January 21, 2016 • Kumi666

Syranic interview about the new record – “The Coriolis Delusion”

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- First of all, welcome back to the scene! How have you been during the long hiatus?

Hendrik: Thank you! A lot has changed in the last couple of years. Everyone in the band has been really busy concerning things outside the band. Regarding myself, I’m actually living a drastically different life right now than I have been during the production of and touring with ‘The Windscale Inception’. I used to be a full time musician and audio engineer back then, playing gigs and producing the debut EP of my bands Syranic and Killtribe and doing other productions like Legacy of Vydar and Eleonore to make money. On an artistic level that time was really rewarding and I have great memories of it, but I had to realize with this lifestyle I just couldn’t survive financially. So I had to rethink what to do with my life and because of several people I talked to I realized I was interested in another completely different field. Long story short, I became an EMT right after our winter tour of 2010 and am now studying medicine. All this information seems really personal, but combined with the fact that our former singer Julian Parusel left the band it is certainly the biggest reason for our hiatus, since I do most of the songwriting and am involved with everything regarding audio.

- There was some member-change in the band these past years. So, could you tell us about your current lineup?

Hendrik: Our band has been going through a ton of changes on every position since the beginning. Within our short career we’ve been having 4 different guys on bass alone. In the end I had to pick it up myself to record our new EP. I actually recorded only a few lead guitars by myself, almost all of the rhythm guitars have been played by our new guitarist Paul Langer while some lead guitars were done by Rajeev Ramesh. Geerd Jacobs is still doing drums and after Julian left the band we quickly found an ‘indefinite stand-in’ shouter with Thomas Fischer (In Arcane, ex-Killtribe). But even though being a clean singer himself our guitarist Kamil Albrecht wasn’t too keen on doing the whole vocal routine for every gig on top of playing the guitar and eventually left the band too. Searching for a new clean vocalist turned out to be the toughest part. We tried quite a few guys and even considered someone female at some point. All of that ended when I wrote and recorded a new instrumental track at the end of 2013.

I don’t even remember how he got hold of it, but Kamil heard it and spontaneously recorded a full chorus for it and sent that to me without me expecting any of it. It completely blew everything anyone else ever tried for the songs out of the water. I needed to have him back on board and he agreed, that song is now called ‘Dysfunction’ and has become the opener of our new EP.

- Did you already play any show with the latest members?

Hendrik: Kamil would only do the recording for the new EP and did not want to invest the time to play live. Because of my whole situation I didn’t even know how I would ever be able to invest that much time myself, so we had a discussion about it and we had to realize that basically we could only decide between just letting Syranic die or making it a studio-only project. So that’s what we agreed upon. I can’t say we’re definitely never going to play a show again, but the chances are really low right now. This might seem sad, but to me it’s a great way to still be able to make music with Syranic at all, and I’m really proud of the new stuff we created.

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- The new EP The Coriolis Delusion has many differences from the prior release The Windscale Inception and the progressive aspect is more emphasized in the new record. Was it the natural progress for the band?

Hendrik: The songs are definitely different, which is caused by not having Julian involved in the songwriting anymore on the one hand, but also me being influenced by different bands now on the other hand. The whole Progressive Metal and Djent scene was always a big part of it, but the songs on the old EP ‘The Windscale Inception’ were also heavily influenced by bands like Chimaira, Dagoba, Killswitch Engage or even In Flames. Now on ‘The Coriolis Delusion’ the progressive elements just shine through a lot more as I’ve been listening to bands like Periphery, Textures and Monuments more than before. One thing that holds true to this day though is that I think Killswitch Engage wrote some of the best metal choruses of all time, so mine will always have that imprinted on them.

- The sound production seems different as well. The prior EP has an overwhelming punchy sound, it blasts as hell. The new one got mixed by Hendrik (metalmixer.de) again but it sounds smarter as it is. Why did you give the production to The Coriolis Delusion like that way?

Hendrik: ‘The Windscale Inception’ is by far the loudest record I ever produced and I even only know a few records at all that come close to it. That’s kind of cool, and it fits the whole insanity theme we got going on with that one. But it’s also kind of fucked up. And it leads to our old EP sounding pretty distorted on some small stereos, so I didn’t want to do this again. Of course the new EP ‘The Coriolis Delusion’ does not sound as massive if you compare them both at the same volume, but if you correct for that, the sound is still pretty damn big. It’s definitely cleaner than the old one, but that is fully intended. I would even go as far as to say I did not make any obvious mistakes with this production, whereas I’d say I did with the old one.

