France’s Alkemyst were one of the bands I discovered when I was on a power metal diet in my early 20’s. All I wanted to listen to back then were bands like Helloween, Rhapsody, Stratovarius, Labyrinth, Vision Divine, Angra and so on. And the labels didn’t let me down. The released every power metal album they could get a hold of, and I still have tons of catalogues and promotional sheets with that stuff. But even then, when the power metal scene was over flooded, Alkemyst caught my attention. High quality power metal with progressive touch from France? That was unbelievable! And they had Roberto Messina from Secret Sphere! Yes, they shot across the sky like a meteor, but they definitely left their trace! To be honest, I haven’t listened to Alkemyst for years and didn’t know they reunited in 2016 and disbanded again in 2022, but my love to their music always has been with me. So a while ago I contacted Alkemyst’s master mind Arnaud Ménard to discuss the band’s challenging story. This is so far the longest and the most honest (I’d say brutally honest) interview I’ve done in 15 years.
Who or what motivated you to pick up the guitar? Did you take any lessons?
I started my musical journey when I was a kid by playing the piano. But as much as I liked music, I had no special bond with this instrument. I have always preferred the strings and singing. When I was a very young child I was constantly singing. My father still has got tapes he recorded when I was 3 years old and sang the songs I had learned at the kindergarten or at the school. My first musical obsession, as far as I can remember, must have been the Beatles. My mother's little brother only was 5 years older than me and he made me a tape of them, I was probably 9 years old. He was into 60’s and 70’s music, and that is a good starting point I guess. I have been listening to it for two or three years as if it were my regular job (laughs). I discovered heavy metal at the age of 12 and it blew my mind. Older friends around me who listened to the same kind of music had the idea to start a band and it seemed to me the most exciting project in a human life ever. I was firstly attracted to the guitar because I was fascinated by the riffs. I was not into shredding so much: I wanted to write songs with awesome riffs, and that is why I chose the guitar because it was in my mind the best tool to achieve that. I took probably 2 years of guitar lessons but I improved a lot when I started to work alone deciphering the music I wanted to play by ear. To be honest my guitar teacher once refused to do it for me and told me: it's not my job — I teach you technique, you have to decipher with your own ears. At first it seemed very difficult but after a while it went simpler and simpler to the point that, after 6 months maybe, I could decipher almost everything I wanted to play without using any tab. This was probably the best move as far as my musical skills were concerned. And I also started very quickly to write my own stuff. It was bad, obviously, but with work and will the quality improved.
What are the most important things for a beginner, in your opinion?
Ear training. This is how you improve your musical skills, and they are more important in my opinion than performer's skills.
At the age of 13, except if you are playing with the Jackson Five, you can't achieve any success. I mean: you have to start from a point, and this point was very humble. It was not easy to find musicians who wanted to play the kind of music we wanted. We and a friend (who played the bass) were the co-founder of the project and we played with different young guys from 1993 to 2000; it was not a very stable situation and it could be described as school projects: we were just learning the job the hard way, with aborting projects due to the sudden departure of a drummer or a singer who did not want to play heavy metal anymore, etc. When you are 13, your taste change quickly, you are subject to the influence of the trends, and many young musicians play for the fun; when it demands work, they just run away. You know the story: every beginner band tells the same one. The only live concerts we made were at private parties at first, under the form of a more or less instrumental band. It was only in 1998 I think we performed our first "real" gig with a solid line-up. From that period the only surviving song is "Up to Heaven's Gate", which I wrote in 1996. But the rest of the songs were discarded.
Were you friends with Dream Child/Eternal Flight? And what about more extreme bands Eating Shit and Hiemperium? Wasn’t there some kind of animosity between you and them?
Yes, we were friends with Dream Child. They were our role model, being 10 years older than us and far more experienced. I owe them to realize we could write and perform high quality music that could compete with the international standards. You have to know that the French scene in the 90’s was said to be hyper cringe, especially the melodic metal scene. We had no support around us and the metalheads from foreign countries disregarded French heavy metal. At least it was our feeling. Dream Child made us figure out we could do it: they were the example we needed to not fall into despair and to feed our passion. Some described us in that period as a "baby Dream Child", which was accurate. They hugely influenced us, no doubt. Arnaud Gorbaty, our drummer, then also played with Eternal Flight for a while. I always have been very close to the extreme metal scene, being a huge black and death metal fan. I helped Hiemperium as much as I could and some members of this band are still very good friends now. I have currently a project with musicians that were involved in Hiemperium and Eating Shit, so no, there has never been any animosity: we worked together and tried our best to help each other.
