MM: Hey great to chat to you. Congratulations on your new album, how excited are you as release day approaches.
7S: Hello! Thank you for having us.
We seriously can’t wait to get the album out there and see what people think! We’ve been sat on it for a few months now so at the moment it doesn’t feel real but I’m sure that will all change when we get our hands on the physical copies.
MM: If I were new to Seven Sisters which two tracks would you play me.
7S: That’s a tough on! I suppose the first one would be ‘Onwards They Ride’ from The Warden demo tape. It has a lot of what makes up the core of our sound, mid-paced tempo, groovy rhythm, catchy twin lead, and sci-fi fantasy based lyrics.
The second one would be ‘Highways of the Night’ off our upcoming album. It has some interesting harmony, changing of tempo and time signatures, loads of lead guitar, and a big chorus all fit into a relatively compact song!
MM: Which tracks you are particularly proud of and looking forward to playing live
7S: For me, the title track of the album ‘Seven Sisters’ is the song I’m most proud of. Another one would be ‘Cast to the Stars’, the last song on the album; they both have a lot going on compositionally and they best capture the epic atmosphere we were trying to go for. CttS has eight guitar solos in it! That’s a lot of fun to play.
I think the songs we’re looking forward to playing live are ‘Highways of the Night’ and ‘Commanded by Fear’. They’re both fairly fast tunes with some fun guitar work and sing-along bits.
MM: The Album is a total return to NWOBHM, what bands influenced you growing up.
7S: As you can imagine, all the usual suspects are involved! Loftin, Javi and I all played in thrash/ hardcore punk bands before and Graeme has played in several black metal bands over the years. I’ve always had a fairly broad taste in music since getting interested in it. I think we all come from similar backgrounds when it comes to metal but we have our own things we love outside of metal too.
As far as the NWOBHM goes our most prominent influences would be Thin Lizzy, ‘Maiden and Priest (surprise!). Other guys like Yngwie Malmsteen, Mercyful Fate, and Madison had a big impact on us during the writing and recording of the album. The main focus has always been musicality and melody!
MM: Why is the band called Seven Sisters???
7S: I happened to see the name on the front of a Tube train and just thought it would make a cool name for a band! It’s a totally boring story but it turns out there’s a lot of history from various different cultures surrounding the Seven Sisters. In London, the area Seven Sisters is named so because of an old ritual that goes back quite a few years where a family of seven sisters would plant seven elm trees around an old walnut tree. In Greek mythology they are the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione; that’s where we got a lot of ideas for the album concept. Additionally, they’re a cluster of stars found in The Pleiades.
Having all this history surrounding the name has made a huge difference to our approach to the artwork and song subjects, it’s great!
MM – Seven Sisters are just starting to get more coverage and attention, if given the opportunity, which current artist or band would you like to perform alongside on tour?
7S: That’s a good question! There are so many bands that we’ve made friends with over the past couple of years that we’d love to go out on tour with. The first that come to mind are Portrait; one of our first gigs was supporting them in Lancaster and ever since we’ve wanted to sort out a few more shows together. We’d love to organise some sort of tour with our good friends Dark Forest, they’re great blokes and an absolutely stellar band!
I think a dream tour for us would be supporting someone like King Diamond or Yngwie Malmsteen. They’re our heroes!
MM: What are the bands touring plans.
7S: Well we have the Harder Than Steel festival in Germany coming up on the 1st October, which is going to be insane!
After that we have our album release show on the 14th and then a bunch of UK dates running from the 21st straight through until the 29th. More details about them gigs will be up on our Facebook page in the next few weeks.
We also have the South Bangers Festival in Spain on the 26th November that will be in Javi’s hometown! We’re definitely looking at organising a week or two of European dates for early next year as well. It’s a slow process, but we’re increasing the pace and getting out on the road more and more.
MM: I remember seeing you at Bro fest in Newcastle Upon Tyne and you were awesome are their plans to hopefully play it again sometime
7S: Thank you! That was our 5th gig, I think. It was definitely early on for us! We’d love to play there again, I think The Bro’s are organising things for 2017 so we’ll see what happens.
MM: What was the first Metal song you heard
7S: The first metal song I remember hearing and seriously enjoying was Iron Maiden’s ‘Prowler’. I just remember being so taken back by how much energy there was in the performance, I actually thought it was a live recording for a while! It’s a really catchy song as well so it wasn’t so difficult for me to remember the words and the melody, that’s stayed with me ever since. I’d definitely heard other metal songs before then but nothing had an impact on me like Prowler did.
MM: Who in the Metal world inspires you and why.
7S: As cheesy as it sounds, seeing our friends or bands that are in the same circle as we are do well for themselves is probably the most inspiring thing for me. It spurs us on to practice more and get better with each gig!
Yngwie Malmsteen is a big influence on Graeme and I in terms of his stage presence, songwriting, and overall artistic flare. Of course, he’s known for acting like a prick these days but you cannot deny his musical ability (or his fantastic high kicks for that matter!).
MM: What was the last Album you listened too.
7S: It was a collection of John Tavener songs; I think the album is just called ‘The Essential John Tavener’. He was a British composer who became recognised for his choral works. A lot of his compositions are religious, but that’s secondary to how ghostly and otherworldly they sound, I can’t get enough of it!
MM: Tell me why we should buy you new Album
7S: Because we’re poor and need money! Ha! Overdone jokes aside; I think as a side effect of the popularity surge in the ‘classic’ style heavy metal there’s been an influx of - for lack of a better term - copycat bands. We’d be kidding ourselves if we said we don’t sound like the NWOBHM bands of ’83 but I feel we have our own take on that classic sound which brings it into present day. I could be talking a load of shit, but for what it’s worth I think that’s why fans of heavy metal, old and new, should buy our album.
MM: Four words to describe Seven Sisters
7S: Full speed twin lead!
MM: Final words for our readers
7S: We’d just like to say thank you for taking the time to come up with the interview questions and giving us the opportunity to chat shit!
We really hope everyone reading checks the album out and you all enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed making it. We’ll see you on the road!