- As an enthusiastic listener for your music, comparing those 2 records sensuously, The Windscale Inception has an instantaneous effect and The Coriolis Delusion is a slowly-soak-in type in my opinion. How do you explain the comparison between those releases?

Hendrik: The songs are definitely more complex now and also just longer than the old ones due to the bigger influence of progressive music. It’s a lot to take in at first, but I think generally the songs that you need time to get into are the ones that stick with you the longest.

- Yalda was once available as free streaming song in the past. So it’s the oldest song on the new EP, isn’t it? The new version sounds fabulous as well anyway. I still love the song so much! What does “Yalda” mean?

Hendrik: Yes, it’s the oldest one. It is the 6th song we have ever written and it almost made it onto the old EP. We released the online demo right after the ‘The Windscale Inception’ came out.

For that song Julian and I picked up a riff I wrote in 2006 and created the complete song structure in one afternoon. He also wrote all of the lyrics for it. It’s a really cool move of him to let us use all of it. To honor that, the last words on the record are still from the original studio recording with him. The concept behind the lyrics is pretty amazing too. I can’t go too much into depth here so I will just quote Julian: »’Yalda’ is a song which stands for the greatness of life and the connection between all beings who exist today and who have ever existed.« The name refers to the Iranian festival celebrated on the longest and darkest night of the year where it is custom to ignite a big fire representing light and hope.

- Every track name of your music is always impressive. They are witty and audacious. The record title The Coriolis Delusion as well. It sounds scientific ( because of “Coriolis” of course) and like word-game at the same time. Why did you give the name like that?

Hendrik: The whole concept behind that name was created with our graphic designer Max Widdra, who also created the artwork for our previous record. In short it’s about what’s driving the world, figuratively in the sense of the Earth’s rotation but quite literally in the power of gold and oil. The ‘delusion’ part of it is about the arrogance of thinking you could ever change anything about that.

- Your former singer Julian was concerning himself in lyrics for The Windscale Inception. Who managed the lyrics for The Coriolis Delusion?

Hendrik:Except for Yalda, the lyrics for all songs have been written by Thomas and Kamil.

- So, could you tell us the track by track story of the lyrics and the musical behind-hind-the-scene in the new record?

Thomas: Dysfunction is an attempt to get access to the systematic nature of the radicalization of people for religious reasons. I just tried to get into the mind of a tortured soul living in a world that has not much to offer for it. I guess it is a rather simple attempt, but for me it was a pretty revealing thought experiment, because it works for a lot of individual cases.

Fallen King deals with the last days of Muammar al-Gaddafi. He was one of very few dictators who was popular among his people, at least for some time. In 2008 over 200 African kings and tribal leaders proclaimed him King of Kings. In the end he was killed by people who once loved him.

It’s not like I am a Gaddafi sympathizer, but I think he had a pretty interesting life and in many ways a good influence on the region. I used to never understand why he had to fall like this. Today we all do!

Control Hunter is all about the western way of optimizing efficiency through dehumanization of mankind. We try to control everything, emotions, speed, working hours, quality time, sleep, nothing is safe. We don’t just live, we organize our life and some of us even organize the life of others. This is wrong! At least in this extent!

Wave-Breaker is a call for individual decisions even if they break rules of social conventions. Don’t just go with the flow, that makes you part of a system that does not care for your individual needs. It’s all about profit. Lateral thinkers and troublemakers have always been the people who generated progress in knowledge of everything that matters!

Yalda is the only song that has been written by Julian Parusel. I have not been able to talk to him lately, but if I remember it right, he saw a TV report about the “Yalda night”, which is an Iranian festivity celebrated in the longest night of the year. Yalda goes way back to the zoroastrianism, the praeislamic religion of the Iranian people. Julian was so deeply moved by the report, that he felt the need to write these lyrics. We did not change them a bit and it feels just right to perform them the way he wanted them to be!

