most of the subjects we write about are usually experiences we have been through or have thought about and we think more people should know. For example, one of our songs is about how corruption affected us in an episode of our lives. Every time we sing this song live, we expose them. In another song, we explain to the world what happened to the innocent Amina Filali, 15 years old victim of a law that used to exist in our country that says that if a someone rapes an underaged girl he can either go to jail or marry her. After marrying her rapist, she committed suicide. People marched protesting and the country changed the law. We thought we should write about it because even if the law has been removed, there are still people who prefer to marry her daughter to her rapist rather than face the shame of the family.
A French author used to say when you are confronted by an enemy, you have three options. You can either fight and risk physical consequences. You can flee and face psychological consequences. Or you can sing about it and that helps reduce the psychological bad effect. When you sing out loud your problems, it has the same effect as a therapy.
PD: What are your aspirations as an artist?
Lazywall: Our main aspiration is to introduce Arabic Rock music to as many people as we can by playing shows and festivals all around the world. To show people that rock music can keep its power and legacy in a different language than English.
PD: What is the proudest moment in your music career so far?
Lazywall: Morocco was never a Rock country in the past. What happened in the USA in the 50s or UK in the 60s didn’t really make a big impact over here, where most people have always been listening to traditional Arabic and Arabic pop music. In 2003, rock was the most underground genre here. Some metalheads were accused of satanism for wearing black T-shirts and were convicted to jail. This made people protest and march for their release. After that day, L’Boulevard Festival, the only rock/metal festival in the country went from hosting 500 people to 30.000 in a year. This is when the Moroccan Rock music scene was born. Our proudest addition was in 2010 when we got invited to perform live on national TV as the first Rock/Metal band ever. We obviously performed dressed in Black.
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?
Lazywall: Being different makes us play in a different league. We cannot compete with the million bands that sound all the same; neither can we compete with million dollar companies that have endless promotion budgets. This is good and bad at the same time. You will not find us with random google or YouTube searches but if you look for our kind of music, you will find us. Because no one sings Arabic rock/metal music with oriental instruments. Those who want something different and original will find us.
PD: And how do you book and promote your live shows and tours? Any performances coming up?
Lazywall: After performing at The Great Escape festival in Brighton, we signed with UK management The Animal Farm. Every time we play shows we try to invite booking agents and promoters. We have a small European/UK tour coming up in October where we hope to get contacts for 2024 European festivals.
PD: What do you think about downloading music online? What about streaming sites like Spotify?
Lazywall: As most musicians, at first, we were against it. But it’s a natural evolution of our society. The Internet is the oxygen we breathe today so music had to follow that same path. We live in a society that wants immediate consumption. Be it fast food, or communication. People have lost the beauty of Patience. Before you used to go to the music store, you buy the album, go back home, put it on your player and listen to it while reading the lyrics. That gave much more value to the artist, because you had to make an effort to get it. Today, people want to listen to the song in the next 3 seconds. Spotify gives them that. For us, Spotify is just the new vehicle that allows us to bring our music to our fans. Even if we are not making money out of it.
PD: What song do you wish you’d written and why?
Lazywall: “Live is Life” by Opus. I was 13 years old when I first heard it and immediately thought “I wish I had written that”. Classic summer hit of an Austrian rock band full of energy and joy. It talks about finding the courage and strength to get the best out of ourselves, based on a reality: life is what it is.
PD: Is there anything you don’t like about the music industry, which you would change if you could?
Lazywall: There are millions of things we don’t like. The sad thing is that we can’t change them. We just have to adapt. Like millions of artists have done before us. Just before the pandemic, we decided to go back to old times where people listened to CDs. We removed our catalogue from all social networks, including YouTube. And we tried to rework our 
website so our fans could get our CDs directly. We lost most of our fans. They just moved on and forgot about us. We cannot change the music industry because it reflects what the fans want. Music à la carte.
PD: So, what are you working on at the moment?
Lazywall: Before making the switch to Arabic, we used to sing in English. We have released 5 albums since 2003. Right now, we are re-recording some of these songs translated to Arabic, that we will be releasing in the next 12 months. We are also writing new material. The band is also focusing on rehearsals to prepare our upcoming Europe shows.
PD: Where can we learn more about you and buy your music/merch online?
Lazywall: You can find us on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. For our merch, you will have to come to the shows!
Here are some of the links:
https://www.youtube.com/lazywallofficial
https://www.instagram.com/lazywallofficial/
https://www.facebook.com/lazywallofficial
https://www.lazywall.com
Lazywall links:
Band/Artist location – Tangier Morocco
Website – Facebook – You Tube – Soundcloud – Bandcamp – Merch – Reverbnation –
Twitter – Instagram – Apple – Spotify – Amazon – Deezer – Last Fm –
Check our page for Lazywall
