NE OBLIVISCARIS interview transcript.

Transcript of an interview with Tim Charles of NE OBLIVISCARIS - 25/03/19.
Full article here.

​MAL-
On the line, Tim from NE OBLIVISCARIS. Tim, thanks for joining me. 
TIM-
Thank you very much for having me. 
​MAL-
It's a great pleasure. Now you've been in the band since 2003. Briefly describe the ride since then.
TIM-
I don't know if I can do it briefly. I mean, it's been a pretty incredible and bumpy ride along the way. The first two or three years we had endless lineup changes, and we didn't really get anywhere, we were still trying to find our sound, to finally from 2005 to 2006, you know we start to get some of the right people together in the band and write some better music and start to play live. We had a lot of issues with keeping that consistency with members. And we lost our original lead guitarist and took about a year to find Benji over in France. And then when we finally found him and started writing some great music together, he didn't get his new visa, and he got deported. And we spend about 18 month, you know, petitioning the Australian Government appealing the decision, which was denied. And we had a petition, which you know, thousands of our fans across the world at the time signed, you know, in support of the government appeal that we had. And then it wasn't until the end of 2011 that we finally got notification that Benji was allowed to come back to Australia. And it was at that stage that we thought, Oh, I guess we should finally release this album 'Portal Of I' we kind of had sitting there kind of half finished, for you know, about 2 and a half years at that stage. So the first kind of eight, nine years of the band, we didn't really get anywhere, as far as, you know, all these problems holding us back, we always felt like was one step forward, two steps back, and we never were able to take a few steps forward in a row. But the great thing for us was it was, you know, once 'Portal Of I' did come out it was it was a big change, where all of a sudden, things started to happen for us, you know, we got a record deal with Season Of Mist, which was fantastic, you know, in 2014, we did this big world tour crowdfunding campaign, which, you know, broke the Australian record for music crowdfunding, which was amazing the support we got, and then we used that money to go and do our first world tour. And, and then now, you know, you fast forward to 2019. And thanks to the Patreon campaign that we set up three years ago, you know, we spent most of the last three or four years just pretty much endlessly, seemingly, you know, touring around the world and doing music with this band, which has just been such a pleasure, you know, to have that progression from you know, just a little local band that was endlessly going to break up up until 2012. We just so many times we talked about maybe we should just, you know, give up because we're never getting anywhere. To now being the in the position now, you know, where we're able to do, you know, some some great shows all around the world and be in a position where we can do an Australian tour and bring you some of the bands that we love and that we're great friends with, you know, here along for the ride, to show them off and how amazing they are to our Australian fans as well.
 ​MAL-
Yeah, okay, we'll get to that gig in a moment. But if I could just take you back to the crowdfunding thing. I haven't heard of too many bands doing it. But in retrospect, thinking about it, there's a few bands, who shall remain nameless, that I think should probably look into that idea. You seem to have come out of it pretty well.
TIM-
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the slow evolution of crowdfunding, it's been an amazing thing in the music industry, because it's taking the power away from being exclusively with record labels to being a mixture, you know, so record labels will have some power and influence but so do fans, they have the power to, to literally change bands careers with, you know, putting their money where their mouth is, so to speak, you know, if you really love a band, you know, contribute to them financially, then they can get somewhere. Back in 2014, when we did our world tour crowdfunding campaign, crowdfunding was starting to get a lot more common, but basically, every band was using it to crowdfund albums. And we had a record deal that was financing not all the record, but a decent portion, and we'll go you know, we don't really need a crowdfunding campaign for an album, what we need is money to tour and no one was really doing that at the time. And that that's where we thought well, we'll just make a trade we'll say if we earn this sort of money, then we'll guarantee that we come to the US and Canada, Europe and UK, and Asia, and these different places and, and, you know, we got a really great response. And then the catch with that with it was kind of like a one time deal, we got a one time amount of money and then we invested it in some great tours, and then the money was gone so what do we do now? And that's where the idea for ? came about. And you know, which partnered us with the platform in Patreon, as a way to then, you know, have this kind of ongoing you know, fan club and I guess ongoing fan contributions, in return for a whole bunch of projects that a lot of fans don't normally get from the bands that they support, and they will all about, you know, trying to help us to be able to maintain what we're doing in our career, but at the same time, now give fans know an opportunity to to be more involved in our career than most bands are able to offer to their fanbase.
​MAL-
We'll get on to this gig. May the 9th we have a massive and I mean massive gig coming up at the Lion arts factory. Adelaide is the first show of the tour. You must be pumped. Tell us all about it.
