PipemanRadio Interviews VMBRA at Bloodstock Open Air 2025

0:04 Hi you lunt, Yes, that's true. W for see why for you you? This is the pipemin here on the Adventures Pipe Man W four c Y Radio and I'm. Here with Umbra Nice here at Bloodstock. How did you get here the Bloodstock to play this incredible festival? So we were part of the Manchester Metal to the Masters competition. So we'll be on the new Blood stage you later today at five. Point fifteen Nice And so did you even imagine that you would get here from winning that competition?

0:47 Well, you went to the competition with the desire and the hope and the goal to win it, right, So for me at least, it was very important to keep that in mind throughout the entire competition and have that spirit and the work for it. But then he's up to the judges. You never know what can happen. And up until the very last minute in the final, like some of us were just convinced that it was gonna you know, the winners were gonna be another band called Technologies that we're playing against us that night. So as much as you were hoping for it from the beginning, it ends always been a massive. Surprise, right, Yeah, I hear that quite a bit here at Bloodstock. It's like all the winners that come here, they didn't think they were gonna be the They wanted to win, but they didn't think they were one to win.

1:34 I think that's the recipe for winning right there, you know, like cause you do have beds that like they're sure they're gonna win, and they're the ones that get let down and the people like you that are just there to be musicians and to have fun and a bad Bloodstock. I think it's important to stay humble but also practice and rehearse and practice and rehearse, which seems a bit right, but you have to do it because if you want to be good, you have to put the hours in. Oh yeah, absolutely, Like Randy Rhodes heat practiced like eight hours a day. I just saw a video the other day. Kirk Hammet still to this day, practices twelve hours a day.

2:16 People don't realize you'll just get up there and play. It's a lot of work. Yeah, and that work paid off because here you are at Bloodstock. Have you ever attended Bloodstock? No? This is our first time playing, and all the first time is punted as well. So we took a lot of yesterday, just knocking around seeing how it is, and it's brilliant. It's a cool festival, right, It's like, really, I do a lot of festivals. It's one of my favorite ones to do, and it's truly a metal festival. Like there's other metal festivals that have metal but then other things. To me, this is the true metal festival. Totally, which is why we're kind of excited to play it because we're not much of a metal band. We play kind of proggy rock fusion. We have some metal bits, but I think we're gonna be something a bit fresh to the festival.

3:01 See, And I like that because you need some kind of uniqueness nowadays. I think a lot of bands nowadays they use like a formula to sound the same. And I like when I hear stuff like that because it's unique. And that's probably why you wont because of the uniqueness of your music opposed to everybody said saying, if I'm a judge and I'm judging a bunch of bands, I'm gonna pick the one like you that's gonna stand out. Yeah, totally go ahead. Even from the beginning, it was a slight doubt hesitation as to do we really fit in a metal to the masses com but we're not that metal. We're not that heavy, but we do have some elements of metal, and we do feel like we do bring something quite unique.

3:49 We are quite eclectic in our music, and because all our songs sound different from each other, nice we can actually cater and they spoke our set list to which of a crowd we're playing. So coming here to Bloodstock this weekend, we were like, listen, guys, this is the heaviest festival in the country. We've got to play our heaviest stuff, right. That's so brilliant what you said, because I find a lot of prog rock bands they do that, like they cater to wherever they're playing. Like even when I interviewed Dream Theater years ago, that's exactly what they said. It's like every gig we do. We cater our set lists to who we're playing.

4:29 To exactly, and that's smart. I think that's a beauty of progressive music is you do have a lot of variety to be able to do that, whereas just a regular metal band they have this is their sound and that's that. But Prague, to me, it's more musicianship, so you can change. It up totally. Last year we played a festival just for Progue called Progue for Pert. It's a charity festival that raises money for brain cancer, which is how nice you. He died and we catered our sets for the progheads, for the old fellas who'll sit there with their arms crossed nodding along, and it was brilliant. But we've also when we play metal shows, we want to get the metal heads head banging as well, so it's important to try and walk that line.

