Van Canto are currently getting ready to release their excellent new album Dawn Of The Brave. Ahead of its release, we caught up with one of the vocalists of this unique band, Stefan, for an interview. Check it out below.
2014 has just got underway – what’s in store this year when it comes to Van Canto?
Our new album, Dawn Of The Brave! It’s our fifth album, and we think it’s the most compact and best sounding album we have produced so far.
What went well about 2013?
Everything concerning the production and the mix went really well. And we had some very cool festival gigs.
Did anything not go to plan?
Nothing important, as far as I remember.
You’re currently gearing up to release your awesome new album Dawn Of The Brave – can you describe the writing and recording process?
Compared to our former album Break the Silence, which was very live inspired and written while being on tour, Dawn Of The Brave was written in a time where we played very few live shows. So we had more time to work everything out very detailed and also to pay more attention the overall concept of the album. Drums were once again produced by Charlie Bauerfeind, all vocals by me and the mix was done by Ronald Prent, who did a fantastic job.
What made you decide to choose those particular covers? (I felt especially proud to see a cover of my fellow Welsh countrywoman Bonnie Tyler on there!)
Cool! Well, first of all we really have to like the song we are covering. And it has to have a great lead melody and interesting harmony structures to be arranged for an a cappella band. Especially Into the West sounds like it has been written for an a cappella band, at least we feel so.
How do you go about arranging your music into an a cappella form?
In the past most of the songs were written on guitar or piano and then translated into metal a cappella. This time we have lots of parts written by just singing them. Of course, when it comes to the covers, we have the original to analyse first, concerning chords, rhythmic patterns, and then arrange our version based on it.
I thought the outtakes from your last album Break The Silence were hilarious – are there any interesting stories from the studio this time round?
Haha, yes, this was great, although to be honest, Sly just had one bad day during the last production an 90% of the outtakes were from that day, haha. So this time he fortunately only had great days, so there was nothing special to “outtake”, haha.
In the past you’ve collaborated with artists such as Joakim Brodén and Tony Kakko – if you could work with anyone else, who would it be?
We also worked with Blind Guardian, Tarja Turunen and many more, so we feel very happy about that. But it would be really cool to work with Eric Adams someday.
If a band could cover any of your songs, which song and band would you choose?
There are some covers around on youtube, and we feel very proud about that. If I could chose I’d love to hear a Manowar interpretation of If I Die In Battle.
And if Van Canto could put their name to any product, what would it be?
Mhh, on a metal a capella album – say, Dawn of the Brave? This would be great 😉
Read our review of Dawn Of The Brave here, and keep an eye on the site for our review of their London show in April!