Could you share some stories from that time: parties, visiting shows of established bands, hanging out in record stores, fights etc.?
The town we lived in (Annecy, in the French Alps) is not a rock and roll hall of fame. Off course, just like every young man, I partied, I saw concerts, I went to record stores. I have to say that my best teenage memories all relate to music: 1992 or 1993 Iron Maiden's concert in Annecy I had to battle so hard against my father to attend, the 100 Francs my grandfather gave me every 3 months that I spent in purchasing a tape or a CD after I read a review, without the opportunity to pre-listen the artist, the time we lost with friends at the record store, gazing at the artwork of the albums and dreaming about the content we could not discover because we had no money to buy them, reviewing the t-shirts of our favorite bands, talking about our projects as musicians and bands and fantasying our future career, etc., the music stores also, with all these amps and instruments we could only dream to afford. You nonetheless have to know that I was kind of the boring guy who wanted to spend his lifetime in a studio or a stage to create and perform music. I think apart from our musical tastes, we were calm people, and pretty standard teenagers.
Nothing to do with Coelho who's a writer I don't like at all. We renamed the band because we had many doppelgänger, so we just wanted to find something more personal. Alkemyst was chosen for a couple of reasons: it is easy to remember, it starts with A so it appears on the top of the mailorders, it evokes mystical/romantic themes a lot of power metal bands sing about, and we could pimp the spelling a bit to make it stand out. Thus, it kind of summed up what the band was starting to be: a reunion of people with different backgrounds and influences, a complicated chemistry resulting in, as we saw it back then, interesting heavy metal.
In 1999 Alkemyst recorded a demo with a singer named Fabrice Sollier. As far as I understand, he was a bit older and more experienced than other members. What can you say about him as a singer and as a band member? Did he fit to your music?
Yes, he was 34 and we were around 18. He had experience, having been the singer in various heavy metal bands before joining us. When he auditioned he blew us away: he was exactly the kind of voice we wanted. He and I were huge Helloween and Iron Maiden fans and, well, he had that high tenor voice type. I still regard him as a voice talent and, despite the bad blood, as the man who helped us going out of the rehearsal room and being recognized as a promising French heavy metal act. His voice was fitting the music well but it quickly appeared that he was not up to the artistic ambitions of our project. We wanted to experiment a bit more and to go a bit less traditional, while it was obvious he would stubbornly stick to his roots, which is not such a big deal, and can be understood, but not in THAT band. It was just over. On a human level, communication was sometimes difficult and it got worse and worse when musical matters started to be confrontational. We spent more time to argue than to actually play and it lead to his departure. We knew it was impossible to avoid but it hit us hard, since at the end of the 90’s there were almost no melodic metal singers in France, and even less good singers. I was disappointed but on another hand we knew this would happen: we had foreseen it.
Have you ever thought about releasing the demo you did with Fabrice? I understand it may be not perfect, but it also may be interesting for your fans as a document of the era.
"A Path to Heaven" was released but I think it is sold out. We never wanted to press it again. The studio experience was great but this was also the time when Fabrice ideas and ours began to part ways. The mixing was really a difficult experience to anyone of us so nobody was really satisfied with the end result. We also recorded a "basement demo" in 1999 on an 8 tracks digital recorder. Two songs. This demo has disappeared, there is no trace of it anymore.
It took 3 years after the demo to get a record deal. Do you remember to what labels did you send the demo? What was their typical reaction?
The demo was quite well received but did not lead to any record deal. The mix did not made justice to the vocal performance — and it is not the engineer's fault since Fabrice simply made everything he could to sabotage the mixing process — and I guess that two songs are a bit too short to make a real difference. We had to record an album. The three songs we had "saved" from the original "Meeting in the Mist" sessions had a more crucial impact since it attracted the attention of an Italian label who wanted to sign us. But we had to re-record the album first since, as you know, a hard drive crash occurred and nothing or almost could be saved from the wreck.
