interview with The Outborn
Have any of you played in other bands? Yes of course. John Mayer (vocals) played for a couple of years in Atma Sphacelus (Death Black metal). Dave Dupont (Rythm guit) played in Jack Slaughtering (Metalcore). Actually Gabriel (Lead guitar) plays in a hard rock project called Gäz. John Mayer and Alexandre (bass) recently formed a Brutal death slam project called Necroticgorebeast.
How is it that you started playing music? Gabriel (lead guitar) and Ninjon (drums) are long time friends. They started playing together in 2008 and eventually integrated other members in the project.
What are your names? / Who plays what? / How old are you?
Gabriel Joly (Lead Guitar) 29 years old
Jonathan "ninjon" Bourgeois (drums) 31 years old
John Mayer (vocals) 30 years old
Dave Dupont (rythm guitar) 25 years old
Alexandre Brochu (Fretless bass) 35 years old
Have you had other previous members? Yes a couple! There as been a huge member switch between the EP and our last album, Chris Perreti (bass) , Eric Lepage (guit) and Max Martel (vocals) were the active members of the band when the EP Path of Lunacy was recorded.
Did you make music even when you were young? Most of us played music when we were very young. Gabriel's father was a very talented guitarist. Alexandre started playing bass at 20 years of age but played acoustic guitar and violin before.
Where are you from? We all live in Quebec City, Canada
What year did the band form? The band was formed officially in 2008.
What's your style of genre? There is a lot! The most prohiminent one is Death Metal for sure especially when you hear the vocals. There is also a lot of rock influences (i.e: guitar solos) mixed with a technical progressive approach.
How often and where do you reherse? We reherse at least twice a week. Of course we practice a lot more individually, doing pre-prod tracks and everything.
How have you developed since you started with the music? thats a tricky question, I guess we could resume it by saying that our songs tends to be more mature, more structured, more focused. We are trying to create a different feeling in each of our songs compared to a more aggressive in your face approach in our early songs .
Do you have other interests of work outside the band? Yes, it goes from having a family with kids to 3d printing buttplugs with the band logo on it (for real...)
Are you looking for a booking agency, and what are your thoughts around that? We are open to everything but for now, for our booking needs we prefer to establish contact directly with promoters (mosty via our facebook page). For now it fits our needs and helps us keep control on what we want to do and want we don't want to do.
Are you looking for a label, and what are your thoughts around that? Yes we have recently completed our presskit and we are in the process of contacting a couple of labels. Let's hope for the best!
What made you decide to make this music? It's really a blend of the musical interest of everyone that has been part of the band in the last 10 years. Each album tends to shift in style a little bit but the idea is to create music that challenge us technically, with a blend of progressive and aggressive music and that is fun to see live!
What are your songs about? Seven is a concept album based on the seven sins. They are viewed not from a religious point of view but more of a critical view of our modern society. Sins, vice, deviance, how we lose control of real things, letting true values be replaced by our egos.
Who does the composing and writes the lyrics? Mainly Gabriel (lead guit) and John (vocals)
Do you start with the music or the lyrics? Always the music
Do you compose in a certain inviroment? Each band has their own recipte. For us, Gabriel (lead guitar) works on the pre-prod at is house (guit and programmed drum), sends us the tracks, we pitch in our comments, a couple of adjustments and voila. We make some light adjustement in rehersals after that.
Have you done any covers live? Yeah, we have made a In the flesh cover from Pink floyd as an intro a couple of time. Also High Roads from Mastodon. There is a couple more that we'd like to do in a near future like I only worship what you bleed from The Black Dahlia Murder.
What language do you sing in? English! We are all french canadian but english is the most universal language in metal.
What are the least and most people to attend one of your gigs? Least would be like 4-5 people + members of other bands ! Thats what you get when you play for a touring band in a small town on a wednesday night. The most is probably 200+ when we played with Unearth.
Do you always play the same songs live, or do you vary? We try to vary as much as possible, mixing old stuff with new stuff + covers.
What was your latest gig? A local show back in august with to amazing canadian bands on tour (Eye of Horus and Becomes Astral) + a great deathcore band from quebec SUFFERIZE.
Have you had to cancel a gig? Never had to! *cross fingers
Where do you plan to gig the comming year? We have a couple of shows in october and november in our province. We also have a big christmas gig in our hometown with Anonymus, legends of agressive canadian metal that started back in 1989 and are still at the top of their game!
When did you start to sell merchandise, and what do you have for sale? When John Mayer(vocals) joined the band back in 2014, he took everything to a whole new level. T-shirts, logos, stickers, beer holders, hoodies, long sleeves, undies. There is something for everyone taste.
Where can people buy your merchandise? You can contact us directly via our band page on facebook! We ship locally, internationally no problem.
What do you think about people downloading music instead of buying records now a days? It's a reality that as been there for more than a decade and is now really rooted in the habits of everyone. For us since we really don't do this for the money, as long as we get feedbacks on what we release and are able to create some kind of buzz around it, we are happy.
How do you think the music industry have changed because of this? Record labels are more careful on their bands signing for sure.
How do you think and know that this interview will help you in the music business? Every opportunity for us to get an exposure on our band is always appreciated. Just being able to share more about our band and getting people to take at look is everything we can hope for !
Is it easier to find inspiration from older bands, or bands that are more active today? Its a mixed bag. we surely are inclined to take influences on older band (even some non-related to metal), but on a production point of view, you have to see whats on top right now.
What have been your biggest obstacles? Ourselves for sure! Keeping a band together hard enough, to make it productive, focused and goal driven is even harder.
What advice would you give other bands or artists? Do what you really like! Wathever your style is. As long as you love what you do, you will always get people to follow you and help you reach your goals!
How do you get psyched for a gig?
Beer booze and cocaine (...)
Jokes aside we always enjoy a couple of drinks. We are actually sponsored by Octane 7.0 (energy drink with malt alcohol) We're hooked to this sh*t!
Do you have any new material? There as been a huge gap between the release of our ep and first album (2012-2017). To redeem ourselves a little bit, we already have 6 song for the next album written. We are surely going to play some of them very soon!
What are your web sites?
https://www.facebook.com/Theoutborn
How can people reach you? Via our facebook page!
What are your plans for the future? We have a nice tour planned in february 2018 in 8 cities of our province of Quebec(Canada). We are also planning to write the structure of at least 10 songs for our next album before the end of the year. There is also talks of going in Europe in 2019 probably for the release of our second album!
Do you have something to add? Thank you for your interest in our band, getting to know us a little bit more! We hope that everyone will take look at our last album Seven which is available on https://theoutborn.bandcamp.com/
