PipemanRadio Interviews Vortex

0:04 Hey, you love them too, that's sure. Why wake up of America. It's time for the Adventures of pipe Man on W four cy dot com Westpong Beats, his number one internet radio station. Here's your host, the White Man. This is the pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man W four c Y Radio. And I'm here with our next guest from up north with some badass new music. So now let's welcome to the show. Danny from Vortex. How are you good? Are you? Are you ah doing amazing? You know? Uh? We just had down here fourth of July yesterday, so you're you're my first air view after the holiday. All right.

1:19 First of all, I'd like to apologize for my bad English because I'm from a French part of Canada, in Quebec, so it's possible you find I had a Hugh Jackson you know what. You sound pretty good. I've heard worse. All right, Okay, thanks, And I actually one of my favorite places in the world as Montreal. Actually I remember, yeah, I tell you a story about why that is. And besides that, it's just a cool city. I remember going there the first time many years ago, and first of all, my first impression was it was like New York was twenty years before that, Like the city is so clean and nice comparatively, you know. And then one thing I thought was pretty cool is like during the winter you have those twelve underground malls that instead of staying above ground in the freezing cold, you can walk through all the which I did.

2:23 I walked through every part of all twelve and those malls exploring. Ah. Yeah, and the trees are not easy with all the snow we get during winter, so yeah, yeah, Montros is nice for that. Yeah. And then the part that really topped it off for me is I'm a I'm a big Devils fan and at the time I went there, Jacques Lemaire was the coach of the Devils. And it's funny because in the New York New Jersey area, which is where I'm from and where I was at at the time, you know, you have fans of the Flyer, the Islanders, the Rangers, the Devils, and it's always like this this big war and rivalry. And funny enough, if you live in New Jersey, which I did, you still get a lot of harassment for being a Devil's fan instead of a Rangers or an Islanders fan, and I'm like, uh, they are our home team. But you know, it's funny when I was wearing when I went up, I was in this bar. I was wearing a Devil's ski jacket up in Montreal, and it was like I had more people that liked the fact that I was a Devil's fan in Canada than I did in New Jersey. And that was because they all loved Jacques Lamar. And it was just because just because you're a fan, that's true, that's true.

3:57 But they were all like, oh my god, you're those fan. I love the Devils because I love Jacques Labar and blah blah blah. So I thought it was pretty cool, so that that experience rated it as one of the best places on earth. You know what. I lived for a while in New Jersey. I'm from Quebec, but my family had to move for about two years in the nineties. And when I was a teenager, I lived for two years in the Paramas, New Jersey. Okay, I'm very familiars, so I know I know a bit about New Jersey and the Devils. I went to see us some of their games back into base there you go. Yeah, I used to have second row blue line for the Devils for years and it was funny. One of my most two of my most memorable experiences of those games was one watching Brodoor score a goal during the Stanley Cup playoffs, which, as you know, how amazing that is, and then being at the Stanley Cup finals and GWayne Gretzky was sitting nine row behind me, and more the fact that was behind me than that he was actually there. Yeah, it's a great story. So let's tell all our listeners for those who haven't heard you guys before, give them your visual of what Vortex is. You know, forget genres. I hate getting locked in the genre, and you know, I'm sure a lot of artists do nowadays

5:28 too, because it's so ridiculous, like even this new album is is different than your other album. And I think when they locked artists in genres, it's hard to do that. They want you to produce the same album over and over again. Yeah, I've been in this for so long. After four or five albums, I decided we would write stories like it was just writing a story for the sake of writing a story. But yeah, idea of writing a story before writing the music was to force ourselves out of what we usually do. We wanted to create a story and shit all the parts of the story with the with different feelings into the songs. So each each song is a chapter of a story. The last three albums are composed this way. So we write like, let's say eight eight eight chapters, and all the chapters become a song, and each chapter we shit the music with what's happening hearing the story. So so instead of just writing riffs and drums and like we used to do in the past, and what most bands do is just go in the real SOO room and one of the guys bringing us something real for any id we don't write this way anymore. We just write with a specific mood or feeling we need to put into the each chapter of

6:58 the story we have written before. So uh this is UH the main thing that is happening with us for the last five years. And we also incorporated orchestral music to UH to our composition. So the idea was also to have like a movie soundtrack feeling to the albums. I love it and you know the new album is called the Future Remains UH in Oblivion and yeah, no words could be more true nowadays, Oh my god, Like, I can't even believe that in twenty twenty three we have the same stuff to write about like in the nineteen eighties in music and and probably even worse so I love but for different reasons uh in in In the last album, instead of using all the same uh populartic events people use in movies and in music, we decided that our story would be based on possible catastrophy that would come from nature, not not exactly nature like like if you were talking about ecology or something like that. I'm talking about something coming from space like. In our story, the main event is are huge solid flares that disrupt everything on earth,

