Metal go getters SAISEI have a series of single's out, with a debut album expected later this year! The band goes into discussion about this new release, previous content, some show plans, touring as well as just wanting to grow together as a band with their music!
1. Please tell us about the history of your band and its members.
Saisei was formed in late 2019, during the COVID-19 pandemic by Stamatis Zografos (Guitars, Keyboards, Programming), Dimitris Pasas (drums) and Apostolis Diamantopoulos (vocals). Having diverse musical backgrounds as far as metal and rock music is concerned, Stamatis and Dimitris had a common interest in the UK metalcore scene. After a couple auditions, Dionisis Hassos (scream vocals) joined the group along with Thanos Galanis (guitars), which led to us releasing our first singles. A few months later, Apostolis left and Stathis Stathopoulos (vocals) & Kostas Dimpalis (bass) joined. Following the release of 3 more singles, Dimitris and Dionisis decided to leave due to personal reasons. Apostolis Diamantopoulos re-joins the band, this time focusing on mainly screaming vocals. In the same year, Kostas Stefanidis (drums) joins Saisei as a recording member. With this established line-up, Saisei started working on their debut album.
2. What’s the origin of the band’s name?
It’s a Japanese word that translates to“Rebirth”and it’s composed of the kanji 再 (read sai) meaning “again; twice; second time” and 生 (read sei) meaning “life; birth. It holds a special meaning to us, a second chance if you will. The suggestion is that our collective pasts, regrets and mistakes, as well as our struggles, have shaped us into the individuals we are today, and have therefore transformed into our strengths; a renewal that is continuous and ongoing.
3. Where is the band based out of and what is your music scene like there? Are there any local bands you could recommend?
Our band is based in Athens, Greece. Our scene regarding our genre is small, but slowly and steadily gaining momentum, offering more and more options that can compete with behemoths from the US or UK scenes in terms of songwriting, stage presence, production and sonic innovation. One of our goals is to raise the bar of our local scene and hope to create new standards for what is expected of a Greek artist in our respective sub-genres, as every band in our scene should. Some of our recommendations would be Till Silence Breaks, a band quite similar to us in sound and concept-wise, Kiss Me Cleopatra, an electronicore supergroup with a more fun and self-referential approach, with some Greek lyrics sparse throughout, and newcomers Nonlinear, with a technical approach to post hardcore.
4. How would you describe your style?
Our current style is a potpourri of elements we all are collectively into. The basis of our music is always Metalcore, but we’ve always integrated modern Post-Hardcore, Electronic Rock, and even some Emo influences which are quite evident, accented by our combination of clean and screaming vocals.
5. What have you released so far and what can someone expect from your works?
We’ve released 9 singles, including “Sink In Sin” (followed up by an orchestral version released as a separate single), two covers from The Weeknd and Juice Wrld respectively, our Japanese-themed trilogy (“Hachiman”, “Kintsugi”, “Tsukuyomi”), and three singles off of our upcoming album (“Impetus”, “F.M.L.T.”, “Saisei Goes Punk! (feat. Kellin Quinn)”). The older you go in our discography, like the trilogy, the heavier our sound gets, and obviously as we progressed, the more refined our sound got, leading to our current sonic identity which our album fully represents.
6. Do you have any new music in the works?
Our self-titld debut album is about to drop sometime later this year, which we are very excited about. Apart from that we’re an extremely prolific project and our future sophom*ore and third albums are also in a state of intense pre-production. We’re exchanging demos and ideas regarding our future tracks all the time.
7. How about playing shows and touring, have anything planned out?
Nothing set in stone yet but we’re planning for an album release show in our hometown of Athens, Greece sometime quite late in 2024, as well as a European tour, as we have a dedicated fanbase outside our country too, mostly in Germany.
8. What plans do you have for the future as a band?
We want to break new ground and tear down barriers regarding what is expected from a Greek band in terms of how much more we can grow. Besides the upcoming album release, as we mentioned earlier we are getting ready for a European tour. We are not sure yet if it’s gonna be a straight 2-3 week tour, but ideally we’d like to play in the UK, Central Europe, and, of course, the Balkans, in the span of 2 months.
9. Where can we listen to your band and where can we buy your stuff?
You can stream our songs on every available platform such as Spotify, Apple Music, Youtube etc.
Moreover, we’re on Bandcamp where you can buy our merch Earlier this year we launched our Patreon which gives our fans the opportunity to support us through various subscriptions. We offer small subscriptions from 3$ (the price of a coffee) to 25$.
10. What is it you’d like a listener to remember the most when hearing your music for the first time?
That is up to them, but music is a mood altering drug, the more effective we are as songwriters, the more our audience identifies a strong feeling with one of our songs. So it doesn’t matter so much what it is they remember, as long as that feeling is augmented through our music. We want to double down on focusing on what the emotion of any song we’re working on is and create an experience that enhances said emotion as humanly possible.
Useful links:
Site:https://saiseiband.com/
Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/artist/4L86uPw4qYP1pdCW7xrtiS
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/saisei_officialband/
YouTube:https://bit.ly/3n9VShD
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/saisei.music/
Bandcamp: https://saiseiofficialband.bandcamp.com/
