Rockezine.com interview with Cellador on Jun 16, 2006

with Chris Petersen on Jun 16, 2006

Next month, 03/07/2006, Cellador will release their album "Enter Deception". Chris Petersen, the guitarist and founder of Cellador, had some time left for an interview.
		First of all, could you please introduce Cellador a bit? Definitely! CELLADOR is a bombastic aggressive and energetic catchy melodic speed/power metal band from Omaha, Nebraska in the Midwest USA, a place totally devoid of any power metal and where the style is virtually nonexistent. We are a young band aged 17-23 years old with members having a variety of influences and origins, for instance our guitarist Bill being from Brazil and Val our bass player being from Russia. The band started as an idea I had in mid 2003 to form a energetic power metal band that would completely surprise kids here and stick out amongst the many hardcore, alternative, and NU-metal bands that dominated our American metal music scene. I originally found Dave our drummer in May 2004, followed by Val and a former guitarist Sam in Summer 2004. Together as a 4 piece we composed and rehearsed 6 songs and 4 of these ended up being recorded for our demo EP "Leaving All Behind." Our singer Michael Gremio joined the band in January 2005 and recorded the vocals for our demo and completed our band lineup. We began playing live shows in March 2005, and by May we were contacted by Metal Blade Records, who was looking for a young melodic metal band to sign to their roster. Towards the end of 2005 we lost our guitarist Sam and put up ads for a new guitarist, which Bill Hudson our Brazillian guitar player answered. Shortly after Bill joined the band we entered MANA Studios in Tampa Florida to record our debut album ENTER DECEPTION under death metal producer Erik Rutan. The album was mixed and mastered in March 2006 and is now set for release in late June/early July worldwide! We are different from many power metal bands in that we try to incorporate fast tempo`s, heavy guitars, extreme drumming, aggressive melodic vocals into our music that comes from our thrash and extreme metal influences in addition to power metal. We have been called a extreme power metal band but most of the time just humbly call ourselves melodic speed metal! We try to filter out the things we never liked about power metal in past and left in all the greatest parts and added some new elements to the mix as well.
		Why did you choose the name of the band to be Cellador? It was actually a very spontaneous decision!! One day I came across an article on the internet about English writer JRR Tolkien. In a 1950`s essay he had written that he believed the combinations of the words "Cellar" and "Door" when said together creates a very beautiful sound to him. I was intrigued by this idea and thought it was very epic and power metal sounding if I formed a new word out of it, call me crazy or stupid but thats what I thought! So I came up with the word CELLADOOR and started calling this power metal project that name. After a few weeks though we changed it to CELLADOR instead to make the name even more unique and so it wouldn`t be confused with anything else. Thats pretty much how it went down! I`d much rather have a band with a unique word or name that no one uses anyway. Its better than having Swords or Dragons or Shadows or Irons in our name if you ask me! Much more unique sounding in my opinion.
		What are the main influences of Cellador? Originally as a guitar player I was heavily influenced by thrash and heavy bands like Megadeth, Carcass, Slayer, Overkill, Kreator, Pantera, Metallica, etc. I learned quite a bit these bands when I started playing guitar and always loved playing stuff like this. Later on in high school I became fascinated with the European Metal Scene, originally melodic death metal bands but soon after melodic power and prog metal. I`d say by the time CELLADOR was formed I wanted to have a band that was really bombastic, energetic, catchy, and melodic but also fast and aggressive like the bands I learned to play guitar to. I`d say then the main influences for this band were bands like Helloween, Iron Maiden, Slayer, Yngwie, Children of Bodom, Dragonland, Dark Moor, Megadeth, Stratovarius, Edguy, Gamma Ray, etc. In addition to myself the other members are influenced by many styles than just power metal, for instance Bill and Val love lots of 80`s hard rock like G`N`R, Motley Crue, Skid Row, and Dave our drummer loves many brutal bands like Hate Eternal, Cannibal Corpse, Necrophagist, Morbin Angel, etc.
We have been called a extreme power metal band but most of the time just humbly call ourselves melodic speed metal!		How about the songwriting, is it part-based or more organic? Who writes the most songs? Well ALL the songs and lyrics on ENTER DECEPTION were written by me, aside from "A Sign Far Beyond" which was half me and half Mike our singer. It differs based on which song as some of the songs were written when the band was just me and some were written right before we went into the studio. In recent times like the last year say generally it starts out with the whole band, or at the very least myself and Dave our drummer, jamming out in rehearsel. I`ll come up with some kind of inspiring "main riff" that determines what kind of song I`m looking to write. I then come up with a main rough chord progression for the intro, verses, and then choruses and take them home and give them detail and more complexity. Once I have a complete rough song of just rythm guitar I record the song on a home "studio" and listen to it over and over changing parts up, adding leads, playing vocal melodies on guitar, etc. I record the song over and over until I have a final completed song, then I take it to the band and get their input on it, change parts up as needed, and also have Mike our singer record demo vocals over it so he knows what he`s singing. Its like writing a paper, meaning first rough draft of ideas, then editing, revising, until a final piece is done. Once we have a completed demo track everyone practices their parts until they have it down and then we play the song as a band!
		You’re all extremely young to be playing in a power metal band. Why did choose for this particular genre? We play power metal because it is the genre we love most! We love songs with sing a long choruses, catchy melodies, loud guitars, dual harmonies, pounding drums! Originally I used to not like power metal at all when I was a young teenager, but I grew into it so much I just had to form a band that plays it!! Plus also hardly anyone in the USA plays power metal especially when its as European influenced as our band and so I thought it would be awesome to surprise everyone by being brave enough to play it here in the states. As said before we love other genres too, some almost as much, which is also why we try to add dashes of other elements into our power metal mix. We were also sick of screaming vocals all the time, very monotonous to us when there`s millions literaly of guys wanting to scream boring lines the whole time. We didn`t want to jump on any American trends with this band, we only played what we liked and we like power metal, so we play it even if there`s not a scene for it here.