8:28 including plants, living plants, living animals, electricity not everything falls down and society doesn't work anymore. So people just have to survive. Yeah, I start the event. Yeah. Well, and I gotta tell you the music in and of itself is bad as it seems like you've gone even you know, you have the story part of it, but you've gotten even heavier and more hints of black metal combined in with a lot of death metals. Yeah. Yeah, because the previous album, which is uh titled The Lighthouse, was more like a dramatic movie feeling into the music, and the last one, the Future Remains in a billion. We wanted to uh have a bit more aggression into the music because we we we we live music is good when when it's a bit more aggressive, you know, when you're too much into uh moods and endians and uh and uh melody, it's harder to get to to have people with you in a live show. So we had the live show in mind when we uh uh wrote the last album. We wanted more aggression in the music, so we kept the melody, we kept the orchestra, but we incorporated some black metal influence is a little more ivy music into

10:03 the writing. And what I love about that is, again going back to the beginning of what we were saying, it's like not locking you into a specific, so specific genre, because nowadays it's so specific. It's like, you know, it's almost like an algebraic equation that sometimes these bands used to create their music because they have to fit into this micro subgenre that there's like ten million of you know, so I like, I did it. I guess why people do that because it's a bit harder to promote yourself when you're not in a specific general. Yeah, it's true, you know. And the thing is is, you know, like as the years go by, it seems like the genres keep getting smaller and smaller, meaning, you know, it was just metal back in the beginning, and now it's like you have to add five more adjectives to that metal to dest right, you know.

11:07 Yeah, it's annoying when, uh, in the nineties I would listen to black metal, I didn't. I didn't even know it was black metal. For me, it was just metal. You know. Now I know that it's black metal. Car if you listen to Immoral, you know it's black metal. But in the nineties I were just listening to metal, that's all. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's interesting too because the original black metal band that I remember getting their first album when it first came out, they aren't even considered black metal by black metal bands today. And I'm referring to Venom, you know, they were like the original black metal, and by definition black metal today they probably don't even fit in that genre. No, no, yeah, you're right. So I think genres humans maybe the things and the visual and the attitude could be called black metal, but the music is more like rock and roll mixed with early metal exactly. And you know it's funny because you know, even the voice like Chronos voice back then was not the voice of you you would what you would hear of black metal today. No, oh, you're right, I agree, and I think that whole I think people should think about that for a second, because if genres can evolve like that, then bands should be around allowed to evolve.

12:41 And you know what I mean by that. It's like, even with this new album, you may have fans of yours are like, oh, you're strained away from your core, and no, you're being an artist that evolves as they learn their their craft. Yeah. The other thing is uh yeah, yeah, for sure, you you you you change over the years. You you adapt and you learn new new stuff, and you're you're also often changing members and the new members bring their stuff into the music too. So I'm the only original member of the band. So it's impossible now to write the same music that we were writing like fifteen years ago, because all the members are are the guys who get different visions and different uh influences, so that that's just normal. But we're we're a band that went from like uh easy uh uh. Music like that was more like uh uh, something like uh, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm translating at the same time I'm talking to you. So it's a bit art from Yeah, we were more like metal core in the beginning, and then we had death metal phase and now it's more we're more into like orchestral black and death. So it goes

14:16 with what we're listen to. Also, like the bands are like the most like right now, what I'm listening too in metal is like a shadow of intent, septic flesh, those kinds of men who bring more than just the traditional metal thing. They have a lot of orchestrations and also a lot of lots of melody with old school risks. So this is what I like the most actually at this time in metal. So it's our music is thinking by that also, and I think that's great because I think like all of us, I mean, we all add things to our taste or modify our taste.

15:00 And you know, it's funny. I was just driving down the road last night and I add my stereo on and I'm thinking to myself, Wow, you know the difference of how I've evolved in my music taste from the start of listening to music till now. Because new things you start, new things start influencing you, and even as a listener, and it just kind of that your taste in music evolved. So it would make even more sense for an artist for their artistry to evolve, for sure. Yeah, speaking for myself, I'm more open to all sorts of newer music, and I take the time to try and understand what ten or fifteen or twenty years ago I wouldn't have taken time. Like, like, the best example is black metal. I hated black metal for many years. I didn't get I didn't get the the id behind the vocals and the arts, production and everything, and now it's my favorite general also, So it's just a matter of taking the time to understand the genre or understand an artist and what he's trying to accomplish reasons, and some music just grows on you, like this is going to be an unpopular thing. But I remember when I first heard black back in Black by ACDC. I hated it, and then I listened to it

16:30 over and over again, and then I ended up loving it. Yeah, yeah, but I'm pretty sure you don't listen to it too much anymore. We hear those songs so many times on the radio. It's yeah, it's getting annoying now, that's right, that's right, and you're gonna laugh at this. Me and my best bro since like thirteen, and we used to go gigs together all the time. We were driving to a festival one time and we're playing music on the stereo. That was music that we always listened to back then and I still listen to now. But he turns to me and goes, man, I thought this stuff was a lot faster back then, because then then it was fast. It was the fastest thing, just like we were talking about Venom. You know. It's like, you're you're so right what you said, because I remember listen to Venom then and listen Venom now, and sometimes I listen to Venom now. I'm like, man, that just sounds like rock and roll. Yeah. The first time, the first time, me and my bud, we we're riding Lightning, the first song Fat Far with Fire with the double kicks. I love it, but we were we didn't know what to think about about it because it was so fast for the time and the double kicks and everything. So now it's just normal shit, you know, like it's it's it's easy to play, it's not fast. But at the time we were like, we're like,

