Interview mit Luiz Felipe Netto von Piah Mater

As PIAH MATER you play mostly progressive death metal. What inspired you to play this particular style of music?
I think it’s a very liberating scope to work with. Much of my interests in music can be easily incorporated in this type of sound without coming across as forced or unfitting. The heavy dissonant riffs, the melodic passages, the acoustic guitar work, etc… everything goes into the melting pot that is this band.

In my opinion there’s a lot of similarities between your music and that of Opeth and Ne Obliviscaris. Would you agree with that or rather not?
I haven’t really heard Ne Obliviscaris to be honest with you. But I’m aware that that is a name that gets thrown around a lot when media outlets want to situate their readers about our sound. As far as Opeth goes, I think the comparisons are more due to the fact that both bands share several common influences (the prog rock acts from the 70’s and the extreme metal bands from the early 90’s) and express those influences in a similar fashion (with compositions overlapping these different genres across a generally 10-minute-plus song). In my view, this axis of influences is more responsible for the similitude between the two bands then us being “worshippers” of the Opeth sound – a band we wholeheartedly love – but that is not what we envisioned the concept behind PIAH MATER to be.

Which other bands and musicians had an impact on you as artists?
I was lured to the heavy side of music thanks mostly to Brazilian bands such as Angra, Shaman and Tuatha De Dannan. Those were big influences to me coming up in the scene back in the early 2000s. Upon hearing (the now classics) „Temple Of Shadows“ and „Ritual“, I knew I wanted that life for myself. Since then, many things have changed of course. One’s personal taste is supposed to be shaped throughout their adult lives. But I still hold those records to the very highest standards of quality to this day. Coming across Dream Theater was a huge deal for me. I basically spent one whole year almost exclusively listening to them as I scavenged through their discography, amazed at the level of musicianship displayed but also enthralled by the unique atmosphere they created around their albums – something that has been rather missing in their most recent efforts. Some time later bands like Porcupine Tree and Pain Of Salvation also made me rethink what I thought I knew about music. Then came the dark. Bands like Katatonia, Enslaved, Opeth and Ihsahn (whom I consider my personal mentor although he doesn’t know that) gave me a framework, so to speak, and through that I found the best way I knew to express myself as a musician. Talking about this particular moment in time, I am absolutely fascinated with Steely Dan right now – a recent discovery of mine despite them being one of the most successful musical acts of the 20th century. Their „Aja“ album is slowly creeping up my list of best albums ever made.

Does it bother you when someone compares your music to another band or do you mostly take that as a compliment?
It tends to be self evident when a comparison is meant as a compliment and when it’s mean-spirited and cast to discredit your work. Either way, I always try not to take these things personally nor allow that to bother me on a personal level.

How important is it to you to create something totally unique with your music?
Style is something that takes time to be consolidated. When you think about it, it usually takes a band three or four albums until they find what is the thing that sets them apart from everyone else. To be able to single out that creative spark requires patience. And truth is, it only gets harder with time, because with each passing year the possibilites of what could be invented only get flimsier and those walls keep closing in on you as an artist. It’s not easy to reinvent heavy music in 2018. That’s why you see more and more new bands going for what they know works and not willing to stray too far off that margin. In hindsight, I feel that we should have done a better job at making sure we were distancing ourselves enough from these other artists that you (and many others in the past) have mentioned, especially Opeth. That’s something we are surely going to be more mindful of for future releases. While being increasingly difficult to be, as you’ve said, “totally unique“ in the modern age, it feels to me that one should always strive towards that goal, even if the price is falling short on the public’s expectations.

Even though you’re still a rather young band, you already seem to be just as professional as much bigger bands. How did you manage to avoid doing typical beginner‘s mistakes?
Thank you for saying this. But in reality we made many of the so-called beginner’s mistakes. I don’t know any band that didn’t. But it’s comforting to know that it doesn’t come across as so apparent. Maybe the reason for it is that our motto in this band has always been „to act like the band that we want to become”, and that envolves a more professional outlook on how we present ourselves to the world. So for instance, we knew from day one that we were not going to put out material just for the sake of creating social media content. We knew that we might take time to release music but that when we do it it will be in our own terms and only when we feel that the recordings are the best representation of the songs. And I could go on and on, but to make it short, we knew that we were not only a small band but one that would probably stay small for a long, long time. And despite all that, we had to think big. Otherwise it wouldn’t make sense to have it as an operating machine at all. But as I said, mistakes will always be a part of the process. The important thing is to learn something from them.

Had you already gathered experience as musicians before you started PIAH MATER?
Igor and I started the band when we were teenagers and, although we had played with other people before, none of that was as serious nor as an integral part of who we are as persons like PIAH MATER eventually grew up to be.

How exactly do you approach your songwriting? What do you begin with?
It usually starts with a riff and then we go from there. Wherever it leads us to. One thing that we don’t do is put together pieces of music that were written separately as if assembling a puzzle purposefully intended to be complicated. What you hear in the records is a product of one idea leading up to the next and so forth until we feel that we’ve told the story that we needed to tell.

