Hello friends ! We will discover the universe of THE WISE MAN’S FEAR but especially their new album.
What’s the story for VALLEY OF KINGS ?
The story for ‘Valley of Kings’ is sort of like a cross between ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’ and ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth.’ Five of the most powerful warriors in the land band together to set out on a quest to destroy five evil relics (The Relics of Nihlux). to do this they must find the legendary Valley of Kings deep below the surface of the Earth. Along the way, they encounter lots of adversity both internally and from their environment.
Who composes ?...How does it work in the band ?
We have an extremely collaborative songwriting process as a band. Usually Paul will write a concept and starter lyrics for songs while Nathan, Codi, Tyler, Joe, and Thomas work on guitar structures. Then when we approach pre-production we will mix and match lyrics to instrumentals that fit the tone of each particular story component. Finally, Paul will collaborate with Tyler and Joe to finalize vocal patterns and make tweaks to lyrics.
Who writes the texts ?..What are they talking about ?..How does inspiration come ?
Our drummer Paul writes the majority of the lyrics and concepts. Each record takes place in a fantasy universe called Pneuma. The inspirations for songs usually have some foundation in our everyday lives but are then encoded into a metaphorical story format and told from the perspective of our characters. One of the major recurring motifs of our music is trying to distill quintessential human experiences into songs, whether it be falling in love, achieving success, failure, or conflict. There is also a lot of subject matter in our songs dwelling on the meaning of life and what living a good life looks like.
Why the name THE WISE MAN’S FEAR ?
We chose to name ourselves after a novel by an author named Patrick Rothfuss because of his incredible fantasy storytelling, worldbuilding, and narrative voice. We repurposed the phrase to be a statement against the destructive power of pride. The message we are trying to convey is the Socratic principle that the more wisdom and knowledge a person attains the more he realizes he does not understand about the world. Oftentimes the answers we find just generate more questions than they resolve.
What's your best live memory ? And why ?
One of our favorite live memories to reminisce on is the time we played the Indianapolis date of the Vans warped tour in the summer of 2015. We were all very nervous for the show and it was an extremely hot summer day. in the middle of our first song of the set, our harsh vocalist Joe puked all over the stage monitor but just kept performing. The whole experience was hilarious and surreal.
In studio, what was the atmosphere for your new album ?...etc.…
The atmosphere we wanted to achieve for Valley of Kings was inspired by ancient Celtic instrumentation which is present throughout the entire record. We chose those sounds for the fantasy elements in order to invoke a powerful warrior feel on the tracks to augment the story. We also designed the flow of the album's energy to mirror the story arc of the record, so it has some really dynamic ups and downs that correlate to what is happening with the characters.
