Implore: Ultimate Freedom
“Since the beginning we wanted to create our own sound.” That’s IMPLORE guitarist Eduard ‘Petro’ Petrolillo reflecting on the evolution of the band he’s been a part of since 2015. During that time, he and founder Gabriel ‘Gabbo’ Dubko have been signed and dropped by Century Media Records, released two absolutely feral full-lengths, recruited and lost more members than we have time to list, and finally landed where we find them today, just a couple of weeks after the release of their fourth and best album The Burden Of Existence.
Petro completely agrees that this new effort, released via the supremely consistent Church Road Records, is their best thus far. “We had nearly three years to write this album,” he explains. “So we decided to go for it and get in touch with Kurt Ballou for the first time and it worked out really well. In terms of sound, I think his work really made a difference. I’m a little bit overwhelmed with how good most of the reviews are so far. It’s fucking awesome. We were not really expecting that nearly everyone would like the record as much as we do, so it’s a really great feeling to see all these good reviews.”
One of those reviews was our own of course, in which we described The Burden Of Existence as a “tour-de-force in balancing death metal, hardcore and more”. If this is the sound the band have been looking for, we’d say they’ve nailed it. Petro elaborates, “trying to be some kind of grindcore/hardcore band and having your own sound seems kind of impossible to me because it’s really hard to have something unique. But I think we’re getting there. I think The Burden Of Existence is the first time where I feel like we are really finding our sound.”
By his own admission though, it certainly took a little while. “In the last couple of years I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts and read interviews with musicians because I wanted to see how my peers felt in this situation,” he offers. “The most common thing that I heard was that it was such a productive time for writing music and for creating, and I have to say I don’t know if it was just me, but for me it was one of the most unproductive times I’ve ever had since I’ve been playing music. I tried to write stuff for nearly a year, and it really didn’t work out. It was extremely frustrating, and it was even more frustrating hearing all these musicians saying, ‘I’m having the most productive time of my life’ while I’m just like ‘fuck off! I’m not!’.”
Part of the frustration was of course a common one, as Petro is quick to emphasise just how important the live element of IMPLORE’s work is. “Playing live and going on tour is something that I feel that as musicians we need in order to keep on creating music,” he suggests. “It’s an output that we really need to move forward. And I actually think that all this touring really played a big role in the evolution that there is in our discography from every record to the other, but I think that is most clear with The Burden Of Existence.”
Other challenges were less common however – namely the fact that the band are currently dotted around Austria and Germany, which Petro sees at least as an improvement on the period in which the line-up was spread across no less than four countries. “I think the way that it affects us is that obviously we don’t practise that much,” he muses when we ask if their living circumstances have any tangible effects on their overall output. “And I’m not sure if this is actually true, but I could say maybe when practising individually, or at least I speak for myself, I feel like I get better at my instrument because I’m more focused on me and my instrument, and when practising with the band you cannot just be focused on yourself because you are playing with other people.”
“It’s very rare that I bring a song to the practice room and say ‘this is the song’,” he adds on that more collaborative element of the band’s process. “Usually with Marcus [Matzinger], the drummer, there’s a little bit of give and take with every song and I think his influence when writing The Burden Of Existence was quite interesting – he played a big role. And once we’d made all the music then Gabbo came in with the vocals and the lyrics, and good vocals and good lyrics can really elevate a good song to a fantastic song.”
We’d actually go as far as to say that in The Burden Of Existence’s case IMPLORE have managed to create 10 fantastic songs, with the results sure to deliver what Petro hopes will be “a punch in the face, but in a good way, and the feeling that you want to listen to it again when it’s finished. That’s one of the best reactions you can have, because obviously you liked it, but also you realised that there are things in the record that you haven’t discovered yet.” With that, we think it’s best to conclude by saying that if you haven’t done so already, give it a listen, then give it another one, and embrace The Burden Of Existence.
The Burden Of Existence is out now via Church Road Records.
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