The music will be epic, colorful, orchestrated

Visions of Atlantis

Thank you for taking the time to talk to us! How are things in your world? From the looks of it, it’s a brave new world for you!

Everything is fine! Thank you! We’ve started working on new material for our upcoming album and it feels very good!

Late 2013 we were surprised by the sudden departure of most of the band, and the return of some old members. Was that a hard decision to make? 

As far as I know, each member decided to leave on their own to pursue other musical projects. This happened after Thomas Caser suggested to return to VOA’s original musical style which is pure old school symphonic metal.

When everyone left, he decided to call his old partners in crime to try to recreate the atmosphere the band evolved in 10 years ago…and he had to find new singers also, obviously.

The course changes you made in 2013, in what way could that be credited to the loss of Nicole Bogner, your original female vocalist?

I think this is not related. When Nicole passed away she had been gone from VOA for quite a while, she was first replaced by Melissa Ferlaak and then Maxi Nil stepped in. The real desire to come back to symphonic metal is a matter of taste. That’s the music Thomas Caser still wanted to make!

The band released an EP last month, Old Routes – New Waters, which consists of fan favorite songs that you re-recorded with the new lineup. They really sound amazing. How did you land on the decision to re-record existing work? 

Well, thank you! We had a new stable line-up by the end of 2013 but with time we realized that we would need quite some time to write a new album. So in order to present the new line-up to VOA’s audience and to concretely show the direction the band was going to take for the long term we thought we had to release something shortly and the idea of re-recording songs – which the band had already done before- came up naturally.

 I really love the vocals in the new lineup. How did you land this great new vocal team, Siegfried Samer and Clémentine Delauney?

Thomas came to me late 2013 telling me what was going on with the band’s line-up and sharing his ideas of coming back to VOA’s original musical style, which is the period of the band’s history that I liked the most. The project was to make a final album and a final tour and since it had been one of my dreams to have a band of this genre I was really seduced by the idea! Since then, it’s no longer a question to make it a final album, I think we would like to go on if we can!

Regarding Siegfried, he has his own band, DRAGONY in Austria which Thomas knew about and since the country is not so rich with metal singers, it felt natural to offer him the male singer part in VOA, which we are very happy he accepted!

How are the current band dynamics, and who does what where it comes to the creative process?

For now we are throwing ideas at our producer in order to find the right sound and musical universe for the next VOA album, so everything is still at a very early stage of the writing process.

Are you currently working on a fully new album? what can we expect of the new Visions?

The band is going back to the style it had on the first 3 records, so the music will be completely inspired by this period. The music will be epic, colorful, orchestrated, topped with, we hope, great melodies and themes.

Even though you started out being highly inspired by bands like Nightwish, you really found our own style. How would you describe your music to someone that’s unfamiliar with the band?

Referring to Nightwish’s first albums is not wrong; though VOA’s music has been evolving a lot with time. The idea nowadays is to come back to a more heavy-speed melodic metal with songs being duets between a man and a woman singing with a classic approach.

You had your 15-year anniversary show this April! How did it go, was it a good show?

Yes, it was a very fun show, having so much friends and family around. We even invited some old members on stage for a couple of songs and we had a very nice time.

What is your favorite fan-related memory?

Definitely when we played Mexico city this year. I had never seen such dedication from fans, never received so much love on stage and so many presents! It was the first time I even took a picture with each single person that was attending the show this night. It ended up being the longest signing session I ever had. These people are really nice and warm and it was fantastic to have been able to play there and meet them.

While preparing for this interview I noticed your official website has not been updated since 2009! What happened there?

Well I suppose the person who was in charge of it must have left the band in between and no one dealt with that.

Where will we be able to see you live this year?

We have a couple of shows confirmed with Tarja in October. We’ll play Pratteln (CH) and Vienna (AU) with her.

Do you have any last words for our readers?

Thank you for reading this interview and if you have any question, feel free to contact me ! I’m on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter! I hope to meet many of you on shows in the future.

Randy Gerritse

Randy is the founder of Metal On Loud Magazine and its community. He is a lyricist for several bands (Dissector, GOOT), an author currently working on his second book, and does web development for a living.

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