{"id":3433,"date":"2011-11-28T23:26:50","date_gmt":"2011-11-28T12:26:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maytherockbewithyou.com\/mtrbwy\/?p=3433"},"modified":"2011-11-28T23:30:11","modified_gmt":"2011-11-28T12:30:11","slug":"voyager","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maytherockbewithyou.com\/mtrbwy\/2011\/11\/voyager\/","title":{"rendered":"Voyager"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>From Official Bio: In the last few years, Australia’s VOYAGER have attained what can only be described as a worldwide cult following. Hailed as “one of the most original and daring groups on planet”, the band has battled geographical isolation to tour Europe twice, perform at ProgPower Europe 2006 and share stages with diverse acts like NIGHTWISH, STEVE VAI, SOILWORK and ALESTORM. The band’s loyal international fanbase has praised its incredibly catchy songwriting and compared its sound to a mixture of AMORPHIS’ thirst for melody, SOILWORK’s heaviness and the crystal vocal clarity of A-HA’s Morton Harket.<\/p>\n

Conceived in 1999 by Danny Estrin, a German-born musician, VOYAGER has 3 full-length albums under its belt, each one propelling them further into cult status as an elite progressive metal band. While “Element V” (2004) was celebrated for its uplifting variety, the band’s opuses have continued on a darker path, with “uniVers” (2007) receiving critical acclaim for its melancholic and emotional side and “I am the revolution” (2009) reaching an even heavier, darker but still overwhelmingly melodic spectrum.<\/p>\n

With an impressive history of Australian music awards, as well as many titles of “album of the month” in Romanian, Finnish, Italian, German and Belgian music press, the band’s notoriety for its energetic live performances has captured audiences worldwide, so much that VOYAGER were invited to play at the prestigious PROGPOWER USA festival in 2011.<\/p>\n

Coinciding with this is the release of VOYAGER’s undeniably most refined work “The Meaning of I”; a dark, heavy, introspective, at times electronic, yet occasionally uplifting journey into the mind in search of meaning. “The Meaning of I” is a culmination of VOYAGER’s sound: polished yet organic, heavy yet melodic, dark yet playful.<\/p>\n

VOYAGER’s new album has found an excellent new home with elite progressive metal label SENSORY. With a worldwide release date of 11 October 2011, “The Meaning of I” promises to be a milestone in progressive music. As one reviewer said: “I don’t care what you call this band: prog, metal, melodic rock or dark metal, but just call it brilliant.”<\/p>\n

We chatted to Voyager’s bass player Alex Canion about the band, and why we think they’re one of the Best Things You’ve Never Heard…<\/p>\n

As an Australian band, you do have a very European sound, how would you describe Voyager to people that wouldn’t have heard you before?<\/strong>
\nI would describe Voyager, simply put as Melodic Metal, there\u2019s a lot of elements that goes into Voyager\u2019s sound and that\u2019s all good and well, but when you\u2019re trying to brand to something that kind of puts a definitive label on it, but we just settle for Melodic Metal.<\/p>\n

Over your career the sound of Voyager has evolved somewhat, how do you approach creating the sound for the band?<\/strong>
\nIt started, the band released its first album before I was even on the scene and that was very Power Metal based.\u00a0 There was a whole other line up back then as well and I guess in its formative stages was bound be different to what we sound like ten years plus into the career of the band. I guess a lot of it has to do with Daniel the singer, he\u2019s always been the main songwriter of the band and he\u2019s German born and he grew up a little bit in Europe as well, so naturally that European sound as well might come to him, but he does listen to a lot of European stuff, we all do so naturally it creeps into our sound.\u00a0 Daniel\u2019s a classically trained violinist and pianist as well and naturally takes away from some of those European influences.<\/p>\n

