Tsunamiz, released the new single, "Magickal Seeds", and Bruno Sobral vocalist and guitarist, gave us the privilege of this exclusive interview with MGMEIA.
In a very interesting interview, we talked and got to know a bit of the person behind Tsunamiz.
And helped us to better understand the lyrical concept of Magickal Seeds!
Bruno Sobral, from Seixal, Almada, Portugal, graced us with a two-hour conversation in which we spoken on several points to understand a bit of this interesting work. He is an eclectic artist in which he mixes rock with electronic music.
In his lyrics he distances himself from political connections. In this pleasant conversation he spoke to us about a bit of everything, from the past to the future. His ambitions and new projects on the way.
Bruno Sobral has a high intellectual level, demonstrates his passion for philosophy, is not oblivious to what is happening around him and in the world, and his lyrics go in that direction.
"Magickal Seeds" - in response to the question if the lyrics were some kind of code or warning to the younger ones, Bruno answers with a tender and affable smile:
Bruno Sobral (BS) - I like to hear people's interpretation! Each one has his own interpretation! For me the message in this song is the Seed. And that message itself can be magical. It's a kind of twist It has a bit to do with the way of seeing things.
MGMEIA (M) - What are your inspiration sources for this song, you have a very rich mixture of different musical styles...
(BS) - I grew up with NIRVANA. I started listening to NIRVANA with my uncle, we have a difference of seven years. And in 1992 I was seven, I was listening to NEVER MIND in his room. Listening and enjoying the music, and I think I became obsessed! At thirteen, I was walking around school with an acoustic guitar on my back and Kurt Cobain's cut long hair. NIRVANA turns out to be a big influence, because I know it was because of them, from whom I not only learned to play but also to sing and compose. Sometimes people question a lot about Kurt Cobain, in fact you hear people criticizing Seattle bands a lot, but in relation to Cobain, like "the guy couldn't play or he wasn't a great guitar player." But I think of all the Seattle artists, he was the one who had the greatest aptitude for creating melodies over chords. Guitar chords, simple but memorable riff's, I think a lot of people miss seeing the genius, and how complicated it is to compose with two chords, three chords or four chords. And he had this melodic ability, for me brilliant and the best at the time, and I learnt a lot from that! This led me to alternative music, above all, then I had a phase of "The Doors"...
(M) - so you went back in time a bit...
(BS) ...yes, yes! But I've always done that! For me music is not temporal! Precisely, what identifies music more temporally, is the production and the arrangement, because otherwise if you undress a melody and a harmony it, the harmony, lives and survives in any epoch, in the future, in the past... and it will be eternal, that is why it is often said that music is universal. Yes and it's true, it's universal and timeless!
I consumed a lot of "The Doors", I always felt affinity for the Legends, you have for example in the 60's the era of psychedelics, the era of the hippies, come on... You have the Icons, like Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, I recognize a lot of vocal talent in a female "Jimi Hendrix" voice in relation to Janis Joplin, but it doesn't mean that much to me, I don't feel so much affinity or so much influence.
If we go into that road, my influences are "The Beatles", "The Roling Stones", in the Brain Jones era, Bob Marley, Two Pac, in rap. It was at that time or a little bit later that I explored Hip Hop, and I immersed myself in that world, in that universe that currently I haven't explored much. I explain. My base is rock, and sometimes the rock people and the more instrumentalist music people who play have a certain disdain for Hip Hop...
(M) - Although in the Heavy Metal world we have examples, from "Aerosmith" with "Run DMC" or "I am the Man" of "Anthrax" or even the "Beastie Boys", that did good works in that field, but there wasn't much evolution in the sense of that idea, maybe we could say that "Limp Bizkit" or "Linkin Park", with the rise of Nu Metal, was channelled to a resurgence of that fusion had no merit!
(BS) - I followed that time of Nu Metal and Grounge, because I was a teenager and it wasn't proper for me, because it's a bit before my time. To give you an idea, when Kurt Cobain died I was about 8 years old, but even so I followed and got really hooked by his work and then I got the Nu Metal scene, 98/99, what's interesting is that many bands were releasing work in 94, and it was then that here in the South Bank, I with thirteen years old, I started, or better said, I was at my first metal concert, to realize that the metalheads that consumed Hardcore, also had consumption for Nu Metal. The release of the second album of "Limp Bizkit" (Significant Other), the first album of "System of a Down" and "Slipknot". And they were interesting bands, but as time went by I distanced myself a bit, from Metal so to speak, because I recognised in some compositions too many clichés, but you find that in all genres of music and that's a fact!
But this also has to do with what I wanted to do. It became transformed, or I discovered it over time as I was playing and fine tuning my composition and consuming music from various artists and I was always selecting what I wanted to hear, more of this or less of that! Like I want to do stuff more like this, and we start to digress! Talking about favourite artists...
(M) - Just a small aside. On your concert in Corroios (Seixal - Portugal), it's very clear your Heavy Metal influences when you pick the guitar!
