We’ve been away for a few days covering gigs, but we’re back with a BotD band, featuring Germany’s Impvlse…
Simple things first – where are you guys from?
We are from the surrounding cities of Nuremberg, Germany. We call Nuremberg our “hometown” as we had our first rehearsal room and shows there even though we only live in close proximity to the city.
How did you meet?
Everything started off with Jason (Lead Guitar) scrolling through a comment section under a 9gag post to randomly stumble over a funny comment. This comment was posted by Marcel (Bass) and just out of curiosity Jason found out that Marcel was also obsessed with heavy music and coincidentally lived around the area. After contacting Marcel and sharing the desire to form a band they went looking for other members to complete the formation. A couple of months later we found Dave (Drums) in a Facebook group looking to join a band and Tom (Rhythm Guitar) who went to the same school as Marcel. In September 2015 we all finally met in a rehearsal room of a friend to jam for the first time. After just playing as an instrumental band in our rehearsal until 2017 we decided to look for a vocalist and shot a music video for our song “Curious Minds” to attract a fitting voice. After a couple of different auditions with singers Chris (Vocals) came along and we felt that he was the right fit for our songs.
How long have you been playing as a band?
The band was founded in the year of 2015. Back then we were only an instrumental four-piece that was having weekly jam sessions where we got to know each other and laid the foundation for our sound. In 2017 we found our current singer Chris. Since then the project got more serious and we started to play shows around the area.
Before you get sick of being asked… where does the band name come from?
The story of our name IMPVLSE is rather unexciting as we were just looking for something that sounded cool to us and doesn’t put us in a box. We wanted a name that doesn’t bind us to a certain genre or scene, that gives us freedom of what we can become. We want to give our name meaning by the music we create.
What are your influences?
We are influenced by everything that is happening in our lives. It’s hard to point out the specific people and events that trigger our creativity or leads us to express ourselves through our music. It’s definitely a subconscious thing. We think life as a whole is an inspiration, every decision is the result of how we process that what we have experienced. So, there are a lot of emotions, good and bad, that would have to be mentioned when we talk about influences. Of course, there are some special topics in politics or in society that we would like to change, you will find addressed between the lines of our lyrics.
Describe your music. What makes you unique?
Our music draws inspiration from many different genres but can overall be summed up as Progressive Metalcore. We try to connect ambient and cinematic ingredients with progressive elements to finally put it into a Metalcore context. The result, we feel like, is a variety of songs with every track expressing its own character, atmosphere, and emotion. We think that makes us unique. Every song brings something different for the listener to relate to.
Do you have any particular lyrical themes?
Our lyrics tell a journey of self-development and growth not only for the well-being of the one but also for the benefit of the world we live in. It illustrates the process of identifying destructive behavior, questioning irrational customs and finally taking responsibility for oneself. Between the lines, you can find notions of us critiquing specific things in our society but those aren’t foregrounded as we want to give the listeners freedom to explore the lyrics by themselves.
What’s your live show like? How many shows have you played?
Our live show is the perfect combination of heavy parts to dance to or bang your head to, and atmospheric moments to let the sound work its magic. Right now, we are working on a new light show and are super stoked to play new shows in front of new people. We already played about 25 shows.
What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done at a live show?
I think there’s nothing to show off with at the moment, haha. We often have crazy crowds that put up a rough mosh pit once resulting in one dude being carried out of the mosh holding his arm, but he appeared to be fine afterward.
What kit do you use / guitars do you play / etc.?
So our drummer plays a Pearl Vision Birch VBA Ltd. Ed.drumkit with Zildjian A-Custom Projection 18″ and 17″ Crashs, Zildjian Oriental China Trash 18″, and Zultan Rock Beat 14″ hi-hats. For guitars, our lead guitarist Jason plays an ESP LTD TE-406FM through a Peavey 6505+ head and Orange PPC212 BLK. Our rhythm guitarist Tom plays an ESP EII Horizon NT-II through a Peavey 6505 head and Mesa Boogie 2×12 rectifier. Marcel, our bassist plays a Warwick Corvette Rockbass through a Kustom DE300 HD Head and a Kustom DE410H.
What are your plans for 2020?
We plan to record a new EP to release it in early 2021. We additionally want to play more shows and continue to build our fan and listener base. We will play our first festivals this summer, for example, the Rock im Park Festival, we are totally looking forward to that. There also some music videos in the planning.
If you were second on a three-band bill, which band would you love to be supporting and which band would you choose to open for you? A chance to plug someone you’ve toured with, or a mate’s band we’ve not heard of before!
It would be a total honor for us to support any of our idols, and we have a lot of mates that deserve a lot more attention. But on the three-band bill, we would choose “LANDMVRKS-IMPVLSE-VERMILION”.
Impvlse: official | facebook | twitter | instagram | youtube | spotify
