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What are your names? / Who plays what? / How old are you? Hi! My name is Shirin, I'm a composer and drummer from Grauen - extreme/symphonic metal band from Russia. Our current line up is: Natalia Pomazkova as vocal/lyrics, Nikolay Naydenov and Egor Loktev as guitar players, and Yaroslav Lolenko is our bass player. 
Where are you from? Moscow, Russia.
What's your style of genre? It's something between black and death metal with lots of symphonic parts. 
What language do you sing in? Russian. But the word "Grauen" - our band name - is German.
What year did the band form? We are formed in 2013, and in 2017 released ou first album "In the Heavenly Source". 
What are your songs about? Basically our lyrics is about horror and mystical themes, a bit of brutal and sometimes dramatic.
What inspires you? A few modern composers as Hans Zimmer, John Williams, Paul Romero. From metal bands it's Nile, Carach Angren, Ade and many others.
How have you developed since you started with the music? I started as guitar player in Grauen, but our first drummer has leaved band after a few month and I decided to learn drums. Then I also learned orchestration stuff and a basics for keys. Our current vocalist Natalia also started practice singing while she already participated in band for years. So yeah, we increased a lot of skills to make our music better.
Have you had other previous members?
Yes, for the first album it was - Nadezhda Pototskaya as vocals, Stanislav Aseev as guitar player, and Alexey Smirnov as lyrics author/vocals in early demo.
Also we played lives with Damir Gaisin, Arseniy Ivanov and Yaroslav Denisenko.
Have any of you played in other bands? Yes, I also playin' in russian symphonic death metal band "Змей и Радуга". Natalia and Nikolay played in Atra Mustum before.
How is it that you started playing music? When I was young, I had inspired by lots of metal bands and music as Dimmu Borgir, Dethklok, Decapitated, Kalmah and others. Also, a lot of us has a musical educatuion, so our band forming was just a natutal thing.
Did you make music even when you were young? I wrote my first worthy song around ten years ago, when I was 17, and from this time I never stops practicing in composing and playing.
Do you start with the music or the lyrics? We starts from guitar riffing, and the important thing to make whole song before add other instruments. Then we adding main symphonic melodyes and drums. After we choosing the song concept, making effects and misc stuff. Lyrics is a final part.
Do you have other interests of work outside the band? Yes, I making a lots of other music, like symphonic or soundtrack-styled tracks. Except music, I'm interested in tech stuff, space exploration news, cinema, and always looking for inspiration in history, legends and arts.
What made you decide to make this music? Well, this is all about the style - I admiring to perfection of symphonic music and for me this is a point to make not just song but the whole world inside listener's head. Every single sound or beat or everything else in the music it's like a brush stroke on the picture. That's the key of really good art.
Is it easier to find inspiration from older bands, or bands that are more active today? It does not matter when music was born, the matter is how it sounds. I really like some of old albums wich made the direction of extreme metal genre, but in nowadays those musicians changed a style or finished their career. But their music stayed and new generation of bands developing those ideas. 
Do you always play the same songs live, or do you vary? We have a few songs from released album that we played every gig, and the others, not released yet, we changing according the audience taste.
Have you had to cancel a gig? Yeah, once. There was a fire accident in a club a few days before gig.
What have been your biggest obstacles? There is a lots of it. Cheaters in musical business, unreliable people, misunderstanding of the audience, and it looks like we will meets much more troubles, but we sure that art is kind of supreme goal.
Do you have any new material? Yeah, at this moment we are in studio, working for new album.
Where do you plan to gig the comming year? We want to make tour with new album next year in our country.
What do you think about people downloading music instead of buying records now a days? I think every artist knows about it and no one stop playing because of it. Metal music it's not a best moneymaking deal, and generally art it's not concentrates around money benefits. So, I think, the age of internet - it's a good time for beginner bands (it becomes easier to share your music around a world), and not so good for stars bands. But the real fans will stay forever.
What advice would you give other bands or artists? Do not afraid to make creativity, work for your sound and have fun with your business.
What are your web sites?
https://grauenmetal.bandcamp.com
https://www.youtube.com/c/grauenmetal
https://www.facebook.com/grauenmetal
What are your plans for the future? I just want to make some real music and play shows for every who wants to come. So, yeah. This is all plan.
Do you have something to add? Thank you for your questions! Stay tuned for news from Grauen and get prepared for new killer album very soon!