Interview with Herege guitarist Dalton Castro

Recorded in Nitro Sound Solutions studio, and produced by Roger Fingle, who has worked with several South-American metal bands and is also known for his work with Earth, Seduced by Suicide, and Blood and Tears, Herege is poised to take the music scene by storm. True to the genre these guys are hard, heavy and in your face. The songs chronologically mark historical facts of the 20th and the 21st century covering topics such as WWII, The Cold War, globalization, and terrorism. Guitarist Dalton Castro was kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions for PureGrainAudio.

What was it exactly which led to the formulation of the idea for Herege and furthermore to the group’s name?
Dalton: The whole connection with the band’s name has got a subversive proposal, joined with attitude, something that’s the original heavy metal proposal as in the early days. Style which was created based against the rules, society and religions that are still infecting the world.

Many of your songs are so hard and intense that I’m sure they translate well into a live environment taking on a whole new life in front of an audience. How does it make you feel when the emotion or power which you envisioned when recording a song comes to life when playing in front of a crowd?
Dalton: It’s really a madness transmitting all the energy which we recorded at the studio, to the gigs, to see the crowd enjoying our songs and banging their fucking heads it’s something supernatural! It’s a huge pleasure to be on the stage and see people believing in our work and giving their energy to us. That makes us stronger and stronger every time to keep playing heavy metal and composing heavy metal songs!

Every band has its musical influences. What are some of the other bands or artists which have greatly influenced you guys and your music?
Dalton: Each one of us has its particular influences. But in general we’re great fans of the following bands which had influenced us a lot: Judas Priest, Testament, Black Sabbath, Saxon, Accept, Motorhead, AC/DC, a lot of thrash metal bands and hard rock as well.

Rock and heavy music in general has recently begun to make quite a comeback in the mainstream. Even though Herege technically happens to fall into this category, do you guys actually want to be considered part of the mainstream?
Dalton: If we’ll fall or not in this category it’ll be just the consequence of the all hard work that we are put in right now. To us the thing that will make the difference is to be recognized by the crowd and all the metalheads that we can have the honor to show our work to….

Guitarist Rui Pedroso has left the band. Are there any plans to replace him or are you going to keep with a single guitar player?
Dalton: When he has left the band we had another guitar player replace him, but it didn’t happen. I believe that we’ll keep with this line-up, it’s working very well!

What does the near future hold for you guys as a band?
Dalton: Exactly, I don’t know. But now we are working over the debut album production, and we hope to release it in a lot of countries and after that make a lot of gigs wherever we can. Work, work, work, it’s the way to open the doors to the band.

Any plans to tour the States at all?
Dalton: Yes, absolutely. As soon as that the album is out we wanna play gigs in Brazil firstly and after that try to do it crossing the borders!

What has been the most memorable moment of your career so far?
Dalton: Many important things have happened, but the most important thing, not just for me but for all guys here I think, was the recording days, the fact that we can live together in another city (far from our home as well) during 13 days was an amazing experience, guys with a common proposal, little money, sharing your personalities and living as a family, it was the best experience for me.

How do you feel your live show differs from you CD?
Dalton: We always look to play as we recorded, but live we can change anything. We can improvise or something like it.

How has your newest EP Bang Your Heads, been received by your fans?
Dalton: I think the people liked these songs, we are still receiving good commentaries about it: personally, on the web, in the promotional gigs too. Anyway it was just a sample of what we’ll show in the next few months with the full CD.

Different groups have unique ways of writing their songs. How do you guys go about writing your music? Is it a collective effort (i.e. rehearsing and jamming together) or is it more of the efforts of one particular member of the band?
Dalton: Well, we came into rehearsals with some riffs that we created at our homes, from then on, we try some drums rhythms, after that, always appears some cool ideas and we join with the main riffs, always banging our heads to pass our energy through the notes.

When playing together and ultimately recording this album, did you find that you could each express yourself creatively enough?
Dalton: I believe that we found a lot of amazing ideas inside the studio, at the sessions, one by one, until we thought that it was done and sounded killer.

There is a common theme of castles, dragons and mythology running through your work. What is it normally that gives you inspiration when writing lyrics and was there a theme (or themes) behind the writing of this album?
Dalton: No, we don’t talk about castles and dragons, we talk about human reality. Our CD – demos they had a lot of connection with metal and against religions and society limits. In the next album the themes are about facts, they mark the past century. The whole thing was done in chronological order. Maybe the inspiration came from the bands which we are great fans of, maybe from our reality, our life way, our will to change the things, our subversive thought as well.  [ END ]