Exclusive Interview: Apollo Stands talk writing and recording “Interstellar”!

Apollo stands have been making waves with the arrival of their new album “Interstellar” with a pair of huge singles in “Insolarus” and “Pick Up” landing before hand and only serving to enhance their already growing reputation for Progressive Metalcore of the highest calibre as witnessed by anyone who had seen them share stages with the likes of  Megalomatic, Setraline, Eveline’s Dust and Fingers Crossed, as well as gracing Trick Bag Festival, Volume 19 Festival and Thrashersaurus Festival. So if you want to know what went into making the new album, read on…

What did you learn from the recording sessions for “Minds” that helped improve your experience recording “Interstellar“? “Minds was a great record and we are very proud of all of our releases but if I had to nit-pick, I would say we were still finding our footing when combining the keys and the rest of the band. With INTERSTELLAR it feels more refined and tighter, the synths don’t take up the mix until everything else stops and they are there to set the mood, I think MINDS tends to fight this in places but not always, it’s been great again having feedback and an outside perspective is always great for growth”

How does the writing process of a new Apollo Stands track start? Melody, riff or rhythm first? “We’ve started writing with the keys as the foundation and build the rest from there and just to give it a little kick we’ve sprinkled a little more synth and samples on top to give it that flair. In the past we have always tried writing first with guitars but as we’ve listened and learned we feel we’ve made a crucial change in the way we write, it makes a huge difference to try new things and see what fits”

One thing that really stands out from the record is that the programming and synths don’t drown out the guitar work but instead augment it; how did you go about getting the balance right? “When it comes to the synthesised parts, we feel it’s best to have them laying down the basic chord structure and melody whilst the guitars follow the structure and try to compliment rather than the other way around which has been our mistake in the past. It’s been a huge learning curve and a challenge from the start trying to find a way for everything to work together, metal is incredibly hard to find a gap in the mix with so much already going on but we are pleased that hard work is starting to pay off”

If you could bring a guest musician on board to work with you on future recordings, who do you fancy working with and why? “Hands down I would work with Rou Reynolds, His talent with aligning electronic music like trance with metal and all the sub genres Enter Shikari have dabbled in is uncontested and a massive inspiration to our music. Sorry “fangirling” a bit there but ye It would be a dream come true to work with him”

For us gear nerds out there, can you tell us what you’re using gear wise (pedals, strings, drums etc) to get your sound? “For guitars we use Kemper Profiler Stage, Bugera 6260 head with a Djent hotone pedal and sometimes il use my Digitech Synthwah which I’m sure some people will absolutely rage at but I like its weirdness from time to time and a Peavey Bass head through a Darkglass Distortion pedal. Edgar has a

Tama starclassic birch/walnut 4 piece

Nebe custom 13×7 snare, 5mm cast bronze shell

Paiste 13″ sound edge hi-hats

Meinl 18″byzance thin crash

Meinl 18″ byzance dry crash

Zildjian 20″crash ride K custom

Sabin 19″ Holy China

Iron Cobra double peddles

So just a quick run through of his drums there

And for the keys I will use vst’s like Massive, Sylenth and Kontakt mostly and for live to play them hands free we use Cymatic LP-16 and a wireless IEM system to feed it all the synths and clicks to our heads and drive us insane”

What difference would it make to you as a band if you could land an endorsement from a gear manufacturer? “A gear endorsement would of course be great exposure and financial stability which has been so hard over the last near 2 years for the band but it would only work if it was a piece of equipment that we genuinely use. There would be no point in just putting our name on something that has no place in our songs”