Exclusive: video interview with Uneven Structure, transcript available

got-djent.com has conducted an exclusive video interview with Uneven Structure, who have recently released a free EP titled '8', and are currently working on their upcoming debut album 'Februus'. A lot of our users contributed questions for the interview - thank you! The interview was conducted in French, the band's native language. Subtitles in English have been provided. It was uploaded in two parts which can be watched below.

UPDATE: For those who prefer a written version of the interview, a transcript is available by clicking on "Read more".

For sharing, please use the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ9tv5dI0CQ&feature=PlayList&p=76E58A300C295649&index=0&playnext=1

Transcript
With:
Jérôme Colombelli (Djé) - Rhythm Guitar
Benoit Friedrich - Bass Guitar
Aurélien Pereira (Auré) - Melodic Guitar/Ambiances
Igor Omodei (Iggy) - Rhythm Guitar

Ingemar "Ikkåa" Schubnel, the band's drummer, was unfortunately unable to participate.

Who the hell are you? - by got-djent.com

Djé: Hi, we're Uneven Structure and we're from France and Sweden. We play a kind of groovy and ambient metal, and we released an EP called 8 in December 2009. Right now, we're working on our album, called Februus, which should be out this year. We have not set any release date yet.

Who writes the song mostly and who aside from Meshuggah mainly influenced your music? - by Hollywars/jwinti

Iggy: Well for the tracks, that’s more often you. (Looks at Iggy)
Auré: that’s both of us, it's Iggy and me for the most part.
Djé: sometimes we need also need to slow you guys down.
Auré: I mainly take care of the ambiances, but that doesn't mean we have specific roles. It happens quite often that we switch.

Iggy: About the influences... we all have diverse influences.
Djé: We could name tons, but if we have to mention a few, Devin Townsend’s work with Strapping Young Lad and the Devin Townsend Band influences us a lot.
Auré: Yeah, that’s my biggest influence.
Djé: As far as drums are concerned, Morgan Ågren, Gene Hoglan, and for the ambiances, electronic music influences us a lot as well. We all listen metal but also electronic music, and it has an impact on what we do.

On the EP "8", Daniel "Mynd" Ädel from Vildhjarta stepped in for the vocals. Your drummer, Ingemar Schubnel, is also Swedish. How did this come about? - by benanne

Iggy: With Daniel of Vildhjarta, it was a combination of circumstances. We had met quickly on the internet, we talked about music, we came to talk about Vildhjarta, and then Uneven Structure. I gave him a few tracks and he seemed to like it, so I asked him if he wanted to throw some vocals on "Reviving", one of our old songs. It was quite awesome, we were happy with it.
Auré: We are hooked on his tone and the job he has done on Reviving.

Iggy: In the meantime Ingemar (drummer) saw us on Vildhjarta's Myspace, in their top friends, and he read that we were looking for a drummer. At this time he still was in Sweden. Two weeks later, he came to France and auditioned, and everything went really well.

Iggy: Getting back to Daniel - since we were really satisfied about his work on Reviving, we asked him if he wanted to do vocals for us again on 8.
Auré: Same deal, same enthusiasm. And we were again very satisfied with his work.

How did you come up with "Egocentric Focus" drums in the intro? How you manage to compose that? - by ma7erick

Auré: I analyzed guitar riff for Ingemar. I programmed a drum groove in 3 layers, starting with the bass drums, setting them on the guitar notes. Then, I set the snare shots between bass drums to have some kind of blast beat at the key parts. And then, some cymbals on top of that, with another groove on top that Ingemar reworked.
Djé: No, it's not completely random. (They all laugh)

What's the concept behind 8? Art is quite intriguing, I'm guessing there's some relation to infinity or is it just some Dream Theater stolen concept? - by pival

Djé: So, a concept stolen from Dream Theater, no, not quite. No one in the band listens to DT except me, sometimes, here's the proof! (Shows a Dream Theater album) There's no link between DT and the underlying concept of 8, but I'm gonna let Iggy talk about it.
Iggy: "Infinity" is definitely part of the concept, but in a nutshell, it's about the "chicken or the egg" dilemma. It's as simple as that.

Thank you for this immensely enjoyable and solid EP. One thing though: I've tried googling for the lyrics of "8", but I'm coming up empty-handed! - by shrizza

Benoit: Thank you for downloading the EP! So, about the lyrics for 8, they will be published online very soon.
Djé: It's true that we haven't done this yet but it's going to be corrected soon.

Are you satisfied with the feedback people gave for 8 and are you worried that some people might write you off as unoriginal, before checking out your album? - by jwinti

Auré: Yes, we're really satisfied with the feedback for 8. We didn't think there would be that many downloads and positive reviews, well, reviews altogether. Now about the lack of originality...
Iggy: Well, originality simply wasn't the aim of the EP. Februus was supposed to be released a while ago. The album takes a lot of time so we decided to release the EP, to show people what we were capable of, that we were doing something.
Benoit: To show people we are a band.
Iggy: What's important is that people liked it.
Auré: Yeah, that's what counts for us!

