Infected Brain

Present yourself to the readers

My name is Hanna and I am the lead singer of the Swedish cinematic metal band Nocean! Nocean is a band that started in 2014 as a classic hard rock band and now we have developed into a gothic, cinematic metal band. We are creating Sweden’s next metal musical now when we are doing our third album project - it’s a music album, an animated short movie and a metal show! The album will be out during fall 2021. We’re doing it all independently and letting our followers join in our creation process!

Who composes ?...How does it work in the band ?

We compose songs all together, but I would say that Oscar (guitarist) and I are leading the process a bit. But the way we do it often is - someone comes up with a foundational idea to an intro, verse and chorus. And then we work on it together in the studio/on our rehearsals. And then it goes into production which is in our own studio so… we do it over time even if we set deadlines and of course the drums need to be recorded when we can record several songs at the same time. Our new drummer has a very large drum kit :D

Who writes the texts ?..What are they talking about ?..How does inspiration come ?

I write the lyrics, but I let the guys feedback on them and we also have a fictional plan for what each song will be about, emotionally :) Since the album is a story, combined with an animated short film, the lyrics on the album will be the emotions of the characters.

Why the name NOCEAN ?

We have kept the name since the start. Our first bass player came up with the suggestion “Notion” - and I played with the word and came up with “Nocean” - as in an ocean of ideas! (Deep, I know)

What are your personal musical tastes and your influences ?

For me personally, I listen to very many different genres, but hard rock and metal is of course the genre I listen to the most. For this album, I am inspired by music from Dark Sarah, Devin Townsend, Within Temptation and actually even cinematic music like John Williams and Danny Elfman!

How was the shooting of the clip THE PHANTOM ? and why this choice ?

Since covid-19 makes it hard for us to meet as often as we want to… we filmed some slow motion shots during November 2021, with shots that were more generic and could be used in the story to almost any song, and then when we decided which song to release, we recorded the drum video parts at the same time when Jonas recorded the drums in the studio, and then our other parts separately as well. The part with the guys doing the choir next to each other is all post production made by me! They were filmed individually.

With Management and booking, how do you work ? And with whom ?

We do almost everything ourselves. We have our manager Lena Malmberg, she is great and helps us a lot with logistics, but foremost she is gold when it comes to taking care of us when we go on tour and when we do larger music video recordings. She also has a little team of friends and family members that has been so great to have in our crew! Other than this, currently we are doing all the bookings ourselves for our album tour. We have been fooled by a company before, and so we are very careful with who we work with.

What are your projects ? (for the band)

Right now it’s all about completing the album project including the music, the short animation movie and the theatrical show! We are trying to build our Patreon so that we can get some financial help on the way from our followers. We are also hoping to do a couple of shows this spring, depending on covid restrictions of course, but at least one bigger live stream is in the plan.

What do you expect from the future ?

We hope for Covid-19 to end so that we can tour! We have booked theatres already for fall 2021, so we are ready to just hit the stage!

What's your motto ?

I will say something klisché here but I actually believe that staying true to yourself and to others, to be loyal and friendly in your approach, is the thing and especially when it comes to metal. We don’t need to be super hard/angry looking men covered in tattoos to be metal. We can be young, laughing people doing whatever we want and still be metal. And motto number two would be to always try to think outside the box!

Website to remember

http://noceantheband.com
http://facebook.com/noceantheband
http://instagram.com/nocean
http://youtube.com/noceantheband

What would you like to say to the readers ?

If you’re a fan of metal operas, cinematic music and gothic aesthetics, then you’ve found a band that loves it too! Hope you enjoy our music and thanks for reading all of this!