Paris rockers Merge released their second album Ineffable in December last year , which we reviewed last month here.
Since then we have had the opportunity to catch up with Tim (Bass) from the band who kindly answered some of our questions.
What genre would you place you band in ?
For someone that haven’t listen to Merge before, I’d say we’re a rock band. By the past, we were more in hardcore, post-hardcore stuff so we’re still influenced at some point by that scene I guess but we’re now much more focus on melodies and creating something we’ve never tried before.
Can you give us a brief history of the band ?
Long story man aha ! The band started in 2011 after Julien went to see Underoath live and he wanted to start his own thing ! The band got a first EP « Transmission » out and their first album « Elysion » in that post-hardcore style I told you about a bit before.
The band had the opportunity to tour across Europe with bands like Limp Bizkit, Enter Shikari or Architects. At the end of those tours, the band changed line, Anthony (ex singer) decided to leave the band and Max (singer) arrived. The band started to work on new songs and we got « Ineffable » out on December 2nd 2016.
We had the chance to tour with Don Bronco in October last year across Europe and we can’t wait to play our new songs as much as possible in 2017 !
What gives you the motivation to write the music.
We ‘re all actually passionate. Music is our way to get out of every days life. We’re all super close friends and it’s our best way to have fun together.
We love touring, meeting different people everyday. Writing music permiss you to share with the entire world, we love that !
Who Are Your Biggest Influences?
We all listen to different things actually, it’s funny. But I’d say stuff like Pvris, Twenty One Pilots and Don Broco really kicked our ass recently. After we’ve all been growing up listening to stuff like Deftones, Thrice and Underoath.
We noticed a slight style change from your last album with this album having more clean vocals , what made you change?
Nothing more simple than it’s what we wanted to do that at that time aha ! We’ve grown up, listening to new things and being influenced by them I guess. We had such a great time composing this album and trying to work on melodies and stuff.
Max was actually part of another band called Crown Cardinals in a similar genre than Merge’s first album and when he joined the band he was 200% ok with that new direction, explore new stuff, taking a bit of a risk instead of staying in the comfortable genre Merge always done until now.
Any meaning behind the band name ?
As I was explaining earlier, we’re all passionate in music because of that magic thing of sharing with people. People that knows your lyrics, buy and wear your merch, that team that you’re trying to make bigger and bigger everyday. In that way, we want to merge with our supporters!
Where is the best place you have performed ?
Tricky one aha ! We had such a great time on that Don Broco tour in October, the public was insane every night, so nice to us, we were really surprised. Beginning of December, we’ve played for our release party in Paris and actually a lot of people we’ve met on tour, from different countries, came to listen to our new songs live.
It was incredible to headline that 500 cap venue and make it soldout and see all the support from everywhere. So if I had to pick one I’d maybe say this one. After that, Germany’s massive all the time and Spain’s always been special to us, we’ve toured there many times and we can’t wait to be back. We really hope we’ll be able to play in countries we’ve never played before this year like UK, US, Russia, Asia or even South America would be incredible !
What are your biggest obstacles facing the band right now.
We actually decided to get this album out on our own, no label, we’ve got no booker and stuff, just DIY. We’re really proud of that but it’s a lot of work and sometimes harder to contact people and tour and stuff but super exciting at the same time. It’s really important to have medias like you to support us, so thank you very much mate.
Do you have any plans to come over to the UK ?
Man, we’d love too. Touring in the UK is really hard, we’ve already tried by the past but haven’t manage yet. We’ll definitely do our best to tour over the UK in 2017.
What plans do you have for the future.
First of all we’re gonna do our best to tour as much as possible because it’s what we love the most. Go back to places we love but also go to places we’ve never been too. We’ve actually recorded 3 acoustics versions of some songs of our new album « Ineffable » and we should release them end of march / beginning of October.
It was really fun to do that and we can’t wait to know what you guys think about it ! And after that we’ve already started to compose our next album so, plenty of things should be coming soon !
If you like what you hear from Merge be sure to support them buy getting the album here.
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