Hanna Tsepesh: Zdravaite (hello in Bulgarian) Vladimir and Rosen Kolev! Welcome to THE GATES OF METAL! Thanks you so much for your interest to answer this interview! First of all, tell us little bit about MYSTICA and also introduce yourselfs and the others band members.
Rosen: Greetings THE GATES OF METAL! The band has a long history as emotional intensity and ideological progress. It has changed a lot trought time. At the moment the members are: Rosen Kolev – Guitars, Vladimir Georgiev – Vocals, Sonya Spasova – Keyboards, Petko Mihaylov – Bass and Antonio Velkov – Drums. We hope that there will be no more changes in the band. On 06.06.2008 our debut album “Dreams In Real Forms” was released officialy in Bulgaria. Readers of your media can listen free most of the tracks at Myspace.
Vladimir: I’m born and grown up in Sofia – the capital of Bulgaria. I’m working in the area of finance and management accounting. I love the mountains,fast cars, Portugal, vegetables, almost everything which ordinary people like and half of the things I cannot buy... I love good music, and in bad music I look for something good and if I can’t find it I feel bad...
Hanna Tsepesh: What about the inspiration to create the lyrics for MYSTICA?
Vladimir: Inspiration for the lyrics of this album are the people themselves and the way they live their lifes. In our whole life we make decisions which are fateful although not all of them influenced us. At the end, when we look trough the past time we understand that not only our actions definde our life. We are subordinate to time and to our contemporaries, and also to the infinite Mystica which envelopes the accidental.
Hanna Tsepesh:Yeah you are totally right! what are your favorite bands at the moment?
Vladimir: If somebody answers easily on this question then he’s not interested in music at all… but I’ll try: Dream Theater, Toto, Kansas, Circle to Circle, Steve Vai, Evergrey, DIO, Rainbow, Whitesnake, Helloween, Circus Maximus, King Diamond ... I know it’s silly to list 200 bands so I’m gonna stop here.
Rosen: As Vladimir said, It’s hard for me to answer this question, because I listen to a lot of different styles of music. As younger musician I listened mainly to bands with more guitar-instruemental parts as Y.Malmsteen, Cacophony, King Diamond etc. Of course now I continue like them. The last album that made impression to me was Beyond Twilight “For the love of art and the making” from 2006. Lately I’m listening Adagio and Circus Maximus, but the band that will always be at first place in my heart is Psychotic Waltz.
Vladimir: I’m born and grown up in Sofia – the capital of Bulgaria. I’m working in the area of finance and management accounting. I love the mountains,fast cars, Portugal, vegetables, almost everything which ordinary people like and half of the things I cannot buy... I love good music, and in bad music I look for something good and if I can’t find it I feel bad...
Hanna Tsepesh: What about the inspiration to create the lyrics for MYSTICA?
Vladimir: Inspiration for the lyrics of this album are the people themselves and the way they live their lifes. In our whole life we make decisions which are fateful although not all of them influenced us. At the end, when we look trough the past time we understand that not only our actions definde our life. We are subordinate to time and to our contemporaries, and also to the infinite Mystica which envelopes the accidental.
Hanna Tsepesh:Yeah you are totally right! what are your favorite bands at the moment?
Vladimir: If somebody answers easily on this question then he’s not interested in music at all… but I’ll try: Dream Theater, Toto, Kansas, Circle to Circle, Steve Vai, Evergrey, DIO, Rainbow, Whitesnake, Helloween, Circus Maximus, King Diamond ... I know it’s silly to list 200 bands so I’m gonna stop here.
Rosen: As Vladimir said, It’s hard for me to answer this question, because I listen to a lot of different styles of music. As younger musician I listened mainly to bands with more guitar-instruemental parts as Y.Malmsteen, Cacophony, King Diamond etc. Of course now I continue like them. The last album that made impression to me was Beyond Twilight “For the love of art and the making” from 2006. Lately I’m listening Adagio and Circus Maximus, but the band that will always be at first place in my heart is Psychotic Waltz.
Hanna Tsepesh: Tell me Rosen, when did you start to play guitar and why the choice to pick this instrument?Rosen: Long time ago a friend of mine bought acoustic guitar and started playing Beatles songs knowing just the basic guitar chords... and so I was impressed arround him. I didn’t know of Metallica or any famous metal band at the time. I started playing and composing seriosly in 1990.
