Interview with
Alex Sarantis of Kachana By Steve Green - April 2010
>>> .We've been covering UK Metallers Kachana since I started the site at the beginning of the last decade. Now with their 2nd album, Of Gods And Men, they've really come of age and have produced an album of Classic Metal in the vein of Iron Maiden and Symphony X. I caught up with guitarist Alex Sarantis to find out about the struggles of being in an unsigned Metal band in the faltering UK underground scene and other such delights.
Kachana formed way back in 1997 when you were all at university in Bristol. What were your goals when you first started the band? At Bristol, most of the students were toffs, and I never imagined I’d end up in a thrash band there, but one day Sacha (former singer) approached me in the canteen, said he’d heard I liked to strum away in my room (oo er!) and the rest is history! From the start, the band was a hobby and our simple aim was to write tunes, record CDs and play gigs. We never set out to do this as a career.
What’s been the most difficult thing to overcome in keeping the band together for the past 13 years? My move to Oxford in 2000 when the rest of the band remained in Bristol made it tough for a while, especially because I could not drive then. More recently, the suburban domestication of most of the band (settling down, marriages, careers, and fatherhood) has naturally made it much harder to get all 5 of us together on a regular basis for practices. However, the fact that the band has always fundamentally been a hobby for us has kept us together in spite of such obstacles. I think everyone sees it as a welcome release from the pressures of gardening, house-buying and baby yoga!
After your original vocalist, Sacha Darwin, left in 2004, you changed direction and headed in a more Progressive/Power Metal direction after your Thrash/Death origins. Do you think you’d still be together if you’d stuck to your original direction as the line-up changes seemed to give you a new lease of life? No. I think we were ready to pack it up after Sacha left. The feeling was that we’d taken the band as far as it would go within that genre. In addition, the remaining members (Shieldy, Dan, Tom and I) had always preferred more melodic/classic metal and were very excited by the prospect of having a melodic vocalist.
On your last album, The Plains of Illyricum, I detected a certain amount of "manliness”. You’ve toned things down a bit for your new album, Of Gods And Men and have headed in a direction that’s best described (by me at least) as an almost Power Metal version of Iron Maiden’s more progressive elements. Would you agree with that, or do you see your sound as something completely different than that? I hadn’t thought of it this way, but your description does make sense. It wasn’t a conscious decision. We tend to write the tunes and see what sounds best to us at the time. I suppose we did want to get back to more complex, faster music/guitar riffs with more tempo changes. I would say that Symphony X, Manowar and Maiden are our biggest influences bands and with the new CD we’ve moved a little bit further away from Manowar and closer to Symphony/Maiden.
I have to say, the ballad, Wings Of Time, is a bit of a departure for you guys. Why did you decide to record such a heartfelt song? We’ve always wanted to do a cheesy power ballad, and hopefully this will be the first of many! Singer Tom wrote it sat at his piano.
Your frontman Tom Morton has a mighty fine melodic Metal voice. We’ve produced some great Metal vocalists in the UK over the years, such as Bruce Dickinson, Rob Halford and Biff Byford. Do you think that rich heritage is now drying up and that the UK is lagging behind most countries when it comes to producing quality Traditional Metal bands? Yes. Dragonforce are obviously great, and underground bands such as Conquest of Steel and Crowning Glory carry the Power Metal flag honourably, while NWOBHM bands such as Cloven Hoof and Elixir are also still going strong, but the scene is not as thriving as it is in countries such as Germany. We’re in our 30s and, having grown up with bands like Metallica, represent the last generation that will hold the classic metal seed deep in our balls! In contrast, if you go to the Revenge of Rock club in Athens, you will see loads of people of all ages and classes seriously rocking out to the likes of Priest, Maiden and Manowar. There IS a future for traditional metal in a country like Greece!
I know you’ve landed a few supports slots with the likes of Blaze Bayley and Sabaton, but as an unsigned Metal band in the UK, how hard is it to get decent gigs? Bloody hard! The gigging scene is much tougher than it was about a decade ago. There don’t seem to be many venues with regular multi-band line-ups and in-house scenes (like the old Red Eye/Devil’s Church). So many pubs have been converted into wine bars e.t.c. that there is now little choice. Unless you can guarantee getting enough punters in to justify the venue’s commitment, it’s not worth their while. Off the back of the ‘Plains of Illyricum’ CD we either got fairly high profile support slots (thanks to Arcane and Sinister Heart Promotions) at venues such as the Purple Turtle in Camden, or nothing at all. You try contacting venues on Myspace e.t.c. but responses are rare. Live music is on its way out to be honest. The next generation is focused on playing guitar hero and will be happy to simply plug an ipod into a PA system rather than bother with the hassle of lugging around speaker cabinets and banging out real tunes.
And on a similar theme, you’ve
self-released both of your albums, the latest in a very
nice digipack. Since you started the band you’ve seen
the change in trends and the emergence of illegal
downloading, how difficult is it for an underground band
to make any progression in today’s free-loading society.
And did this influence your decision to only charge £5
for each of your albums?
We have always done the band as a (expensive) hobby, and
not to make money. We are realistic when it comes to CD
sales. We know that most people these days won’t even
bother spending a tenner on a professional, big band’s
album, so why would they bother spending anything on our
offering? At a gig, you often find punters with a fiver
in their pockets, and after a few pints this doesn’t
seem like a bad idea to them if they’ve enjoyed the
show. The most important thing to us is that as many
people hear our tunes as possible. Illegal downloading
doesn’t really affect us because we all have good
careers, and will continue to plough our own money into
the Power Metal quest.
And I have to end the interview with a question
that’s dear to my heart. What’s the chances of you and
fellow Kachana guitarist Dan Beaufort reforming Torso?And please explain a bit about Torso to those not
lucky enough to see you back in the mid-90s
Torso was an underground heavy metal band based in
Harrow in which Dan and I played between 1995 and 1997.
The other members were Paul Gallagher on bass and Derek
Rodriguez on drums. I did vox as well as rhythm guitar.
We produced one EP, ‘Voices from the Grave’, which
featured the legendary homily to the victims of genocide
in Rwanda, ‘Tribal Massacre’. We played at the Swan and
Bottle in Uxbridge on numerous occasions between
September 1995 and January 1997. Not sure about a
reunion, although a cover of ‘Tribal Massacre’ has
always been talked about!
