Van Canto have shot to international attention producing not only one of metal’s most original performances, but in the bigger picture of music. We interview vocalists Stefan Schmidt and Ross Thompson from the world’s first metal acapella band to get an in depth look into the now 10 year career of Van Canto, and learn about their recent big production in ‘Voices of Fire‘.
We talk about the development of Van Canto – where did it all begin, how did this idea come about, and how did people respond to the project in a musical community where audiences are known for being fiercely outspoken. The band have now made 5 albums, with their latest ‘Voices of Fire’ featuring elements that argue their biggest piece to date. Van Canto are in a good place right now, and with this interview we learn just about everything about the unique prowess of this band.
Listen to the interview or read the entire transcript below:
Well guys thank you so much for speaking to The Metalist today, really appreciate it! So, Van Canto, one of the most unique concepts in metal – acapella metal – I think we’d like to know where it all began. How did this this concept come to fruition?
Stefan: It’s 10 years ago now. It wasn’t planned to be the world’s first metal acapella band in the beginning. I just wanted to do something vocal oriented, and a metal band with lots of vocals. It could have ended like a metal opera with different instruments, but the more voices we recorded the more we loved the idea to keep it that way.
Ross: The first time we recorded it I remember quite clearly that we sat at your place after the first weekend…I came down the second weekend to record the next four songs…
Stefan: Yes, we had the lead vocals ready…
Ross: And then you played me the song that was already done and I was like ‘no way…we can do something with that!’. And we did something with that.
So it wasn’t right from the beginning you said that you were going to make a metal acapella band?
Stefan: Yes, it developed from the point we had our first video out, ‘The Mission’, and people loved it. We thought that if other people love it, and we ourselves love it, we could try to do some gigs…I think the real start of the idea that we were a band was when our drummer Bastian joined after the fourth gig we played. Then we opened up for Nightwish in front of 10’000 people…
Wow! That’s a big gig to start out with!
Stefan: Yea! We thought ‘Hey, let’s do it that way! It’s fun!’. [laughs]
So it must have been an interesting reaction when you first started and put out your first video?
Ross: Mixed. [laughs]
I’m sure you got some love and a little bit of criticism…
Stefan: It’s still that way.
Ross: It’s like any band. No matter who you are or what you do you are going to have people who are behind you, and you are going to have a bunch of people who aren’t. And unfortunately for us the people who are not behind us have a voice in the scene that we play in so they can spread words…it’s such a small community. It’s not like pop where there’s billions of people.
Stefan: But there are many voices who also support us.
Ross: There are more people that support us than there are against us. But anyway we have these loud people that just go on about it, but we just drown them out.
Surely outside the metal community some people should have taken some interest too? The concept is so unique, has anyone come up and said ‘Wow, I don’t even listen to metal but this is interesting’?
Stefan: Yes. This is a very common reaction. We also have a lot of people tell us that ‘I listened to metal when I was a kid or in my mid-20’s, and now I am 40 or 50 and because of you I started listening to that kind of music again’. That’s also a good thing.
Ross: We’ve seen 90 year old guys at festivals and concerts sitting front with the horns up!
Metal goes the whole spectrum!
Ross: Definitely.
Was it tough when you started out to convince other members of the band that acapella was going to be the way forward?
Stefan: Our members?
Ross: We knew what we were doing. But we weren’t sure how people would accept us right at the beginning.
Stefan: I think the most important fact was that we had regular metal bands before, but those bands were not too successful. If you manage to get the gigs you always wanted and tour with bands that you admire, it somehow shows that you are doing something right. It wasn’t hard work to convince all our band members to focus on this concept.
Although we are a band who always have their eyes and mind open to different kinds of music, we always do projects…it’s important for every member of the band to feel like a family, and should be allowed to do something else…as long as we come back together in the end!
Ross: As long as we take the main chunk – Van Canto has been the main chunk for the last 10 years for all of us anyway, but we have to invest into it – we’re not just going to drop it because something might just come around the corner!
Well you can see it’s paid off, I mean you’re playing the Islington Academy tonight! It’s not an easy venue to book!
Ross: [laughs] No it’s not!
So the decision to use a drummer instead of beatboxing…how come you decided to use a drummer?
Stefan: It was part of the concept from the very beginning. As I said we had planned a vocal-oriented metal sound, so we never thought of starting a production with a beatboxer. We are all from rock or metal bands so we’re just used to somebody giving the steady beat and I think it is very important for the live sound as well, because it’s hard to do the concert, and if you had a beatboxer who had the job to keep the rhythm steady it just wouldn’t work.
When you started out it seemed like about half the music you were doing was covers…what was the reaction to that?
Ross: Well actually we started with one cover and one folk song. Now we’ve got about 20 covers across all 5 albums. We only did one cover at the beginning, but because everybody recognised ‘Fear of the Dark’ and ‘Kings of Metal’…
Stefan: The first cover was Nightwish [‘Wishmaster’]…
Ross: Right! Yes, they recognised that and hooked on to that…
Stefan: That’s part of the band. If you have to get used to a new sound than perhaps it’s easier for them to follow it with the song that they already know. I think it’s OK if you do a cover of world metal, sure it’s OK if people only know us for our covers, but our plan is to have them introduced into our our music with a cover song and have them stick with the band to buy our albums, and come to our shows over and over again with our own songs. We always have to keep the balance between not being recognised as a cover band, but of course it’s fun playing ‘Fear of the Dark’ live! It’s just fun because it’s such a great song!
