Interviews: Vespera
1. Where did you get the idea for the band name? Did you plan it or did it come out just like that?
We had just finished filming six music videos in seven days, and I took the following week off to basically melt and recover.
I was playing the new Final Fantasy game that had just come out, and while I was running around an area called The Vesperpool, I was also in the band group chat talking with everyone about names. I mentioned that I really liked the word “Vesper” and the imagery and feeling associated with it.
Jon immediately said, “Why don’t you just put an A at the end?”
Everybody kind of stopped and went, “…that’s actually cool.”
So that became Vespera. Later I learned about the word’s association with evening and evening prayer, which felt strangely appropriate for the atmosphere of the band.
2. Why did you want to play this genre?
I never really wanted Vespera to play one specific genre. I wanted it to feel ethereal, enigmatic, and aggressive // sometimes within the same song.
Heavy without becoming one-dimensional, atmospheric without becoming passive, and melodic without sanding away the edges. Progressive metal and post-hardcore became part of the vocabulary, but I’ve always cared more about what the song needs emotionally than where it belongs categorically.
3. Did you know each other before the band was formed?
Barely.
Jon and I had met once before Vespera when we took press photos for The Alchemy Index, but we really didn’t know each other. When that project started falling apart, I showed him the demos I had been writing and asked if he wanted to be involved. He eventually came out to Bethesda, Maryland while I was recording, and that’s when we actually started working together.
Cairn had gone to school with Jon. When Jon and I put out word that we needed a guitarist, Cairn was literally the first email in the inbox.
4. Each band member’s favourite band?
If I had to sum each of us down to just one artist:
Casval // Earth, Wind & Fire
Cairn // Lil Peep
Jon // Crosses
5. Who or what inspires you to write songs?
Usually whatever I’m trying to understand about myself.
A lot of Vespera comes from psychological introspection more than observation of the outside world. Relationships, identity, addiction, anger, recovery // whatever sits in my head long enough that music eventually becomes the clearest language for it.
6. Where was your last gig?
Our last Vespera show was Chicago on the 2021 NateWantsToBattle tour.
We were supposed to play Ferndale afterward, but we cancelled that date. The tour itself ultimately ended in Ohio as COVID spread through the touring party.
So Chicago was the last time Vespera actually stepped onstage.
7. Where would you like to act?
Everywhere, honestly.
It would be wonderful to have my art take me around the world // meeting new people, seeing new places, experiencing new things, and taking on new challenges.
I think that kind of exchange would keep evolving me as a person, and in turn continue influencing my songwriting.
8. Whom would you like to feature with?
I’d love to work with Tanerélle, Emilie Nicolas, or Mercury.
They all compose such beautiful melodies, and I think their voices would pair really well with mine. I also have a particular love for lower alto voices like Sade’s // there’s something about that darker, lower register that immediately pulls me in.
More than anything, I’d want a collaboration to create something neither artist would have made independently.
9. Whom not?
I wouldn’t want to collaborate with someone whose values fundamentally conflict with mine.
Music creates an association between people, and I take that seriously. I wouldn’t want to attach Vespera to someone who openly supports the dehumanization or mass suffering of other people. What we’re seeing happen to civilians in Gaza would be an obvious example for me.
I don’t expect everybody I work with to think exactly like I do, but there are moral lines that matter more to me than reach, numbers, or the size of someone’s audience.
10. Have any of you ever suffered from stage fright? Any tips for beginners on how to beat that?
For a long time, 10–15 minutes before going onstage, I’d sit somewhere quiet, close my eyes, and focus on feeling the inside of my pinky, then slowly expand that awareness through my hand, arm, and body. It would pull me into the present, slow everything down, and help me feel grounded and grateful to be there.
As long as you dedicate yourself to your craft, stay disciplined, and keep yourself sharp and rehearsed, things usually have a way of working out just fine.
These days I honestly don’t get very nervous. I’m having fun and putting my heart into it. I think we sometimes get so focused on performing well that we forget that we’re supposed to enjoy it.
11. What bands have inspired you the most?
As far as bands that helped shape the musical instincts behind Vespera, Deftones, Glassjaw, and Thrice are three enormous ones for me.
They each showed me different ways that heaviness, melody, atmosphere, and vulnerability can coexist without one cancelling out the other.
12. What’s the weirdest thing a fan has ever asked you for?
I wish I had something truly disturbing for this answer, but nothing immediately comes to mind that deserves the title :D
People have definitely said and asked strange things over the years, but honestly the interactions I remember most are the sincere ones // people telling us exactly where they were in their lives when one of the songs found them.
13. What do you think of your fans?
They’re the reason rebuilding this band makes sense.
From the beginning, I wanted Vespera to connect with people who might hear something in these songs that made them feel less isolated. Five years disappeared and somehow there were still people waiting, asking questions and keeping these songs alive.
Now we’re trying to build that into an actual community rather than treating listeners as statistics.
That means a lot to me.
14. What do you think of our site?
I appreciate how much space Breathing The Core gives independent heavy bands.
There are so many artists trying to exist outside the larger industry machinery, and simply documenting those bands // biographies, interviews, releases // gives their work another place to live and be discovered.
You made room for Vespera very quickly, and I genuinely appreciate that.
15. Something to add?
The biggest thing I would add is that Vespera isn’t returning by pretending the last five years didn’t happen.
The Thoughts That Plague You was written as one continuous 14-song album, but circumstances caused people to receive it across three EPs. We’ve finally restored the intended sequence, and we’re giving that existing music the life it never really had.
This is the beginning of rebuilding the band, not the end of the story.
No hay comentarios