Not only Dream Theater…. The actual prog metal scene can give very good examples of very interesting music as present. An example can be Sun Caged, dutch progressive metal band leading by the guitar-virtuoso Marcel Coenen.. Sun Caged came to the attention of fans and reviewers with their self-tiled album released in 2003. 4 long years has gone, and literally all changed…. new line-up and new perspectives came with the long awaited “Artemisia”. Now I try to know if the great quality target reached with the first album was repeated in “Artemsia”; I try to discover this asking some questions to Sun Caged mastermind Marcel Coenen.
Hello from Italy Marcel ! welcome to A DREAM IN STEEL web magazine, first , About the new album "Artemisia" , I've found in it a little more intimate touch than in "Sun caged", also a such tangled mood ...what's your opinion ?
Hello and thanks for the support ! We are really proud of Artemisia, and yes, it is a more intimate mood then the debut album, the album got a bit more mellow and less dark, so it will appear to more people we hope.
About "Artemisia" theme... "pain and loss are recurring themes”. Where did you get the inspirations for the lyrics ? maybe From personal experience or life around you ? Please talk about this...
Paul ( Adrian Villareal – singer) is responsible for all the lyrics, many of the lyrics stem from dealing with the loss of Paul's mother in 2004 and he found that the mythology of the goddess Artemis really went hand in hand with that theme.
At the moment which is your favourite "Artemisia" song or which one are you considering special? and why ?
I personally like the songs Bloodlines and Departing Words as best, but I am proud of everything we did for this album. Departing Words is the only song on the album which is really written totally in the rehearsal room, it just had a few pre-written pieces. I definitely think it is one of our strongest songs on the album.
Bloodlines comes from the time I was still in Lemur Voice back in the days. I wrote some of the riffs in the song already in 2000, the year Lemur Voice disbanded. I really love how that song became, and I think it is one of our most progressive songs.
How much line-up changes influenced the direction or the overall result of this new album?
New band members always changes the overall sound of a band, but in general I do not see that as a bad thing. In Metal music it seems not done to change a singer, if you look at Judas Priest for instance, you see that the band got bigger again when Halford returned to Judas Priest, even if the previous singer was better, it is a nostalgic thing which Metal fans in general seem to have. Luckily in prog music people are more open minded and those fans always seem to follow the direction of the band, I think Sun Caged has grown to a more richer sound.
I think that Paul Adrian Villarreal helped Sun Caged to emphasize its " melodic ingredients", but not in the total same approach of your ex-singer Andre'... what's behind the choice to call Adrian ?
We searched for a singer for a long time, we had a lot of auditions and we simply did not find the right guy, until Paul reacted. Paul auditioned and got the job, simply because Paul is a great singer with a lot of abilities. Sun Caged did have other singers also before Andre and the approach was never totally depending on Andre. With Paul we have the perfect singer for the future Sun Caged will go through.
At this moment what's the best complements you received on reviews or comments about "Artemisia" ? and the worst criticism ?
The best compliments we can get is that Sun Caged is a promising band and we have a bright future to see, everybody who sees our hard work we did to create Artemisia has to accomplish that and I think in general the reviews and comments were very good.
The most criticisms we got where from the typical metal fans I described before. People who can not really relate to our kind of music anyway.
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