It’s been over a year since you made it to newcomer on our website, a lot has happened since. Let’s start with the new line up. You and Natalia are the only original members left, why do you have a new line up and who are the new members?
Natalia and I have always believed in having a band that has the capability and drive to perform aggressive and theatrical live shows. The members we have added in the past year to Vicious Alliance meet our requirements completely. All three of them have the ambition, attention to detail, and proper attitude for performing with Vicious Alliance. They are dedicated band mates who devote their financial and personal resources for the good the project.
General Timothy Bridgeman is our current drummer. He has brought his extensive experience in live sound engineering and enthusiasm to Vicious Alliance. Out of our new members, he has been with us the longest.
Commissar Andre Blatt is our live synth player. He has a remarkable talent for playing our complex melodies, and he also designs many of our flyers along with Natalia.
Minister Trent Nighman also joined Vicious Alliance as a live keyboard player. He has the highly crucial job of creating our live sound-scapes with lush strings and choirs.
All three have also taken it upon themselves to maintain our various Vicious Alliance websites and online profiles. This is just another example of why these individuals are an integral part of our new lineup.
These days there is total concept of Vicious Alliance, what can you tell about it? Why working with a concept?
Working with an intelligent and radical concept band is far more entertaining then existing as a band that has a standard industry-oriented outlook. Having a concept like ours allows listeners to enter an imaginary world and provides for some originality in a genre that I fear is becoming banal. It also lets Vicious Alliance get across some novel ides to our fans, and makes our live shows a whole lot more dramatic and unique.
Our concept is a post-steampunk dystopia set in a bitterly divided 1930’s America. An alternate World War I (the Great War) has yet to end and the various factions who survived the influenza epidemic of 1919 are locked in warfare. Obviously the story is much more complex, but you can check out our official website to read our biographies. Sometimes we can draw some pretty interesting allegories between our concept world and our modern life. The fear of new technology, ever increasing pollution, germ warfare, religious ideologues, and all of these things provide inspiration for our work.
How important is the visual part of Vicious Alliance and who is responsible for it?
Our visuals are an extremely important component of Vicious Alliance. They help us define our concepts and also lend a theatrical feeling to our live performances. We are all responsible for contributing to the visual aspect, but the idea as a whole was formed by myself and Natalia. I was always very interested in early 20th century history and alternate history. A goal of mine was to combine a modern electronic element with something much older and grandiose.
My band-mates are great at portraying their characters and bringing them to life visually. It definitely adds a special element to our performance.
You signed a deal with Cop Int, how did you get in contact with them and how is the collaboration doing so far?
Last year Vicious Alliance began its search for a label. CoP was highly recommended to us by K. Bathory of Dawn of Ashes and a number of others. This positive feedback I heard was an important factor in our decision to try to sign with CoP. We put together a package consisting of our first demo Humanity Bleeds, live video of our performances, and promotional photographs. Following the guidelines on the CoP website, we mailed our package and waited.
Christian, the label head, was prompt in contacting us back. We signed our contract and for a year we prepared our new material. I am pleased to say the collaboration is going very well. Crushed By The System is on the verge of being released and our first full length album will soon follow. I am sure that with our new releases pending, there will be much more cooperation between CoP and Vicious Alliance.
The first release on Cop Int is a digital ep release, why did you choose for this form instead of an actual cd?
The digital release is actually the brainchild of CoP. It is a format which the label has used to considerable success with other bands. We are hoping this same format works for us as well. Hopefully it will create a large internet buzz for an upcoming Vicious Alliance full length.
For our live fans we will be offering at our performances a limited pressing. I guess this is the best of both worlds for a first release.
The ep is called “Crushed the System” , what can you tell us about it? Your website says you worked years on these tracks, can we say it’s a “best of” so far?
I would agree with that description. Crushed By The System is the final product of all our work since the release of our first demo. Working on this project has produced very high and low points. Crushed By The System was re-worked several times until we felt that we had achieved our maximum potential as far as song production.
Another interesting point about why it took us so long to release this EP is the fact that for so long we were not happy with the quality of our recordings, particularly with Natalia’s vocals. Meeting Mr. Luke Haughwout of Mechanical Harvest Studios was a great boon to our project. His work recording and producing our vocals allowed us to finally achieve our goal. I felt that if we had released Crushed By The System before reaching our potential, people would view us as another generic band that is more concerned with making a name for themselves then production.
The ep has 2 remixes as well, one by “Die Sektor” and one by “Worms of the earth”, how did you get them so far to do a remix?
Both of these bands have been friends of Vicious Alliance since our founding.
Die Sektor is perhaps one of the best aggrotech bands today. Their production and uniqueness allow their music to stand out of the pack. All of the members who I have met are great fun loving guys who are very non-pretentious. I am in regular correspondence with Alan Smith and there was never any doubt that our first release would include a remix by Die Sektor. Alan also did our production on “Where Soldiers Fall.”
Worms of the Earth (Dan Barrett) has been my friend for years. Timothy Bridgeman (our drummer) was a former partner in WOTE. Needless to say we have always been somewhat tied together. WOTE is a concept band from Baltimore / Washington D.C. and his power noise is some of the best I’ve heard. Dan is a great friend, an intelligent guy who manages a webzine, and a musician who dabbles in a wide variety of styles.
His remix was another given for our first release.
In your own words, what is the biggest progress that Vicious Alliance has made in the last year?
Vicious Alliance has made such a tremendous amount of progress in so many areas during the past year; that it would be hard for me to name one particular accomplishment as the biggest or best.
We have improved the quality of our live shows to a tremendous degree. Finally we are moving towards our goal of making our live shows a powerful and dramatic spectacle. We have new equipment such as a projector, vintage uniforms, and new musical instruments which add to our performance. We have travelled to Puerto Rico to perform at the Nekropolis Festival and we have co headlined our hometown shows with bands we lookup to such as Dawn of Ashes and Die Sektor.
Vicious Alliance has had the honor of remixing several talented artists and appearing on their releases such as Worms of the Earth’s The Angels of Prostitution. We also were proud to be featured on Experiment Haywire’s Machine Kunt : Extreme Women in the Dark Future compilation.
And finally I must mention how proud we are to finally have completed our first official label release Crushed By The System.
What is next for Vicious Alliance?
Vicious Alliance will continue to work on improving our production for our upcoming full length release. We will also continue to refine and improve our live shows and concepts.
We are pleased to announce that on New Years Eve we will kicking off our Winter War ’09 Tour with Prognosis at the Sterling hotel in Allentown, PA. The Winter War will be almost two weeks long and we will be traveling to Atlanta, Nashville, and Chicago to name a few places. Please take a moment to check out myspace website for the full details. We hope that many people who have wanted to see us live for so long will finally get that chance.
How and where can people get the new ep?
Crushed By The System will be available for download on iTunes, Vampire Freaks, and CoP International’s website. It should be available to everyone with the internet. We will also be pressing a limited amount for sale at our live events. I encourage everyone to please support us by downloading this EP. You will be helping to fund and drive our great campaign!
www.copint.com/cop_home.asp
www.theviciousalliance.com