A Chat With VISERION
Photographed by Rebecca PaigeVISERION is a Queens based black metal band who takes raw black metal and fuses its elements with their influences. These include death, grindcore, and progressive dynamics. The band has recently announced a split album with TELOCH VOVIN, which will be released on July 28th.
What is the process you go through when creating new music?
Either Ben or Cris will usually have a skeleton of a song ready and we will jam it out with Matt and Tasso then either change certain parts completely, add layers or add segments until we as a whole band fully flesh out the song.
What is the theme of your songs?
We enjoy writing stories in our lyrics. Our songs on the split for example have lyrics about No Man’s Land during WWI or about the Roman soldier who stabs Jesus on the cross. The music also goes along with these themes by conveying the emotion of the song thru the instrumentation.
Who is the guest vocalist you have and what have they contributed to the band?
We are excited to have two amazing guest vocalists on this split. First we have Janan Kerry from fellow NYC black metal project Protagony. We also have the great Xenomorph who is an amazing one man black metal project! (Check them both out!)
What do you have planned for the rest of the year?
We have our split release/listening party coming up at Duffs on Brooklyn on July 28th. We also are playing the awesome Death of the Summer fest in Baltimore with a bunch of sick bands including our friends in Tombstoner, Festergore and Cranial Damage. We are also working towards writing our second album.
What do you hope the future holds for VISERION?
We would love to continue to play more and more states to meet and make new fans! We also want our music to grow and evolve as we do. We are all huge fans of black metal and creating songs and albums is our number one passion. Being signed to a label that will help us grow and distribute our music would also be an amazing opportunity.
Who are your biggest influences when creating music?
We all bring our own influences and style into the band. Ben loves bands such as Darkthrone and Spectral Wound and the more aggressive styles. Whereas Cris and Tasso bring more melodic elements to our music with influences such as Emperor and Ultar. Lastly our drummer Matt listens to a lot of music outside of black metal such as Between the Buried and Me and Porcupine Tree and brings a more progressive sound to us.
What was it like creating the split album The Iron Age Of Kali Yuga with Teloch Vovin?
It was a unique experience. We had the idea to do a split with them for awhile as they are friends of ours and we wanted to collaborate. We then decided let’s collab with some other friends on two of the songs. We’re super excited that we get to not only release this split with Teloch Vovin but also have great people such as Xenomorph and Janan featured on it. Making music with our friends just made this extra special for us.
If you could write a song with any other band, who would it be?
For me personally it would have to be Opeth. The way they are able to flawlessly transition between heavy brutal riffs to clean progressive parts is something I would love to learn and be a part of. (Sorry Tasso)