That one is a funny story. We quickly realized — with despair — that it was nearly impossible to find a suitable replacement to Fabrice in our area, and even in our country. I could have tried myself because I had started to sing and had a band at the time, in which I sang covers and original material. But I lacked technique, and I also think that the other members were not quite ready to see me take the vocal duties. They had their reasons, but I have to say that apart from Séverin (Bonneville, guitars) who thought I had potential, the others ones were not very supportive. Singing has been a kind of "side project" for a long time before I started to take it seriously. At that time I had borrowed "Mistress of the Shadowlight" from a friend, and Roberto, who is a character, had the habit to cultivate numerous epistolary links with various people. You still can find it on the original pressing: his personal snail mail address was indicated in the booklet of that album. I remember that, when in the studio, on the evenings, he would handwrite gigantic letters to a million people. It was awesome and part of what made me love the man even more than the singer. Roberto is a musical talent, for sure, but he owns something special few people have got, which I would call a calm and natural non-conformity which made me respect him a lot as a human being. It was a game changing event in the band's story to be able to work with him, even if the fact he was heavily involved in another bigger band confined us in the shadows. We never could properly tour because of it, for example. I liked his voice, but above all I LOVED the melodies he wrote. So reading this mail address, I took a map of Italy and figured out he was living in the north, three hours by train from my city in the Alps. That could be done. I immediately wrote him a letter, with our demo, a couple of 4 tracks demoed new songs, and a big lie: we were planning to record our first album during the summer. Obviously we were not at all. We were in February, the songwriting was not over yet, and we were penniless students with no means to book a studio. I was not expecting anything, but well, one does not catch flies with vinegar, I suppose... so I shamelessly lied without saying it to anybody in the band. I was far from thinking Roberto would answer, and that his answer would be a yes. Then we had to take our responsibilities, and kick our asses: I found a student job at the post office to make the necessary money to at least afford a couple of recording studio days, and everybody tried to find a way to fill the wallets; very intense creative period too since we had to put the finishing touches to a couple of songs, including the "Nameless Son" monster Fabrice had discarded, and which in my opinion is the pinnacle of “Meeting in the Mist”. Roberto was one of the best surprise of my life and I still love him as a true brother. Recording this debut could have been seen as a nightmare knowing what would occur next, but with him it turned out to be a dream and one of the most intense creative experiences of all my life. Not only he saved us, not only with him we created the music we had been dreaming about for so long, but also he allowed us to be a real band, a team of people working together towards the same goal.
In the booklets of your albums all members are credited as song- and lyric writers. Was it really the case? Or did you decide to do that to avoid some misunderstandings within the band?
It was a way to avoid the quarrels and to allow everybody to feel really involved in the creative process. I mean, I can bring a song, but the other musicians will have their input too, and sometimes there are brilliant arrangement ideas coming from someone who is not the direct creator of the song; those arrangements can be the little extra thing that makes the song unique. In Alkemyst, I used to create a lot of stuff, but I also wrote with Séverin who had interesting ideas and also discovers good riffs. The more the band lived, the more I brought and the less Sev, due to the fact that I got involved in the recording process since, quickly after “Meeting in the Mist”, I started to run a home studio which became after a couple of years an extra-job, then my real job, so I could record complete and arranged songs while Séverin kept of recording riffs on tapes, that I then had to work on so they could become actual Alkemyst songs. Roberto wrote the vocals lines, and we worked on the drum parts with Arnaud Gorbaty, the drummer, together, to find the perfect fills, etc. I mean, everybody worked a lot, but I could be seen as the main composer and producer, not in the technical sense, but more as far as the artistic direction was concerned. Nonetheless, in the studio, when vocal recordings and mixing started, we all worked together as a real team, to try to find the best solutions, and that was awesome. Hard, demanding, but great. Well, to sum it up, I had a lot of work because I took in charge the writing of the final songs, but Séverin also wrote a lot. As everybody was involved — especially on the second album — anyone in the band was likely to come up with some ideas, be it arrangements or completely writtten parts, so it made no sense to claim for any exclusive ownership as far as the songs were concerned. How would you cut such a cake? It made no sense. We also rehearsed every week and we could share our view about the song structures. Several of us also wrote the lyrics, depending on the topics we wanted to tackle or what we were going through in our own lives.
