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Q & A WITH CYBERPUNK BAND SENTINEL COMPLEX





PLEASE INTRODUCE YOURSELF FOR US WHO ARE NOT FAMILIAR WITH YOU AND YOUR MUSIC AND TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF. Sentinel Complex is a two piece cyberpunk metal act with music that ranges from fast heavy riffs and drum beats to industrial electronic sound design and synths. TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOUR NEW ALBUM OR SINGLE? We recently dropped our new single Demise Of The Faithful, which is a metal-heavy blend of our usual mix of score, metal and electronic elements. Our current plan is to release songs gradually throughout the year, rather than doing a traditional album. This allows us much more freedom in how we present music to our audience. We’d like to think we've got some seriously good music on our hands and it would be a shame for people to miss them due to all the algorithms we face with today’s listening systems. WHAT INSPIRED THE ALBUM OR SINGLE? With every song we write we try to form some sort of narrative around it. Demise of the Faithful is our take on the Book of Revelation as well as other myths and end time texts. If only we had known how fitting the song would be now with the current situation. We can see this lock down changing a lot of perspectives for artists, so maybe by the end of this year you'll pick up on how we were feeling during this time, but we sort of already came into this year with a lot of inspiration from end times mythology. If anything, this whole situation globally has strengthened some of the themes we will play on with these songs. That being said, be sure to follow us on Spotify if you want to listen to us slowly decent into cabin fever. CAN YOU SUM UP THE ALBUM IN A FEW WORDS? Forward-thinking metal for fans of cyberpunk and horror. WHAT RECORD CHANGED YOUR LIFE AND WHY? Jamie: I think for me there are a few. The first is probably The Black Album by Metallica because it is the album that made me fall in love with metal in the first place, and the song Sad But True was the first riff to make me feel like the doom slayer! Next there is an album called Bringer Of Light by a band called Damnation Angels, which was the first album I heard to have orchestral elements and metal which really had an impact on the way I look at metal since it worked so well! The third is probably Hold Your Colour by Pendulum since that was the first time I had ever heard electronic music at an early age. Josh: There are lots of albums that have touched both of us. I'd have to credit my uncle for all the albums he has thrown my way since being a young lad. But now I'd have to give credit to Slipknot's Volume 3. It may not be my favorite album by them by any means these days. but it was one of the first albums that I can remember that really showed off a good range of artsy songs, melodic songs and pure balls to the wall metal. DO YOU HAVE A FAVOURITE MUSIC VIDEO FILMED BY YOUR BAND OR ANOTHER ARTIST? Josh: I'm very proud of the Lyric video we made in-house for Demise of the Faithful. But if I had to pick another artist to shine a light on amazing music videos it would have to be Breaking The Habit by Linkin Park. I think that video single handedly got me into anime. I'm still waiting on the HD video by the way... Jamie: My favourites would have to be the video for Throes Of Perdition by Trivium and the video for Gateways by Dimmu Borgir. Those are the earliest ones I can remember that I watched over and over because they were so badass! Recently though I did discover a fan-made video for Can’t Kill Us by The Glitch Mob which absolutely blew me (and the original video) away so respect to the guy that did that! WHAT WOULD WE FIND YOU DOING WHEN YOU'RE NOT MAKING MUSIC? Jamie: When I’m not doing music I’m either tending to/ playing with my animals or I’m doing something horror related. I’ve got a big collection of films that I’ve been adding to for years and I’m still not through them all! That will usually put me in the mood to write something musically though, so chances are I’ll end up back at my desk shortly after… Josh: Listening to music, collecting music, the lot. I’m big into demo hunting, and I really enjoy archiving leaks and demos from artists I love. Like Jamie though I’m big into my games and films, but like I’ve talked about before to me it’s all one big thing so I don’t see a lot of separation from what I do outside of working on sentinel stuff. DO YOU GET NERVOUS PERFORMING LIVE, IF SO HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH THAT? Jamie: Honestly I’ve never really dealt with stage anxiety playing live for different shows. There’s always a slight bit of “don’t mess this up” but the thought is always “people are there because they want to see you play and not because they want to judge you” which always helps. I love playing live though so it’s more excitement than anything for me. HOW DID YOU FORM THE BAND? We met through a big group of mutual friends and it actually took us a while to get acquainted. Once we did though it only took a couple of conversations about music and things like that for us to say “we should probably jam some time” to each other. We started making music together for a few indie game/ film projects in 2014, and after some time and realizing we had a connection we started writing music for ourselves under our original name - Nova Prospect. In 2016 we rebranded under the name Sentinel Complex and have been honing our sound and style ever since. HOW DO YOU WRITE? - DO YOU HAVE A KEY SONGWRITER, OR DO YOU ALL WORK TOGEHTER? Jamie: When it comes to writing, we both do all the writing and it usually goes the way of one of us will have an idea which will then be brought to the other, and then we’ll both sit down and see where we want the idea to go. At some point I’ll usually sit down with the end result and take it as far as I can go with it. Eventually we’ll end up with the final which we are both happy with, and we won’t release anything until we are both completely satisfied with it! Our songs have a lot contained within them which we are steadily trying to build as we release more and more material. The main story of the lore tells the story of a battle between man and machine, and planet(s) defending themselves against the higher power of an invading mechanical force or “higher power”. We tend to add nods to religious aspects surrounding the events in the story too, neither of us are religious but we find it a very interesting subject when it comes to morality, the future of man and the general topic of dystopia. WHAT INSPIRES YOU? Generally our inspirations are pretty similar, since we are both huge fans of anything related to horror or cyberpunk media and are into mostly the same styles of music. This means that when one of us gets an idea, the other one can riff of it easily and we can get a lot of ideas out of just one. We usually get a big hit of inspiration after we watch a certain film or play a certain game etc. Since we both love score, it really helps to get deep into the world of the particular film we are watching and it means we can really channel the theme of that universe into some unique ideas WHAT IS NEXT? Currently we are working on a bunch of individual ideas which we want to eventually collate into a full album, but we are going down a different route this time around by just working on spontaneous ideas as they come, rather than working on an overall theme for a record. So far it’s turning out pretty well! We will be steadily releasing multiple singles throughout the year and the album we plan to have out by the end of the year. PLEASE TELL US ANY SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS SO WE CAN SHARE. https://sentinelcomplex.fanlink.to/SLCX

@sentinelcomplex


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