18:03 wow, I know right. You know what's funny that you brought that up is because, like I was at the first Metallica show ever, so I'm an old school Metallica fan, okay, And so of course me and my twenty five friends, which were the only ones that would be at Metallica shows back then when they started getting more commercialized, we're like, screw them posers, blah blah blah blah blah. But the fighting thing is we always said when Ride to Lightning came out, if you took fight Fire with Fire off of Ride to Lightning and put it on to Kill them All, and took Jumping the Fire off of Kill them All and put it on right into Lightning, then Kill Them All would have been the perfect metal album ever at that time because it fit more the fight Fire with Fire fit more on Kill them All that did Ride to Lightning, and Jumping the Fire fit more on right Delightning. You know. So it is interesting that you should say that though, because it's like, like you said, the double the double kick bass, you know, that is like normal nowadays and I remember when that first happened, like the first song that ever happened with it, It's like, holy crap. Oh, and that you think was the first one? I said, made one more that maybe it's one of maybe not the first one of the first like fast as a Shark from Accent, that's the one.

19:33 I was just gonna mention. That was all you read my mind because that's what I was gonna say. Okay, because I'm I'm also one of my best friends. It is Dan Spitz who used to be in Anthrax, and we talked about it one day. He's like, back in the day, I remember when that song first came out and we all and when he was referring to we all, he was referring to Anthrax, Slayer, Metallica, and Megadeth and they were all they were all like, man, that is the coolest thing ever. And he said that was the first thrash metal song ever. You know. So it's interesting because like Metallica wasn't thrash metal to begin with, there was no thrash metal. They were actually considered power metal, if you could believe that, and then you know power metal Metallica, yeah, yeah, power metal yeah, And then you know, Slayer originally did cover and cover songs for like Priest and Maiden. You know, so when fast As of Shark came out, and interestingly enough, okay, I got a great story for you since you brought that up too. So me and my bro went to an Aussie show on New Year's Eve, was with Randy Rhodes and right before he died, and it was one of those gigs where you know, I told my dad I was sleeping over his house.

20:59 He told his parents who was sleeping over my house? And we were just going to the Aussie show. And so then in the morning, I lived like on this lake, but there was a hill from my house that went down to the lake, and so we were just sitting at the bottom of the hill by the lake because we couldn't go home because we were supposed to be sleeping each his house. So we just waited till morning and my next door neighbor came out and this woman goes and she sees us in all the Aussie stuff. She goes, oh, boys, did you guys just go to the Aussie show last night? We're like yeah. She's like, stay right there, I'll be right back. I want to get my husband. So the husband comes out, invites us up to the house, and he invites us into this room which is his studio, and it's wall to wall cassette tapes. And it turns out he's Aussie's promoter, so no way, Yeah, it was way cool. And so then he pulls this cassette tape out and hands it to me and he says, listen to this. This band isn't even in the United States yet, but in six months they're gonna be huge here. And it was accept and the first song, obviously that I heard was Fast as a Shark. It was that album Restless and Wild, and he handed it to me and it wasn't even out yet, you know, it was like a demo and what are you going to be there

22:30 primorial in the United States. Yes, yes, So he was handling them and they haven't hadn't even been here yet, and I remember listen at song and I was like, oh, my fricking god. And I think that's probably the day I became a pure thrash metal head that I am today. Yeah, because at the time, just before that, you had a Motley cree like you said, venom, that type of man and Metallica was not using the same kind of riffing, and so yeah, it was a game changer that album, I think absolutely, so yeah, yeah yeah. So here we are today, twenty twenty three, and we have a game changer with your new album. The future remains in oblivion. So I know, I don't believe it's a game changer. I think it's a great piece of art. But that's why as a game changer, we I think we just following the what other bands did before us, Like like I told you before, like I really like the bands we incorporate orchestral music, but we tried to had much more movie sound tracks and forences. So that maybe that's that part is Uh, I'm not saying it's a game changer, but this part

24:00 is maybe something we that is particular to us. Nice. Well, let's tell everybody how they can get the album, how they can reach out to you guys on social media, the web, just everything to connect with you, your link tree and all that good stuff. Um, the best way to access everything is our is on our link tree. So a link tree, Vortex band or Vortex dot band. You I was listening, you get everything from our music to our views, to our website everything. You can buy the CD directly from our bank a camp because we used to be with PRS and Music, a label metal label from Quebec, but they close down during the COVID COVID, so instead of waiting for a new label, we just decided to put it out ourselves. So this is the first time we put an album ourselves. But I think nowhere nobody it doesn't matter as much as it used to before. Before you you needed a label to promote yourself.

25:12 Now I think you a band that is well organized can do it. It can't do it. So yeah, that's the Beauty Link Tree Vortex Dot band. So you find everything that very cool. Well, I love the music. I implore all the listeners to check it out. They're gonna love it too. And thanks for giving us such great art, and thanks for being on the Adventures of pint Man. Thanks for having me. What's great, nice thought? Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of pint Man on W four CUI Radio.