It’s certainly a very commanding song!
Stefan: Yes! Very epic! I think it’s also a good sign if you can mix songs with such great cover songs and that you don’t lose the tension doing a live gig.
The original music of Van Canto is fantastic. I remember the first album I heard was ‘Hero’, and I thought that was just unbelievable. It’s unconventional, I’m guessing the way that you have to write songs like that – how do you get together and write and produce these original songs?
Ross: We don’t get together! [laughs]
Stefan: Well sometimes we speak on tour…but the songwriting is actually very common in comparison to other metal bands. It’s just the idea of some chords, or main melody, or even a guitar riff. Then it’s translated into the metal acapella arrangement afterwords. There has been some riffs that have been written just by singing them, but from 70 songs about 60 of them have been written on guitar or piano.
That’s fantastic, obviously my next question would be then, something we all want to know is that epic guitar sound you make with your voice. I can imagine starting out it must have been very difficult to figure out how to do it without getting feedback…
Stefan: It was quite easy actually! If you are a guitarist and you have a great guitar amp, the idea to do metal acappela the idea to stick distortion on your voice is quite obvious in my mind. The harder job was to produce the distorted rhythm sound.
On the first album we sang quite clean, [gives example], but from then on we sang heavier, [gives example] and did the distortion by voice which has a much greater impact on the audience and a greater impact on our voices so we can’t speak much after the shows…
Ross: Yup! 3 or 4 gigs! [laughs]
I guess you guys have to take a bit more care as well since you are all vocalists – can’t really drink too much or whatever…
Ross: Well there’s no drinking at all. I mean we haven’t got a plan or there’s nothing set on paper, but we’ve just taken it on ourselves not to do the 80’s party thing where you finish the gig and down like 5 bottles of whiskey or something.
Stefan: Perhaps the last gig of a block…
Oh sure! Well it’s the last gig of a tour, you have to let loose!
Ross: Yea, that one get’s a bit more rock’n’roll!
Stefan: That’s where he get’s his headline from! [laughs]
So now you guys have a brand new album out [‘Voices of Fire’]? It looks like it is a concept, would you guys mind explaining a little about it?
Stefan: It’s the first album that we did under the brand ‘Van Canto – Metal Vocal Musical’. It’s a concept album and there is a novel that has been developed by our lead singers, but it originally was by a German best-selling author and each of our songs belong to one chapter of the book. It’s the first Van Canto album that has been released without any cover, and the songs are supported by big choirs and a speaker. So for me it’s a little bit more of a soundtrack experience – although the songs themselves the perfectly fit into every Van Canto live set just like every other original song. But we wanted to do this bigger concept to have this creative impact.
Ross: We wanted a blockbuster movie for a CD. We had the independent movies before that did quite well, and now we wanted the blockbuster!
So this is the biggest project yet from Van Canto?
Ross: So far!
Stefan: Production-wise, yes.
I did read somewhere that you guys used the London Metro Voices, which I believed Nightwish used them as well.
Stefan: Yea, and the Lord of the Rings soundtrack. It’s just 300 meters from here in the Angel Studio. And John Rhys-Davies is the guy who speaks between the songs. For us this album is heavily connected to this place.
And I guess you are going to be spending the rest of the year touring?
Ross: I wish! [laughs] That would be awesome!
Stefan: This tour is quite compact. But as always there’s not that big a of a Van Canto master plan. Of course this production was big, so for me personally it’s good that we have some creative time to breathe.
Ross: I think Stefan needs about 6 months of pure sleep! [laughs]
Stefan: Sleep would be good! But of course there will be more gigs…we’ll just carry on.
Ross: Yea we just carry on. It’s like most of the time when we say that we don’t have anything planned, by the end of the year we’ve booked like another 20 appearances or something that we are just asked spontaneously to do. Of course we’re like ‘Yea, we’ll do it’. Then we turn up and do a gig or a special or something. It all depends on what’s available, and what we are capable of doing.
Stefan: Of course also it depends on what mood we are too. Right now after the whole production, we had the promo part of it, and now we are in the tour part. I think it makes sense to focus on that part rather than having thoughts on the next 7 projects. So right now we’re here and playing a gig tonight.
Just focusing on one step at a time!
Ross + Stefan: Yes.
I saw you guys at the Wacken festival a few years ago. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people try to pack into that tent you guys were performing in.
Stefan: That must have been 2008! In 2014 we played on one of the bigger stages with guest singers and such. That was a nice evening as well. I remember the first appearance at Wacken, it went very well. We were very happy that it was so packed. Unfortunately there were many people complaining that they couldn’t get in!
That’s a good problem to have!
Ross: I was happy it was raining outside, or else no one would have come in! [laughs] But people kept saying ‘Why didn’t you play on one of the stages?’. Well nobody knew us for a start…
But you didn’t expect such a turn out! It’s great as all these years later here you are doing a headline tour.
Stefan: There are so many bands around. Honestly it’s very special to be able to play those stages or to have a European tour.
Ross: And we do appreciate the fact that there are a lot of good bands about and that there is a lot of competition to get the best venues and to get the good times.
Stefan: It’s very hard. You have to book a tour like 18 months before going out, otherwise there is no venue. It gets harder a little bit because there are more bands around. So it’s good that we started 10 years ago so we have some sort of establishment.
Bring the experience to the floor! Guys thank you so much for speaking to us today!
Stefan + Ross: Thank you very much!
