Exclusive Interview: Whispers In The Maze talk “Stories Untold (Chapter 1)”!

Hailing from Ottawa Ontario Canada, Whispers In The Maze are a band who have spent the past six years at the grindstone perfecting their sound as a Metal band without borders, who want to create a musical blend of the heavy, the melodic, the progressive and the poetic. In doing so they have been hampered by line up changes and in that time have only been able to release a pair of EPs in 2019’s “Threads Unbind” and now 2022’s “Stories Untold (Chapter 1)“, however as the saying goes, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. We caught up with the band following our review of their most recent offering and the conversation went something like this…

How have you found the reaction to your new EP “Stories Untold (Chapter I)” so far? “The reaction has been great so far. Everyone seems to be attracted to something different in it, but at the same time everybody understands what we are trying to do”

Having previously shared backing vocal duties between guitarist Emine Topcu and bassist Ben Bertrand, when vocalist Marc Alain Bonenfant departed, what made you choose to have them share main vocals as opposed to bringing someone new into the project? “We tried to recruit a new vocalist at first, but the people we wanted were not available, and the ones we auditioned were not the right fit. While looking for a vocalist, Emine and Ben started to learn to play and sing the the songs at the same time for band rehearsals.  It is quite challenging to do both in some of our songs, so at first, the division of labours was based on what was more doable depending on the bass and guitar parts. At one point, we realized that we had so much fun doing it that we did not want to stop”

How did the decision to revisit your 2017 demo “INK” for the new record come about? Have you had any comments or compliments from former band members Amaury Lavoine, Patrick Kuhn or Zacharie Charest who helped write the original on the new interpretation? “The Ink demo was recorded in one day and we were never really happy with how it sounded. Later, when Vitto joined the band, he put his spin on it as well. Since it was previously recorded, there are elements of the original drum arrangement that Mike ended up liking and keeping, and then further expanding from there. We still all really liked the song and thought it would be a good companion to Poisoning Imagination. The EP just came out, so we only heard back from Amaury yet, and he likes it. We’ll make sure to ask Patrick next time we see him. His new project rehearsal’s space is right next to ours”

If we are the product of our genes and influences, what’s in your genes and who would you consider your influences? “We are influenced by the classic Melodeath band from Sweden and Finland for sure. Emine and Ben also play in a cover band called Projekt Göthenburg that pays tribute to those bands, so there is definitely some spill over into our original work. But we all have quite different tastes in music, which makes our sound different than any of our personal influences. There is definitely also a pinch of Gojira and Lamb of God in there if you listen hard enough. Having band members from different cultural backgrounds also has an influence on the style. We like to merge these different colors”

If you had the opportunity to work with a guest in the future, who would you like to bring into the studio to work on a cut with you and why? “We talked about introducing some orchestrations eventually. We would definitely need help from someone who knows what they are doing if we decided to go down that road, famous or not, but we think this would be a cool experience to try out”

What can you tell us about “Stories Untold (Chapter II)”? “That one is a little more than half written. One of the songs was written when Marc-Alain was with us, so you’ll hear some of his lyrics. The other compositions are more recent. Where there is a lot of ‘doom and gloom’ in Chapter I, Chapter II will have a little bit more of an epic feel to it and some progressive elements”

“Stories Untold (Chapter 1)” by Whispers In The Maze is out now and available over at bandcamp.