INTERVIEW: Alma Alizadeh – For I Am King

FOR I AM KING have made huge waves in the short time they have been a band including playing the prestigious Wacken Open Air before their debut album Daemons was even released! They hope to continue this momentum with their newly released follow-up entitled I (our review is available here). Just before the release we caught up with frontwoman Alma Alizadeh to get some insight into the band’s journey leading up to this point and the concept within the new material.

I will be the second full length release from FOR I AM KING, how do you feel the band has developed since your debut?

Alma: I think we are more mature since our debut. We had a lineup change just before we were trying to figure out what kind of album we wanted to write. Our guitar player Koen joined us in the middle of the writing process which was a little strange I guess. When he joined we started all over again. We threw away all the material we had written and started to write as a band. We wanted him to be 100% involved with the album. With his entrance we took our sound and the writing to the next level I feel. We took a different path as a team so in both ways we grew as a band and musicians.

The concept for I is very thought-provoking. Where did the decision to use this subject matter stem from?

Alma: We wanted to write more about the things we experience in our surroundings. We wanted to go more personal than we have done before with Daemons. It was a bit of a scary step to go more personal with this album as it was a new approach for us. We wanted to get our voices heard and use personal subjects and what is happening around us in the world right now. The song Misery is about the depression and it’s not only happening around us but is very close to us too. It’s a very important topic to talk about. It’s something that you can’t ignore.

The lyrical content for Home was quite personal to yourself as it was inspired by events in your childhood when you fled Iran, did this take you out of your comfort zone or was it more of a cathartic experience?

Alma: It was partially inspired by my own story but we also wanted to write a song about how important it is to feel at home wherever you are. Not only you can make yourself at home in a place but the people and the surroundings do too. If you can’t stay where you were born and have to move somewhere else sometimes it’s not your choice and sometimes you have to. When people are taking care of you, you can feel at home anywhere!

Of course, that’s a very positive message.

Alma: It was what I wanted to say with that song. You can’t do that alone, you need friends and a support system.

FOR I AM KING have released quite a few tracks from I prior to release, have you felt this has been effective in creating a bit of hype for the album?

Alma: I think it worked well as we wanted to keep the train rolling. We wanted to show the diversity of songs we have available on the album. I think it worked well to release more than one single. We have just released the track Devotion so it will be fresh in their head and will hopefully give them a bit of a craving to check out the whole album.

In recent years there has been a surge of death metal bands with incredible female vocalists like Tatiana from JINJER and Lauren from ONCE HUMAN. How did you discover you had such a powerful vocal talent?

Alma: I used to play bass guitar and it’s quite a crazy story how I got introduced into doing vocals. We were jamming one day in the studio and we decided to exchange our instruments. I remember the singer at the time who was a friend of mine, he jokingly said “Oh Alma, why don’t you try screaming?” and without any experience or lessons I tried it and it actually sounded pretty good! After that jam session I decided to go into the vocal side and left my bass guitar aside.

That’s amazing! So it was all came naturally then?

Alma: Yeah! After that I started a band with a few friends and started to learn screaming myself without taking any lessons. My inspirations were WALLS OF JERICHO, I loved Candace and her energy and she was so brutal and aggressive, I loved that a lot. I listen to a lot of DARKEST HOUR and John Henry was a big inspiration for me to start doing vocals. ARCH ENEMY as well of course. I loved Angela‘s vibe.

Your debut album was only released in 2016 and you’ve already played high profile festivals like Wacken, Metaldays, With Full Force. It must be encouraging to have accomplished this in such a short time?

Alma: It’s crazy! We didn’t expect everything to come so fast. When we started the band we had goals and we wanted to go somewhere. We played Wacken in 2015 after only being a band for about two years and we have since toured Japan and that was also something we didn’t expect. I’m very happy it’s going this way.

What does 2019 have in store for FOR I AM KING? Any tours in the works?

Alma: We’re going to play a lot of shows, touring will be the main focus. We wan’t go back to Asia again if possible and hope we can play a lot of festivals in 2019 and try and get out music out to a wider audience.

I is now available via Redfield Records.

Like FOR I AM KING on Facebook.