This is the way I view things. The problem in Alkemyst is that it was a democracy in which I had the feeling one person was more involved than the other ones. I think it's due to the fact that in the beginning, we never really talked about our goals and what we were ready to sacrifice for them. As I was ready to give everything to that project, I did the most part of the job — and when I say "job" it does not involve only the music, but also all the aspects around running a band, and the others committed to the height of their aims — from what it seemed to me. Alkemyst was my top priority in life, and I had the feeling my partners did not share that — which is maybe a mistake — or more probably they were less extreme than I was and a bit more grounded and realistic. I think that during a period I really thought it could be possible for us to be successful and to make a living out of our music, which was a foolish thought. So I can't blame them nor complain: what happened is what happens to almost every band, especially when there is no financial support nor any professional structure to back them. So, there was a leader, but he thought he was a kind of slave because his leading duties did not made him legit enough so he could dictate anything to the others. That caused a lot of problems and frustration, from my point of view at least. Some probably would be a bit more composed about it, but everybody in the band always recognized I was the more committed — sometimes in a bit extreme way.
I would not say the incompetence. It was more thoughtlessness. The sessions were so intense that nobody took the time to backup them. No safety copy was made, it's true, but nobody is to blame I think. We were just too burnt out by the record process. Other members of the band are more pissed off because they remember that the studio kept on repeating us a daily backup was made — which, obviously, was not the case as the story proves...
What did you feel when the news about the hard drive crash hit you? Is it true that you even considered an option to disband Alkemyst? What motivated you to carry on?
We were devastated but we did never consider to disband. It was a shock, for everybody, and I think that the studio was also feeling bad. Everybody had lost something in the disaster: we, but also the studio. They offered us to re-record for free. You have to know that everything was recorded and that we had mixed three songs already, so basically the whole album had to be recorded again from scratch. You always have to turn the bad events into positive things; I mean, when a bad thing occurs in your life you can't change it, you kind of undergo the fate. But you still own the freedom to learn from it. For me, it was the opportunity to benefit from a free pre-production. Apart from prestigious bands, who can afford to spend 6 months in a studio to pre-produce and record a second version of his debut album? We wanted this album to be released, we thought it was great and we had to finish what once was started. So we worked harder.
How was it to re-record the same songs for the second time? Was the re-recorded version as good as the first one?
The result was better. “Meeting in the Mist” would have not been that good if the first version had not been erased. It's the truth. It was very strange to re-record the album but we were better musicians and our preparation was also better. We changed a couple of melody lines and arrangements. It was for the best, no doubt about it. Maybe there is one thing that could have been improved: the second version is kind of more polished and a bit less bitty compared to the first one, but at the same time the musicianship is so superior that we can't regret anything. And we also had a lots of fun, maybe less than the first time because that strange situation was a hard hit, but, well, I loved being at the studio and recording music. I knew from that time that I would do everything to make a living out of working in a studio or with musicians.
I guess even in the early 2000’s studio recordings were still pretty archaic comparing to what bands have now. Could you tell me what it was like to record “Meeting in the Mist”?
Not that much different than nowadays. We used a DAW, on the contrary to the demo when we taped on a 2 inch. Though, even if the process was quite modern, the way we did it was pretty old school because everything was tracked in the same studio on a long period without a pause. Today many people record at home, or even in five different home studios without meeting each other, and send the tracks for them to be mixed in a pro studio. Recording “Meeting in the Mist” was hard because we were even not half that good as we thought we were, so every take was a battle. But it was also an intense friendship experience. I remembered well that I was hiding my face from the sound engineer when Roberto recorded the chorus of "Meeting in the Mist", because I was about to cry out of emotion; it can sound cheesy but it moved me to the core. There were two places: the recording studio, and a real shithole flat where we lived during the session, that was offered for free by the studio owner to the recording bands. The fridge was a wreckage, the whole place smelled of cat piss, there were monstrous spiders and even scorpions (it was slightly in the south of France), we were eating pasta every day, I had to save money on the food to be able to afford the studio rental. I finally lost something like 8 kilos during the sessions, and as I was still a literature student I worked on the evenings, after the day sessions, to complete my Master degree, in that horror room which was my home for almost 6 months in 2001 and 2002. We also have had a lots of fun together, especially with Séverin, listening to music, smoking weed, drinking beer and talking about music for hours. There were also more difficult times because the whole process was tiring but overall this was what I wanted to experience and I would never trade these months for anything. I'm grateful I could live this musician's lifestyle, even if it was not very glamourous. In that regard the habits have changed; apart from very successful bands, rare are the people who now rent a residential studio for several months today.
