“4 friends joined by the same feeling” is how Alex Gonzalez, drummer for Maná; Andreas Kisser, guitarist for Brazilian heavy metal band, Sepultura; Sr. Flavio, basis for Los Fabulosos Cadillacs and Andrés Gimenez Dmente, ex-lead singer for Argentine band, A.N.I.M.A.L. describe their new musical project called “De La Tierra”(DLT).
To find out more about this project and how it came together, I spoke to Alex Gonzalez and Andrés Gimenez via telephone and even over the phone line, one could feel the excitement in their voices as they talked about this new adventure they have taken on.
“The idea for this project first started about 8 years ago, when our bands [A.N.I.M.A.L. and Maná] would cross paths on the road either in Mexico or Argentina and Alex and I would always talk about the music we loved, which was heavy metal. We always talked about getting a band together and just jamming and on Maná’s last tour of Argentina, I went to say hello to Alex in his dressing room and he told me ‘I think it’s time we got this metal band going’” said Andrés.
When I asked how they chose the other band members, Alex replied: “I was already friendly with Andreas Kisser and he even played with Maná on our last appearance at Rock in Rio, so when I called him up, ‘he said to stop looking for a guitar player, I am in.’ Sr. Flavio has been a friend of Maná from the very beginning and of course he already had a relationship with Andrés, and we are both admirers of his mastery of the bass, so we just called him up and he also said yes right away.”
Being that all the band members come from different bands and musical backgrounds, I asked if it was difficult for to get everyone on the same wave length and Alex responded: “Not at all, first of all we are all fans of metal, and these guys are master musicians who have no limits and we wanted to try different types of metal so it was a lot of fun, there were no egos, just four friends playing their hearts out”
I asked about the recording process and Alex said: “It was a very quick process, we went into a rehearsal studio in Argentina for 5 days, and of the 16 tracks on the album, we knocked out 8 demos and later on, in three days we finished off the rest of the demos, so it was very intense, productive and super fun to play with such a group of dedicated and talented musicians.”
Having finished the album, the obvious question is, will there be a tour and will they play L.A.? To which Andrés replied” “There will definitely be some live gigs around March of next year. You have to remember that we all are still part of our original bands, so we have to work this into our work schedules, but we will definitely do at least short tours and we will most certainly play L.A., we are also looking at doing other shows in the U.S. but we are still looking into that with the booking agents.”
The first single “ Maldita Historia ” (Damned History) is already available on iTunes and the full album will be available in November.
Maldita Historia
