Semblant is a Brazilian band often described as a “gothic metal” band. Would you agree with this description?
More or less. Not in all. We were mixing all our influences in music since the beginning and the bigger part of them belongs not only to the gothic world, but also the metal world. Bands like Behemoth, Danzig, King Diamond, Metallica, Nevermore, Slayer, Testament have their space alongside of Cradle of Filth, Fields of the Nephilim, Moonspell, Opeth, Paradise Lost, Tristania and other obscure bands [as influences].

Gothic or Heavy Metal: the real thing on our identity is the influences from the “dark side of the force”. We prefer the term “dark” to define our identity, because sometimes we sound really heavy, extreme, next to dark atmospheres.

Gothic movies, literature, music and culture belong to our own world of inspiration of course. It is hard to describe our identity, because we explore lots of variations inside our universe of influences.

You guys have been playing together since 2005. Can you tell us a little bit more about the band’s history?
Well, many things have changed since we begun, specially the band members. We recorded a first EP called “Behold the Real Semblant”, with Semblant’s first lineup, followed by a websingle called “Sleepless” – this work contains the track “Sleepless” and acoustic versions of the 3 songs from our first EP.

On 2010, we released the first album “Last Night of Mortality” with the same lineup and finally, the changes happened in a short period of time. Our first female singer left the band with the drummer and the guitar player. Mizuho Lin, Sol Perez, Juliano Ribeiro and Rhandu Lopez came afterwards [replacing the previous band members]. With this new lineup, we released the 4 track EP “Behind the Mask”. Our bassist Leonardo Rivabem left the band by his own reasons too and there is when Rodrigo Garcia came on board.

Nowadays, I think that the band can show a lot of power, strength and great “interpretation” playing live… like never before. The biggest proof of that is the great number of concerts that we’ve made since 2010. Our compositions since “Behind the Mask” are much more inside the essence that we’ve always searched to be into. You can definitely expect a great new album for 2013!

As you just mentioned, you have released since 2005 1 full album and 2 EPs. How well were these releases received by the Brazilian public (especially the latest release, the EP “Behind the Mask”)?
We received much more attention than we expected, really. Our first EP became the “highlight of the edition” of Roadie Crew Magazine (the biggest rock ‘n roll and heavy metal magazine in South America at that time). Since that, we’ve started to receive a lot of great reviews. The same happened with our first album, “Last

Night of Mortality”.

“Behind the Mask” came to present the new band members and became our most successful release: a second “highlight of the edition” at the Roadie Crew Magazine, awesome reviews worldwide and we sold the same quantity of copies of “Last Night of Mortality” in a shorter period of time.

We’re still working with this 4 track EP and we’re proud to announce that “Behind the Mask” have its own identity: his tracks will never be included into another material, the next album will contain just unreleased material. The first proof of that is our next album’s first single, “Throw Back to Hell”, released last month on all of our official channels.

Have you guys had a chance to “export” this work to international fans?
Yes but, unfortunately, not by a label or a distribution agency. We sold the EP online, on our own, to the international fans who requested a copy. American and European fans, for example, sent us messages with their address, we talked about the payment method and we sent them the album. This was done of course, just to the guys who wanted the physical copy, because the album is available for download on our official website.

We purposely released a brand new track right now. Is the track called “Throw Back to Hell”, as I mentioned earlier. It is available for streaming on all our official channels. You can consider this the first real single (on a first version, of course) of our next album. A lot of people from abroad are listening to it. It’s amazing!

You had some special guests participating on your full length album: Charles Rytkonen (Morgana Lefay) e Danne Eriksson (Inmoria, ex-Tad Morose). How did this happen?
Charles is an idol to me since the 90’s. I respect and collect all possible items about Morgana Lefay as a fan! I met and started to keep in touch with Danne, because he started the band Inmoria as a project, 2 or 3 years ago.

They played together for the first Inmoria’s album. By then, we started to have some ideas about a link between Inmoria and Semblant, especially because of the “dark thing”: the 2 bands have lots of dark themes and atmospheres. Charles’ voice is deep, scary and the idea was to include him on an intro written by me, with a free interpretation of them about the ideas, to form something similar to a movie trailer, an “epic horror” movie intro. That’s who the “Last Night of Mortality” intro, was born.

Semblant has also been the opening acts for bands like Tristania. How was it?
Oh, they’re really nice guys – and girl. Great people! We made a beautiful concert together and I hope we can repeat this partnership at the same stage one more time in the future. We did the opening act to Nightwish and The Agonist as well, and all these guys gave us a great treatment, watched our concert and we h

ad a great time together.It’s great to receive some wise words or talk a lot with bands so full of experience.

Let’s talk about the Brazilian metal scene now: many internationally known bands rave about the scene in Brazil and how the fans are loyal there. But, what does the reality look like for national bands? How difficult it is for a metal band to succeed in the music industry in Brazil?
Well, it’s a hard way. Metal is not popular here. We have a great scene, but we must struggle hard to keep playing live and to receive some attention from the media, because other music styles that are much more popular here are always fully crowded on their concerts, have all the media above them and get Brazilian people’s [attention] from coast to coast.

Producers, managers and labels can never count with money to invest [in metal] but, the thing is: they do a great work. We have festivals full of bands happening all around the country, every town have its own metal pub. It’s just a question of planning, strategy, professionalism and true will to make things happen.

Cheese question now: we talked about the difficulties of being a band in Brazil. So now, let’s talk about some positive aspects: what is the best part of being a metal band in Brazil?
We struggle harder than the bigger part of metal bands around the world to show our music so, when we reach a great opportunity we catch it at the same time with every inch of our beings! (laughs)

Going back to Semblant now: what is in the agenda for the rest of the year and for 2013? Any goals to be accomplished?
We have 3 or 4 concerts in 2-3 day festivals around here. One of them is at the “Metal Massacre”, closer to our hometown, and another one is at “Rock in Santa”, at the State of Santa Catarina, south of Brazil too [the band is from the state of Parana, which is in the south of Brazil]. The others will probably happen on our own town.

We’re trying to stop playing concerts for 3 or 4 months, to put all our focus into the next album’s recording. We want to start to record the official production of our new songs until March or April next year. Until the present moment, we’ve finished 15 brand new songs to be recorded. We will choose 11 for the next album’s track-list.

Do you have any messages for the Spirit of Metal readers?
Friends, we’re really honored to talk to all of you for the first time. We really hope you can visit us on www.semblant.com.br, www.myspace.com/semblant and search all our material on Youtube on our official channel www.youtube.com/user/OfficialSemblant.

We hope that all of you can enjoy our work. And believe us, we will try to visit all of you for lots of concerts after the release of our upcoming new album. Thank you for your time and BEHOLD THE REAL SEMBLANT!