We were not. We were even bitter. I think I can say it today because the people at NB have changed, but in the beginning we were about to sign a humbler deal with Scarlet Records. Roberto was in Secret Sphere, they had inked a deal with NB one year before. One of the terms of his contract with them was that any of his side projects had to be sent for evaluation to the NB A&R. So we had to sent them “Meeting in the Mist”. The answer came under the form of a contract that was pretty standard and without obvious trap, but at the end of the email, there was that pretty eerie line: “Please take notice that if you want to sign on another label, you will have to record the vocals again, with another singer". Knowing what we went through, we simply could not afford to refuse the offer. So we signed with them, and I now think it was the best solution for us. At the time I felt angry but now I don't think it was so legit to be that pissed-off. Sure, we were a bit scared, because we also heard things from actors of the scene that let us suppose the contract could be a terrible trap, etc. It was not. We should have been more grateful with the chance that was given to us, even if the circumstances did not give us the opportunity to benefit from it as much as one could have expected. The contract was not bad, we had been paid a comfortable advance, and it was a 5 albums deal. My relationship with some people at the label were good, especially with Markus Wosgien who was the head of promotion back then. This man was highly professional and proficient, nice and honest, I really can't shit talk about him. Though, I could not help myself but considering we had been signed to then be put into a closet. I mean, the album was released on June 2003, and at the Wacken festival, where NB has a huge shop, our album was impossible to find that year — a friend of mine who attended to the festival told me. Maybe it was, I will never know... I also asked NB for contacts so we could find a booking agency and a manager, because we were 100% naked, deprived of any solid ecosystem apart from that giant label. My emails were never answered. They just released the album with the standard promo plan. Fair enough for a band with a proper management, but we were not fitting the picture. Again, I don't complain: we were young, without experience, and we knew nothing about the business.
You were the first French band that got a deal with Nuclear Blast. Was there some envy or jealousy from other french bands because of that?
Thanks to notice it. Nobody remembers it today (laughs). Not envy nor jealousy from our circle of friends in the local scene. It was seen as another local victory. Dream Child were also the first band to ink a deal with Metal Blade too. Everybody seemed quite proud of us. But the French journalists from Paris and all those who were in the professional or pseudo-professional French metal circus were a bit cruel towards us. Hard Rock Magazine did not review our album. Funnier, during a radio interview, Arnaud, our drummer, was asked "Why you ?" by a journalist who eventually worked at Hard Rock Magazine France, with such a tone that the answer implied a complementary statement: "Why you and not another more talented band than you ?". We had no contact with the French metal scene, we were a small bunch of musicians from the mountains, we were proud of what we had achieved, and we did not expect such a cold reception in our own country. I also remember that when our album was released, the Masterplan's debut came out too. I had brought a “Meeting in the Mist” CD at a Metal party, for the "disc jockey" or human jukebox to play a couple of songs of it after the Masterplan album. This man was the manager of a local band and a huge prick; he did not refuse to play our songs but he lowered the volume to the point it sounded incredibly weak, just because he wanted to somehow avenge, probably. I guess people can't help to be stupid and jealous, even at a slight level. I probably am sometimes too, but I always try not let it interfere with my decisions.
Did you play some shows or proper tour in support of “Meeting in the Mist”?
Some shows yes. A support tour? Never. In France all the doors were closed in front of us, apart the ones that could be opened by friends we knew before. And as I said, we had no professional ecosystem to help us build a solid career.
Why did you quit Nuclear Blast after the first album? Didn’t they fulfil their commitments?
Oh! They just fired us at the same time they fired Secret Sphere, due to the lack of sales and absence of touring. Logical move, but it did not help when we started to seek for another label for the second album.
As far as I’m aware, after “Meeting in the Mist” you suffered some disease and were unable to play the guitar for some years. Could you share some details about that? Was it when you started to concentrate more on your vocal abilities?