Here’s a link to Wikipedia if you’d like to get into it: Yalda on Wiki

Hendrik: Each of the songs has its own underlying musical theme that gets referenced a lot throughout the different parts. Dysfunction is probably the best example. Every single riff is a progression or variation of the riff before it, instead of separately written parts that have just been glued together. Even the chorus is a variation of the verse riff. I wrote the song one morning within about 4 hours and haven’t changed anything about it since then. The writing was obviously heavily influenced by Djent bands like Meshuggah and Periphery but there are also further influences that I can name pretty distinctly now. I’d like to think that the 16th part is due to the fair share of DevilDriver songs getting played in local metal discos here. The breakdown right after that probably wouldn’t exist if I never discovered Betraying The Martyrs. And yes, I’ve heard of the band Monuments before.

Fallen King starts with a Periphery-esque riff that is actually a variation of a “counting part” our drummer Geerd and I always jammed in the rehearsal room back in 2008. We called it “Feuerwehr” [fire department] then as a reference to the emergency phone number in the EU [112] since it goes like 1-1-2-1-3-1-1-2-1-3… Both verses were written in admiration of Glasscloud’s absolutely destroying heaviness. The prechorus is an homage to Monuments while the chorus is to Killswitch Engage and TesseracT. Textures and Dead Letter Circus were probably the biggest influences to the long interlude part after the second chorus. The outro is practically made of the stuff Justin Lowe wrote for every After The Burial song once you hit the 3 minute mark. I love the outros this guy wrote, damn.

Control Hunter is basically me trying to write riffs like Bring Me The Horizon did during the ‘Suicide Season’ era. Architects influenced me on this one, too. Much like dysfunction there is a basic theme that just gets varied a lot through the song, from beginning to end.

Wave-Breaker is the oldest song on the record right after Yalda. That’s why it’s overall faster and more ‘metalcorey’. The intro and verse riffs are influenced by a really cool one man project by Darren Cruickshank called Bleeding Skies. He writes some amazing riffs, you should definitely check him out if you’re into djenty stuff! At least part of the chorus was created with Sikth in mind. The closest thing to being an influence on the breakdown right after the second chorus might actually be Emmure though. The outro itself was written by Rajeev and me and partly derives from me mixing the latest Under The Pledge of Secrecy album. They always write crazy dissonant stuff with sick time signature changes and their album might just be the heaviest thing I have ever heard.

As I said earlier, Yalda was written by both Julian Parusel and me and is based on a riff I wrote back in 2006. I can’t really name all of the influences anymore, but there is probably some Dagoba and Chimaira in there. The chorus and instrumental interlude are hard evidence of my strong love for Textures though. The ending is a mix of Textures and TesseracT influences. It is the fastest song on the record, though there is a pretty funny thing that happened during one of our biggest gigs, where Geerd’s click just got totally fucked and was playing back way to slow. Geerd was so perplexed by it that he continued that tempo all throughout the intro and even parts of the first verse. For a minute of our career Syranic was a Doom Metal band.

- Why did you release the new record as EP again?

Hendrik: I knew I wouldn’t be able to manage a full-length production including songwriting, recording and mixing in a reasonable timeframe alongside studies and the other audio productions I do and most of the other guys wouldn’t either. So a 5 track EP was just the most realistic goal to set. And that still took us about two years, which is way longer than I expected. There were only very certain and tight periods where I could focus on the production and it sometimes didn’t sync up quite well with some of the others’ free time. In the end I’m glad we didn’t even do a 6 track, which we thought about too.

- Do you have any plan for a full-length in the near future?

Hendrik: My personal situation might change a bit in the future, so that I get to have more control over when to have free time. It also might become even worse. In any case we will almost certainly stick to smaller releases. If we produce songs at a faster rate in the future, we will just make those releases more frequently.

- I’ve been waiting for your first music video for a long time! Do you have any plan for the shooting?

Hendrik: There are actually plans to do that this year, but of course I can’t promise anything. We really want this, but unfortunately our drummer Geerd Jacobs, who is also our photo and video guy, is even more busy than I am.

- Since you had a long time hiatus (at least for your fans), could you give some message for your fans and new listeners in the world?

Hendrik: Thanks so much to everyone who stayed with us during this rough patch! Thank you for your patience and for believing in us. To everyone who checked out our new record, old fan or new listener, please let us know what you think. We’re not making any actual money with this, but we basically live off your reactions, so please share them with us!

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