Who would you sight as the bands major influences?<\/strong>
\nFirst and foremost I\u2019d probably say Type O Negative, strangely enough, until I started listening to Type O Negative I wouldn\u2019t have really gotten that by listening to Voyager itself but I guess looking back on the albums there\u2019s always elements that creep in of Type O Negative, that\u2019s a big influence on Danny as well.\u00a0 Apart from that I\u2019d say Meshuggah, they crept in there, definitely Soilwork and I guess some dribs and drabs of some world music as well.\u00a0 I know Ozric Tentacles play a part in it but we all listen to different stuff as individuals as well so naturally it\u2019s all going to be a melting pot when we get together<\/p>\n

Talk us through the new album ‘The Meaning Of I’ it\u2019s such a strong album, how did you tackle the song writing for this one?<\/strong>
\nThe song writing was done a little bit differently this time around, normally Danny would write the skeleton of the song and we\u2019d all make the rest of it up, but it was much more of a collaborative effort, we got a new guitarist Scott Kay on board as well, and he\u2019s a bit of a riff master, so he contributed to the song writing , a lot of the times we just jammed them out and what we normally do before each album is we\u2019ll do a pre production album, where we can really kind of send all the tracks to each other and we can chip away at the song writing.\u00a0 For example, Danny wrote \u2018Momentary Relapse Of Pain\u2019 when we were still touring the \u2018I Am The Revolution\u2019 stuff from the last album, and then a year ago in December I was in Scotland, in Winter time and I had a little travel acoustic guitar with me and I wrote most of \u2018The Meaning Of I\u2019 the title track on this little down tuned acoustic guitar.\u00a0 So it was a little more of a collaborative effort this time round, but we all oversaw the writing process.<\/p>\n

Just on the title and song itself ‘The Meaning Of I’ what’s the meaning behind it?<\/strong>
\nI think it basically sums up the whole album, I think that was Danny\u2019s intention with the lyrical content, the album is very introspective and I guess it delves in to one\u2019s personal journey and I guess trying to recognize and identify who you are in yourself.\u00a0 The lyrics are mostly quite dark as well and it\u2019s kind of like that throughout the whole album.\u00a0 So, the basis of \u2018The Meaning Of I\u2019 is what we\u2019re honing on in terms of marketing of the album.<\/p>\n

Was there a concept you were going for?<\/strong>
\nI don\u2019t think it was conscious at time of writing, normally the concept would come from lyrical ideas and concepts and ideally around the lyrics and that\u2019s very much Danny\u2019s thing, so going in to the writing we didn\u2019t set about making a concept album and I don\u2019t really think it\u2019s entirely a concept album as it is maybe a quasi concept album, that\u2019s what we normally try and do is we allow to let the listener fill in the blanks a bit. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Are you hitting the road for some of your own headlining shows after the Bodom tour?<\/strong>
\nWe are actually, we\u2019re looking at doing our own headline tour through Australia in March next year so I think that\u2019ll be a good experience after this year ,we did the Alestorm tour in April around Australia and we got to play Adelaide again which we\u2019d only played once before I think and also the first time in Brisbane, we\u2019re getting to do that again with this Children Of Bodom tour which is great so we\u2019re going to try and hit up the major cities again in March.<\/p>\n

Obviously with the sound you’ve hit the European market before and played with some big bands, do you have plans to get back there in support of this new album?<\/strong>
\nDefinitely, Europe is definitely on the agenda for us I guess you could say We\u2019d love to go everywhere, its\u2019 just a matter of money and timing and what\u2019s viable and when it\u2019s viable to do it.\u00a0 So we have definitely got fingers in the pies and we\u2019re looking at going over there at the end of next year.<\/p>\n

Do you find that your market is more so overseas and that somewhere like Australia isn’t ready for a sound like yours?<\/strong>
\nThat\u2019s a good question.\u00a0 It might be a bit hard for me to answer that, because how do you know when you\u2019re ready?\u00a0 I guess you could say if Australia was ready maybe we\u2019d be in the top 40 or something like that and we\u2019d be going down the path of a band like Pendulum, because you know they\u2019ve got a very electric sound but they\u2019re still quite heavy.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know, I think maybe it\u2019s taken a bit of time, the bands been around for about 10 years now so maybe they aren\u2019t ready, but they better be because we\u2019re coming.<\/p>\n