Even now I don't really know what precisely happened. I fell in a scale in a period when I was dreadfully stressed. One week after I noticed, after a rehearsal, that my left hand was numb. I could not grab anything too. It lasted one month until I chose to follow the advice of a friend and to go see an osteopath who helped me recover the ability to grab. But the hand was still numb and my neck started to suffer badly. The doctor diagnosed a cervicobracchial nevralgia, but without any clear nerve compression clinical sign apart from the pain and the subjective lack of sensitivity. Playing the guitar was painful. With the help of an osteopath, I recovered slowly, after three years. Bad period of my life. My voice was not that fit either, since I had started to try singing on a more regular basis I could not sustain a vocal performance on a standard run, and the vocal education offer in my area was pure crap for rock and metal singers. I had to wait a couple of more years before I discovered that I could actually learn how to sing with the help of skilled professionals.
Of course. Everything was going wrong then, also in my personal life. This is also the time I finished my studies and became a literature teacher. Don't get me wrong, I love literature and I love teaching, but what I call the industrial democratic mass education system disappointed me so much that after a couple of weeks, I had the feeling I was strangled and blood-sucked at the same time. I hated my life and saw no way to get out of this dark tunnel. Then my left hand started to not work anymore, and even music became an ordeal. That was hard. The production of the album was also complicated. Because we were broke, we decided I would handle the production duty in my home studio. I had worked with several bands after the “Meeting in the Mist” experience, helping them to track professional recordings. A black metal band called Osirion, and a heavy metal band called Black Rain, in 2005. Everybody in the band trusted me for that task, but what I could do for other bands was harder with my own band. I lacked the necessary experience and technical knowledge, made mistakes, and every of them piled up to the point we had to find a very good mixing studio to fix everything — finally it cost us almost as much as the “Meeting in the Mist” production... I think the only cool parts of the production of this album were the drums and vocal recording sessions, because we worked as a team and our imaginations were boiling, just like on first album, and the mixing, for the same reason, even if at that point I was burnt out to the core and starting to experience health troubles that were a bit more serious than suffering from a numb hand... We talked about it with Séverin recently and he remembers how fun and creative were the recording sessions for the vocal parts with Rob, we were so deeply involved in the process, working on vocal lines and lyrics. Surely one of our best memory of “Through Painful Lanes” recording. But apart from that it was a hard album to write and a even harder one to record.
What was your state of mind when you started working on the second album? Were you still enthusiastic? Or were you disillusioned be the music business? Something like, “OK, let’s do it and see what will happen…”
As far as I can remember, we started with a lot of optimism but a lot of time had passed since the releasing of “Meeting in the Mist”. Quickly tough difficulties we never experienced started to appear. I had a way to experiment on the new songs that Séverin was not fond of, and Séverin, in my opinion, started to bring songs that were a bit rushed. I felt bitter to have to work on his material to make them up to the standard I had in mind, and he was bitter at my way to work them out. It is not that his songs were bad: we just could not agree anymore about what was good and bad, in a way. I mean, we still could find a common ground and we did, but it was out of long arguing that let both of us exhausted and frustrated. Our tastes had changed: I never was a pure "prog metal" fan, I like elaborate music, but it has to be a bit more energetic. Technical thrash or death metal for example have pretty progressive and forward-thinking constructions. Séverin was less interested in the dark side than me, I have to admit. There was a time we could agree on a middle solution, but after “Meeting in the Mist” egos started to boil a bit too much. I thought I was legit to take all the final decision because of the depth of my personal involvement and I had the feeling that nobody realized how hard I was working for the band. Yes, it was a very hard time as far as working mood within the band was concerned. On another hand, Séverin also had a clear idea about the working process within the band: his raw material was bound to be used in a more elaborated way in the songs I was working on. That was something we experimented on “Meeting in the Mist”, a bit, and it gave good results. I don't know why it kind of became heavier on my shoulders on “Through Painful Lanes” — I felt a growing pressure. Must have been related to my general state of mind at the time. I think we really wanted this second album to be a masterpiece and we pushed ourselves very hard. We also tried to elaborate songs through jam sessions and I hated that, because I considered we were simply not good enough to be able to deliver the kind of stuff I was expecting by improvising together: at the end of the day everything tended to sound the same, and we would only rely of musical formulas. Nonetheless, a couple of very good riffs came out this way, which I have to admit, but we should not have to exclusively rely on this method. But we finally managed to put up a strong and balanced album, it's a kind of miracle because this one was a hard one, I swear.