TIM-
The way the lineup came about was we were looking at trying to bring out one or two internationals for this tour. And we were also really liked the idea of touring with CALIGULA'S HORSE. You know, I've been friends with them for years, huge fan of them. And we were talking about touring for a long time, but it's just never been the right timing. And we were talking to them, and they were really interested in doing the tour, and we thought great, you know, maybe we could do them and you know someone else or you know, we're also looking at someone like RIVERS OF NIHIL, and we're talking to them, and they were interested and we thought maybe we can do those two together. And then about last September, we're in North America, and we were playing in San Francisco, and you know, one of the guys from ALLEGAEON came along to the show, and, you know, we've done about 60 shows with them all around the world in North America and Europe, and he was like, 'Oh, you know, when are you bringing us to Australia?' Yeah, we thought, well, that's a pretty good idea actually, we love the band, we'd love to, you know, give our Australian fans a chance to see how great ALLEGAEON are live and they've got a new album coming out in April, which is just absolutely phenomenal. It's the best thing they've ever done. And we thought, oh, we'll see. I was trying to work out how to, which bands to choose and which bands to fit in and all that sort of stuff, but we will keep you in mind for sure, because we love those guys. And then a few days later, we were in Montreal, Canada, and we're hanging out with the whole band of BEYOND CREATION have come along to the show, and their new album was out the very next day, and they came along with a copy of the album to give us as a gift, and we were playing it on the bus and we're all sitting there going Oh, Jesus. this album's absolutely amazing. Now we brought them to Australia in 2014. And they're like, 'Hey, when are you gonna bring us back to Australia? We had so much fun last time, you should bring us back again'. And we though 'Oh, that'd be good'. And then we're thinking Well, how do we choose how do we choose between all these different bands? And we thought well we probably can only do three and you know maybe four total bands at the most but we couldn't really decide and so I started to think this might be crazy guys but look I'll do a budget to see if there's any way humanly possible that we could just get all the bands that we like. And you know, so we talked to the bands like well this is what we can do and do you want to come and everyone was keen and managed to do it at a ticket price that we thought was reasonable for you know, obviously such a massive, massive bill. And you know, look the ticket sales have been amazing. It's been the best received, you know tour package we've ever done in Australia and it's definitely on track to be the biggest shows we've ever done in Australia. And it is that funny thing where you know a lot of people were talking about how how big the package is but for us it was really just us hanging out with our mates and wanting to tour with them, and rather than choose one mate's band over the other, how about we just bring them all across and we'll all have a good time, and show all these amazing bands off to our Australia fan base.
​MAL-
Sounds awesome. What are you doing at the moment? What are we doing in the lead up to these gigs?
TIM-
Well, first thing we're doing was just trying to recover a little bit from the pretty hectic touring schedule we've had the last six months really. And now that we've kind of settled in back home, it's time to start writing for a new album. So that's that's been the focus it's just starting to be the focus more and more. You know, we've been pretty much everywhere around the world over the last 18 months and came out and you know what, come back for our second Australian tour on this album cycle. And you know, we've done North America twice, we've done Europe twice. We're doing it a third time in June festivals, you know, we've done all through Asia in February and Mexico a couple times we did 70,000 tons of metal in January. And you know it's kind of that time now Okay, we've been everywhere a couple of times and let's focus on some new songs so that we can start it all over again and go back and play all these places again, but with some new songs to play for everyone so that possibly take a few months but hopefully sometime in the second half of this year we'll have that new album ready to record so we can have it out hopefully I would say yes maybe the first part of next year is the aim if everything goes according to plan, we'll see how we go.
​MAL-
Awesome. Those European tours, what's your favorite one? Is that too hard a question?
TIM-
It's a tricky question. Look we had such a fantastic time touring with ISHAN in October through Europe, just because it's such a legendary iconic musician in the world of heavy metal and he's a musician that all of us in the band have been huge fans of for such a long time. So that was really such a pleasure to get the chance to tour with an artist that we respect so much. The same goes for 2015, we toured through Europe with ENSLAVED because that was a band that came out with their 'Isa' album in maybe 2003 or 2004 that had a huge impact on me I'd never heard a band before mixing black metal and, and and these, you know, really progressive elements. But yeah probably the favorite European tour was our headline tour, you know, last March/April, just because we've never done a headline tour through Europe before. And obviously when people turn up, you know that they're there for you. And you know, we had some just amazing results on that tour. You know, we had two or three days in a row where we have a sold out show in London and then the next show was a sold out show in Eindhoven in the Netherlands. And then a couple days after that we have you know, one of our biggest shows ever the headlining act in Helsinki, Finland. And all the crowds were, you know, so much bigger than what we had done when we first started coming to Europe. And it really made us feel like we would getting some way like we were really starting to make an impact on that scene and made us really feel and have faith that we were on the way to becoming, you know, like, a big band in Europe, you know, in the way that we are on the way in North America, and in the way that we, you know, had had been for a little while, you know, a big band in Australia. So, just that excitement about doing that as a headline act, having people come along and selling out shows is definitely a pretty incredible experience.
​MAL-
Tim from NE OBLIVISCARIS, thanks for joining me today. Good luck with everything coming up. We look forward to seeing you guys along with CALIGULA'S HORSE, BEYOND CREATION, ALLEGAEON AND RIVERS OF NIHILL on May 9th at Lion Arts factory. Thanks for taking the time.
TIM-
My pleasure. Thank you very much for having me.