FemME Battle 2023: ALVEOLE

Can you tell us something about the name of the band? What does it mean and who came up with it?

Well, our name ALVEOLE is the scientific wording for an air sac, a part of the lung. Right before we founded the band, our guitarist Sebastian’s lung collapsed because of a pneumothorax. His weeks in the hospital were a horrible experience for him, but he tried to turn it into something positive. He tried to take his recovery as the start for a more fulfilled life and for taking care of self-esteem.
So even if one alveole can cause a pneumothorax, all alveoli together are forming the lung and this is the reason that we all can breathe and live.
For us ALVEOLE stands for turning something very bad into a new and positive outlook into the future.

Can you tell us something about the history of the band? When is it established, are all the bandmembers still the same as when the band started?

Silvia: We started in 2014 as a studio-project with a main focus on writing songs. After a short time we were asked to play shows, so we played our first show after our first album was released. I am really proud that we constantly grew and refined our style ever since. What started more as a fun-project is our greatest passion now. Conditions for being a bandmember changed as we played more shows and spent more time on the music and also the promotional aspects over the years. That’s why also our lineup changed. Today only me and Sebastian are left of the founding members.  

Please introduce us to the members of the band. Who are they and which instruments do they play? Do they have a musical background, etc. All the things you think are important or nice to know you can tell us.

We are 4 members: Sebastian is the guitarist, Silvia is our vocalist, Marvin plays the bass and Kris is our drummer. What unites us is, that we all have a strong focus on creating something unique and innovative and we are working hard on increasing our creative and technical skills. We all started learning our instruments in our youth. Silvia started with the drums and Sebastian with violine. Fun Fact: Before Kris joined the band he had break of several years of playing the drums.

(picture: Alveole)

Who writes the songs? (lyrics and music).

Sebastian (guitarist) is responsible for the instrumental arrangements and the main ideas and structure of the songs. He starts with sythesizers, the guitar or drum rhythms to create the basis of the song first and finishes the songwriting process hand in hand with Silvia writing the lyrics and creating the vocal melodies. Then the rest of the members are adding their ideas with their instruments and during this process we’re checking if the song is also working in the rehearsal room in a live situation.

Did you release some records so far.

We already released 2 studio albums and are going to release a third one next year.

And if the answer is yes can you tell something about them (year of release, tittle, songs).

Our last two records were “Rhythm of Absurdity” in 2014 and “Andorra Effect” in 2019. During the last two years we produced 12 new song which will be released during the next year. As first new song the new ALVEOLE era “Separated Me” was released on Dec 9^th 2022.

Are you full time musicians or do you have other jobs also?

In these times it’s really hard to make money with music, so we all do have normal jobs.

How would you call your music?

Since we’re no big friends of stereotypes, we’re always unsure about the genre of our music. We’d call our current songs something like modern metal.

Are you influenced by other bands? And yes, which one(s)?

We’re always searching for new music and bands. So we’re influenced by so many bands. During the creating process of our new songs, we listened a lot to Bring Me The Horizon, the new Within Temptation record, Annisokay, Lacuna Coil and many more.

What was your most cool gig so far?

Playing at the Hirsch in Nürnberg last year was a really cool experience. On this stage we have seen a lot of our favorite bands so far.

Is there a band you want to go on tour with? And why this band?

Sebastian: Spiritbox is one of my favorite bands currently. It’s the perfect mix between very nice melodies, groove and technical parts.

What do you think of FemME?

Women are very underrepresented in the metal scene and even in the whole music industry, so it’s great to have a festival especially for bands with women in there.

Are you looking forward to come to the Finals?

Yes, of course!