Intervjuet ble gjort i forbindelse med albumet "How Innocense Dies", som kom ut i 2004.

Since the band hail from Brazil there are many norwegians that never have heard about Avec Tristesse, can you tell the story behind the band? What kind of metal do you play? Members? etc..

Pedro Salles: In the beginning, we didn't quite know what we wanted to do, but we knew we wanted to try something different and spontaneous. As we are big Death Metal as well as Goth Rock fans, it turned out they way it did on our first album, Ravishing Beauty, released in December of 2002. Our record label at the time promoted us as a Dark Metal band on magazines, webzines and radio programs. Till this day, I'm not sure what exactly is Dark Metal, but we do carry this "metal style" as our own, although I heard bands like Bethlehem (old) and Aeternus (old), who are also considered Dark Metal, and found very few similarities with our songs. Anyway, after some line-up changes, we established as a trio, with me on vocals and guitars, Nathan Thrall playing the drums and Rafael Gama on bass guitars. We then released our second effort, How Innocence Dies, with a far better production and a longer duration (aprox. 1 hour), as the first one was pretty short (about 32 minutes).
Recently, we added two new members to the team: Guitarrist Alexandre Granhen and Flavio Vizeu playing the synths.

You have released two albums, "Ravishing Beauty" (2002) and the newest effort "How Innocence Dies" (2004), is there any big differences between these two albums?

PS: Ravishing Beauty was more like a welcome card, as it is more limited due to short duration. On How Innocence Dies, we got the idea from our previous work and evolved it on a better produced basis. We recorded, mixed and mastered on a better studio and had more time to work in a relaxed manner. Coldly analyzing the sound, one could say that HID is more heavier, but so is it lighter, because we widened our range between heavy/angry parts and calm/atmosferic parts.

Do you have any record deal? If so, what label is it?

PS: We released both our albums through Hellion Records which is an independant Brazilian label, but for our next work, we are trying to get hold of an european label. So, if any labels out there are interested, please send an email to Denne e-postadressen er beskyttet mot programmer som samler e-postadresser. Du må aktivere JavaScript for å kunne se adressen .

It's not easy to get your albums here in Europe, what kind of distribution do you have? If you don't have any, tell us where to get the albums.

PS: The first album is distributed in Russia and ex-soviet union countries through maximum cd records. I'm not sure how to get in contact with them. I think it is distributed through The End in north america, but I'm also not sure about that. As to our second album, we are looking for interested labels to distribute it, specially in Europe. Again, if anyone is interested, please send us an email. For now, we can sell CDs abroad. Send us email!

Can you write down some words about the newest album "How Innocence Dies"? What kind of response have you got so far?

PS: HID was our effort to make a well composed and produced album, without the help of no one except ourselves. We've had great responses so far. People compare us to swedish band Opeth, which is an honour, but I really can't find many similarities between us. This must have happened because here in Brazil, the majority of the bands follow a certain type of style which many famous bands play, and we don't follow any style which would be the same case as Opeth, who, in my opinion, are a famous, yet hard band to put a label. Then people automatically associate us with them. But that's just my dumb hypothesis.

You have titled your album "How Innocence Dies", why did you choose this title?

PS: Well, after we finished writing all of the songs, we looked at them and saw that they all spoke of the same matter, which was about the negative side of the modern human relationships, specially for people in our ages (from 18 to 25), which is a phase of confusion and many questions unanswered. We also wanted to follow the same "formula" that we used on the title of the first album, where we gave an ambíguous meaning to it. "How Innocence Dies", on a more metaforical sense, could describe how we lose our inocence as a teenager and become into an adult. It could also be interpreted, on a more literal sense, as a murder or even a suicide as consequence of the psycological problems, as well as the pressure, that society puts into the minds of today's youth.

Some words about your lyrics? Any deeper meaning behind them?

PS: We did try to put into lyrics all our confusion from past and present, so that people who read it may find some similarities to their own problems. On our next record, we are writing some solutions that we found to our problems. It's like growing up. Eventually, on our 9th album, we'll be talking about how to endure the pain of a prostate operation.

Who makes the music? Is it teamwork?

PS: Yes, it is! We write in all sorts of ways, with ideas coming from everyone, but usually we write the music first and the lyrics afterwards on top of it. As soon as we finish writing a song, we then arrange it and record/program all instruments on my computer, and that is our pre-production.

What can your fans expect from Avec Tristesse in the future? What are your future plans?

PS: We made a slight change of objectives this year, which is affecting how our songs are sounding like. We decided to write music for ourselves insted of trying to guess what people would like to hear. The basic change with this decision, is that we're experimenting alot more and we're not criticizing ourselves so much as we did in the past, which turns out to be very fun and stimulating. We think that this change will give long life to the band, even with the fact that we're unwealthy.

If you had to choose only one song from "How Innocence Dies", what track would it be and why?

PS: I'd say Angel After Dark, because it is a very personal track. I wrote it to put out, on music, my own problems on a very twisted and emotional day.

You have done some gigs, what response have you got? Any plans doing shows in Europe?

PS: We've done about 10 gigs in roughly 4 years of band now, but almost all of them took place last year and this year. On all of them we had an overwhelming response, which elevates our spirits, usually low, and gives us strength to carry on doing gigs, and occasionaly losing money. It would be a dream come true to play in Europe, but we're very far from popular over there, so no one would pay for us to travel the atlantic. I guess no one even knows we exist.

And the last question, can you tell us about the metal scene in Brazil?

PS: The scene for extreme metal here is very conservative. People tend to be narrow minded, listening to whatever is extreme, badly produced and unpopular. It is a big country, and the main city from each estate has its own scene. São Paulo, our biggest city, has the biggest metal scene by far and alot of bands come from over there. Here in Rio de Janeiro, the scene is quite weak, maybe because people only want to go to the beach, I don't know. But we have great bands here too, like Imago Mortis (Doom Metal) and Ashtar (Folk/Progressive Metal).

Silent Savagery wish you good luck with the band and the music, and we're looking forward to your next release...

PS: Thank you very much for the oportunity. I hope to play in Norway this century if possible and don't forget to visit our website: http://www.avectristesse.com/en/main

Cheers!

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