Blackened Horde: How did the band get started?
Jeff: We founded Illyrian on deliberately not making our music socio-political, or even overly personal for that matter. Obviously music will always be personal at some level, but we chose very early on to lyrically write about video games and comics and movies – works of fiction that we felt told a great story, or made us feel a certain way, or things we just remember fondly. We came into this wanting to have a good time, and want the same for our fans.
Blackened Horde: What kind of music do you play?
Jeff: We style ourselves primarily as a death-thrash metal band. It started more on the thrash side, but the death part of the equation continually creeps in more and more. I think this EP is absolutely more on the death side of things.
Blackened Horde: How has the fan response been?
Jeff: It’s been mostly positive as far as we can tell! I don’t think it’ll never not be cool to see a fan in an Illyrian shirt.
Blackened Horde: Where did the band name come from?
Jeff: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, of all things. Well more specifically, the spin-off show, Angel. There’s this character, Illyria, who shows up in one of the seasons, and she’s this force of the apocalypse sent to bring destruction. We felt the name was a nice intersection between our nerdy roots and our genre of choice.
Blackened Horde: Introduce the band members and what they do in the band.
Jeff: I (Jeff) am the bassist and one of two vocalists. Scott is one of the guitars, the other vocalist, and our primary songwriter. We’ve also got Darren on drums, and Kelly on guitar.
Blackened Horde: How many albums/CD’s have you released?
Jeff: This EP is our third release. Prior to this, we released an album, “The Entity, Unknown” in 2019, and our first album, “Round 2: Fight!” was released in 2016.
Blackened Horde: Tell me about some of the songs on the latest CD?
Jeff: Its a concept EP about the popular video game series, Dark Souls. At a high level, it follows the story of one of the game’s more prolific characters, Gwyn – a being who rises from nothing to godhood, builds civilizations, falls to his hubris and dooms everything, and finally sacrifices himself to stave off total desolation of the world he’s built. It’s got a very Greek epic feel to it (a correlation that was not lost on the developers of Dark Souls, as you can see from Gwyn wielding lightning bolts on the record’s cover art), but we felt there is something innately primal about that kind of story too. Plus the game’s about slaying demons – how could we not write a metal album about it?
Blackened Horde: Who writes the music? Lyrics?
Jeff: Scott writes all the music, but I write all the lyrics. The process is always done collaboratively though, and we all contribute in our own ways.
Blackened Horde: And where do the lyric ideas come from?
Jeff: All our lyrics across all our albums are based on video games, movies, or comics, and that will probably always be the case for us!
Blackened Horde: What is your view in Satanism and Occultism? (If this applies)
Jeff: They’re fine. Cool imagery.
Blackened Horde: Do you have any side projects?
Jeff: Not at the moment, but most of us have played in other bands along the way, and a few of us fill in with other bands as live or session members once in a while.
Blackened Horde: Who are some of your musical influences?
Jeff: These are myriad, but I think the pertinent ones would be Revocation, The Black Dahlia Murder, and Battlecross.
Blackened Horde: What is the band like when you play live?
Jeff: We get constant positive feedback about our live shows, and it’s something we pride ourselves on. We’re big believers in being performers in addition to musicians, and like to do a lot of crowd engagement when we play. We’ve pulled people up from the crowd to wail on a cowbell, run into the crowd mid-solo, walked out onto tables – we try to put on a show.
Blackened Horde: Have you guys ever played in another country?
Jeff: We have not, though we did have a UK tour booked before the pandemic set in.
Blackened Horde: How big of a crowd do you normally get?
Jeff: Depends on the show! We’ve played to 300 people, and we’ve also played to 30.
Blackened Horde: How is the crowd response when you play?
Jeff: We try to interact with the crowd a lot, so as far as I can tell it’s always a good time out there.
Blackened Horde: What do you think about the underground scene?
Jeff: Collaborative and competitive in all the right ways.
Blackened Horde: What are some of your new favorite black metal/death metal bands?
Jeff: I’ve really been digging Igorrr lately, though I wouldn’t say they are exclusively black metal (or any one genre) by any means. Not a new band, but new to me!
Blackened Horde: Since the Covid Pandemic has that hurt the band in making music at all?
Jeff: Yeah totally, we’ve always been a “get in the space” kind of band. But we adjusted to collaborating digitally when we had to work remotely, which was for many months, and while I can’t deny it slowed us down, it didn’t totally halt us either.
Blackened Horde: What advice would you as a musician give to a fellow musician just starting out?
Jeff: Stay for the other bands when you play a show. So many new bands show up for their set, as do their friends, and then they clear out with those friends after their set (which is usually the first slot if they’re new). You can’t control what your friends do, but sticking around to support your scene-mates is something people remember.
Blackened Horde: When do you guys plan on writing any new material?
Jeff: We’re about a third through our next album already – we try to keep well ahead of our release schedule so we can plan ahead.
Blackened Horde: What does the future hold for the band??
Jeff: World domination ideally, but a tour or two when it’s safe to do so would do in lieu of that.
Contact them at:
https://www.facebook.com/IllyrianBand
https://www.instagram.com/IllyrianBand/
https://www.tiktok.com/@illyrianband
https://open.spotify.com/artist/2l3ghXIwGYLHHriUWTPBk8
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF5RNfsl7m7PdncsC2nqf_g
