Frontman Samuel chats about Green Day, his obsession with music and new EP #Libra
PLEASE INTRODUCE YOURSELF FOR US WHO ARE NOT FAMILIAR WITH YOU AND YOUR MUSIC AND TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF.
My name is Samuel Konter, I’m the vocalist of Heedless Elegance. I was born in Budapest Hungary, my parents used to work in theatres, now they are retired, I think if I look back, it was obvious that I will one day step to the path of arts. When I was in kindergarten, I started to play the piano, but I gave up when I was in the beginning years of elementary school. I hated to practice.
Later on, I started to get familiar whit the world of rock/metal, my friend gave me a mixed CD of System Of A Down songs, and I immediately fell in love with it. The next ones for me were Metallica, Pantera, and a few years later the heavier modern metalcore deathcore stuff. That time I was playing on the drums, I learned to play from myself, and from the age of 15 to 20 or 21 I was in a few bands, but I never felt that I can be that good with the drums where I wanted to be.
I was living in the UK for one year after high school, and when I came back, with Zsolt we decided to form a band again, but this time for real. My only condition was that I wanted to be the vocalist, because in the previous years I’ve been practised screaming a lot, and I thought maybe I could be better at it than the drums. And here we are 5 or 6 years later after that decision. Since then, after a lot of change in the line-up, we released 2 albums and we also got into the top 25 "Best Emerging Bands of Hungary" as the only metal music group by winning a showcase talent show in Herend and a major governmental showcase competition.
TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOUR NEW ALBUM OR SINGLE?
Our second LP called “LIBRA” just came out on the 31th of January and we are really proud of this release, we worked so much on it and we gave our souls and hearts to make it as good as it’s possible for us. As far as we are able to look back from now to the past two years we truly think that it has become a colourful, yet coherent album overall. It was a challenging task for us to create such an LP while being honest and fulfilling our expectations to ourselves.
WHAT INSPIRED THE ALBUM OR SINGLE?
The last 2 years were tough for us in our private lives, we finished friendships, relationships, some of them was necessary, some of them just happened. We also lost loved ones. All these happening gave us a new perspective and I think this album is a memorial and in the meantime a release of our past.
CAN YOU SUM UP THE ALBUM IN A FEW WORDS?
Libra is a concept album – divided into two parts with eight songs in total – about a fictional character and it's an inner journey from a murder driven by long-awaited revenge to the dissolving death of himself.
WHAT RECORD CHANGED YOUR LIFE AND WHY?
There was a lot along my journey of music, but if I need to pick one, I think it would be the first album that I’ve ever got. It was Green Days “Bullet in Bible” DVD+CD. I got it from my mom when I was 11 I think. I never even know what music I really like, I did not know what a music genre even means, so I was happy that I got a CD I taught it’s cool to have one, and I watched it and listened to it and I immediately fell in love with the whole thing. I think that was the moment when I really started to have an interest in music.
DO YOU HAVE A FAVOURITE MUSIC VIDEO FILMED BY YOUR BAND OR ANOTHER ARTIST?
I really admire the music videos of Rammstein. They have a different perspective on what a music video should be, I think their vision is to make little movies, not just a video where the band plays with a little story in it. Of course, the production has a huge value so their boundaries are their artistic visions.
WHAT WOULD WE FIND YOU DOING WHEN YOU'RE NOT MAKING MUSIC?
Mostly my every days are about the band, we always have something that we need to do about it, so we cant say fortunately that we are bored, and have nothing to do. Besides the band I work as a bartender in music clubs, so I’m close to concerts even if I’m not playing.
DO YOU GET NERVOUS PERFORMING LIVE, IF SO HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH THAT?
I remember I was very nerves when we had our debut performance in the venue called “Robot”, because even if we worked so much with the previous line-up, I thought we weren’t ready for a concert, but we had to do it because it was about time. After the first note, my nervousness left, and the rest of the concert felt like 5 minutes for me. I think that was the last time when I felt real nervousness because after the show I knew that I can do this. Of course in the beginning of the concerts, I feel a little bit nervous, but I think that is healthy and I don’t really care about that feeling, just focusing on the performance.
HOW DID YOU FORM THE BAND?
The idea of creating a band came to our minds around 2015 I think, we were in a rock/metal festival in Hungary. Zsolt and I were totally sober and we said to ourselves “let's try it one more time, but this time do it for real“. We had projects where we were playing together with Zsolt, but something was missing from them, so we decided to follow a path where we’ll be very conscious about what we are going to do. Of course, we were continuously bumped into problems and mistakes, but on a different level. Since the official start of the band which was in 2018, we had quite a few band members on each instrument, cause there was always something that came up to the surface. Those things were on a scale from ‘problems with the attitude’ to ‘the person literally went insane! But eventually, in 2020 the final line up of the band was found and now I can proudly say that I’m in a band with amazing musicians and friends: Zsolt Forgó, Mátyás Erős, Dani Varga and Albert Csobán.
HOW DO YOU WRITE? - DO YOU HAVE A KEY SONGWRITER, OR DO YOU ALL WORK TOGETHER?
With the new line-up, we started to write songs together. Of course, sometimes someone can bring a half or fully written song, but in the end, we will work it out together, and we only use it when everybody is happy with the outcome. That is how our new album “ LIBRA” was written. We went to Lake Balaton for 3 months and we came back with a fully written LP.
WHAT INSPIRES YOU?
Could be anything, I think my task is to pay attention to my life and my environment, embrace everything that I can and if it’s necessary, write about it. These days movies and video games are inspiring me a lot, but sometimes my dreams can take over the control.
WHAT IS NEXT?
With our new album “LIBRA” we hope that we will find new opportunities to show ourselves to the world, I really believe it will happen. Our plans are to play as many concerts in as many places to as many people as possible in the next years, and we will continuously work on to make our shows bigger, smellier, more colourful and more professional. We hope that the belief that we have in our music, and the attitude we trying to follow will takes us to where we want to be.
PLEASE TELL US ANY SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS SO WE CAN SHARE.
You can find us mostly on every social media platforms on the internet
Our main platforms are Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and Spotify, but you can also find us on Bandcamp as well. Here are the links for them:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heedless.elegance
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heedlesselegance
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7yNr78pUKCO7heCTAoSlF8?si=koEjmcmbT-6WCNmLhLqFIQ
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJc7CBQEV75-AIWdQl4UuJw
Bandcamp: https://heedlesseleganceofficial.bandcamp.com/releases
f you would like to order merchandise or the albums, you can do it here in the webshop of metal.huhttps://metal.hu/zenekarok/heedless-elegance/