Profile: Hearts of Black Science
Name: Hearts of Black Science
From: Göteborg, Sweden
Sounds like: Dark and dour indie/electronica
Listen: Empty city lights (demo version)
Discography:
2007 - The ghost you left behind (Club AC30)
2006 - Demo 2 (self-released)
2006 - Demo 1 (self-released)
Links:
www.heartsofblackscience.com
www.myspace.com/heartsofblackscience
Finally, a band that sounds almost exactly like their name suggests! Combining the best of downbeat electronica and goth/industrial with the melodicism and darkness of Swedish doom-metal. Sure to appeal to almost everyone, from indierockers to metalheads to dance music fans. Somehow, they manage to get it all right without screwing up any of the pieces.
Who are you and where are you from? How did you guys end up forming a band?
We are Tomas Almgren and Daniel Änghede. We're from Sweden.
I (Tomas) came back from a seven year trip where I had unsucsessfully pursued a career as a horror movie director only to find my childhood friend Daniel without a band for the first time in over 20 years. We used to have all these bizarre sideprojects back in the day but had never done anything serious together so we decided to start Hearts of Black Science. Both of us had opened up to a lot more music than just metal and synth (which were the kinds of bands we used to be in) and found that we now shared some common denominators.
It was the perfect time to start a band and we were both excited about trying to write songs in a style neither of us had tried before. Some sort of dark indie / electronic hybrid.
Why should anyone care about HoBS? What makes you special?
Our main strength is that we combine a lot of different influences under the roof of HoBS and still sound coherent and familiar coupled with a knack for infectious hooks and melodies. If you're a fan of melancholic pop you should check us out. I'm not claiming that we're breaking new ground or anything but we're definately attacking music from a different angle.
You guys say you like metal. Just how metal are you?
Daniel has an estimated collection of a thousand metal albums. We start every recording session by listening to Manowar's "Defender" and we adopted the DIY work ethics of black metal genius Satyricon: "Self made is well made."
I used to smash rust off of factory support beams for a living and our studio is situated at the bottom of a decommissioned subterranean power plant...
I mean, come on! Surely we're metal enough. ;)
And though it may not be obvious at first glance, our songs have quite a lot of metal inspired guitar work. Again, we don't filter out any influences so anything will fly if it sounds good in the mix and comes from the heart. A lot of hardcore metal fans have been requesting us on myspace so it must exist in HoBS somewhere.
What's the worst trend in music today? How about the best?
The worst trend has to be trends in general.
Trends dictate rules.
Rules are poisionous arrows to the heart of originality.
Bands that get all preachy about trends are kind of annoying as well.
The best thing to happen to music in a long time is file sharing, internet forums and the DIY spirit that has spawned many great bands (and even more crap ones) that probably wouldn't have gotten the exposure otherwise. I find amazing stuff on a weekly basis.
What other Swedish duo would you like to challenge to a fight? The Knife? The Embassy? Samuraj Cities? Who would win?
Hard to say but I would love to team up with The Knife and give Abba a run for their money in a double duo - tag team - no holds barred - smack down. I would piledrive Benny into oblivion. Abba would probably win but they would limp back to their corner.
So you used to smash rust off support beams for a living? What do you guys do now to cover the bills? What do you think you'd be doing if you couldn't play music?
Daniel works the nightshift in a cookie factory.
I'm currently unemployed and I've been living off the money I saved up at the factories scraping rust but will most likely be back there if the album doesn't sell a million copies in the next few months. We've just started our own company to handle the HoBS merch that's coming soon and I have been thinking about expanding the company to incorporate other services in the future. But we're taking it one step at a time. Playing live and promoting the single and the album is what's important now and all we have time for.
If we couldn't make music I'd still love to get a job in movies. Directing or writing or maybe sound design.
I don't know what Daniel would do. Maybe something in the gaming console industry. He would probably say something completely different though.
If you were a boy band, what would your Spice-names be?
I guess I am a little Conrol Freak Spice. Daniel's more sort of Mellow Spice.
Lastly, what's the future look like for HoBS? What are your plans for the next few months?
We're playing live as much as possible now. We have something like fifteen dates in the UK. Most of them are in London but some are in Mmanchester and Brighton. The single release party will be at the Luminaire on March 8th and the album release party will be back home in Sweden at Sticky Fingers on the 30th of March. We're playing on the Gideon Coe show on BBC Radio 6. There are two more singles planned for spring and summer and we have some interesting collaborations with other artists that we're working on. New songs, remixes and videos. We're busy and loving it.