As we begin to wind down 2015 has been an incredibly eventful year for everyone in the Metal community, good and bad. Though for Australian borne Ne Obliviscaris 2015 has opened many doors to a plethora of audiences. However as the old adage goes, as one door opens another closes. Kindly devoting some time we were able to catch up with Violinist come Vocalist Tim Charles for an update on all things Ne Obliviscaris. Letting us in on just how much of a sacrifice is needed to change opportunities into realities, we’re given a glimpse into the band’s unbeatable work ethic. Discussing the creation of Citadel and what the record has done to the band’s status in the Metal community we delve into the world of one of the scenes most exciting bands.
Listen to the full unedited interview below this excerpt.
What have Ne Obliviscaris been up to from Bloodstock until now?
Sure, I guess Bloodstock was right towards the end of our European summer of festivals. Literally what happened straight after that was that day, that we played Bloodstock we drove to the airport and the next morning we had like a 6:30 am flight to go to Czech Republic to play Brutal Assault and we got there at like 4:30 in the morning and we’re all going through security and everything was taking forever which apparently is not unusual for London airports but it was our first time, so we didn’t realise that two hours was…
Cutting it fine…
And as a result of my violin getting put aside by security and being held aside for about twenty minutes until they finally looked at it, I actually missed the plane to Brutal Assault.
No!
So we were supposed to be one at like two, three in the afternoon? I’m literally at the airport talking to the festival promoter in the Czech Republic saying ok, I have managed to find a new flight but I’m not sure I’m going to make the show and everyone is going “oh fuck…”
Oh my god!
So they ended up moving us to close the festival. We were on at like two in the morning or something like that so they swapped us with one band and put us on as the very last band so that I would have time to get from London and it was a crazy situation because all of us were going thorugh together but it was just because of how long everything took and there was me who sort of got held up for all that time with my violin. I obviously look like a very nefarious character haha!
Of course!
But yeah, so we did that and that actually went really really well it was an amazing response especially because we were playing at like the middle of the night we thought that everyone would go home but it was packed and it was amazing. The problem that that created was then we had a flight at six o’clock that morning to go to Portugal to play Vagos and the festival was an hour and a half drive from the airport.
Oh no…
So we literally got off stage at like ten to three at Brutal Assault, we had a van with the doors open waiting at the back of the stage literally put stuff up and threw it in the van and drove straight to the airport. We made our flight to Portugal with about fifteen minutes to spare and then without going to a hotel, without going to be we went to the festival at Vagos and played. I think everyone slept maybe half an hour on the plane something like that?
That’s dedication!
And then we had two days off!
Oh that’s alright! You win some and you lose some!
No sleep absolute strees and chaos for two days and then a couple of days to recoup before doing a few other things but that was amazing for us. This whole past year has been amazing for us. We did a couple of festivals in India, we did a festival in Gauhadi headlining to about 12,000 people which is incredible. Then we did eleven or twelve European festivals this summer, we did Hong Kong and Japan and Israel, we did a bit Australian headline tour at the end of last year when Citadel came out. Then when we got home we had about eight weeks before coming back for this current tour. I thought it would be a long time but it was really just trying to get our lives in order I guess, because one of the things that happened when we got this tour and also a North American tour which is about to be announced for next year was that we sort of realised that everyone was going to get fired from our day jobs.
We’re always applying for leave and I think, as I work normally as a violin teacher when I am back home my school pretty much told me you can do this European tour in October / November but that’s probably it… And then I was like well, there might be an Australian tour as well…
Hahaha! Just subtly break it to them…
They have been really good and I think that at the moment I am officially on the books I just don’t have any students anymore hahaha, but you know Dan just quit his job as a train driver and you know Mark just had to quit his job because they wouldn’t give him anymore time off work. Everyone is sort of in this crazy transitional stage where we’re not this huge band making lots of money but at the same time we have all these great opportunities and we don’t want to pass them up so everyone is just sort of doing what they can to cut their costs and earn some money this way or that way to keep going. So that we can have these great opportunities, so that we can be in places like tonight, here in London and hopefully make a lot of new fans and come back again bigger sometime in the future.
