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The Distrolution / Distrolution Merch team had the opportunity to participate in the Hellfest Festival from June 19 to 26, 2022. The program included concerts, meetings... and several interviews, which you can find each week in FR version on Distrolution Merch and in EN version on Distrolution ! Discover without further delay our interview with the French band Fractal Universe !
Photo: L'Oeil de Verre
Hello Fractal Universe. Would it be possible, to start this interview, for you to introduce yourselves and your band?
Hugo: Yes, of course! So I'm Hugo, I play guitar and I do backing vocals in Fractal Universe. Do you want me to introduce the band after, or...?
You can!
Hugo: Fractal Universe is progressive death metal, so. We come from the Northeast of France. We formed in late 2014. We released a first EP in 2015 and since then, there have been three albums. We released our third one about a year ago. One year ago today, actually. One year to the day today with Metal Blade Records. We like to play quite technical metal and at the same time, bring influences from all over: jazz, classical music, prog rock obviously... Colors that we don't necessarily see often in metal, which is still quite codified, and that's it!
Thank you! So, I'll let the other members introduce themselves.
Val: I'm Val and I'm the bassist of Fractal Universe and I also do backing vocals.
Vince: I'm Vince, so guitar, vocals, and saxophone.
Clément: I'm Clément and I only play drums!
We find ourselves in this legendary venue that is the Hellfest Festival. How does it feel to play in such an iconic festival?
Hugo: It was awesome! (laughs) It was really awesome! We played yesterday at 12:15 on the Altar and honestly, we didn't expect... We were surprised to see so many people in front of us, who hadn't just come to pass by. They had come for us, they were fired up, you know! It was extraordinary! The audience was very responsive, very warm, and even after the set, many positive feedback from different people saying it was very good, great sound. And the concert itself... Well, great! The welcome from Hellfest and the team on the Altar was really great, very efficient and friendly people too, so it was comfortable, not stressful at all and that's it. Very good, great experience!
Discovering the full lineup for the second weekend, was there a band you absolutely didn't want to miss?
Clément: Yeah, Katatonia, I'm gutted! (laughs) They canceled yesterday, so... bummer!
Vince: For me, there are so many, but there's one that I've never had the chance to see and I'll see tomorrow, it's Metallica! Not very original, I know, but I've been a fan since the beginning of my teenage years and I've never had the chance to see them. It will be the perfect opportunity!
Val: I'm really looking forward to Igorrr, because I've been following this band for quite a few years, and now, with all the lineup changes, I'm curious to see what it will be like! There's also Myrkur, who is much calmer, but I've never seen her live and I love what she does, so I'm excited to see what it's like live!
Hugo: For me, there was Obscura who played last night, again, it was their concert with the new lineup, at least in Europe. Well, unfortunately they have some issues, but I was still happy to see these new musicians, these new old musicians for those who follow the story, except for the drummer, but I was able to see this concert, so I was quite happy. And otherwise, yeah, today I really want to see Igorrr. And Nine Inch Nails who played last night too, which was a discovery for me and a huge impact! Incredible experience!
You mentioned it earlier, during the band's introduction. You're signed with Metal Blade Records. How did you attract the attention of such a big foreign label and how did this collaboration come about?
Clément: There was a person working there who knew us. We wrote to him a bit hastily on Twitter and it happened like that! It's true! (laughs) I sent him a private message and he replied that he wanted to hear the second album. He listened and said "I'm going to talk to the label", then we had a call with you, Hugo, and him to discuss, and it happened like that!
And what does such a big label bring to you on a daily basis?
Clément: More visibility! We have a view of our statistics and we have more credibility too, I think. And beyond that, they've always supported us in trying to find tours. The tour we're going to do with Evergrey, the impulse came from them.
Hugo: It's true, I think it gives credibility, additional weight. "This band is signed". "Oh yeah!" That's also what I think helps us a lot in our daily lives.
Let's talk about your latest album, which, as you said, was released exactly a year ago. Can you explain your composition process for this album? Does each person have a predefined role, or is it truly a team effort?
Vince: Let's say that composing is mainly my responsibility. What I do is I compose demos, I record them at home, you see, and I send them to the others, we refine the details and all that. And only then, once it's pretty much set, we bring the thing to rehearsal to see it all together and fine-tune it. Actually, that's how we've proceeded since the first album, not much has changed on this one, except that for the recording, well for the first time we did everything in our own studios. Clément has a professional studio at his place, the Boundless Production Studio, where we recorded the drums, and then everything related to vocals, mixing and all that, was done by the team that has been following us since the beginning, by Flavien Morel.
And so, all this happened... The recording took place during the pandemic and it allowed us to really focus on that, not having concerts falling on weekends, or not having to interrupt things, as had been the case previously.
Clément: But we preferred to have concerts anyway, I think!
Vince: Yeah, that's right! (laughs)
Clément: I think it was tough for the drum recordings, we were struggling because there was a curfew or it was a bit... We were coming out of the second lockdown I think, I can't remember!
Vince: Yeah, we were coming out of the second lockdown. You were sending me pre-productions!
Clément: We couldn't see each other actually. Usually, we spend a lot of time together fine-tuning the drum parts to make sure they match, and here... Even for the recording, we had a close call, it was a close shave. Even though I was at home, Fabien and Vince needed to be able to come, and it wasn't a sure thing!
Vince: Even for shooting all the music videos, we fell into the window where there was no curfew or anything (laughs). But shortly after, it started again! We managed to do everything despite all that!
