Interviews: Kheos

In this new occassion we have had the opportunity to interview the Modern Metal band Kheos from France. Check out the interview and this band on their FACEBOOK PAGE.

1.Where did you get the idea for the band name, you planned it or came out just like that?

The idea of the band name takes its inspirations from the “House of Chaos”, a place located in the West of Lyon. If you go there, you will find behind walls blackened and covered with esoteric signs, a facade of a medieval building of charred appearance. As a coat of arms was hung a large metal salamander, in the middle of lava flows and splashes of red paint. Fake meteorites and car wrecks strew the grounds. In other words, a whole set of artworks, allegories of Chaos created by the human being on earth. It made us willing to to decline all of our texts under the lens of this conception. Chaos comes from the arrogance and ignorance of human being in front of unexplained phenomena. We are determinist, and we seek absolutely to rationalize events that we cannot control. We must organize and control our destiny. The paradox is that we are also the creator of our own chaos: rapes, aggression, conflicts, wars, terrorism. In a constant need to manage our pulsions, emotions, feelings, our body, we must tame ourselves, we must learn, build and evolve. Nothing is innate, nothing is learned, and everything can be annihilated from empire to pieces, from pieces to dust. What occurs at the human scale can also be applied to the universe. First, the big bang, a boundless chaos, and then, the creation of galaxies.

To summarize, the conception of chaos has given rise to our past and current thoughts, ideas and texts and further, the name of the band Kheos. We changed the typology of Chaos into Kheos for a more greek phonetic, more accessible and easier to remember. Moreover, as you noticed, Kheos is pronounced the same way as Chaos in english. Given our texts are in english, we wanted our band name sound like the english word Chaos without using the word in itself.

2.Why did you want to play this genre?

We have a lot of different influences in the band and it was really difficult to know which kind of genre we would intended to. At the end of many discussions, we put our choice over modern metal. Therefore, we were able to mix those different influences in our music style. You can listen in our songs a mix between Metalcore, Deathcore, Progressive and Djent riffs. Such a mix between metal styles enables us to create songs that never resemble each other.

3. Did you know each other before the band was formed?

The birth of the band is based upon  the meeting between two guitar players who became roommates totally by chance. They were surprisingly able to write several songs in a few weeks, thus giving rise the musical project that is currently named Kheos. They chose to create the project and to search for other members to complete the line up. The first to join them was Stephane, the drummer who was at his beginnings in this style at this period. Rapidly, he made progress and learn all the songs, enabling the three musicians to search a singer and a bass player. Aimane, the frontman, has joined the project in 2017, found on a website called zikinf.com. The bass player, Rémi ( also called “Bûche” ) was invited to play in Kheos by Stephan, a friend of him.

4. Each band member favourite band?

Rémi : Crystal Lake

Sébastien : Monuments

Aimane : Dir en grey

Stéphane : Whitechapel

Bûche ( Rémi ) : Within The Ruins

5. Who or what inspires you to write songs?

As explained backwardly, the main ideas that inspire us to write our songs stem from the human need to escape its suffering in the paroxysm of self-destruction. Human nature and  its paradoxes, human feelings (and especially suffering), can lead to many stories, many songs. Because human nature is complex and passionating, it is a field that really inspire us : oppression, self-destruction, insanity, depression, and many other topics are tackled in our songs.

6. Where was your last gig?

Our last GIG was in Lille our hometown at “La Rumeur” a place we already played in with a band called FRCTRD who are now friends of us.

7. Where would you like to act?

There so many places where we want to play. This choice is quite difficult but at least we have some places we would love to play. For instance at the Euroblast festival in Germany, TechFest in UK and the Resurrection Fest in Spain.

8. Whom would you like to feature with?

Our big dream would be to feature with artist like Kadinja, Monuments or our god Meshuggah.

9. Whom not?

We love to play with any bands we can. The only thing that matters to us is to share good moments with other bands. However, we would not play with bands who have much ego or with some ethical issues that matter to us.

10. Any of you has ever suffered from stage fright? Any tip for beginners on how to beat that?

Of course we all suffered from stage fright. Especially at our first big stage at the RedStudio of Douai. It was the first time we had to prepare our tech-rider and being full sonorised. The tip we can give to every beginners is to stay calm and try to solve issues by thinking and don’t get mad because you have troubles with your gear. There is so much time we messed the beginning of our sets because of this behavior, that is totally normal. It’s kind of obvious to say but, the more time you will spend in training yourselves and optimizing your gears, the more time you will gain when you will have to set-up at the shows and get lesser and lesser stress for your gigs. Eventually, we would like to say that we will always have a “stress” before playing a gig, that is a normal feeling that proves that what you do matters for you. This is a positive stress that gives strength and adrenaline to enjoy the party.

11. What bands have inspired you the most?

There is so much bands that inspired us, simply because each of us has different influences.  At the beginning we were kind of BreakDown of Sanity huge fans. We were so sad to learn about their split. After that we bench ourselve upon Djent and Deathcore bands like Whitechapel, Monuments, Vildhjarta and Born of Osiris. Those bands really inspired us in our songs but also in our gig standing, for instance the light show of Vildhjarta.

12. What's the weirdest thing a fan has ever asked you for?

There is nothing that we have in mind but maybe it’s because we are weird too ahah (who’s never been asked for a butthole picture.

13. What do you think of your fans?

They are extremely lovable ! We really appreciate our fanbase. Not only because they support us, but also because we love to chat with them and learn more about them and their feedbacks. We like to be as much transparent and close as we can.

14. What do you think of our site?

The information are quite easy to found about the bands on the site and the accessibility on each link are kept update. It’s smooth to collaborate with people that really keep it professional to spread the arising bands. All the informations needed for a website are in it and easy to find.

15. Something add?

We love to cook some fucking bolognese !!