Rockezine.com interview with Beyond The Embrace on Sep 23, 2004

with Oscar Gouveia on Sep 23, 2004

At the end of a day what makes seven notes someone plays become music? – Talent! It’s a real rarity! And also a lot of work to make the brilliant shine…Beyond The Embrace undoubtedly have talent, they know how to deal with it, and they definitely hit the mark with their new album “Insect Song” which I reviewed not so long ago. So, you can imagine how exited I was to do an interview with their lead guitarist Oscar Gouveia.
		For those Rock-E-Zine readers, who hear about Beyond the Embrace for the first time, would you tell us how the band started and took their first steps in music? Our vocalist (Shawn Gallagher) and I became friends back in the 1990’s and he introduced me to Swedish melodic metal like In Flames, At The Gates and Dark Tranquility. Having grown up with bands like Metallica, Megadeth, Ozzy, and other old school metal, I felt something in the Swedish stuff that reminded me a lot of those bands that I love. Well as time progressed Shawn and I decided to form a band and write songs melding all of our influences. I had been in a band since about the 7th grade with our guitarists Jeff Saude, Alex Botelho, and our old drummer Mike Bresciani that had broken up a year or so earlier. Knowing that we all had great musical chemistry together I asked them to join. Shawn’s cousin Adam Gonsalves was asked to play bass and the rest is “history”.
		Beyond The Embrace. What does the name of the band mean? How did it become? I believe that it’s a lyric from an Opeth song that our old bass player Adam stumbled upon. He presented the idea and everyone liked the name because I believe it’s vague but at the same time meaningful in a lot of different ways.
		Is there any special message or ideology behind your music? What is it about? That’s a question better suited for Shawn since he writes all the lyrics, but what I get from all the songs is that there isn’t really much of any message or ideology. Shawn writes about life and how shitty it can sometimes be and I think that a lot of people can relate to his lyrics and somehow feel better knowing that they’re not the only ones that feel that way.
		What bands do you consider to be your main musical influences or inspirations? Could those influences be easily heard in any of your songs? My personal influences would have to be early Metallica, Megadeth, Ozzy, Testament, In Flames, Pantera, Children Of Bodom, and the list goes on and on… [laughs].
		Who writes the music and lyrics in the band? Shawn writes all the lyrics, and helps in the songwriting along with myself, Jeff, and Alex.
		First thing that comes in mind while listening to your recording is the unusual circumstance that you have three guitarists. Do you believe this makes your sound special? How did the idea become? The 3 guitar thing is mainly a live tool. We love twin guitar harmonies over driving rhythms. We don’t want to sacrifice any guitar parts that we write and record on our albums. We’ve seen too many bands leave out great guitar parts live because they can overdub all they want in the studio but when it comes down to playing it live they only have 2 guitars. It was mainly Shawn’s idea because when I and him wrote the first BTE songs and tried to play them with 2 guitar players, we felt that disappointment of not being able to play all the guitar parts we wrote.
		About the new album. What are the lyrics on the album about? Like I mentioned earlier Shawn writes mostly about life and its problems.
		What do you expect from this new release? I believe that people that love true metal and venture to buy the album will like us, and if they see us live they’ll like us even more.
		How does the promotion go? Promotion goes well, but there could always be more, you know… [laughs].
		Do you like the way the album is being received by the critics or the fans? Honestly I don’t read many reviews, because I only like the good ones and you have to go through the bad ones to get to the good ones. I like it when people talk to me in person or e-mail and tell us what they think directly to us, that means the world to me. Although I’ve noticed that we’re a band that you either really hate or you completely love. There doesn’t seem to be any middle for the most part, and that’s fine by me.
		Your plans for future. What is the meaning of success for you? The meaning of success to me personally is to be able to do this for the rest of my life and not have to work for “The Man” everyday.
		What would you consider more important for you: experimenting with new sounds and probably music styles or the loyalty to the certain style of music and its fans? I think that no matter how much we progress musically, we’ll always retain our “sound”, and our music will always have those certain elements that we love and are the reason that we started this band in the first place. The quality of production will always differ unless we record in the same studio with the same gear for every record, but musically you just have to go with your gut.
		Playing live. What was your first gig like? Do you feel different going on stage these days? Our first gig was great we had a lot of friends there and we hit it off right from the start. The feeling is always the same for me when we get on stage it’s the biggest release and the best high and I love it.
		Thank you for the interview. And in the end what would you add for your European auditory? Our new CD “INSECT SONG” is available in stores and online through Metal Blade Records along with our first CD “AGAINST THE ELEMENTS”. Check www.beyondtheembrace.com for news and tour dates. Thanks- Oscar Gouveia – Beyond the Embrace
(Julie Michael)