What can we expect from Februus stylistically? - by benanne

Djé: Februus will be very very different compared to 8. You'll find some similar elements, but it will be much more melodic and really progressive. I'm not going into details as we don't want to talk much about this album. But what I can say is that we will use instruments that are not usually present in metal, or at least what we tend to call metal; Something quite different from 8.
Auré: We have reworked a lot of ambiances, they are much more elaborate than what we've done on 8, and also more atypical grooves.

How is the recording for the album progressing? - by benanne

Iggy: It's going well! What we can say is that we've decided on the album structure last week. Now it's just a matter of a couple of riffs to change, a couple of transitions.
Djé: We're in preproduction.

The 8 EP came out of nowhere. There were plans for a February EP that evolved into the Februus album. Can you explain how this turn of events came about? - by benanne

Iggy: We began writing Februus about one year ago, which is quite a while ago already. Februus was first called February, it was about a 30 minute concept. As time passed, we realized that 30 minutes wouldn't be enough time to develop all the ideas we wanted to incorporate. Between ambiances, grooves, other elements... it would have sounded rushed in such a short timespan.
Auré: The 30 minute timespan wasn't long enough to develop the ideas we had, so we decided to delay Februus and that's how 8 arrived.
Iggy: Yes exactly, by reusing riffs from older versions of Februus that seemed interesting to us.
Auré: And by changing a couple of notes and harmonies, they sounded radically different, so we chose to reuse them for 8.

Who in the band plays extended range instruments and what is the rig you're using? - by ma7erick

Djé: Well, everyone! We all have baritone guitars. 8 was recorded with an 8 string baritone guitar with a 27" scale. (Auré hands him an 8 string guitar) This is a classic Ibanez model that a lot of you on got-djent may know. Februus will be exclusively recorded on 7 string baritone guitars. More precisely this model. (Auré hands him a 7 string guitar) It's an Ibanez, I think the name of the model is RG7680 if I'm not mistaken. You won't find much about it as it's a guitar produced in really small quantities. It has Lundgren M7s. Well, this one (points at the bridge pickup) is an M7 and this one (points at the neck pickup) a custom Lundgren pickup.
Iggy: We stepped back to 7 string guitars for Februus because we realized that, what with it being much more harmonically loaded than 8, it would have been difficult to juggle between very low tunings and dense chords, stuff like that, so we preferred to return to 7 string guitars to keep the strength in it. But it doesn't mean we're playing on 6 string guitars.

Iggy: For the album, we haven't completely decided what hardware to use yet, as we are in preproduction, but for the EP we've *oddly* used a free VST called TSE X-30. I really urge all you guitar players to try it out. It's an ENGL preamp that sounds great.
Auré: It has done a great job on the EP.
Djé: It sounds awesome, yeah.
Iggy: In a nutshell, TSE X-30, just try it.
Djé: We thank the guy who made it!

Djé: We're using some hardware like PODs, classic stuff. As for the drums, well, our drummer is not here to talk about it, but it's a huge drumkit.
Iggy: It's not an ordinary kit. There's the usual elements, but also some much more special things like percussion, lots of stacks, allowing him to have particular sound textures that will be integrated in the album. What happened for the EP and will happen for the album is that we've reproduced his kit as close as possible with Superior Drummer and a shitload of extensions. We've managed to get sound that's close, really close to our drummer's and we've kept the specific tones of his stacks and all elements, so we've managed to avoid the "default kit" syndrome.
Auré: On tour we should end up with a tone quite close to what we've got on 8, and what we'll have on Februus.

What with touring? Have you found a label yet? - by StervendeWens

Benoit: For now we prefer to focus on the preproduction of the Februus album.
Djé: For live playing, we've got to solve a couple of things first, in order to play in the best possible conditions, but we're working hard on it! As for the label, we've got ideas but we haven't approached anyone yet. We will soon, though.
Iggy: As soon as we have something to show them.

What do you think about the "djent" phenomenon? - by benanne
Djé: The Djent Phenomenon! (Looks at Iggy)
Iggy: Why me? (They all laugh) Well, it's cool to see a lot of people showing interest in it, to see something emerge. For us it's more like a set of technical and writing tools, a certain kind of tone, dynamics. It's very interesting, there is much to learn about it, but we can't just rely on that, it's just a technique. It would be like saying "we do shred music".
Benoit: That makes no sense.

Do any of you guys have any side projects? - by ma7erick

Djé: I play guitar for Uneven Structure but I'm also bass player for a local prog rock band called Nemesis, with whom we're preparing an EP.
Auré: Besides Uneven Structure I do a lot of electro, and also metal in a project called worC.
Benoit/Iggy: We... (laughing) we have a noise project which is on hold right now, we won't mention the name. Those who should know about it already do.

Are there any new bands that you like and would like to mention? - by ma7erick

Iggy: Inevitably, Paul Ortiz, "Chimp Spanner", great musician, his album "At The Dream's Edge" is awesome.
Auré: He's also a very cool guy.
Iggy: Yeah, very cool guy, if you like great music, check him out.
Auré: Limit Zero too, it's a band we helped when they released their EP, We host their EP on our website. A band to discover.
Iggy: And well, we have to mention them. Vildhjarta: great band, great guys! Daniel, Daniel, thanks!