Rockezine.com interview with Influence on Feb 29, 2004

with Bas Assenbroek on Feb 29, 2004


		Influence might be a famous band in the Schagen-area (Holland) but I don’t think that many of our readers have heard of the band. Can you give us a short bio of the band? The band excists for 8 years now, three years in this form. It started off as a school band playing metal from two decades ago, like Priest and Maiden. Back then we also started writing our own songs. At this point only the two original guitarists are still in the band, the rest changed throughout the years.
		There are a lot of hard rock/metal bands in The Netherlands, in which way does Influence differ from the masses? We play metal as it should be played,with a real INFLUENCE sound. It’s a bit like old school metal, but i think we give it a real personal sound. Besides we have a beautiful girl on bass, something that’s, especialy in metal, not that obvious.
		Why did you decide to make a live album after just one studio album? We see ourselves as a real live band, so we wanted to let people know what we REALLY sound like. We had new material but not enough for a whole new studio album, so we combined some old songs with new songs and recorded a live album.
		What do you expect from Live From The Other Side? We hope we get people’s attention, do more gigs, get a record deal, maybe a big name wants us as their support act. You never know. Also, we sell the album at gigs just to be able to pay for everything.
		How did you finance the recording of “LFTOS”? We sold tickets for the recording, there where about 200 fans, the rest was payed with money we earned with performing.
		How do you promote the album? We hope it promotes itself, we send albums to over 200 addresses, internet site’s, magazines, places we want to play etc. We hope we get some good reviews, so we can work on our name.
		Will there be a promotional tour in The Netherlands? We do intent to play a lot in Holland, but it will not be a tour really. Except when a big name want’s us to join them on their tour...we can talk about that....no problemmo.
		What’s the next step and when can we expect the second studio album? Play as much as possible. The next step is the second studio album. We are working on some new songs, within six months we intent to start recording.so it should be finished in eight months, I guess...
		Anything you’d like to add? Be ready to be INFLUENCEd...!!!!!
(Geert Oldenmenger)