Alternative metal rock band Alborn had a busy August, inking a deal with Imagen Records and releasing their debut EP, Impairative.
Rock Life had a chance to catch up with Alborn bass player, Zame Lewis recently, who spoke about the reaction to the new release and what else the band has been up to.
Q: How has the pandemic helped and/or hurt the band during this time? Zame Lewis: The day before we were supposed to fly out to New York to meet with Imagen Records was the same day that the country had shutdown.
Needless to say, we had to cancel the trip and figure out a new game plan. Cancelling the trip definitely slowed down our other plans involving Imagen, but luckily it worked out in the end.
Besides that, the fact that we haven't been able to hit the stage and see our Alborn family has also been a real bummer. Q: As you mentioned, your signing with Imagen Records was put on hold. What does it mean to you to finally have it be official? ZL: It's beyond relieving and gratifying to us to finally have taken this big step towards our music career.
Having Imagen on our team will allow us to accomplish much more than when it was just the four of us working endlessly and doing what we could.
Excited doesn't even come close to how we feel. The gears are turning and big moves are to come! Q: How did new single "Full Circle" come together? What do you want people to take away from it? ZL: The main riff for the song was a riff we knew was special and had to be used just right, but we were stuck on writing the rest of the song for at least a year.
Multiple demos had been made but nothing we came up with could quite do the riff justice. So, we finally brought it to the studio for dissection with Morgan Rose from Sevendust and Jose Urquiza of 3 Years Hollow.
The song had been put through the ringer with multiple versions laid out until eventually the structure of the song came together. After that, Justin and Morgan wrote some amazing vocals together and it was like magic.
"Full Circle" is a special song and we knew that from the start, so that's why it took so long to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together and come up with the end product.
We try our best to write quality and unique music and we hope people hear that when listening.
Q: Have you been happy with the reaction to the EP so far? ZL: Absolutely! Our fans are nothing short of amazing! This EP, like "Full Circle", has been refined over and over again and folks have definitely picked up on the hard work put into it. Q: How else did you spend your forced time off the road? ZL: We've all been working our regular jobs and writing more music. A lot. A LOOOOOT of music haha! , Q: For those who haven't heard it, what do you want people to know about your music? ZL: Our music is inspired by all kinds of music, old and new, but our biggest musical influences come from the early 2000's era of rock/metal.
We like to think listening to our music will remind a nu metal fan of a more modernized version of that genre.
Q: You started out as a cover band and then evolved. What was the initial inspiration to write original music and what do you feel was the best thing you did to make the transition and get your name out there? ZL: From the start, we all wanted to play our own original music, but playing covers in a local music scene always seems to be the first step to get your foot in the door for live shows.
So, for a few years we played cover shows with some originals thrown into our sets until we finally decided we didn't want to play covers anymore.
It didn't make sense to keep playing covers and to be remembered as a cover band when all we wanted to do was play our own music and be recognized as an original band.
On New Year's of 2018 we made a post on all our social media pages that was a sort of proclamation of taking the big step towards being an all original band. The post was a picture of the four of us with the caption, "New year, new me." Q: What's next for the end of year and heading into the next? ZL: Hopefully bringing more and more content to the table. We're ready to share as much as we can, when the time is right. Q: When can we expect to see you back on the road and what is an Alborn live show like? ZL: It's honestly too far up in the air to say when we'll hit the road again, unfortunately. Hopefully, this time next year.
We put 120% energy into our live shows. When our fans in the Alborn family are there with us, there's an incredible electricity in the air and that electricity pushes us to put even more energy into our shows. Q: Anything you'd like to add? ZL: Thank you for having us and we can't wait to chat again!