INTERVIEW: Siân Greenaway – Alunah

Forging a solid series of studio records alongside frequent touring down the years, with a career spanning over a decade, Midlands-based doom outfit ALUNAH have been a hidden gem for some time now. Now, since the arrival of new vocalist Siân Greenaway, it feels like the band are really going to make their mark. Always putting their collective feet forward, looking ahead, the path for the band is truly exciting as the UK doom scene continues to boom with creativity. Ahead of the release of their brand new EP, Amber & Gold, the first material to feature Greenaway, we spoke with Siân to find out how she is settling in with the band alongside lifting the lid on the new EP and how they are pushing their sound forward.

So you have this new EP Amber & Gold coming out it very soon. So for people who may not be aware of ALUNAH, what can they expect from this EP?

Siân: So think of it as a female fronted BLACK SABBATH with more light and shade to it. So there are obviously some heavy things but also for a female who doesn’t listen to a lot of metal there are things in there that I think people will be able to appreciate. We’re trying to reach a different and more accessible sound than we have done before.

There are definitely doom undertones to it but it’s almost like a hard rock record…

Siân: Yeah, that’s it basically.

This is your first record with ALUNAH since you joined, so how did it go working on this record?

Siân: It was amazing! We literally just jammed stuff and it came straight away. We did put a lot of pressure on ourselves because we wanted to get me on record within the year so we’ve done so much in this year. Having to go on tour and me having to learn all these previous songs and then also write all this new stuff, I was surprised at how easy it all came together. Everything just worked, it all just clicked into place which is such a relief!

ALUNAH have enjoyed quite a long career, so for you coming in, did you feel any nerves or pressure to hit the standards that have been set before?

Siân: No, not really because the guys made me feel really comfortable. I was confident in myself and I was going to do what I want and everyone else loved the stuff when I brought it to them. Like I said, everything just worked so I didn’t feel like I had to even compare myself to any of the old stuff because it wasn’t like that, for me, it’s about this new era and having my own input on what they already do and it just works.

So it’s all about looking forward rather than looking at what has been done before?

Siân: Exactly.

Your vocal style on this record, it’s very ethereal. Was that something you wanted to do right from the start or was it something you discovered once you started jamming with the band?

Siân: It’s literally just how I sing. I get a lot of people saying “oh you sound very TYPE O NEGATIVE” and it’s funny because I don’t even really listen to them. I checked them out more once people started saying that and I totally get why people are saying that. I think you can pick things about me from a lot of different people but maybe that is because I have quite a wide taste of what I listen to? It’s not like I’m trying to sound like anyone else, it’s just what naturally came out when I was writing.

I feel like your vocal style definitely opens ALUNAH up to explore new sounds moving forward…

Siân: I hope so yeah.

So with this being just a four track EP, how come you decided to do that rather than a full studio record? Was it that you wanted to give fans a taster of what sort of direction you are heading?

Siân: It’s exactly that. We wanted to get something down and now we’ve got the first year out of the way, we can look at doing a full album with more time. We don’t want to do a full album and rush all the songs, with four songs we had enough time to focus on those and put enough into it, so now we’ll have even more time to do obviously more songs.

As you’ve been part of ALUNAH for pretty much a year now, how have existing fans taken to you on the live front?

Siân: Amazingly. We still have a lot of people who haven’t heard me sing because they haven’t been able to come to shows. There are live videos online but the sound quality isn’t always great so I’m definitely excited for people to be able to hear this but I haven’t had anyone say anything bad, let’s put it that way. It’s been so amazing and I was nervous about that, it was the only thing I was nervous about, I didn’t want the band to lose any fans because of me. If the band was going to lose any fans it would have been down to me but so far so good!

So for the writing and recording process for this EP, for a lot of bands when a new member comes in they don’t have that much involvement. So for you, how much involvement did you have with the creative process?

