HARD NOISE: NOVELISTS // Put Their Own Spin On Concept Albums

When one thinks about metalcore, usually the plethora of artists offered by the thriving scenes of the US and the UK spring to mind, with the Australian tradition of producing great ‘screamo’ also of note. All too often the acts coming out of mainland Europe are overlooked, but French progressive hardcore pioneers Novelists are sure to change that perception over the touring cycle of their unique new release Noir.

Written as a concept record in four chapters, with alternate tunings and mixes of each episode, Novelists bring a refreshingly original twist to a genre plagued by sameness and repetition.

Novelists Bassist Nico Delestrade took some time to talk us through how the concept came about, as well as touching on the insecurities that plague artists feeling the pressure of the creative industry.

HYSTERIA: Where do I catch you?

NICO: I’m in Berlin in Germany which is where I live. The rest of the band live in Paris, so I’m the only one that is far away, but I’m moving back to Paris early next year because I’ve been here for three years and it works, we manage to still be a band, but it’s a bit hard to make it fully work. I’m the one that organises everything, and it’s a bit hard to do that when you are over 1,500 km’s away.

How did the band get going with you living across the continent?

I don’t write any of our music. We all have different skill sets in the band, our own roles, so our guitarist and the drummer write all our music, and what happens is I produce the music. The band record most of their stuff in Paris, and then I record the bass over here, then Amael, our drummer, then comes over the Berlin and we work on the album in my home studio. It doesn’t get in the way of anything- it’s more a few flight tickets. The only thing that’s annoying is that, for example, we did all the pre-order bundles on our own website, and it was annoying for me to not be able to organise everything, like calculating shipping costs and all. Those things don’t really matter for the album, but it’s irritating and makes things a little bit more complicated. Apart from things like that, it was way easier this time around with Noir. We did the first record this same way, so we knew what we were doing which made everything much easier.

On that idea of this being like round 2, what do you think you guys will do differently this time around that you didn’t opt for on your first album cycle?

I don’t think we want to do something completely differently. The major change is just we wanted this to be a bigger cycle, we want bigger tours and bigger numbers. We will make everything the same but with more ambition.

The record itself is super interesting with the concept that runs through it with the four chapters. Who was the driver of that idea?

It came very naturally and grew with the record itself. It wasn’t something that we planned. We knew we wanted something separate in four chapters with every emotion, but we didn’t know much more than that. In the process of writing the record the ideas just came and it started to take shape. The first idea came from our guitarist who has been studying classical music for years, and he suggested following on what they do in symphonies, like with three movements in one big piece of music. He wrote two chapters like that, with one being technical and fast, the first chapter, and a ballad being the fourth. Our drummer wrote the two other chapters, and we decided to make them have different feelings, so we put in different guitar tunings and mixes on those chapters. That was the first idea, and then we read all the lyrics that our singer wrote, and we thought it would be very fitting to make it an analogy about the stages of mourning. After a very dark time in your life, be it depression or whatever, you have all those steps before getting better, and that’s what we wanted to convey. If you listen, you can hear the first chapters is the sadness, the second is the anger, the third is the acceptance and the fourth is the reconstruction. That came very naturally during the writing process. It was all just ideas that came together.

On a past interview the band stated that the album showcases each aspect of the band’s personality. What is the Nico aspect of this record?

I think it would be the rock vibe. I’ve been listening to a lot of very dark pop rock. Bands like PVRIS have been a major influence, and I think that would be my side. That’s tricky to say because I didn’t write the thing, but I still spoke about it and I guess even without writing you put your influences in it.

When the band was talking about what they wanted for the record, was it tricky to settle on a musical direction, or did it arise organically?

You can tell that there are lots of influences and we didn’t pick one direction here, because none of us really agreed on what to do. I would agree with the drummer for somethings, and the guitarist would agree for other things, so none of us had the same idea. For example, I didn’t want to do any heaviness originally, but my guitar player didn’t want any of the rock music so I’m glad we all had different ideas, because it makes the record very diverse. We all had different views, and I’m glad.

Was that creative tension part of what the band described as the “painful” writing process?

I think it was a big challenge for my guitar player, because he wrote Souvenirs and he was ready to just write the same thing. It was tough for him to figure out “wait, you want me to change and evolve?” He was always insecure about it and producing a good product, so it took him a lot of time to go back to writing. I remember having most of our drummer’s songs written, and the guitar player didn’t have anything, and we were very behind on the album. I remember that was very tough. I mean, I can understand the feelings, and Souvenirs wasn’t the most successful record ever, but there were some people who liked it alot, and he was afraid of disappointing people. I was trying to push him to write but without being a jerk. It was rough, and when we started, when it was all written, the idea was to not make any compromise at all, so when something wasn’t satisfying us, we would just erase it. When you work for two days you work and you listen back to it and it doesn’t click, there is a part of you that goes “let’s say this is great so that we don’t have to work on it.” But then you just have to be honest, and it’s very hard to erase it, even though you work forever on it. That was tough but thankfully it didn’t take to long with that. Overall it was a painful record but not in a negative way; the process was hard, but it was what we needed to do to get the result.