5:18 See I love that. What brought you to this point? What was that moment in time in your life that you decide this is what you needed to do. In terms of playing live, I've always done it really ever since I was a wee boy. My first gig was at my cousin's wedding. I've played in the wedding band, and I was just like, I quite like this. I've always been chasing that high and playing here. It's gonna be yes another high I'm gonna try and chase. For me, it's a completely different story. I come from a very small town in the south of Spain, which is a very musical town. Everyone's seeing some plays guitar so it's never considered something serious, something to pursue or do for life. Everyone does it for fun. But for me, it was always the dream of I want to do this properly. I want to do this in front of a big audience. So I left Spain, I came to the UK, I went to a music university, changed my life completely, met the right people and now I'm in the band that I've always wanted.

6:16 To be nice and meeting the right people, I think that's key because you see so many bands that there's a lot of them playing for a long time. They don't look like they like each other, and I think the way they have real longevity and creativity. Is to really like who you're with because you spend a lot of time with them. It's like a marriage, it's a family. Yeah, absolutely, And I personally feel quite lucky and privileged because Chad, the guitarists, and I met a university like ten years ago. So we've been working on various different project musical projects together, but it was only when we decided to the Old Umbra that we went out and found p Our Basis and found Kiran our drama. And when you meet these people, you never know what's gonna You never know if we're gonna gel, what the chemistry is gonna be. But you know, we're all different in our own ways. And it's been now three years, three almost four that we've been together, and it's interesting how very different the four of us are, but in how many ways our personalities kind of overlap, to the point that all four of us have different jobs outside of the music that we do. We play, we write, we have jobs for the band, which is what we've suited for as well.

7:41 Y that's cool too, because just like a business or anything else, different people that should have different specialties and bringing different things. To the table. If everybody plays the same way, if everybody does the same thing, you don't get the unique yes. A right you need. It's a team effort and with that team you have to have different parts of the team. So that's pretty cool. So wait, how are you going to top this now? Download next year? Question? There you go, there you go, We'll put it out there in the universe. Maybe I'll get the interview you at download next year. Then realistically, some other festivals would love to play. I think we would love to play at arch Tangent as well, because that is it caters to some of the more different, unique sides of the metal world. So that's a wonderful festival.

8:33 We'd love to play that as well. But then putting that out there to. The world nice. Tell people how they can reach out to you guys on socials on the web. Check out your music towar date, it's all that stuff. So it is spelled V N b r A. The U is Roman. You scratched into a stone. You can find us at umber UK pretty much anywhere. Just remember the U is a V. Yeah. See, that's the thing too. It's so hard to come up with a band name nowadays that everybody has to like spell it differently, use symbols and it's it's like everybody, it's so hard to come up with a band name. Now. We were actually Ombra with that you at the beginning, but Spotify was like, na ah, too many Ombras registered now, so we were okay, let's just swap the U fra V.

9:17 Brilliant and that went through. I love it brilliant. I know, right, that's funny, but that's what catches their attention. Yeah, exactly. Any other final words you want to tell the listeners that we haven't covered array that they need to know about you. If you like music that's a bit weird and doesn't take yourself too seriously, check out Umbra. There you go. I love it and I'm so happy you're here at Bloodstock. Thank you, and I can't wait to see you at Download next year. Oh yeah, main stage, baby. There it is. Thanks for being on the Adventures and pipe Man. Thank you. Michelle Kerr was my press officer for my entire fucking career here in the UK, entire career with Machine. She recently passed away and it was a very, very sad day.

10:08 And I can tell you the reason that I'm gonna tell this story is because she was family. She was Bloodstock family. She was heavy metal UK family. Most of the. Bars that you know and love you probably heard of because of that woman right there. Slive, Knots, Slayer, Machinehead, Trivium Kills which engage, Hey, breed, you name it. She helped lift everybody up. Man, She helped lift everybody up, and in so many ways, she helped make this entire music scene, this incredible, beautiful community that lives here at Bloodstock.

10:51 Man. She helped make it so ladies and gentlemen, please make some noise. From Michelle Kurt, thank you for listening to the adventures of Tatement on w fur CUI Radio