		How is the power metal scene in America at the moment? When CELLADOR first began it was completely nonexistent here in the USA, aside from a few veteran older bands that played that traditional "American" styled power/progressive metal that has lurked here since the 80`s. Still to this day when we play live shows since there`s no other power metal bands to play with we generally play shows with metalcore, emo, death metal bands. Many bands boast that they have elements of power metal, but most them end up having a screamo vocalist or hardcore influences that dominate the mix, so I wouldn`t really call it power metal. Within the last year though thanks to social networking websites like MYSPACE we have met and heard from many upstarting young bands like us here in the states, granted I don`t think most are as far in development but within a few years I think some of these will be very good. There`s definitely been a rise in interest of melodic metal and traditional metal in the USA in just this last year. I think it can be credited to the rise of the Emo and Metalcore scene which pushed aside the desolate NU-Metal trends of the late 90`s and early 2000`s and brought many traditional metal elements back to the mainstream. Things are looking very positive and optimistic here from a power metal fan`s perspective if you ask me, I think this is also why Metal Blade probably signed us!
		What do you think of the current state of metal in general? I think things are looking a lot better than they did only a few years ago! Granted that many of my favorite bands that put out KILLER records back a few years ago aren`t as good nowadays in my opinion, the overall amount of publicity, support, and sheer audience for metal has definitely grown to larger proportions. I think extreme styles like grindcore and death metal are more popular now than its ever been, its actually kind of trendy because many young metalcore and hardcore bands that are very popular are using a lot of the same elements. Many European bands that used to never tour here and I thought I would never get a chance to see are now showing up to tour not once but twice, some are here now more than any other continent! Even power metal is beginning to become widely know here, which I never expected to happen.
		The comparison with Dragonforce is made quickly. Do you think it`s annoying to be compared with Dragonforce Yea, we get the comparison all the time, and have heard it a lot on interviews and websites likewise. I think its mainly been because they are kind of the spotlight metal band recently and thus when a band like us comes up while they are being noticed many of these same people will obvious compare us because we are a speedy power metal band. On one hand I don`t see too much harm in it because they definitely are a talented band with a rapidly rising fanbase, so being compared can`t be entirely too harmful for us I don`t think. But there`s also people who then say we`re a clone band, which is ridiculous and generally comes from people who don`t listen to much power metal. Dragonforce has fast songs and we have fast songs, but so do a lot of bands! X Japan was a symphonic epic metal band that had songs approaching 200 BPM as well, a band which influenced CELLADOR quite a bit but no one goes around saying we`re a X Japan clone. Also CELLADOR has very different rythm guitar styles and our vocalists sound NOTHING alike!
		Wasn’t it strange to work on a power metal album with Erik Rutan? I mean, most of the time he operates in the extreme death metal genre CELLADOR made the choice to work with Rutan after we heard some samples of what he and his studio had done before in the past. On this first record ENTER DECEPTION, our label and us agreed that we wanted to try a type of production that was different from what the European bands generally had, something a little more natural sounding, raw, but also very intense, so to appeal more to the general preference of the American audience. We heard a record by another Metal Blade band called Into The Moat and thought the production on the record was very clean, tight, aggressive, and intense like we wanted. When we found out that Erik Rutan from Hate Eternal did the record we began to be intrigued by the idea of having an extreme metal engineer produce our first album, thinking it would be something new for a power metal band and since we were a bit more on the extreme side as opposed to many power metal bands we wanted to go for it. As it turned it out working with Rutan brought the band to a new level of intensity, discipline, and professionalism. He was very hard working and focused when working with our band. He really pushed us to our best performances, and worked with us on a very organic and understanding level. He really believed in our band which had said to us from the beginning, and put a lot of time and effort into working with us. Definitely a great guy!
Its an absolute dream for all of us in the band to travel to the land where power metal was born		Are there any plans to come to Europe? Yes there is talk of it but we do not know the exact time when thats going to be yet! We are being pushed really hard here in the USA, which is probably a first for a power metal band that sounds like us, so we are gonna probably play much of the USA first before Europe or Japan. But with power metal already established and known in Europe it definitely is a prospect for the band to travel there for this first record. It probably would be sometime in late 2006 or 2007 but I`m not too sure, it could be any time really! Its an absolute dream for all of us in the band to travel to the land where power metal was born, so we will do everything we can to try and make it happen ASAP.
		Any plans for a next album yet? We`ll see how well ENTER DECEPTION does and then also how much promotion and touring we`ll do first. I`d personally love to put out another record in 2007, we had a lot of extra material that we ended up not using on ENTER DECEPTION but was just as good and couldn`t fit on the album! Also Bill joined the band right before we recorded our album, and he had a lot of material that he wanted to use but we just didn`t have time to practice it. We`ll try to put out another one next year but we`ll see what happens!
		Anything left to say? A great amount of thanks to Romana and Rockezine for giving a new, young, upcoming band like CELLADOR a chance to be interviewed!! To all reading, be sure to give this new American band a chance. Check out ENTER DECEPTION, an intense, fast beginning to end, catchy melodic anthemic onslaught of metal thats for true metal fans and beyond!! Thanks a bunch and keep it metal!!!
(Romana Pavesi)