Information
Author: Mourning
Line Up
Jonathan St-Pierre - Vocals
Joel St-Amant - Guitar
Marc-Andre Barrette - Bass
Pierre-Alexandre Mercier - Drums
Today here with us we have Massive Slavery, this band has just released its debut "Global Enslavement" so let's learn something more about them.
Hi everyone, Jon “The ProF” (frontman) here with you for the interview.
Welcome on Aristocrazia Webzine, let's break the ice talking about you, how was the band born? Can you tell us your story?
The band is born in the winter of 2009. Joel St-Amant (Guitar, Ex-Descend Into Nothingness) and Marc-André Barrette (Bass, Ex-Paroxysm) was working at the same place and begin to talk about creating a new band. They contacted Pierre-Alexandre Mercier (ex-drums, Decrepity) to joint them and soon after they have start to compose and play some music for the next couple of month while seeking for a frontman.
Finally at the end of august 2009, they put their choice on Jonathan St-Pierre to complete the lineup and engage the process to finalize and record the first album, “Global Enslavement” at the Northern Studio with producer Yannick St-Amand (Despised Icon, Beneath the Massacre, Neuraxis) .
You play a modern metal devoted to impact and melody but differently from other bands of this wave I noticed a more evident personality (I also mentioned Neuraxis as a guideline in the review) and a more solid vision. How much is useful the experience gained playing with other bands?
This is a very important thing. Except for myself, the three other founding members where playing in well known underground bands in the province of Quebec (Canada). They gained a lot of experience and I think than this is why Massive Slavery put a strong and solid sound right at the beginning. That maturity helped us to work quickly on our first album ( recorded only 4 month after the lineup was completed) We have a more realistic and down to earth vision of metal music, and we started the band knowing exactly what type of music we wanted to made.
Which are the main sources from which you draw inspiration for your sound? Are there bands, also non-metal ones, which help you in the composition process?
We have been inspired by a more modern type of metal, influenced by “Swedish” type of melodic death metal, mixing with a more aggressive and brutal type of death metal, with a sweet touch of hardcore influences.
An important fact about the inspiration of the band is that everybody in the band came with a different background and musical influences. I think that helped us to clearly define our sound and also the type of music we wanted to make.
I think that "The Denial Of Man's Regression" and "Global Enslavement" perfectly represent your music, very balanced in the technical side but also in the catchiness, how do you create a song? Do you make composition sessions in which everyone has its role or are you more instinctive when you write a song?
The writing process for Global Enslavement was really simple. Joel is an awesome song writer, he writes the directing guitar line on each track of the album first, and after that we have composed and worked our different part to combine them and the end.
Everyone in the band have composed and worked his own parts, but we have always followed the main structure of the songs leaded by Joel guitar work. I think this is a great way to write an album, the guideline make’s a more complete album at the end. I think that you can see that Global Enslavement is an album that evolves from one song to another, making the listening a more complete experience for the fan.
The serious lyrics make you a band which looks carefully at the world, which are your main themes? Can you sum up the message of the album?
Global Enslavement is a semi-concept album about the epic failure of modern society. The whole album can be described as a reflection and a statement about some of the worst part of our history, with theme like mass media disinformation, corruption and abuse from the great rulers of the world, the enslavement created by the explosion of new technology and also the rise and fall of all kind of religion. Each song is a reflection or a social critic about some massive issues of modern civilization.
Jonathan's vocals are really strong, his performance is great. I noticed that many vocalists in these days prefer to be something like a model than a frontman, what do you think about this trend?
Hey thanks for this comment I really appreciate it! I try to put the best performance I can on Global Enslavement and it’s cool to see that people liked what they heard!
I consider myself as a frontman and to be honest, don’t think that anyone deserve to be treated like a role model, not even musician. People are supposed to be able to make their own mind and to follow their own path in their life, not taking a vocalist or a band member as model and try to do the exact same thing in life.
I know that we can have some sort of influence on people, but my goal is to wake them to the things that happening around them, and make them care about the state of mankind.
For the productions you relied on Yannick St-Amand which worked also with the only Deathcore band which I evere liked, Despised Icon. Why did you choose him?
Yannick was an easy choice because he already worked with some of the guys older projects like Descend Into Nothingness and Decrepity. He knows exactly what kind of music we wanted to put on cd and we have a great relationship with him. His studio is only an hour drive from where we lives so it makes the whole recording process a lot easier too. Plus, he made an awesome job with bands like Despised Icon, Neuraxis and Beneath the Massacre. He’s an awesome producer and a really cool guy, so we were very lucky to have the chance to work with this guy.
You are part of one of the most beautiful musical scenes, the canadian one. It is always making bands and the quality of the releases is often high, how is living in a nation like this?
