Just before Sonic Ruin vanished into hibernation I was sent a CD from a band named Flashfalcon. I was about to put the 'zine to bed, but I liked the CD enough that I was hopeful that doing an interview with them would be enough to spark my desire to keep Sonic going. One thing lead to another and the interview was misplaced and eventually forgotten about.
Until tonight.
Hiding on a hard drive I have here are a few pieces of that I had started work on, and ones that were all but finished. This is the Flashfalcon interview. At the bottom of the interview I am attaching a few You Tube links to some of their stuff, one of which is a great cover of The Wildhearts "Suckerpunch." I apologize to the band for this interview not seeing light of day sooner.
Sonic Ruin interview with Flashfalcon:
Sonic Ruin: Give us a little quick background on how you formed:
Nick Valiant : FLASHFALCON was formed 5 years ago with a reunion of very good friends who love the same kinds of music, listen to the same shit, and all have differents band experiences before!
We
are five over-powered guys from Lyon, France : Paco Billy (Vocals),
Riff Raffson (Guitar & back vocals), Nick Valiant (Bass &
Back Vocals), Gus Van Snake (Drums) and our latest addition Rick
Thunder
(Guitar
& Back Vocals), who just arrived after the departure of Matt
Gonzalez, -creator of the band with Riff and myself-, to Montreal,
Canada.
We
play some hard, loud & powerful rock with various influences like
punk rock (Dead Boys, New Bomb Turks, The Wildhearts), the
scandinavian high energy scene (like The Hellacopters, Gluecifer
etc...), hard rock (AC/DC, Judas Priest) , metal (Metallica,
Entombed) and a bit of speedrock (Zeke, Peter Pan Speedrock)...
It's a mighty mixture of all of us, that we really love to throw in
your face!
We
just released our first album, titled "Voracious Appetite,
Venomous Bite" on the label Nicotine Records. It has been
recorded & mixed by Johnny Cat at Rock'On Studios (Annecy,
France) who use to work with Backstreet Girls, The Boys, Honest John
Plain etc; and mastered by the famous Glen Robinson at Studios DOC
(NY, Montreal) who own an impressive CV (AC/DC, Nashville Pussy,
Probot, Voivod, etc...).
SR: What are your individual influences? An influence that might not be instantly noticeable:
Nick Valiant : I'm really fan of the scandinavian scene with bands like Gluecifer, The Hellacopters, Wonderfools etc... I'm also the ultimate speedrock fan in the band with bands such as Zeke, Peter Pan Speedrock, Puffball, Black Radio, etc...
Paco Billy : For my part my influences are more from punk bands such as The Dead Boys, Ramones, Dictators, The Undertones, X, Social Distortion…to heavy metal like Motley Crue, Iron Maiden (Di Anno’s days), Def Leppard, Thin Lizzy, Accept, Steel Panther… til 90’s punk indie bands like Hot Water Music, Samiam, The Posies, At the Drive In, etc…
Riff Raffson : My influences result essentially from heavy metal and hard rock : Mötley Crüe, Guns and Roses, Accept, Aerosmith, Twisted Sister… And some of them are also from trash metal: Metallica, Exodus, Slayer, Anthrax…
I’m
an old punk rock fan too, I love bands like The offspring, The
Ramones, The Descendents, RKL, The Dead Boys … even bands like
NOFX, Rancid …
Like
Nick said, I also listen a lot of Scandinavian bands like Hardcore
Superstar, Backyard Babies, Gluecifer… I love some English bands
too, I’m totally fan of The Wildhearts, The Rolling Stones…This
is not an exhaustive list, I’m sure I forgot some of my favorite
bands like in every interview!
SR: Recording method and writing style? Certain songs seem to have guitar bits added in, such as song 3.
Riff Raffson : At first, we start to put Bass and Drum’s structures together, then we record guitars and solos and finally, Paco can put the shit out of him and start shouting on songs… It works for us, so we stick to this way of working. Perhaps we’ll change our ways for the next album, I don’t know… It depends of what kind of song’s style you’re dealing with. Sometimes, we add one or two layers of power chord’s guitars on the basic structure to make it sounds heavier, but I’m not sure we did that for One after the Other… I think there is more stuff added in Breakout Killer.
SR: There are some instances of very cool guitar work in the songs, are you guys holding back at all?
Riff Raffson: Sure, because we love guitars stuffs and we also like to arrange songs, but it’s really difficult to find the good measure. Sometimes, you want to put riffs and solos everywhere, you see? Haha… So we worked a lot before the recording, especially with Matt for guitars, because we wanted to know exactly what we’ll going to do in studio and have balanced songs. But it can arrive that we find good guitar’s rearrangements during studio’s sessions as well.
SR: Same question to you Paco, songs such as “Eternal Lonesome Boy” show a vocal ability in the chorus that you don’t use most of the time, will you ever unleash your full vocal range and ability?
Paco Billy : Yes that’s definitely true ! I don’t think I use my full vocal range and ability in this album because I was still looking for my own style of singing and I wanted to show how angry and hungry I was at that time ! When we wrote this album we were all in a mood of taking revenge, proving to everyone that we are a good band, full of rage. And it maybe had influenced, unconsciously, the writing and recording process. We did it 5 days in a row. And as we were in a big rush we didn’t take time for the melodious parts. The most important at that time was to get a straight heavy and punk rock record with no frills.
For
the next album I think I will go for something more melodious and I’m
working on it! I think it takes time to find out the vocals you’re
comfortable with.
SR: On the surface, at face value, you guys come across as a Punk style outfit: loud, fast, in your face, but when listening closer, there is so much more going on. Using a band like Riverboat Gamblers as an example of a band who started one way, and kind of morphed into a different direction. What direction do you see yourself going in the future?
Nick Valiant : As I already said before, Rick just arrived after the departure of Matt, -our former guitarist, who used to write the songs with Riff-, to Canada. I really think that Rick will work very well with Riff to write dozens of terrific songs. We already had written a few new songs with Rick, and necessarily, he has his influences, his way of playing guitar, and his style of writing. He brings lots of new ideas and slicing riffs. The next songs to come are going to change a bit, but it still remains FLASHFALCON!
Paco Billy : We will still keep Flashfalcon’s background like Scandinavian, Punk rock and Heavy metal scenes but with a few changes as we’re all listening to new different stuff and the coming of Rick Thunder as our new guitar player.
Riff Raffson: I think it’s going to be heavier and more melodic at the same time. It’s a good melt isn’t it?
SR: Are there trailer parks in Europe, or are you basing your knowledge of such things on North America?
Paco Billy : I don’t have a great knowledge about how life goes in such places. In wrting Trailer Park Queen’s lyrics I wanted to let my imagination figure it out what could be a woman’s life in a mobile home. As you could noticed in TPQ it ain’t that good. It’s just the way I perceive things from where I am and I’m certainly 100% wrong. But anyway I don’t care, I just wrote it for fun.
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