INTERVIEW: Sylvain Conier – The Dali Thundering Concept

The french metal scene is bursting to the brim with phenomenal talent and one of the stars that is shining brightest comes in the form of THE DALI THUNDERING CONCEPT. After their highly regarded Savages album which was released earlier this year they were welcomed back to UK Tech-Fest to play the Winspear Stage. Before their performance we caught up with frontman Sylvain Conier to talk about the band’s progression and the french metal scene!

Thank you for taking time out of your day to speak to me, how does it feel to be back at Tech Fest?

Sylvain: It feels really good! It was hard not to come back last year, we got accustomed to it.

THE DALI THUNDERING CONCEPT’s new album Savages has been out a couple of months now, how has it been received?

Sylvain: We’re really happy with how everything is going. We expected a little less response, the other albums we had great feedback but not as much as this. There’s kind of a hype around it and we’re very happy about it. Thanks to John at The Euroblast Collective he’s been pushing it further for us.

How do you feel THE DALI THUNDERING CONCEPT have evolved as a band since Eyes Wide Opium? 

Sylvain: This was our first album and we decided to do it alone. We made quite a lot of mistakes, the band was not very stable and we changed two musicians during that period. Now we feel that we have the right people. We are all involved 100% and everyone has his part of expertise, Steve the bass player works alongside the management, Martin (drummer) on production, Leo (guitarist) works on production and design and I work on the marketing. I think we are more mature and we learned a lot from Eyes Wide Opium. We’ve definitely learned a lot from Savages too, we made a few mistakes, nothing can be perfect!

Savages is quite a complex album, how did you go about the writing process?

Sylvain: We actually did a lot of research from the beginning. We had released Eyes Wide Opium and we already knew the concept and we wanted to take time to do it right. We read a lot of books. 1984 and Orwell stuff to understand how to build a dystopia. We read a few more books like Jeremy Rifkin and factual material to understand more about global warming, what are the consequences and the impact and how it could evolve. We met with a few experts on geopolitics and we chatted for a few hours and they helped us stay on track with our concept to make it accurate. Leo composes most of the music so we had a chat together and we wanted to create a landscape. When it’s in our era we wanted it to be very electronic and very fast but when it moves to the second era which was like the apocalypse it had to be very heavy and dark to make it evolve. The vocals were like the witness who was telling the story along the way.

Ah so it was quite the educational learning process for yourselves too?

Sylvain: Oh definitely, we learned a lot of things!

What inspired you to go down the route of a concept album for THE DALI THUNDERING CONCEPT?

Sylvain: It’s quite funny actually as we worked on concepts with our first E.P When X Met Y as we had Dali in the name and we thought it would be stupid not to. It didn’t feel interesting enough to just pack songs together we wanted to find a link between the lyrics and the songs to give it structure. Since then we have been digging deeper and deeper and who knows what we are going to do in the future but I know it’s going to be way longer and way harder to do!

Did you enjoy getting to collaborate with Adam from OCEANO and Phillippe from KADINJA on this release?

Sylvain: Oh yeah, Phil is a very good friend of ours. We grew very close since we did the Words Are Wind release a few years ago and plus he is also in KADINJA with Steve so we have a musician in common. That was absolutely amazing. We spent a whole day trying new stuff and experimentation. Adam from OCEANO was like a fanboy thing “I want this guy!” [laughs]. It was really awesome. He did a great job. You look at the recording and you were just blown away. Amongst other things this is what makes me progress and improve myself. I noticed it when we worked with Nick Arthur (MOLOTOV SOLUTION) on the last album and as I’m supposed to sing his parts I hear what he did and try to do the same, as the months go by I get a bit closer to what he can do so it’s really cool to find new voices.

That’s cool that you do those parts live too rather than just playing a backing track.

Sylvain: In Phil‘s case we have him on a backing track as I don’t sing! When he’s available he comes on stage with us. He did it at the release party and that was cool. The screaming I can do!

Obviously when anyone associates France with metal they instantly mention GOJIRA and IGORRR has been creating quite a stir but are there any bands you would like to give a special mention?

Sylvain: There’s a lot! I feel there is something happening in France these last few years with new sounds and they have a lot of bands around them which are similar like PSYKUP which is completely insane, they are like if SYSTEM OF A DOWN and GOJIRA had a baby! There is KADINJA obviously! I’ve heard their new album which is going to be released next year and it’s amazing, Ascendancy is shit in comparison! We’ve got our good friends in EARTH TRIP who are like djent, deathcore but they’re really fucking good.

There are quite a lot of bands who I feel have hit that glass ceiling shall we say? TREPALIUM and HACRIDE in particular, I love those guys and I feel like they’ve been making waves but haven’t quite shot up in popularity like other bands.

Sylvain: It’s hard because HACRIDE and KLONE and PSYKUP are kinda from the older generation. They’ve been around a long time but I think they kind of missed that point where GOJIRA exploded, they tried to come back and it was even more difficult for them. They’re all very good. HYPN05E were very inspirational for us. We heard them when we were teenagers and Leo came up with a load of material which eventually became THE DALI THUNDERING CONCEPT. Big inspiration for us. Maybe there is a glass ceiling but there are a lot of interesting things happening. You hear a lot of the same things in music today and it’s always been like that but in the end especially in France today there are bands which should not be overlooked like HACRIDE. They’re insanely good! You know the band CARPENTER BRUT?

Oh yeah they’re like a synthwave project and are gathering a lot of momentum at the moment!

Sylvain: Well it’s guys from HACRIDE and KLONE that did that. It’s incredible!

What plans do THE DALI THUNDERING CONCEPT have in store for the remainder of the year?

Sylvain: It’s kind of foggy for now. We have a tour in the works but we don’t really know when. It’s for our booker to decide. We have some unfinished business with Savages, we want to bring out some bonus songs. We also have a colour vinyl which is coming out and we just wanna do as many gigs as we can now. We’re too tired to do another album. We’ll play this one first and think about the next one later!

Oh definitely, Savages is quite an intense listen so I can imagine it was an intense experience for you guys to record?

Sylvain: Savages was intense man. Especially when we did most of the things in house, the production,  the designs,  most of the things. It was so fucking interesting to do. You learn a lot.

With the writing process did you all get together? I’ve known a lot of bands in this digital age to just record bits and pieces and pass it amongst themselves.

Sylvain: or the writing process I do all the lyrics on my own and for the flow and pacing we get together and work on the details, mostly with Martin and if some things are not in the taste of the other guys we can change it a little bit. Leo writes most of the music so once that’s confirmed he gives it to Martin and Steve who may do a few tweaks.

Thank you for your time, I’ll leave you with one final question. Is there anything you would like to say to the readers of Distorted Sound?

Sylvain: It’s the hardest question in every interview! [laughs]. Thanks for the interview, thank you to your readers for taking an interest in the band. I hope they like the music and I’d be happy to meet them if our ways cross somewhere down the line.

Savages is out now via Apathia Records. 

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