Illumishade: A Different Story

ILLUMISHADE are just kicking off what is bound to be their biggest year yet. With the explosive new album, Another Side Of You showcasing some serious growth, the band has already achieved big things in 2024. With their first European tour complete and a North American one with KORPIKLAANI ahead, Distorted Sound managed to find time to pick vocalist Fabienne Erni’s brain on the year so far – and what’s to come.

With an album as full of sounds and styles as Another Side Of You, it was impossible not to kick things off by delving into this. “We experiment more with a modern aspect that we didn’t have as much in the first album,” Fabienne explains. “We enjoyed it, but it’s hard.” When asked whether any styles will be repeated she explains the band keeps things open.

“When we write the next album, we won’t think about it too much and we’ll go wherever the music leads us. We want to be creative and have this creative output without thinking in categories.” With future music, ILLUMISHADE will “see whatever fits and whatever feels right.” There is one thing she plans to keep, though. “One guilty pleasure that Jonas [Wolf, guitars] and I have is having one power metal song on the album.” She smiles. “We want to do this as a tradition. We did it with the second album now as well. So this is something we want to, or I at least, want to keep.”

A major change for ILLUMISHADE between their two releases was their lyric-writing process. For Another Side Of You, everything came in-house, with bassist Yannick Urbanczik doing much of the writing. On whether this gave the album a more personal feel to perform, Fabienne mentions “They’re both personal, but in really different ways. The first album was set in a fantasy world with a whole story. But when I dive into it, I’m the person in this story I can also relate to the more modern written lyrics from this album. Yannick writes a big part of the lyrics, and although maybe I haven’t experienced some of the subjects myself yet. I can build it around me and be part of it.”

Fabienne and guitarist Jonas Wolf are both also part of the huge folk metal unit ELUVEITIE. With album releases, press, and live commitments from both bands, it’s hard to imagine how there’s time to write. On keeping creativity flowing, Fabienne comments, “I don’t write music on tour. I did it for the first album because I had a deadline,” referring to ILLUMISHADE’s first album Eclyptic: Wake Of Shadows, created as a university project. She reminisces, “we were in China with ELUVEITIE and before the show, I was on my little MIDI keyboard writing. It wasn’t the most comfortable experience, I prefer to write when it’s more calm.”

“We already have some material for the next album. Let’s see which ideas we keep in the end!” Regarding how these ideas will start to come to life, Fabienne mentions, “we want to go to the mountains again. We did that for both albums, just to concentrate on the music.” The results are undeniable. The track Hummingbird was “fully created in the mountains without even thinking that we needed an additional track. Now looking back, the album wouldn’t be complete without it.”

ILLUMISHADE’s music is known for huge, theatrical soundscapes. We dived into how tracks as complex as Cyclone are born “Every song has a little bit of a different story. Cyclone, if I remember right. Mirjam had this vision of a riff that was bending, then Jonas took over and did the soundscapes, she added layered choirs on it, I added the melody, and so on.”

ILLUMISHADE tracks are usually built up this way. “It starts with one bone, or maybe even the whole skeleton. Then the flesh comes when the whole band is involved.” Another Side Of You‘s first single Here We Are was crafted this way. “It was just chords and piano first. Then with the whole band involved, it became what it is now.”

Delving further into Here We Are, it’s impossible not to imagine such a powerful track performed live. Speaking on whether they consider live performance during writing, Fabienne says, “we don’t think about it too much. Sometimes it’s like ‘oh, how are we going to do that live?’ But there’s always some kind of solution. It just needs to sound good and then we’ll figure it out!”

With ILLUMISHADE’s first European tour wrapped up, we discussed which tracks went down well. “I was surprised at how nice it was to play Cloudreader, I was a bit sceptical about it. I like the song, of course, but it’s very uplifting and soft in a way” she laughs. “Live, it has this punch to it and this hardness. I could feel it from the crowd, they enjoyed it!”

“Enemy is always fun to do. The dark, heavier music is cool to play live,” she continues. “It’s also always special to do Rise on the piano. It’s wonderful to see when people start moving to it or just watching and enjoying it. That’s just then the best gift you can get when you’re on stage and you feel the crowd enjoying it.”

On their upcoming North American tour, the band are going to be putting their all into every show. “I don’t put too much pressure on myself to do too many things,” she comments. “Like going sightseeing or something. We felt it when we were with DELAIN on the road for the first time on tour, it takes a lot of focus and energy. I want to put everything I have into those 45 minutes on stage.”

This channels in with the band’s goals for the rest of the year. “For us, it’s just to play, to play, to play, which fits in with the plans that we have! We all love playing live and now we finally can do it. So that’s our goal, I guess, having fun on stage, getting more comfortable, getting more into the routine, growing together as a live band and reaching new people with that!”

Another Side Of You is out now via Napalm Records.

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