Hanna Tsepesh: Vladimir, and you when did you start singing? Can you tell your history little bit…
Vladimir: I sing since I was a little boy, I’ve always had attraction to music. My first tries for singing were at my birth hospital, but I think it was just ugly baby cry and sob... in spite of all everybody arround looked satisfied!
Hanna Tsepesh: (ahahaha) nice one! About your album “Dreams In Real Forms”, i like it a lot the solos guitar and the melody in all the album is fantastic, and also the lyrics! Congratulations for all the band members for the fantastic work! But for the people who don’t know MYSTICA style and work, talk with us a little about your style and the album. What MYSTICA want to say with this album for all the people out there?
Vladimir: There’s different meaning for every single person. Point one and we’ll tell our message for him.
Rosen: The music in this album is addressed to a wide circle of listeners – there’s something for everybody. For the “regular” type of listener it will be melodic and relaxing. For the more “particular” type of listener there’s also stuff to hear – interesting accents, change or rhytms, unisons etc. The style is progressive metal, which is more to hard sound, but has melodical elements, and is not laid on improvisation as in jazz and some rock styles, but is more of a pre-synchronised interesting moments which sound like improvisation but they are pre-defined.
Hanna Tsepesh: This album is really good, you guys make a great work! MYSTICA also have one music with bulgarian lyric, can you guys tell to us what is the meaning of the title and what is the theme?
Rosen: The bulgarian track is inherited by the previous project “ Agonia”. The trend is all songs to be in English language, because we’re headed for outside Bulgaria, and it will be very hard for us to be noticed if we sing in bulgarian. Because music is a universal language, but the same is not to our own language. The track is titled over the legendary warrior Spartacus, who led revolt and made thousands of Rome slaves free people. Lyrics are based on the poem of “Christo Smirnenski” (bulgarian poet). You can feel the oppression of the tyrany in the song, but you can also feel the warrior spirit and the thirst for freedom.
Hanna Tsepesh: Yes it's true i felt the same! About recording studio, everything was ready when MYSTICA start to recording the album?Rosen: The recording process took a lot more time than we planned, but we made a great album – it was worth it! The tracks were completely ready but we wanted great sound and we maintained to the idea of crystal instruments. We wanted every instrument to be clearly distinctive – bass, guitar, keyboards, drums, vocals, and all perfectly mixed and balanced.
Hanna Tsepesh: From where the band name appear and why this choise?
Vladimir: All members of the band are fans of the popular bulgarian drink mastic (brandy).On one of our rehearsals somebody called it Mystica, because it spins your head very good, and after we became sober we realized that the band’s name can be this. We all liked it very much and it was matching our style. So It was Mystica – as all the material, the name was born in the rehearsing room.
Hanna Tsepesh: I have to say that i like a lot the album cover, is one fantastic work! Can you explain to us who have the idea for the cover? You have a lot of magic stuff in the cover…
Rosen: In the cover there’s accents from the album tracks. Nothing’s accidental. If you read all the small stories you’ll find logical connection. Our web designer and friend Ivan Maslev succeeded to visualize the confusing world of the hero from the album. When the listeners hold the cover and hear the music and lyrics they will start finding the accents one by one until they build the whole puzzle.
Hanna Tsepesh: One little curiosity, in Bulgaria is it easy for a Metal band to grow up? You have some kind of support in there?Rosen: For the real art people there’s no easy things. The truth is the album is financed mainly from us and friends of ours who respect our work. Unfortunately there’s no music company that produces and releases metal albums in Bulgaria. At the moment our album is distributed thanks to our efforts. What we’re happy about is that the album is very well accepted outside Bulgaria. We have invitations for shows and a lot of interviews already. We’re very thankful for the opportunity to introduce ourselves in Hell on Fire! This is our first interview for Portugal media.
Hanna Tsepesh: You are very welcome, don’t need to thank to us, is our work to help all the bands we can! Do you have some Projects to play at Portugal in the future? You guys have future concerts for now, do you want to tell t us some dates/places?
Rosen: It will be our pleasure to play in Portugal if a promoter from your country invites us at acceptable conditions.
Hanna Tsepesh: Last question, do you want to leave any message for all the portuguese metalheads about your album?
Rosen: “Dreams in real forms” is a message to all metal fans in the world as well as the portuguese fans.
By: Hanna Tsepesh
www.myspace.com/mysticabg
www.mysticaband.net
