The Raven Age Interview

1.  What inspired the formation of the band?
I guess just being fans of other bands and having a love for writing music. It was and still is our favourite thing to do, so it all started off as a bit of fun that we took more and more seriously the deeper we got into it.

2.     Who were your influences starting out and have they remained the same? 
Dan and I were massively influenced by bands in the early 2000s nu Metal era like Linkin Park and then metalcore became a huge influence on me personally. I discovered bands like Bullet, Killswitch, Parkway and Trivium. They were the bands that made me want to pick up the guitar and learn their riffs everyday. I’m still a huge fan of all of these bands today.

I think we approach it in a pretty standard way, we generally branch out from a guitar riff or piece, although sometimes it’s a melody that drives the music behind it. We never set out to write a song in a certain way ie “we’re gonna write a 3 minute or 8 minute song today”. It just happens and we roll with whatever way we feel the idea needs to go to get the best out of it.

I think the songwriting has changed from EP to album 1 and now album 2, but in a totally natural manner. I think it’s just an experience thing and learning from what we’ve previously done, altering minor things or shedding certain habits when writings We’re always super open to ideas, so if something doesn’t sound very “us” right away we don’t always bin it, we’ll sit with it and see if we can use it in a different way first.

4.     You’ve got a song on the new record ‘Fleur de Lis’ which seems to have a historical context, was this a deliberate choice or something that happened naturally? And are there any more songs like that on the record?
Again it’s a natural thing, I’m general drawn towards big epic subjects like that when getting inspiration for lyrical content. There’s so much story to be told with a subject line Joan of Arc that it just sparks the imagination off and paints a thousand pictures as well as providing a bunch of historical facts.

Yes there’re quite a few historical based songs on the album like Scimitar which is about the crusades and Forgotten World which is based on an autobiography about Auschwitz. There’re also some more personal and modern subjects on the album, it’s good to have a blend so it doesn’t get too samey.

5.     What were the big influences for the songwriting process on this record?
Having a passion for being a band and the drive to keep going. It’s not easy for a young band these days with so much good competition out there and touring is very expensive. But we’re all here because we love it. If the band fails then we’re not just going to put our instruments down, we’ll sill be jamming away and writing music for the rest of our lives, no doubt about it.

6.     What plans do you have for the future?
The main goal is to make this work for everyone so we can keep the band our main focus and job ideally. That means a hell of a lot of work basically. Keep touring, writing music and keeping the passion for it. As long as that’s still there then we’re happy!