By Nikita Alekseyevich Khrenov
Connecticut melodic doom heavyweights Fires in the Distance just dropped their debut album Echoes From Deep November through Prosthetic Records, and they took some time to speak to us about their signing, the history of the band, and the album’s themes and recording process.
Nikita: Fires in the Distance is brand spanking new in many ways, what inspired the band to come together?
Kyle Quintin: Everyone’s lookin’ at you buddy.
Yegor Savonin: Yeah, it wasn’t meant to be a band to begin with, it was just like… something that I was doing at home that didn’t fit the Archaic Decapitator parameters. It wasn’t in the same vein, so I just kept writing and then I asked Kristian if he wanted to jam out some of the riffs with me and then it just kinda grew from there. It was supposed to be a studio band to begin with but once we started all playing together, we just said, “This can’t be a studio band, we have to get this on stage.” So yeah, it basically was a little solo thing that became something way bigger.
KQ: Yeah, I remember you had us listen to once song on the side street of my parents’ place back when we used to jam there a few years back. One song turned into six real quick. We were like, “Yeah let’s jam a couple songs” we had like 2 or 3 when we got together and the 4th one was like next week and then 5 and 6 popped out a month later.
Kristian Grimaldi: Yeah I met up with Yegor at All-Stars in Manchester like 4 years ago, 5 maybe, and he just played me the skeleton of “Chained to the Earth” and I just said “I wanna play this, if you need another guitar player this would be sweet.” Like that was it for me, he was onto something seriously good.
N: Alright, we got some happy accidents.
Craig Breitsprecher: Well yeah, that’s how most of the world population came to be.
N: Alright so what inspired the themes of Echoes from Deep November?
Y: Primarily the fall season, I mean you know about this. A lot of the Russian folk music is based around the Fall, a lot of Type O… I dunno. I felt it was time to play something different from all blast beats and crazy shredding and put some more feeling into it. That whole theme fit the atmosphere of the music fairly well.
KG: It’s very emotional music you know what I mean, that’s what made me want to do it too. Music to me is emotional, like when I was younger, I was pissed off and wanted to be as heavy as possible because I was pissed, and this stuff really drew me in. It doesn’t matter what type of rock or metal it is; it just has to be emotional so that’s the cool thing about it. You can really feel it and it affects a lot of people that listen to it and play it. I went through a hell of a time playing the music while we were recording so it was really perfect timing even though it sucked. It hit home pretty good, like Yegor, you wrote Lock and Key about your relationship ending and I related to that too. The whole process is really portrayed well and even the name is perfect, when shit happened it was right around the fall so yeah.
C: Out of the ashes comes something new.
N: That’s kind of the Fall as a whole, worked out the same way as far as the music is concerned.
Y: For sure.
C: I think just how the music sounds too, I mean I’ve never played in a band that sounds as heavy and thundering as this band. I don’t know if it’s the tone we have dialed in or the speed of the riffs but you know, when you’re not playing a million miles and hour you can really lock in on your sound and emphasize every note rather than a whole slew of notes. I just think that it sounds deep, when walk in the room you can really feel it. Just the tone of the music relates to the theme of the album, whether intentional or not.
N: Like you mentioned, whether intentional or not, it all comes together pretty damn well so I have to say congrats dads, you made a banger. I’ll cheer my milkshake to that.
*Laughter*
