Cyanide Paradise EP Reach For The Stars

The Dutch melodic death metal band ‘Cyanide Paradise’ released their first EP, “Reach For The Stars” at July 8 (2019). The band is quite young and that’s why I ask frontwoman of the band Linn to tell us something more about the band, and of course, the EP. So thank you Linn for answering my questions and telling us more about ‘Cyanide Paradise’ and “Reach For The Stars”.

Let’s just start with the name of the band, ‘Cyanide Paradise’. It’s souns a bit creepy I think but I’m sure you can tell us more about it.

First of all we think the name has a certain quality to it in how it rolls of the tongue and the feeling it provokes. It hints at being in a dark place where one feels there is only one solution to escape and reach a better spot. This does tie in very well with some themes and stories we have planned for our songs, but we can’t say too much about that yet!

The band is not “old” so to say. Can you tell something about the start and how it went on until now?

Martin and Jeff quit their previous band together in 2017, looking for a fresh start. After a while they started to work on writing music together, both based on material Martin had written in the past and new work they came up with together. Eventually they started accumulating enough good material that they felt ready to share with the outside world and in early 2019 ‘Cyanide Paradise’ was born. Soon after that Linn joined the group and played her part in the creation of the debut EP, which is released July 8 2019.

You already mentioned some names. Can you introduce the band members?

Martin Vos: is our guitarist, besides doing a part of the vocals. He is also the main songwriter and does our production work.

Jeff Wennekes :is our bassist, co-founder of the band and co-writer for a lot of the songs.

Linn: joined the band shortly after it was founded and is responsible for a major part of the vocals. She also makes most of the Artworks for the band.

I have been listening to the EP several times now and I must say it sounds very nice. Are you professional musicians and has anyone of you a musical education?

Unfortunately none of us can afford to be full time musicians at this time, and we all have to work another job to pay the bills.

And we all have had some private lessons for our instruments/vocals, but none of us had a “professional” musical education.

Are there band members who also play in other bands?

Both I (linn) and Jeff are currently also members of symphonic blackened death metal band ‘Pictura Poesis’.

So let’s talk about the new EP. Like I already told you, I’ve been listening to it several times. But what can you tell us about it? And let’s start with which one of you is responsible for the music and lyrics?

Both music and lyrics were mainly written by Martin and Jeff together, with some songs being more influenced by one and some by the other. Musically a lot of material written by Martin was used as a base.

Nowadays days it’s very common I think that there’s a certain message in the songs or even in the whole album. Is there a special message in the songs?

There are two songs on the EP that will be part of a bigger whole, which will become more clear with future releases. Other than that we invite people to listen to our songs and see what meaning they feel they get from it. We feel it’s usually better to go with your own feeling and interpretation rather than having everything spelled out for you!

How long did it take before the EP was ready?

Martin and Jeff started seriously working on the EP late 2018, Linn joined the project not long after that, and from that point we steadily worked on getting everything finished.

Did you work with a producer?

Everything is self-produced. We did pretty much everything for this EP ourselves, except for the actual fabrication of the physical copies.

The EP is called “Reach For The Stars”, why this title?

The EP is titled after the last song, which heralds the beginning of a long voyage that won’t end with one EP!

Now you’ve finished this EP hat are your future plans?

For now we are going to focus on writing more songs, not only so we can keep a steady stream of music coming your way, but also to work towards a nice setlist and hitting the stage! In the meantime we are also looking for a drummer and second guitarist to complete our line-up and join us for those live performances. Once we get to that point, the sky is the limit and we will “reach for the stars”!

Thanks Linn for your time to answer my questions!

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“Reach For The Stars” is the first EP, released at July 8 2019. The album contains 4 tracks:’

Subatonic
Enlightement
Pestilence
Reach For The Stars

Like I told you before it’s the first album of this band. And of course a first album is always trying out some things, for sure when it’s an independent release, this one sounds very professional. The four songs are different and I’m impressed. Impressed also when I hear the voice of Linn. And sure it’s black metal and her voice is deep, but it’s no problem at all to follow the lyrics very easily. And the voice of Linn, together with the backing vocals of Martin, give’s this EP some extra power.

For a debut album it’s very well done and I’m curious about where this will end. The band is just starting but at a high level and I’m sure this is only the beginning. And the only way to find out how it sounds is to listen for yourself. And I’m sure you won’t regret it.