Hailing from Perth, what\u2019s the scene like over there for a band like Voyager?<\/strong>
\nThe scene is I guess like any other scene, it\u2019s just that.\u00a0 A scene.\u00a0 There\u2019s a lot of bitching and in fighting I think Voyager are considered outcast from the Perth Metal scene because we\u2019re not heavy enough or we don\u2019t conform in some way to that.\u00a0 It\u2019s pretty interesting because we\u2019ll have the normal Metal shows which is the same people all the time and what we\u2019ve noticed at our shows a lot more new people are coming, a lot of a different crowd and don\u2019t get me wrong, we\u2019re friends with a lot of people in there, but there\u2019s also a very negative side, like the scene on websites where there\u2019s lots of nasty talk about Voyager and stuff like that.\u00a0 It\u2019s not serious or anything and we just do what we do because we love it and we\u2019re not trying to please or displease anyone.\u00a0 There\u2019s a lot of politics involved and that\u2019s what\u2019s fucked about it because it should be about getting together about the music.<\/p>\n

As a band now for 12 years, what have you seen personally as the greatest achievement and growth for the band?<\/strong>
\nI would probably say that ProgPower USA is definitely one of them, we played that in September.\u00a0 The reason for that is it\u2019s a pretty prestigious festival they\u2019ve got going on over in the USA there and I\u2019d say it\u2019s definitely a landmark in the bands career.\u00a0 USA we basically had no ties to at all until this festival, so doing it was just incredible being invited.\u00a0 We played on the same night as Ihsahn and Sanctuary, Warrel Dane\u2019s original band, I guess that was the band before they became Nevermore and a whole bunch of other guys.\u00a0 Arcturus were supposed to play that night but they couldn\u2019t make it, but when we got over there it was just unreal, we were just met with so much love and support, it was unlike anything we\u2019d ever really experienced before.\u00a0 After our set we got up to the signing table and we were signing autographs for an hour and a half, it was just mind blowing, like a little band from Perth going over to Atlanta, Georgia in the United States signing all these autographs for people, it was incredible.\u00a0 I think with this new album we\u2019ve really honed our sound and we\u2019ve got the production to match as well, Jens Bogren did just such a stellar job.\u00a0 What did you think of the production?
\nI thought it was huge, if someone gave me the album and said \u2018where is this band from?\u2019 I would\u2019ve said Europe.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t even sound like it was done here, it\u2019s so well done.<\/strong>
\nOh cool, I\u2019m glad you think so man, I guess from a musicians point of view, as the guys that wrote it, it\u2019s so satisfying, once you\u2019ve got material you really believe in and you\u2019ve got the production that you think will translate it as best as possible, you\u2019ve just got a winning combination.\u00a0 I\u2019d say ProgPower USA is hopefully that start of something good for us over in the US, but you know, we went over to Europe as well, that was my first tour with the band, I think it was when I first joined, I think I\u2019d just turned 19 and that was absolutely insane, but hopefully we\u2019ll keep the ball rolling and keep doing better things.<\/p>\n

Lastly, what’s next for the band?<\/strong>
\nwell we\u2019re taking a little break but getting listened to by as many people as possible, and like I said, we\u2019ll start working on the logistics behind this headlining tour of Australia early next year and then we\u2019ll start to plant the seeds for Europe later on in that year.\u00a0 So we\u2019re keen, we\u2019re willing, we\u2019ve just got to set it all up, so hopefully we\u2019ll see you guys again soon.<\/p>\n

Essential Information<\/h2>\n

From:<\/strong> Perth, Australia<\/p>\n

Sounds like:<\/strong> Melodic Metal<\/p>\n

Band members:<\/strong> Daniel Estrin, Simone Dow, Alex Canion, Scott Kay, Ashley Doodkorte<\/p>\n

Website:<\/strong> http:\/\/voyager-australia.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Latest release:<\/strong> The Meaning Of I (2011, Riot! Entertainment)<\/p>\n

Check out the photos of Voyager live from their Melbourne show supporting Children Of Bodom here<\/a><\/strong> courtesy of Lens Of Rock<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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