Female Fronted Thrash

Pokerface

Thank you for taking your time to talk to us! As a female fronted Thrash Metal band, it makes POKERFACE a quite unique act. What can you tell us about that decision?

Initially, we didn’t plan to be the band with female vocal. However, there were no male candidates with extreme vocal and we decided to try Delirium female vocal. It was an experiment for us, but later we realized that it brought extra bonuses. We polished her acting technique, created her style and finally came to current image of Pokerface.

What can you tell us about the band members?

Our band was formed as a project, not as usual: best friends – band – conflicts – separation. We replaced musicians constantly until we came to stable collective: Nikita (guitar), our main composer with ideal hearing and classic musical education. We would never created unique material for our second CD without him. Egor “maniac” (guitar), came in difficult time and helped a lot. He is young, naive and very opened. He has a good technique, plays in 2 bands in doom and grindcore styles. Alena, “Delirium”, our frontwoman is a student. She does carrier of star and engineer in parallel. She is very serious in her job, practices extreme vocal technique. Alena is one of the best death vocalist in Russia. Dmitry, DedMoroz (bass) is also general manager of Pokerface, who is doing all commutations with promoters and agencies. Now it’s not possible to imagine the band without him. He had also helped a lot in crisis time. All events of 2015: tours, supports, promos are related to Dmitry. Doctor (drums) is one of the founders and he is strict and reliable participant. You can count on him anytime.

Let’s discuss the tour you are participating right now in, “Global Technocratic Balkan Tour 2015”. What are your feelings about it?

Balkan tour is our first European event. We realized how organizational activity should work when musical bands plan so big schedule of concerts. We constantly learn something important and very useful. Tour is going very well, sometimes clubs are overcrowded. We are hearty welcomed there and it makes us happy. From time to time, people ask us to play an encore. I think this tour will bring us more reasons to be glad and to trust in our music and in ourselves. Now, when half of tour is finished we can say with confidence that this tour is not the last one.

Let’s discuss your album you released last September, “Divide And Rule”. What will we find in it?

Album is really evil and saturated. From the first song All is lie, listener will not get any chance for the rest. The next song, Kingdom of hate has a short intro and long-continued speed line. The Chessboard Killer is well known song, as it was included in our EP, we just added extended speed part. Absolutely new line of our work is a song Existence and we are really proud of it: still rhythms, but it’s full of energy. Our fans will like it. Into the Inferno is our etalon: saturated intro, quick riffs and groove and energetic refrains in the middle. Human control is about modern technologies, which manipulate humanity. Age of terrorism will be appreciated by lovers of speed solos. Killed by me describes aggression and punishment and will be remembered by it’s playback and recitative. Song Shut up is the most high-speed in the album and devoted to religious fanatics, who brings evil instead of kindness. Divide and rule is final track, after that you will want to push the repeat button to listen again and again.

You are going to perform with MEGADETH in November in Moscow. What can you tell us about it? How the band feels?

It was very hard to reach the agreement about supporting so famous band. It’s not a secret that headliners choose supporting band by themselves. We are really glad and proud that we open Megadeth show in Moscow. It will be an extremely great experience as a stage Stadium Live is one of the biggest stages in Moscow. Everything works here differently than in small clubs. We organize our performance thoroughly. I think everything will be on the highest level and fans will be happy.

What is your most iconic moment as a band?

The first critical moment happened in November 2014, when second founder of the band left us. As a result Pokerface lost not only in musical development, the bans lost in image also. We were completely demoralized and didn’t have any idea how to deal with that. It sounds so dolefully to play thrash metal using only one guitar. We decided to find new guitarist and Egor joined us in one month. He gave us a power of confidence and as a result we went to Russian tour with Sepultura on March, 2015.

The second moment is our Samara show in the frames of out tour with Sepultura. We have been met very warmly for the supporting band and we realized in that moment: yes, we are on the right way! We are able to inspire people, our music has crazy energy, our performance pushes everybody to run for slam and circle-pits. It was unforgettable moment of euphoria. These moments motivate us and give us a strength to continue move forward against all the odds.

Please recommend some music for the readers.

We can recommend the following bands to listen to:
Fleshgod Apocalypse
Autumn woods
Cerebral bore
Deadxhead
Shattered skies
Jinjer
Butcher Babies

Any last words for the fans?
Guys, there is nothing more important than to believe in yourself and to understand the goal. You can always find opportunities to realize it. Only laziness does not require any resources.

Zohar Belkin

This author is no longer associated with Metal On Loud Magazine.

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