Shattered Vessels

With a debut single and video on the way, ‘Portrait Of Us’, release September 24^th, OnsNieuwsMusic is always curious about the story behind the band and the music. And I was so lucky to do an interview with this symphonic metal band from Mexico City!

First of all, can you introduce yourselves?

“Shattered Vessels” is a symphonic metal band based in Mexico City. Our unique style fuses complex orchestrations, passionate voices, dark lyrics and the intensity of the metal genre.

The project is called “Shattered Vessels”. Can you tell us something about the name of your project?

“Shattered Vessels” was supposed to be the name of a song at first, but then we realized that, because of its meaning, it would be more fitting as a band name since it matches our backgrounds in a more personal level. “Shattered Vessels” represents the idea of someone broken because of life experiences or situations, certain moments in life were we feel “SHATTERED“. There are many ways to interpret it but, on as of a personal experience sometimes you love someone, you want to give, share, and just pour out all of yourself to that person, yet they are not prepared to receive all that energy and love from you, so that vessels shatters, that relationship cracks, it’s extremely painful when something like this happens. Thru our lifetime we carry with this shattered vessels, sometimes we ourselves are the shattered ones, on the positive note we can always reconstruct ourselves, bring the pieces together, restructure that vessel.

You call “Shattered Vessels” a metal project. Does this mean it’s a onetime project or is it a band?

At the moment it is still a project since we don’t have all the members. We hope that we can make it a full band if everything goes right.

Your debut single is called ‘Portrait Of Us’. What can you tell about this single?

It is strongly piano focused. It’s hard to label what we do so we just say, it’s symphonic metal influenced on the Classical Romantic era.

As for the lyrics, it talks about the memory that remains after being the sound is hard to explain or label into a metal style, it has guitar elements known in thrash and metal core, it has strings and brass orchestra elements, it has melodies common in melodic or power metal, and Yael’s voice has an operettic abandoned by a loved one, who was supposed to be there with you at the end.

The end being success that you should have shared together, but because of their decision to leave, you have no choice but to look back at them, standing in the same place they were before, and now you’ll see them see you from behind. It’s both encouraging and sad at the same time.

Who is responsible for the music and the lyrics?

The music is composed by brothers Flare and Hagen , the dynamic is kinda strange so we just say both of them compose everything. As for the Lyrics, Flare writes all the songs at the moment.

Are there guest musicians who helped you with this debut single?

Yes, we hired a cellist for the song and video, and we had the help of a really good friend of ours and admirer of our past works for the piano.

When there is single, the next question is always ‘will there be an album also’?

We do have plans to make a mini album, with 5 or 6 songs. From where we’re at now, it takes a lot of both, money and time to create really good material and so, our resources will most likely cover up to 6 songs for now. But hopefully if we start getting strong support from fans and record label, then we would be thrilled to continue.. we have so much good music material!

What makes your music symphonic metal?

All of our songs are strongly based on classical instruments, while there are many bands that focuses of guitar riffs or melodies, our music strongly depends on orchestra and classic instruments to play those melodies instead.

Are you influenced by other bands?

Yaels strongest influences for the vocals are from composer Richard Wagners operas that are so intense, dark and passionate, also Tarja Turunen from Nightwish was a strong influence during her teenage years. And overrall some bands that have influenced her throughout her musical career are Dimmu Borgir, Rotting Christ, Satyricon, Amon Amarth, Iron Maiden, just too say few…

Hagen- The first metal band I ever heard was Metallica at the age of 15, but I got really into metal a few years after when my hunger for metal led me to listen to all types and sub-genres of metal music. I would say my favorite metal band is Symphony X. My main influences come from a classical background. Music created by Frederick Chopin, Johan Sebastian Bach and F. Schubert always amazed me almost to a religious degree. In modern music such as metal, I look up to people like Jason Becker as I became less of a pianist over time and more of a metal guitarist and composer over time.

Flare is influenced by any type of music, chord progression or feeling he likes from any music style. However he doesn’t have a preference or favorite band, he just likes the songs or he doesn’t. In metal, he grew up listening to: Metallica, Rhapsody, Sonata Arctica, Children of Bodom, Iced Earth, Avenged Sevenfold, Bullet for my Valentine.

Do you have musical backgrounds?

Flare is self-taught overall. He never attended a music school or had any proper education, he just creates what’s in his head. He can play guitar, bass, drums and sing in tune. He likes to be known for his compositions more than his playing skills. He has made about 200 songs and used to be the main composer for the disbanded “Dark & Poetry” band.

Yael is a soprano with dark coloratura. From the age of 10 she began to train as an operatic singer. At 15, Yael began to perform on stage as the lead singer of various symphonic metal cover bands. Now a days she keeps studying and perfecting her style with constant opera classes and focuses mainly on ‘Shattered Vessels’ as her main project.

Hagen started in music as a pianist at 4 years old and switched to guitar at 17, since then has dedicated himself to composing music?