(BS) - You might be right! That also has a lot to do with the themes I select, for a concert, but not only, as well as for the albums themselves, but all due to the musical influences of when one is young, even because my favourite guitarists... but just a small aside is that I consumed a lot of "Guns n' Roses", I think Slash also contributed a lot! Although I listen to a lot of everything, AC DC (Back in Black), Slayer (Season in the Abyss), Metallica (For Whom the Bell Tolls), because they are in terms of composition or moments in music surpass any barrier of genre, of era! And that's how I consume the music, and that's how I'm also influenced, because then in the creative process I make scenes, which basically correspond to emotions, in a process like that intuitive, and since I'm the one producing, I finalize and arrange, I let myself go...
But of course, there are always surprises when we are producing and we end up taking certain paths because they turn out to be the best, fortunately!
(M) - Badly compared is like Lady Gaga who loves Heavy Metal but sings PoP!
(BS) - (laughs) Yes, it's a sector that influences you, and of course that's one of my goals every time I make a song it has to have something memorable!
I've been developing that over the years, I started creating very early, I've created a lot of things good stuff and a lot of crap, but I end up developing a quality control! You make a riff or you are, and you say "well, this is useless...".
(M) - Portuguese music influences, I know you are a Zeca Afonso fan! Is there anyone else who inspires you, nationally?
(BS) - I really like Zeca Afonso, António Variações, I think António appeared at the wrong time, if he was alive he would be the number one artist in terms of audience. In terms of sales, I think he would be our David Bowie. I am a music guy so I think in visual terms, Variações, whatever visual style he had was cool! But musically I felt not only the voice, the lyrics the melodies, everything! I think with what he showed he would be a Lusitanian David Bowie! I love Ornatos Violeta, a Portuguese alternative rock and it's very well explained in the excellent album "O Monstro Precisa de Amigos". Moonspell, I ended up listening to the first three albums...
(M) - Do you think you have influence from musicians from your area, Brain Dead, Da Weasel...
(SB) - take a look for example, Dead Remind, actually it was the first concert I went to, when I was thirteen years old, it opened a brutal vision, because I thought "wow, this is brutal", in the sense that it was my first live concert, and then all those people, they were talking about the Nu Metal (or New Metal), they were talking about Sepultura's "Roots", because of the mixture of the indigenous sonority with the Metal!
Then Ectofinger, Eat Machine, are without a doubt the bands from the Margem Sul (South Bank - crossing the bridge from Lisbon to Almada) that influenced me! Everything afterwards is a dressing up! It makes about come out everything good you did in your composition!
In my humble opinion I think Moonspell were an interesting band more than now. For example "Wolf Heart" with "Alma Matter" I think they had a more proper entity!
(M) - In terms of literature what do you consume?
(BS) - (Laughs) I've read more! Now it's more audio-book. It's because sometimes there isn't that time in the day to sit down and open a book, but I have done it and mainly on public transport, but as always it's debatable. I'm a big fan of Fernando Pessoa though, I think I've read almost all of his work. Nietzsche, German philosopher! And many more philosophers, even because in the first year of philosophy at University, when I entered the Faculty of Letters in Lisbon, I did nothing there and left (laughs), I read many philosophers, but I always kept that passion for the philosophical field!
(M) - For some special reason?
(SB) - Yes, for "Red Pill"! Nowadays you hear a lot about "Red Pill", about seeing things as they are, or as it really is! It was that awakening, to complement already some experiences that I had had in my life and I didn't have, maybe, the right answers that made sense to my experiences, even because it has everything to do with the human condition, it has to do with you and with others, how the human being acts and thinks! I remember sitting at the bar in the University, reading Nietzsche's "On the Genealogy of Morals", and saying "AH OK"!
(M) - A Philosopher more turned to the sociological field then...
(SB) - Yes, sociologist and almost psychologist, part Freud! But there he is, not only for the content but also for the way he wrote, because above all he was almost a novelist in the field of philosophy, so much so that he is known for his expressly powerful, strong and sometimes somewhat enigmatic writing, but experientially well written, something that I also recognise in Fernando Pessoa. I believe that for me they are two of the most fascinating writers to read! In fact, Fernando Pessoa ended up incorporating several different philosophers, which was funny. And he did it intensely with his heteronyms! Here I will adopt a more naturalistic scene and here a more pessimistic scene, etc...
(M) - I think that gave us a better understanding of the lyrical composition of "Magickal Seeds"! What is your main message in it, I already expressed here my point of view, but you as the author what is the message you want or would like to transmit.
(BS) - There it is, I am not sure if I want to, to push something, but I want it to be in the taste of the listener because it is not a political statement in the sense of being something stagnant, something that for me has to be something alive, as long as it is not interpreted or explained, I think it continues to live. And if it's dissected or in this case diversified it ends up losing interest and ends up desiccated!
What I want or what I represent as an independent, and I do it intensely, different songs from each other. People might think that I follow that line of work, which is not reality, because there are many opposite things in my work.
(MGMeia) - Future works...
(Bruno Sobral) - I have another video clip coming out and another album with themes that don't invoke "Magickal Seeds II", or anything like that.
(MGMeia) - You will follow the line of composing according to your state of mind...
(Bruno Sobral) - Exactly! Not only with state of mind but also with diversity. I like diversity in the albums, I like different songs, it will be an album maybe more melodically rich. There is one of the themes that is "Wonderful Day", it is a song that maybe will sound like a song composed by "The Beatles" in the 60s!
(MGMMeia) - Thanks for your precious time and we'll be waiting for "Wonderful Day".