Siân: Oh, loads! So the way that we do it is that Dan [Burchmore], who plays bass, and Dave [Day] they’ll have some riffs between them. They’ll bring them in to rehearsing and start jamming it with Jake [Mason], the drummer, and then I’ll help decide how many bars are in a verse or how it goes into a chorus. Once we have a bit of a structure I’ll take it away and put a melody to it and I may already have lyrics which I can add to it so everyone is completely involved with everything. Everyone definitely has their integral part in writing the new stuff.

That must be a really nice feeling to have as a band?

Siân: Definitely. The only downside to it is that a lot of the time we can overthink things. We can spend ages and ages on something that should be really simple but I guess that happens with everyone!

So moving forward, what sort of direction can you see ALUNAH going in?

Siân: We’re not 100% sure yet. The whole EP is kind of Viking themed so I don’t know if we are going to carry on with that or take it in a new direction. I do know that we’re going to have some different instruments on the next album so we’ll see what happens. Right now we are just focussing on the EP, we’ve started writing one new song so far but it is really early days.

On the EP there is the cover of Wicked Game, what was the decision behind deciding to cover that song?

Siân: We were thinking of just having a song to cover because obviously on Solennial they covered A Forest and it went down really well. It was really interesting what they did with that so we kind of wanted to do a similar thing as well. We wanted to write some songs for the EP but we didn’t want to rush so we thought “do we try and write a new song for the fourth or do we do a cover?” and I was definitely happy to do a cover. We didn’t want something that was really obvious so we thought right let’s do a love song and Dave thought of Wicked Game. It was funny because Jake and Dan had heard it a few days before and thought it would be a really good doom song and I love the song anyway! So we all agreed on it and it is a really good doom song, when you slow it down and everything and the atmosphere you get when you slow it down, especially live, is just really good.

Have you performed the cover live at all?

Siân: Yeah, twice so far! Our tour started on Sunday, we just supported DIAMOND HEAD so we did it there, and we also did it at Sludgefest in Reading which was in August and that was the first time we did it.

How have people taken to it live?

Siân: It’s our last song in the set and everyone at the end of the gig come to the merch stand and they will always say something about us doing that.

Amber & Gold is going to be self-released as opposed to be released through a label. What was the decision making process behind going down that route?

Siân: Yeah so we wanted to do it quickly and it was like do we go around different labels and because it is just limited edition vinyl, it will be online, just not on CD, we thought lets just do it this way and get it out quickly. Obviously with record labels they can sometimes delay things and might have wanted us to do it next year and we didn’t really know how it would pan out if we did that, so it was just easier for us to do it ourselves.

This EP arrives as the UK doom and sludge scene is really exploding at the moment, there’s a lot of great bands coming through. Do you think this EP is arriving at the perfect time and you can capitalise on the popularity of the style?

Siân: I hope so. It’s nice that people are getting hyped up about it but I do think that we are quite different to a lot of typical doom bands because we’re not as heavy as bands like CONAN. I’m hoping it appeals to people that don’t necessarily listen to doom as well.

You mention CONAN, you’ve got some tour dates with them alongside the ones you’ve been doing with DIAMOND HEAD. So how do you feel you compare with a band like that when you are on a tour package like that?

Siân: Well the show we’re doing with them is an all-day festival where there is a good mix of people but to be honest, I hope is that when people go to an all-day festival is that we are a bit refreshing for them as they’ve listened to a bunch of really heavy stuff all day. So it might be nice for us to give them a little break or something, something a bit different.

ALUNAH also have a run of headlining shows starting at the end of November. So for people who might be considering going to one of the shows, what can they expect? Can they expect to hear a lot of the new material?

Siân: So there will definitely be all of the new EP in there but then we’ll obviously do some songs from Solennial and songs from White Hoarhound. We do like to put a mix of the old stuff in there too.

Well thank you very much for talking to me Sian. Best of luck for the EP release and the upcoming live shows!

Siân: Take care, thanks for the interview!

Amber & Gold is set for release on November 16th via self-release.

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