We never thought about popularity, so it was more of a natural development. On “Meeting in the Mist” there were also a couple of more progressive pieces, like "Hold on to Your Dreams" or the long and epic "Nameless Son", which means that we already shared and expressed that taste for "out of the box" ideas. I love Hellowen but what makes them stand out for example is the fact they often dare wacky moves, and this is why they are so good. As soon as Power Metal became a style on his own, it became kind of boring. As I see it now, I consider our band a bit as a poor's man's Angra without exotism: we were all less proficient musicians than they were, but we were walking that same thin line between traditional melodic speed metal and progressive music. But on the contrary to Angra, our formula did not appeal to many people: we were too sophisticated for the die-hard power metal fans, and too straight-in-your-face for the progressive music fans, and our special sparkle was to be seen and understood by a minority. But it has to be said that I love “Trough Painful Lanes” and I think it is superior to “Meeting in the Mist” on every aspect. I think it is from this album that I really started to write music, instead of undergoing my habits and my influences. The direction, though less conventional, is more focused: we wanted to reconcile catchy heavy metal and a more sophisticated approach into one coherent music; “Trough Painful Lanes” was clearly the kind of music we had defined together and wanted to play as a band.
How come that your second album wasn’t released in Europe? Were Nightmare Records and Spiritual Beats reliable partners?
As we had been fired by Nuclear Blast, nobody wanted to take the risk to release the album. The illegal torrenting/emuling had exploded and the record companies did not know how to handle the situation. The labels who licensed the album in Russia, Japan and US were reliable as far as we know they released it and paid advances. But they never really helped us to make contacts so we could not tour and properly promote the album. It was really minimal. Again, no blame intended: they were modest structures with a very inferior selling power than Nuclear Blast.
Do you know anything about the sales of both Alkemyst’s albums?
I know very little about it. I guess it is not spectacular at all.
According to Metal Archives, Alkemyst carried on until 2014. Was it really like that? Or were you on hiatus after “Through Painful Lanes”? Did you try to work on new material?
We tried. We even toured a bit in 2010, but it was a mini tour, and with a female singer, Elodie Buchonnet, who helped us a lot and did a wonderful job, because Roberto was touring with Secret Sphere at the exact same time. But we had changed a lot, our lives had changed and I have to confess my passion for the band was thinning out. I was disappointed with the state of the market, I also came to the conclusion that I might not be able to make better albums that “Meeting in the Mist” and “Trough Painful Lanes”. I also wanted to play another music and I had a sleeper projects that needed all my attention, in which I put all my forces in from 2011/2012. It eventually became a band with two beautiful albums, the second being released in November 2023/ We worked on a couple of songs but completing them was impossible. I think we might have written half an album between 2010 and 2018, which is not sufficient. If you don't manage to write songs, it's because you lack inspiration, and what we call inspiration is simply ... the craving creating songs. And when you don't want to write songs anymore, it is useless to force the process.
The band resurrected in 2016, released 2 singles and then split up again. Did you try to get a deal during this period? I can’t believe no one offered you a contract after the single “Riding the Open Sea”!
You should believe it because no one offered a contract, and the sales on bandcamp were ridiculously low, as well as the views on Youtube. I came to the conclusion that Alkemyst was a corpse and that nobody was really interested in our music except for a dozen of nerds.
Since 2016 to 2020 you were the singer of Alkemyst. Did you try to get a hold of Roberto Messina?
This was bizarre because Rob could have been the singer, but he seemed very busy and his job was hyper demanding, his availability seemed low. So I did it, also because I wanted to try it. With the time, I think it was a mistake. The songs are awesome, I like them, they have the Alkemyst identity, but it's not Alkemyst. We should have ended up our story as the band we were, we should have waited a couple of years so the conditions could fit the project. One doesn't always make the rightest choices. These two tracks are our swansongs but I'd wish the swan was not me, even if I like the result and if I think we do justice to our legacy. These singles, composition-wise, are the best Alkemyst songs we ever wrote, but with the wrong voice on them. On another hand, we wanted to share this songs with our fans. The vocal performance is great, the result wasn't cringe at all, so it was better to release those songs than to keep them asleep on my computer.
