Interview w/ Joe by Laurent Bouquet

Laurent: Enertia is a young band. What is your goal? What do you plan for your career?

Joe: To have our music heard by as many people as possible, either in the live setting or on our CDs. We will play anywhere & everywhere that will have us & have the means to travel all over the Northeastern USA at this point,& we hope to make it all over America & to Europe & Asia before too long.

L: It's incredible to see that you're not signed yet. With the help of "Momentum", your last album, have you got some contacts with labels? Which ones? Can we expect to see you signed ?

J: There have been a couple people that have expressed interest in us as far as helping us to get a licensing deal & we are seriously considering some of the offers we have received. On our own, we have sold over 2000 CDs & having a company that can get them in stores worldwide & ads in magazines would definitely help us to reach the next level. If nothing comes of these offers, we will just continue to put our music out ourselves.

L: You released in 1996 "Law of Three", your first album. What's the difference between it & the new ones. Where do you progress?

J; The songs on "Law.." were just the starting point of the band & while we are still very proud of the songs on that disc, we have all improved as writers & musicians in the last year. The new songs on "Momentum" are how we are feeling & thinking in 1997 & we feel the newest material we've written for CD #3 is even more powerful, so stay tuned! There has to be a natural progression in the music every time a new CD is released or it wouldn't feel as though we have accomplished anything.

L: You described yourself as a progressive power metal band. What 's your definition of progressive metal. What's the difference between prog metal & heavy metal for you?

J: We consider ourselves to be 20% progressive & 80% power metal. The difference between prog & heavy metal is shorter songs that are more "song" oriented & not based on how well the musicians in the band can play. I would say that we are more of a metal band for that reason, as we take so much time & pride in the writing of our songs as we want them to appeal to people other than musicians. We all listen to a lot of different music ranging from classic stuff like Thin Lizzy & UFO to Dream Theater, Nevermore & Machine Head & about 1000 others!!!

L: You have got a high technical level. Do you practice a lot? Did you take some lessons? Do you still take some?

J: We rehearse several days a week & everyone in the band practices on their own, & we are also playing out almost every weekend too so that helps to improve our technical abilities. Myself, I am totally self taught, only learning from all my favorite musicians from the front row at the hundreds of shows I've attended in my life. a couple of the other guys have taken lessons & know enough theory to choke a horse, but we all agree that the best songs come from the emotion that draws out the riffs & lyrics more so than a particular arpeggio pattern!

L: Does it need a special technical level to play heavy metal, power metal or prog metal ? Is it an absolute condition to offer a good, music?

J: Yes, I would say that it does, but I don't necessarily feel that it takes a high technical level to write a killer song. We have some parts that are very complex, & then we have other parts that just pound, although there is nothing too challenging going on at the time.

L: In your bio, you said that your influences are bands like Flotsam & Jetsam, Armored Saint, Dream Theater, Nevermore, ...All these bands are American ones. But I think that yours influences come more from European bands (new wave of British heavy metal, particularly). What do you think of that?

J: I agree w/ you that there are tons of European bands that have influenced us, starting w/ Thin Lizzy & UFO, Motorhead, Priest, Saxon.

L: What means Europe & France for you? what are your favorite European bands? Do you also know some underground ones?

J: some of the newer Euro bands we are into range from Morgana Lefay, Narita & a lot of others. I am sort of familiar w/ the underground bands such as Snailbooster thanks to the net, & have Lps in my collection by French bands such as Trust, Ocean & Voie De Vait . You are very lucky as it seems as though metal never went away in Europe. We grew up listening to metal & never turned our backs on it even when it wasn't trendy.

L: A lot of people says that heavy metal is dead or old fashioned. Now, a prog metal wave has come. What do you think of this purpose?

J: I think the only problem w/ this is that there is already a Dream Theater & Fates Warning, who have helped to make this prog metal movement so popular & as good as some of the clones are, they are never going to out do the originators, so hopefully, some of the bands will try to be original as possible so the scene doesn't become stale.

L: Don't you think that sometimes, some bands described themselves as prog metal ones & in fact it's just heavy metal?

J: This is the case w/ ENERTIA!! We could play any style of music we want, from country to reggae to Dream Theater style prog metal, & we play power metal as that is what comes from our hearts.

L: Don't you also think that you're also an heavy metal band that uses all its abilities to compose the best songs as possible?

J: Again, that is exactly it! we just write & use our instrumental abilities to write the best possible song.

L: What are your next projects? What are also your goal for the career of Enertia?

J: Look for our next CD in late 1998 & if we get backing, we will strive to make it our best sounding CD to date. We will be doing a couple promo videos from "Momentum" They will be available through us in early spring (in PAL format for everyone in Europe!), & along w/ that, we will 8 track demo our new material to see what we think of it on tape & this will also help for when we go into the studio as we don't have to do 100 takes!!

L: I'm sure that you would have a great success in Europe & Japan. What's your situation in these lands? Do you expect to come here to play or to promote your CD's?

J: I agree as we have sold over 2000 copies of our CDs to date & about half of them have ended up in Europe & Japan. We would love to play overseas & really hope to at some point in the next year. We just played the Powermad festival in the US & there were a lot of Germans that came over just to check out the show & it was good to know that a lot of them were familiar w/ us before seeing us play. It is flattering to see how well known we have become in the underground & we hope to get to that next level by getting a company that believes in us enough to give us tour support.

L: May be some words to convince metal fans to get your CD

J: It is very powerful & listening to it will remind you just of what you liked about heavy metal the first time you ever heard it!

L: If you have a question to answer that I don't give to you. What would it be?

I think you covered most all the bases & it was a pleasure to answer them. I guess I'll use this to say thanks to all the people that have supported us so far & what your doing is a great thing too, so keep up the great work Laurent!! Your page is great & it will help to expose some of the new underground bands!!

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