Exclusive Interview: STELL/\RIS talk singles, lyrics and influences!

Hailing from Prague in the Czech Republic, Stellaris (stylised STELL/\RIS) are every inch the Modern Metal band, a female fronted quintet with Metalcore roots who are plotting their own course to the top of Metal Mountain and following in the footsteps of Jinjer, Morphide and Infected Rain in doing so. Established in 2019 they released their first music video in “Find your Course” directed by Jáchym Belcher which gained international attention and 17k views on YouTube. Their second single “Dust Of Future” landed last month with the band opting for the services of director Igor Paliatka for the video with a more in depth storyline about an apocalyptic future and again 14k YouTube views. So we chatted with frontwoman Nicol about their plans for World domination…

Two singles down and you’ve surpassed 36k Spotify streams! How have you found the reaction to “Find Your Course” and “Dust of Future” so far? “We had a really good reaction to both songs. ‘Find Your Course’ attracted attention immediately after we released it and many zines wrote about it and shared it, which is amazing when you take into consideration that this was our first single. ‘Dust of Future’ is way more far than the first single and that’s also the thing, what many people told us about it. We were working hard on ourselves and started to cooperate with a new producer Damian Kučera of Skywalker and it paid off”

The lyrical themes of both singles are deep and meaningful; something that really shows in the depth of the vocal performance and its emotive qualities. How important is it to you as a band to get the message across? “Especially for me it’s really important to have a strong message in every single song. I’m singing and screaming about things and situations that affected me in some way in my life and trying to suggest or warn about something. It also helps me to perform better as my performance is full of emotions. I wrote the lyrics for ‘Dust of Future’ when I was really struggling with the fact, that we as a society are greedy, arrogant and ignorant to everything and everybody. I’m vegan, so when I’m singing this song I’m thinking about all animals around the world that are suffering because of us. Needless to say, my guys aren’t vegan so I wrote the lyrics the way they can relate to it and see their own meaning of the song”

Who are your influences and what inspires you to create music? “I’m personally inspired especially by the female fronted bands as we have in common female voice so I can see how they are dealing with that. The guys are for example inspired by Currents or Monuments”

You’ve mentioned that you’re working on your debut album; how is that shaping up? “If everything is going well, this year we’ll have the whole album recorded. In the first half of the next year the album will be out. Let’s see how the world handle this covid craziness” 

We’ve long championed female fronted bands and have pointed to the success of bands like Jinjer, Butcher Babies, Infected Rain and so on as evidence that a talented vocalist is a talented vocalist, whatever their gender. How important is it to you to be recognised not just as a “female fronted” band? “As you said, we shouldn’t care about the gender of the vocalist and should be focused on the music itself. However, it’s gonna be a long journey to prove that it’s not only about me. I know that a lot of female fronted bands are facing the same stuff as we do”

Hailing from Prague in the Czech Republic, how has the local scene helped inspire you? Are there any bands that you’ve played local shows with that we should check out? “Our local scene has a lot to offer. You should definitely check out bands such as Skywalker, Marked As An Enemy, Abbie Falls, Hillside or Stercore from Slovakia”

You can snap up the current pair of STELL/\RIS singles over at bandcamp.