And right after Roberto returned to Alkemyst you decided to call it quits. Why?
Well... Because nothing was moving. We were stuck in the same quicksand. I was not taking any pleasure to work on new songs nor to mix the ones we tracked the drums for (two other singles) anymore. As I said, it started to smell of death. We had to turn the page. Just consider it: nobody cared about us, and I started to share this lack of interest too. You can carry on playing with a band when you love it, even if the sales are bad and the situation is hard — it is, honestly, the case of 99,999% of the bands. But if you start to share the lack of passion of the audience, is it really worth the amount of work implied? My answer was a clear no.
How do you think, why Alkemyst didn’t achieve more recognition? What did you lack?
We lacked maturity, communication between the members which could have made us realize right from the start each one of us was searching for a different goal to reach, or maybe had a different representation of the pursued goals, and that we were not all ready to give our life to the band, which would have been a disaster by the way knowing that I would lose the ability to play the guitar in 2005 for three years. We also, and I think it was the most crucial problem, suffered from having no management, no booking agency, nothing but a label, which is clearly insufficient. Signing on a label is like getting a karate black belt: it is not an achievement, it is just the beginning of the journey. We were 20—25 years old guys who had to write music, produce it with our own money (which basically at the time was non-existent), negotiate recording deals, find gigs, promote our work. It's a hell of a work and we were just not up to the task. The context also was not favorable: we came out too late; three years ago I'm pretty sure that the album would have had a better reception. Everybody started to feel bored with power metal when “Meeting in the Mist” was released. Having Roberto in the band was both a blessing and a curse too, because his availability caused us problems. It was clear from the start that his main band was Secret Sphere, and when he was busy with them, he was not with us. We never rehearsed with him, or on too rare occasions, before the too rare concerts we gave. Ironically, we never took the chance to have him just for us when he left his main band (before he came back on their latest album). Sometimes stars just don't want to align and you have to accept it, even if it seems stupid when looking from an exterior point of view. And as I said, our band was too personal for the power metal fandom (they like to be seduced by immediately rewarding clichés), and too straightforward for the progressive Elite listeners. The band also told no story: we were just a band playing music and nothing more than that. Did we have something special? We had an identity, for sure, but it clearly did not match the audience's expectations.
Alkemyst’s entire discography is available via bandcamp for just 5 euro, which is ridiculous money. Do you think people won’t pay more?
People don't pay more. The price is ridiculously low but the sales are even lower.
And what about re-releasing your albums on CDs? Have you been asked about that? And who owns the rights to the albums?
We own the rights, we could but there is no demand for it at all. We still own the Nightmare Records “Through Painful Lanes” stock. Sometimes someone purchases it, but last year for example only 4 people bought it from us. Metal Mind, a polish label, re-released “Meeting in the Mist” in 2009, with liner notes and an extended booklet. It's a very interesting re-release, and they made us the honor to be involved in its creation. Séverin wrote a very beautiful text to describe the album and its genesis.
Last year you posted an excerpt from some new project with ex-members of Alkemyst. Are you already able to reveal some details?
Not so much, we work hard on this new band and we still don't know where it will lead us. I have let the songwriting duty to the musical mastermind, Sylvain Félix, who is an incredible riff writer and hell of a guitar player, with a hyper complete background. I'm the singer now. It's melodic speed metal, but it is impossible to compare it to any other power metal band. For me it is a logical evolution, my time with Alkemyst was over long ago, and I was not tough enough to kill the beast when it should have been killed. I really think I have now to move forward. We all do. We are older now and probably a bit more aware of our forces and weaknesses. I'm also a more experienced musician and producer. I'm now a full-time vocal technique teacher and producer, I also session sing for various projects and, well, the way I practice music today is far more grounded that it was when I was 20. So I just follow the wind and see where it leads me. I'm 44 now, it's a bit too late to start a rock star career, but still young enough to create interesting heavy metal. Since I was 13 it has been my daily obsession. I'm happy I still can feel the fire of passion burning.
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