„The Wandering Daughter“ is already your second album. In which aspects, do you think, did you progress as musicians since your debut „Memories Of Inexistence“?
Going through the experience of writing, producing and recording a first album teaches you one thing or two about the craft of music making. „Memories Of Inexistence“ gave us that opportunity. To make every mistake in the book and then find our ways around it. I’m proud of how it came out eventually, but I understand its shortcomings. On “The Wandering Daughter”, the process was a bit more familiarized, but still there were many aspects of it that were new to us. The drums were tracked live, the bass and keys were outsourced and, overall, there were more than a dozen people involved in the production this time. Much more than the three people that were around when „Memories Of Inexistence“ was being tracked in my small home studio. Those were very different experiences in their own right and both of them taught us important lessons about us as musicians.

The lyrics of „The Wandering Daughter“ seem a bit cryptical to me. What is the album about thematically? Is there a concept that ties the songs together?
„Cryptical“ is the word. The type of lyrics I’d rather write usually revolve around the description of eerie sceneries and darker sentiments, mostly based on personal experiences. But I tend to do such in a way that doesn’t make anything too obvious. I’m no fan of giving away too much. There has to be mystery. So I shape the lyrics to be a mirror that reflects whatever is projected at them. Everybody will have a different perspective upon reading them depending on their own past experiences and whatever crosses they might bear. As far as concept goes, “The Wandering Daughter“ is an album that happens outside. In the green and moisty wild. It’s about self knowledge. It’s about finding one’s place among nature. About recovering from a devastating loss. And, on a macro-scale, about defining the right balance between progress and preservation. All in all, it’s a very nature-inspired album.

Do you think that there‘s a track on you new record that could be viewed as some sort of climax?
To me the closing track, “The Meek’s Inheritance”, feels like the climax of the album and it’s probably the one I’m most satisfied with right now. The album was almost named after that song, by the way, such is its importance in the context of the storytelling.

In your personal opinion, which of the tracks on „The Wandering Daughter“ is the most difficult to play?
It depends on which instrument. But in general, if I had to say one song, it would probably be “Sprung from Weakness”.

The album seems to have gained a lot of positive recognition. Did you even get to read a negative review? If so, what did it say?
Yes, we are very grateful for the positive feedback we got from the people who heard it. Receiving a ‘thumbs up‘ from publications of the likes of Decibel Magazine and Metal Hammer, among others, is quite humbling to us. But above that, the warmth we get from the people who come to us and take the time to write down their impressions on the album is very satisfying. This human connection is of extreme value to us personally. Regarding bad reviews, they will always be there. We tend to internalize what is constructive and shrug off what’s not. But overall, it’s been somewhat rewarding to keep up with them. We are still a bunch of newcomers in this arena and by getting „peer-reviewed“ we can often learn things about ourselves that we didn’t think of before. But I believe that with time, it will get weary and I’ll eventually just give up on trying to decode what it is that people want or expect from me. We’ll see.

You’re currently signed to code666. How did it come to you working with that particular label?
Code’s long tradition of working with highly respected bands through the years is what made us write them an email proposing the collaboration. Luckily for us they were interested and we got a positive response less than ten minutes later. A few weeks of sorting out the details went by and, lo and behold, by May 2018 we were a signed band.

Thinking about your collaboration with code666, what is the best thing about the label‘s way of working with you?
We are a band based in Brazil and, to our understanding, a considerable share of the people interested in our music resides in Europe. Code comes to fill that gap. They are an Italian label with many contacts in the region and their job was to make the music reach as many people as possible within their reach. Considering that we are promoting what could be viewed by some as a „dead format“ in this day and age – that being the physical CD – I think they did a good job at making some noise about it. We are definitely less small now then we used to be.

Could you also give us some news about probable live shows? Is there anything planned yet?
There are no plans on that end for the immediate future, unfortunately. But everything can change if we receive the right call.

Let‘s end our interview by going through our traditional Metal1.info-Brainstorming. What comes to your mind when reading the following terms?
Best Opeth album: Watershed
President Bolsonaro: It’s winter in Brazil.
Brutal death metal: If brutality overshadows musicality then what’s the point? Besides, you can’t get any more brutal than „Altars Of Madness“ and that happened 30 years ago. Bands aiming to surpass that only for the sake of sounding „more brutal“ are like a dog chasing its own tail.
Musical Highlight of 2018: Getting to spend ten days in the beautiful countryside of Sweden writing music for a future and yet secret release.
PIAH MATER in five years: Only time will tell. Hopefully having at least two more albums added to our discography.

Thank you once more for your answers. I’d like to leave the final words to you:
Thank you for the opportunity and thanks to the readers for the interest! Hope to talk with you soon.

Publiziert am 1. Februar 2019 von Stephan Rajchl