melodylane

MELODY LANE: First of all, also if it can sound a bit expected…Can you tell us where does the name SPIRAL SKIES come from?   
ERIC: Listen to the song Spiral Architect with Black Sabbath and you can hear where the name comes from.

MELODY LANE: The line-up of the band is confirmed, is it the same from the beginning of the band…or have you had changes in the last years? Can you tell us something about the roots of SPIRAL SKIES? And where the band was born? 
ERIC: The line-up has been the same since Frida joined the band in 2014. Before Frida joined, we instrumentalists had played as a ”rehearsal room band”. I wrote some dirty rock 'n roll / 80s hard core songs in the beginning but we quickly slipped into writing songs together more inspired by 70s progressive, psychedelic rock.

MELODY LANE: Can you list us 5 songs, from SPIRAL SKIES discography (including new material), that can define the sound of the band … 5 songs that can help our readers to know SPIRAL SKIES at the best. 
ERIC: Labyrinth of the Mind,The Wizard’s Ball,Dark Side of the Cross,Awakening, Shattered Hopes

MELODY LANE: Tell us something about the creative process of your music. Is there a main composer or we can talk about a team work? The songs come from ideas of a single member and then the band works on these ideas in the studio jamming together, or your songs are written in the studio and all the members compose together?
ERIC: it’s a total team work! We compose together in the rehearsal room, often someone comes up with a cool guitar riff that we start jamming on. Singing melodies usually comes after the instrumental is ready which is not always an easy way to go. But Daniel and Frida is doing an amazing job to get it together with some input from the rest of us.

MELODY LANE: Who writes lyrics and words in SPIRAL SKIES? Can you tell us something about contents and messages of the lyrics of your songs?
ERIC: Daniel our drummer who has written most of the lyrics and Frida a few on our releases.
FRIDA: Yes. For the next album we have written about half and half. The content is mostly about life and death, and all what’s in between. I can’t recall any lyrics that we have written that has a Happy theme, so to say. Daniel is a very skilled at his work. You should read his lyrics - they are like poetry to me. And yes, we are both writing some society criticism. But that is up the listener to find out. We don´t wanna explain in total what the lyrics all about. It is better for the listener to make their own opinion and believes. 

MELODY LANE:  After time, are you totally satisfied with your choices about sound and the writing of your old albums? If you could… would you change anything?
FRIDA: I am satisfied but could not really speak for the whole band. Eric (bass player) recorded and mixed our debut album and he has some great skills. Of course we all learn with each recording how to do stuff easier and better, and so on. It is a progress that never will be finished, i think. A road that has no end. As Eric mentioned above, we write all music together and that is something that takes time. Maybe will change a bit in the future, or maybe not. 

MELODY LANE:  Apart from the all the problems and troubles related to the pandemic COVID-19 , any chance for us to see SPIRAL SKIES playing live here in Italy/Europe in the next months/years? Maybe summer festivals?Any plans?
FRIDA: We have not booked anything at the point cause it is too much of a economic risk.  But we would not hesitate to come to Italy and since we do a lot of the booking ourselves, we would gladly be recommended to festivals that we could contact. We have not yet played in Italy but I have been there many times on vacay and love it. Wanna come back and play for sure!!

MELODY LANE: Could you tell us two bands, from the actual international scene, you’d like SPIRAL SKIES to tour with?... Two bands that would represent a perfect line-up for SPIRAL SKIES to play with. And why these bands?
FRIDA: Witchcraft and Twin Temple. Or Lucifer and Ghost. Or Jex Thoth and The Devil´s Blood (if they still excisted) Or Iron Maiden, of course… ;-) Reason why I choose these bands? Probably cause the audience would appreciate our music, which sometimes reminds of all the above (Including Iron Maiden) but without being really similar. We have always played with bands that are quite a bit from our own style. Actually we would probably go along with all sorts of bands. We have toured with Black metal bands, and played with Russian Reagge bands so guess everything works out. 

MELODY LANE: We know that ‘to define is to limit’… but how do you define SPIRAL SKIES sound? Are you an Hard Rock band? Hard Blues band? …Doom ‘70s band...Or…?
ERIC: difficult question, can you answer it? Haha.

MELODY LANE: Which musicians are/have been your main musical inspirations? 
ERIC: I would be lying if I did not mention Black Sabbath. We all have quite different musical influences so that's why I think we sound the way we do.

MELODY LANE: Which are your favorite bands nowadays? Is there any musicians you’d really like to collaborate with?...and why?
FRIDA: Hard to say, it depends from day to day. I listen to all kinds of music and I think we are all the same. At the moment i am listening to norwegian melodic black metal such as Ihnsahn, and also listen a lot to a persian singer songwriter called Habib. But the bands we all listen to from time to time are probably Blood Ceremony, the Devil’s Blood, Horisont, Black Sabbath and for our guitarrist Dan Grim - Yngwie Malmsteen, ;) 

MELODY LANE: What was the most important concert for SPIRAL SKIES’ career?
FRIDA: Probably our show at Sweden Rock Festival, where we had our biggest audience, biggest stage and most serious production when it comes to light and sound etc. I was for sure most nervous about this one so guess it was the most important. But all shows are important. You always wanna do your best! And nothing can really compete with that feeling before entering on stage. I live on our live shows. Missing it a lot these virus days...

MELODY LANE: As a musician, what has been your biggest achievement to date and what do you want to achieve in the near future? 
FRIDA: I think we all felt very proud when we held our debut “Blues for a Dying Planet “- Vinyl in our hands for the first time. It is something physical that you can touch, and of course - listen to - that manifests all the countless hours of songwriting and jamming we´ve done. And it will be there for our children and grandchildren and so on (fact that  they wanna listen or not I leave unsaid, haha).  That is cool, i think! :) 
Regarding the future, some stuff had to be put on hold due to the pandemy. We have all material written for a new album, and we hope we can record it this fall, and release next year. And we really hope we can be able to play live again soon.