Living in Canada is a great thing, especially in the province of Quebec (The French speaking part of Canada). We’re living if a vast, sometime cold but always a friendly country. The biggest issue about living here is the distance between the cities, since Canada is the second largest country in the world after Russia, we have to travel a long time before hitting importants markets like Montreal and Toronto.
We can say that the Canadian scene is divided in two, the Canadian scene, and the province of Quebec scene. The’re a lot of awesome band that first emerged from here, like Kataklysm, Cryptopsy, Voivod and Obliveon. Those bands have influenced the decades after and now you got a new breed of great bands from here, like Neuraxis, Despised Icon, Martyr, Beneath the Massacre and so much more. The Canadian and Quebec metal scene is a really good one, and we’re really happy to be a part of it.
How are the relations with other bands? Do you have some friends with which you share the stage or are you just friends and go out with them? Metal is also brotherhood, even if many people forgot it.
The’re a lot of friendship in the metal community, expectialy on our local scene of Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec (Northern capital of Metal Music) .The relation with the other band of our scene here is great and I recommend your writers to check for bands like : Archons, Decrepity, Cryptik Howling and Abitabyss.
How did the contract with Maple Metal come and how are they supporting the album? What is people saying about it? I'm talking about both the critics and the fans of course.
The deal with MMR was a complete surprise for us. At the beginning, we didn’t even tried to get on a label to push our first album. we were thinking about self promote it and see what happen in the future. We self released Global Enslavement on the local market on april 2010 and the label contacted us via our Myspace to offer us a deal in the month of may.At the beginning of june the deal was sign with MMR and we re-released the album worldwide on july 26.
This is a young and small label, such as the band. Their other important act is Italian made Subhuman, with their first album Profondo Rozzo. So we’re all growing and evolving with the label and we hope that the mix will continue to give some positive results!
I understood that the live side is not easy, it's not so easy to move around the Quebec area in which you live. Anyway, do you have an experience which you will never forget? And how was the night in which you introduced "Global Enslavement"?
Our first show back in april 2010 for the independent release of our album in our home town of Rouyn-Noranda was totally awesome. You can ask for a more great gig for a first show and a release show by the same time.
The show was sold out (400 crazy fans) and the energy was incredible. The heat was up in the place and I think we never sweat like that in our entire life. Metal fans in Rouyn-Noranda/Abitibi area where we lives are simply amazing. We brought up 400 people to the show in a 40 000 people town so we can’t ask for more!
There is some live footage on Youtube if you want to see a little bit of what the Massive Slavery experience live is.
I can also say that the shooting for our first music video at the end of october was an awesome experience too. We have worked with producer Chad Archibald and Black Fawn Films (producer of music video from bands like : Eye set to Kill, Baptized in Blood, Blue Felix, Arise and Ruins, Swoolen Members and a lot more).
Are you preparing some gigs? Will we see you around in Europe or are you staying in your area at the moment?
One day for sure but not right now, our main objective is to take over Quebec and Canada first. The market here is considerably wide and we haven’t exploited yet.
But since our drummer Pierre-Alexandre officially leaved the band at the end of October, we’re now focusing on searching for a replacement or a session drummer in order to put some gigs on the map. We’ll keep you updated on this!
How is life outside the band? Hobbies, working, what made you dream to play metal? Usually bands play just for passion because money can't be the main reason since they don't earn so much.
The life outside the band is really normal, but we are all very busy guys. We all have families and full time job so Massive Slavery is a serious band, but not the main priority in our life right now. We’re not ready to give it all just to make some tour and stuff like that. We want to push and promote our music the most we can, without sacrificing everything we have. We love metal and we love music, but we’re also realistic, so we want to have fun first and just live this awesome experience with all our fans.
Personnaly, outside the band I work as a High School teacher in History/geography (That’s why they call me Jon “The Prof”) and I’m a big fan of Poker, music of all kind, and videogames.
Which are your targets for the future?
We will release our first music video for “Humanity’s last hope” before the end of November, and the same song will also be featured on the Rock Band game, via The Rock Band Network. We will work hard to push the promotion of booth in the next couple of month, and continue the hunt of a new drummer. We hope to get back on stage early in 2011 and make a couple of gigs across Canada.
Thanks for the time spent with us, the last message for our readers is up to you.
If you want more information about the band, visit our MySpace page at www.myspace.com/massiveslavery and also our official Facebook page at: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/MassiveSlavery/205503389299
Also, be sure to check out for our first music video for “Humanity’s last hope” out in November on our official YouTube page at www.youtube.com/massiveslavery .
The same song will also be available on the Rock Band Network through Rock Gamer Studios by mid December for only 1.99!!
Finally, I want to thank you and your readers in Italia and we are very thrilled by your support and interest toward Massive Slavery, we appreciate it a lot! We hope to tour one day with our label mate of Subhuman across Italia so stay tuned if we hit Europe one day you can be the first one to be visited!