And in terms of management, how did you manage your time and your band during this pandemic?
Vince: We're often in contact. We're quite organized for remote work, since Valentin, you live 3 hours away by car. So there are many things we already do remotely. I think we weren't starting from scratch on this. We were able to organize ourselves even better so that things could progress despite all this!
It's a concept album that addresses the theme of death. Why did you choose this particular subject?
Vince: Actually, the theme of the album is quite vast, it deals with death from different angles. We evoke, for example, the theme of spirituality, how man comes to spirituality through the fear of death, well, questions we all ask ourselves. And so, as I said, these are questions we all ask ourselves in one way or another and it's interesting to treat it, really, from different angles. And here, so, the album addresses all these facets. I think it's also reflected in the music, in the diversity of the album's music in general which reflects these points of diversity, well, all these questions.
As a music fan, I personally attach great importance to artwork. A beautiful cover makes me want to see what's behind it, and I find that your covers are very well-crafted.
If I'm not mistaken, you've been working with the same artist since the very beginning?
Hugo: Yes, that's right, for the 4 albums we've made, he's done all 4 covers. The artist's name is Shad, Shad Paintings, you can find him on social media. I actually met him in high school and after high school, he went to art school in Nantes I believe. For the first EP, we needed a cover and I was like "You, you draw. Want to do the cover?" and he did this thing that we really appreciated and we got along well with everyone, so we chose to continue collaborating with him for the other releases as well.
We really like his very organic style, you can feel the brush strokes in the covers and even more broadly, his vision. In fact, when we ask him to provide us with a cover, we obviously give him the music, the lyrics, the album title, and that's it. Maybe some questions about colors, more orangey, more green, and then he has free rein. Sometimes he provides us with several proposals, then we choose, and then he develops that proposal. I think for the latest Horizon, there was only one proposal in the end?
Vince: No, there were several, but this one was unanimous. He has carte blanche, but he draws inspiration from everything, and that's what makes it match so well with the music.
Hugo: Sometimes a line of text in a song, he'll try to incorporate it into the cover art, it can happen, it's true!
Artwork: Shad
You're going to join the band Evergrey for their European tour and you're going to do almost one concert a day for over a month.
How do you prepare for such an intensive tour?
Clément: In my head, I tell myself that we've already done 23, we're going to add 13 and then personally, I'm going to the gym a bit to train for unloading the trailer, because I think it's harder to do the unloading and setup, because it's not comfortable at all. Playing every night is cool, we already play every day so it won't change much for us. But yeah, it's going to be tough to chain a month and a half like that.
Vince: I found that on the longer tours we had done so far, we caught the rhythm pretty quickly, actually. At first, you might feel the impact of having to change your rhythm, going to bed at 3 AM, waking up at 2 PM (laughs). But finally, you really quickly get the hang of it and it becomes your routine, you know!
Hugo: Yeah, the body gets used to it. The first three days, even for concerts, I feel it. But after yeah, three, four days, almost without warm-up, we can deliver on stage without feeling much the next day, so that's cool. Obviously, too much excess every day in terms of partying, alcohol and all that, doesn't help. But if we're relatively sensible, it goes smoothly! We're lucky to be in a tour bus too, meaning that when the concert is over, we pack up the gear, the bus starts, we go to sleep and we wake up the next day in another city. We don't have to... It's a driver, so we don't have to pull all-nighters to go from one city to another. We had done that... That's hard! But the tour bus is relatively comfortable actually. So it goes pretty well, even when chaining many concerts every day.
I imagine that fatigue must still be felt at some point. It's a rhythm, let's face it, that is relatively intensive!
Hugo: Personally, I didn't feel it that much during the last tour, two years ago!
Clément: There are more complicated things as Hugo said, where we were driving the van ourselves. And sometimes, we had routes that meant... Well, there was a night team that arrived exhausted at the next concert, who had to do the day, then we left again. Once we left from Lithuania, we drove for 22 hours having slept only 2 hours, because we had partied...
Hugo: Yeah, in that case, we kind of overdid it, yeah!
Clément: Now, it's complicated! You really feel the impact when you get back! (laughs)
Is there a concert that particularly stood out to you during your career?
Vince: Well, yesterday's! (laughs)
Val: Yesterday's! (laughs)
Vince: I think it's worth noting, it was quite an incredible experience. But beyond that, there have been quite a few. Well, there were also the Metal Days! In 2017... 2016? And on the last tour with Obscura, the one that impressed me the most was the concert in Belgrade, Serbia. Because again, we were surprised to see how much people knew us. We had never played in this country, or even in a nearby country. There were people in the audience who knew the lyrics and everything, so it was a great surprise!
Clément: We played at Hellfest 4 years ago, but on the Hellstage. It's funny to think "4 years ago, we were on that stage over there and today, we're playing at noon on the Altar".
Maybe the main stage, one day!
Clément: Well, in 4 years, normally, if we follow the cycle (laughs)
Can we talk about your future projects?
Hugo: Yes, a few festivals this summer, the tour we talked about... This summer, there's a fourth album coming. We're working on it, no release date for now. So, a few concerts...
That was my last question. I'll let you have the final word for our readers!
Hugo: Thank you for being interested in Fractal Universe if you're reading this! And if you like the band, don't hesitate to check out everything we do, we're very active on social networks, internet, all that. If we're playing near you, come see us, say hello, and tell your friends about us! (laughs)
Clément: We have 4 French dates on the tour with Evergrey. We're going to play in Paris, Toulouse, Colmar, and Lyon.
