interview: Thunder Lord

Thunder Lord

Thunder Lord is traditional metal from Chile. Their songs generally stay at the quicker tempos, in the tradition of fast and melodic heavy metal that you can remember without difficulty and that you will enjoy immediately. Their new album is called “Prophecies of Doom,” but don’t mistake the title for a doom band: Thunder Lord music is a headbanger’s ball through and through. What is the fire of Thunder Lord? Who is the beast within Thunder Lord? The band’s guitarist/vocalist Esteban took some time to answer these questions. ¡Gracias, amigo! Let’s rock!

Thunder Lord! How is life treating your metal band in Chile?

We are from Santiago, the capital of Chile, here are a lot of heavy metal fans, but not much support for national bands. When came Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath and other monster bands like that, reunite 40.000 people, but in the events of heavy metal or thrash any weekend goes almost 200 people. We participate in concert almost once per month and travel to different cities to promote our speed/heavy metal.

How did your band start?

The band begins in 2002, and in the first two years literally we learned to play, compose some songs and change drummer twice, then we recorded our first demo “Thunder Attack” at the end of 2003. Then we start to play live in bars with other thrash metal bands. After that we changed to our actual drummer Eduardo, and recorded our second demo “Thunder Strike Back” at the end of 2005.

In that time we start to play in other cities and our first demo was re-released by “Alvacast Records” (Bolivian) and distributed in some countries of Latin America. In 2008 we record our first album in a studio, we recorded again 8 songs from our first two demos and we composed 7 new songs, and we released independently “Hymns of Wrath in This Metal Age” with 15 tracks.

We keep playing, but we take a little rest. In 2012 we record our second album "Heavy Metal Rage", and one of the founders, Misael left the band, and we replaced with Diego on guitars, later in 2013 we signed under the German Label “Iron Shield Record” and they released “Heavy Metal Rage” to Europe.

In 2014 we recorded our first live album “Thunder Storm”. Then we composed and recorded our third album “Prophecies of Doom” and was released by “Iron Shield Records” this year. A couple of months ago Diego left the band and was replaced by Javier. So now we are Esteban (voice and guitars), Javier (guitars), Francisco (bass) and Eduardo (drums).

What do you call your genre?

We listen different styles of metal (traditional heavy metal, power metal, modern heavy metal, thrash, speed metal, etc.). But for Thunder Lord we want to play speed and heavy metal, but with some melodic arrangement. We are very influenced by the German heavy metal bands, but we don´t want to be a bad copy of any of they, so we try to do our own styles, to be recognized when the people listen us. Is difficult to describe our own music with words, is very subjective, but for me is a 80% of melodic speed metal, and 20% pure heavy metal.

Tell us about your discography.

We have 2 demos, 3 studio albums and 1 live album. You can buy it directly with us or through Iron Shield Records. Digitally you can get it in the principal mp3 stores (Itunes and many others), and of course you can listen us in Spotify.

What made you a headbanger?

The love for heavy metal, when you convert heavy metal in part of your life, and start to receive good feedback about your songs, you can´t stop to play.

How can people support you?

Listen us, then buy our albums jejejeje.

Any shows coming up?

We have a couple of dates scheduled for the next two months in Santiago and possibly other city of south of Chile, but nothing in the mid or long time. Our goal is in a moment of the future play in Europe or USA.

Are you able to recover some of the costs of having a band?

In Chile there is no money in metal, as I comment you in a couple of answers before, there are so few fans supporting this. We sell albums but this money is only for do more promotion, and for play almost nobody here charge for play, only charge the costs of travel, food and lodging. The tickets pay the backline, the rent of the locals and the promoter. The principal problem is the mass of people that support this. Much of the fans only listen foreign bands, for many years the Chilean bands are considered boring or bad copies of others. But slowly this has been changed, but still we have a long road to cover.

What is your approach to lyrics?

We do lyrics according the style, we have a lyrics about mythological stories, wars, typical steel, swords and leather songs. But some others about we see our society and the stupidity that reign in many people of our country. For me is more important the musical part, the lyrics comes in a second priority accompanying the feelings of the music.

What other news do you have?

We want to thank you for the interview and the possibility of promote us and let us know in USA. You can find us:

www.facebook.com/thunderlordofficial

mail is thunderlordattack@yahoo.es

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