Sometimes it takes a while for what you want to do in life to truly come to fruition. For GAEREA, it’s taken a decade for them to reach this point.
Though when you look at where they were at the beginning of their career, taking the Portuguese heavy scene by storm with their crushing take on black metal, and compare it to where they are right now, penning soaring metalcore anthems whilst being signed to Century Media Records, it’s clear how important context is for exactly how they have ended up here.
This is where vocalist Alpha finds himself now. Though remaining masked and anonymous within the band, the things that he has injected into ‘Loss’, the collective’s fifth full-length, are as heartwrenchingly stark and beautifully open as if you were staring eye-to-eye with him. To combine such an unfurling of years of earnest feeling, previously kept inside like a coiled spring, ready to burst, with such relentless battery is something that has been in the making for a long time. And now it’s here, it feels like it’s going to change everything.
To find out more about the process of bringing this sensational album to life, Rock Sound took a dive into the unknown with Alpha and discovered how his relationship with GAEREA has shifted to a place that has allowed this album to exist.
Rock Sound: How are you feeling at this point, where this record is no longer something you have been working on and instead something that is now very much a part of your story?
Alpha: Everything is still very recent, and we’re still just starting to understand what this is. More than anything, I am excited for this crazy year we have ahead. I can’t wait to play these songs live. So far, everything has been quite open with the singles we’ve put out, and people understand what kind of band we are, but I think there are other songs that are very different from what people are really expecting. I’m just very curious; I’m not fearful, but I know it’s impossible to please everyone. I’m also curious to see how many people we piss off, too.
RS: When did you realise that something was different about what you were working on compared to what you had created in the past? Was there a particular moment that it started to sink in, or has it been more of a natural easing into things?
Alpha: The first song that you hear on the record, ‘Luminary’, is the first one I wrote. That’s what I have done with all of our records before now. But then the second song I wrote was ‘Stardust’, which is the last one that you hear. That’s when I realised this one was going to take a bit longer. ‘[2022 album] ‘Mirage’ was done in two weeks. [2024 album] ‘Coma’ took us two to three months. This one took us a whole year to do, because it just felt so overwhelming at times to nail some things about it. But also, it’s a record where I knew from the start that I wanted to challenge myself way more as an artist, as a musician, as a singer, as a songwriter. I wanted to really like put myself out there with my inner emotions. Of course, the whole concept around the record is completely about my traumas, my fears and people that I lost in my life, which is a first for us.
But I also wanted to sing. I wanted to use seven-string guitars. I wanted to build songs and not just make tracks. We’re all very used to writing ten-minute songs, and I’m very happy that we’ve done things like that, but I don’t want to build my career with this one trick that I know I can pull off. I wanted to have more orchestral parts. I wanted to have more beats. I’ve wanted to write a dark pop song for many years at this point.
It just came to a point where we had to put ourselves out there. We’re reaching 10 years as a band, and I’m happy with what we’ve done. Our fan base knows exactly who we are and who we can be. And you only live once. So, let’s just fucking go. I already risked everything that I had to become a musician. Yeah, why wouldn’t I risk a bit more and make a record like this?
RS: How do you feel as though the person you were at previous creative points in the last decade would feel about the person you are now, and how you are approaching Gaerea?
Alpha: If I could go back in time and tell myself, ‘Alright, in five years, we’re gonna make a pop song’, I would shit myself. I mean, I would hate my future self, because I was just a very different person. We had different people in the band. We had different approaches. I was a very different kind of kid, and I wanted to prove myself in a scene that doesn’t give you anything back. Now, I feel accepted.
I love black metal, and I think it’s, I think it’s one of the most freeing expressions of art there is. I’m never going to shit on the plate that we ate from, but it is a very gatekeeping world. And I realised that I sometimes felt a bit afraid of risking things because we might get fucking nailed for it. Black metal fans love black metal because it is black metal. It’s supposed to be raw, uncomfortable, dangerous. I understand all those things. Now, we’re still that kind of band. We don’t sound like a black metal band, per se. We never did, honestly. When we were trying to be a very aggressive black metal band, people would already call us an indie, post-rock, black metal, or hardcore band, because we never had that essence that Norwegian bands have. We’re from Portugal. We write music differently. We have different backgrounds.
So I was just ready to find something else, and I only realised it in the last two or three years. Something that will stay true to what I believe is important in my music. Those black metal roots are still there, even in the more metalcore-sounding songs, but it’s just time to do something else. Otherwise, we’re going to get stuck in this loop where I will just feel very bored and angry because I didn’t risk enough when the chance was there.
RS: That same frustration can boil over when you feel as though you want to say something with your music, but the pieces aren’t in place for you to make that so. But considering just how much you seem to exorcise within your lyrics on this album, it must feel amazing knowing that you waited until the right vessel was presented to you.
Alpha: It’s not like I ever felt like I needed to express these things, or work on these things, or even explore them within music. It’s just that, with life passing, I realised that some things that I’ve done in my life are rooted in these moments from my teenage years and how those things shaped me. In writing this album, I realised I had never wanted to be a musician in the first place. When I was a teenager, I was just trying to play guitar with my best friend. He was so into music; he wanted to become a singer and form a metal band. He already had everything figured out. He actually passed away as we were approaching adulthood, and it’s only now that I realised that I became the singer and the musician seeking a dream. So sometimes I feel like I stole somebody else’s life, you know?
Then there were a few more personal problems that made me realise that I needed to explore these things a bit more. Talk about and share them more, and not just keep them to myself, because that’s what I’ve done for the last 15 years. It’s been a case of exploring them, but not actually curing them. Because you never cure these things. They stay with you; it never goes away. But now I know that writing these songs helped me as a form of therapy. I don’t feel as much guilt anymore for things I didn’t say or how I could have been there more or seen the signs. The guilt is gone, but the feeling of loss remains, and that is what the album is about. The more you talk about things, the clearer they become. And I’ve only realised that after 16 years.
RS: As you look forwards with these songs under your belt and with the success that has already come from opening up in such a way, how does it feel not to be carrying all of that weight just by yourself anymore? What does it mean for you as a band?
Alpha: Before, we were just a very different band. We really weren’t as open with each other as we are now, five or six years ago. We had different people, some of those people being very angry. Now we’re more of a family, and we love each other’s presence. We’re way more in touch with our emotions. We’re way more expressive. We are much more in line with how I actually feel now. Sometimes it is, ‘I don’t want to see your face right now because you’re pissing me off’, but that’s something that I wouldn’t have said in the past because I wouldn’t want to piss that person off, so I simply wouldn’t do anything about it. But now, we can.
It’s just so great to have that freedom to be yourself and tell your bandmates how you feel. That’s what opens the gate for an album like this, for them to understand what is coming next. I really think it came at the right moment for us all, because it resonates with many of the things we have all experienced in our lives. And because of that, it was an album and a process where everybody sank their teeth into that little bit more. Because everybody understood how personal an experience this can be for us, and how it can be for the fans, too.
