Jools: Yeah, that'd be me. I'm the guitarist and main vocalist for Kalmar. I play an Ibanez s370 and use a Marshall 100watt DFX amp. It's a little on the small side but seems to do the job. Guitar wise, I'm mostly metal influenced (though probably not technically as good as a metal guitarist per se), and favourite bands with regards to inspiration writing wise are people like Jesper Stromblad from In Flames for sheer technical ability, and Paul Townsend formerly of Hundred Reasons because of the cavernous sounds he manages to achieve.
Recently, I've been experimenting with the idea of metal that sounds Happy... that is, still maintains the power and aggression of heavy metal along with the technical proficiency, but ending mostly in major chord structures (the happy sounds) and lyrically dealing with happier themes, such as defianc
e, and being satisfied with the person you are despite others telling you you shouldn't be.Mike: Looking nice and festive is our bassist Mike. A veteran of the Cardiff music scene, Mike has been there, done that, gotten the T-shirt. What he doesn't know about being a musician in a band is probably not worth knowing. He has more of a classical understanding of songwriting and has an uncanny ability to herd in all of the wild ideas we have into something approaching credible pieces of music.
He plays a Stagg 5 string, and uses a Behringer 450watt bass head/cab combo.
He's also one of the two musicians in the band that own a car. Which of course makes him invaluable.
Coren: Because our drummer is a pain in the arse and does not like having his photo taken, we used the worst picture we could find of him. And this is it.His drumming style shows heavy influences of Incubus and Finch, so he's very well rounded for playing harder rock stylings, but his high hat work is extremely crisp which is something that can be missing from a lot of rock and metal drummers.
He plays a Pearl Export custom kit with Zildjian Z series cymbals. It's a basic setup, but extremely effective.
When it comes to actually playing music, it's a very weird mixture of attacking something brand new and retreading old ground. We were all in a band together before Kalmar called Girl13, and we did achieve a modest amount of notoriety, but because of a few periods of upheaval and an almost revolving door lineup, we never seemed quite able to break through the glass ceiling and transform ourselves into a famous band with a record deal rather than local band that nearly did it. It's safe to say that all of us are a bit tired of the same old routine, so we're going to be actively striving for ways to get to that next step rather than hoping that something will magically fall into our laps.
We are Kalmar. And we're pleased to meet you.
2 comments:
So why is your band named after a small Swedish city?
I wish I could say that it's because one of us is Swedish, and from there, or that it also means something in Tagalog or Japanese or Hindi, but I think we're called Kalmar for the same reason that a lot of bands end up getting named the with the names that they have. We thought it sounded cool, it's one that we all agreed on and the .com and .co.uk are both available. It doesn't sound like the greatest of answers does it?
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