Australian progsters For Millennia have come up with a debut EP “Where The Ocean Ends” last July. The group from Adelaide shows a huge potential and talent on the release, and it will be really interesting to see what they come up next with. Guitarist Oliver Green introduces us to the For Millennia world.
What does the band name stand for?
It took us quite a while to decide on a band name with which we were all completely happy. We had some interesting names in the beginning, from ‘Pariah’, to ‘Silhouettes’, to ‘Redivider’, but we didn’t feel as though these adequately reflected the intentions or personality of the band and its music. ‘For Millennia’ came to fruition shortly before we began recording our first demo. Literally, it is a representative term for ‘thousand years’ or a ‘very long period of time’. It was a rare occasion in which all of us completely agreed and how we felt it could apply to what we had written and what we wanted to do in the future enabled it to stick right from that day forward. The name was also unique and had not been taken by any artist, meaning that we would be an easy band to find and contact without confusion; always a bonus!
Where did For Millennia take its roots from?
For Millennia took its roots, and came to be, from various reaches of the Adelaide Hardcore, Rock and Metal scene. Rory and Oliver knew each other through connections between their past bands and were both interested in creating a metalcore band with progressive metal influences. Oliver and Henk met each other the night before the band’s very first practise and Dominic joined the band shortly after. We interacted extremely well as both people and musicians right from the start and have continued to ever since. We knew what our goals for the future were and continued to work towards them collectively to the present day.
How would you describe the sound of For Millennia?
We like to think that we have a pretty diverse sound which appeals to different musical tastes and preferences. We have a number of fans who are into completely different styles of music and this really owes itself to the fact that we’ve played shows with many bands of different genres; from prog metal to grunge, metalcore to post-rock, heavy metal to jazz-fusion and everything in between. We take large influence from contemporary rock and metal from the 2000’s era, as well as progressive rock and metal, and even some elements of metal/hardcore and combine it into a sound which we are happy to call our own.
Tell us about your debut EP “Where the Ocean Ends.”
We believe that ‘Where The Ocean Ends’ really displays what we’ve got to offer as both individuals with different musical backgrounds and as a band of musicians. It conveys our varied stylistic approaches to writing. Each song has its own personality and we wanted each song on the release to sound like it ‘belonged’ with its counterparts. An overarching theme of the EP is of resolution, accepting the darkness which comes with the light and understanding that the good will always prevail over the bad.
How did the creative process for “Where the Ocean Ends” go?
We didn’t really adhere to a specific creative process when developing ‘Where The Ocean Ends’ as we’re a band that tends to take our time when writing material; we’re always willing to wait a little longer to write new music if it means the end result will be better. The majority of the songs on the EP came to fruition rather spontaneously through jamming with one another, but others were built from ideas that some of us had created on our own which were then brought into a full band scenario. ‘Ocean’ is a good example of this, as the foundation for the entire song, the bass component, was written by Dom prior to even joining the band and when he brought it before us we all added our individual touch to it and made it our own. We wanted to make sure the EP began and ended on a similar note, which influenced our writing of the first and last tracks ‘Freedom In Death’ and ‘Solace In Silence’ respectively. Both songs are based around a watershed experience Henk had and we believed that the use of this ‘recurring theme’ concept assisted in enabling us create a narrative for the EP.
Where do you draw your inspirations from? How does the song writing process for For Millennia go?
We tend to take inspiration from our personal favourite artists and seek to combine different stylistic approaches in a way which sounds fluid and appealing. Most of what we have written has been a result of full-band jamming and working with each others’ ideas in the moment, and we plan to continue to do this as it enables each of us to feel as though we’ve contributed equally to the song writing process rather than just playing along to one particular member’s ideas. That being said, we sometimes feel the need to mix it up and bring ideas to the table to see how they work for everyone and if they can be developed into something which suits our stylistic aims.
Which bands or musicians influenced your work at the most?
One artist that has influenced that band as a whole has been Caligula’s Horse. We played a show with them in January 2015 and since then have followed them closely, attending all of their shows here in Adelaide and seeking to attain a similar level of professionalism and maturity when it comes to musicianship and band interaction, both on and off stage. Individually, we each have different musical tastes and preferences. Henk is influenced by early 2000’s rock and Nu Metal bands such as 30 Seconds to Mars, Oliver is into more groovy and progressive stuff like Tesseract and Dom and Rory are into more contemporary and melodic death metal bands like Mutiny Within, In Flames and Darkest Hour.
Being a young band, what are your expectations from the scene?
We approach being in the band by trying not to expect anything really, as for the most part, a lot of success is based on building friendships with other bands and supporting the scene. The scene is not going to be kind to you if you expect to get everything without giving anything, so we look to support other bands as much as we can and hope that they will return the favour at some point; that’s how all bands grow. Most of the people we’ve met within the local prog scene have been very supportive of what we’re doing and it’s likely because they’ve been where we are at some point and know how tricky it can be to do things like release a debut EP or put on your own show.
As a band coming from Australia, do you find yourselves being “far” from what happens on the global progressive metal scene?
Yes and no, but only to certain degrees really. Social media makes it fairly easy to find out about and keep up to date with new and popular bands coming through the ranks in the European and North American scenes. We’ve all been to shows in the last year or so that have had some fantastic bands come across from all over the world. Even still, Australia has its fair share of outstanding prog bands that are breaking into the global prog scene and doing really well overseas at the moment. If we keep at it, who knows? If we’re incredibly lucky, maybe we’ll find ourselves eventually becoming a part of the global prog community.
What does the future hold for For Millennia?
We’re starting 2016 off by releasing a brand new single called ‘Final Taste of Bliss’ which we believe is a real step up from what we’ve written in the past. We’re launching the single on January 22nd at our first headline show with some local metal bands. We are also currently in the planning stages of shooting our first music video, which will be in support of this new song, and will likely be released shortly after. We’re also looking to write and record a new release later on in the year and we’ve already come up with some pretty interesting conceptual ideas for it. We aim to establish more friendships within our local scene and play some interstate shows for the first time. Finally, we’d like to focus on improving as musicians and as a band in order to reach the goals we have had since we began.
Stay tuned for more For Millennia news via the band’s Facebook page.
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