Archaic-Magazine.com :: An uncovered prog metal gem!

There are still many hidden gems to be found in the metal scene. Colleague Filip mentioned to me I might like The Kolios Project so I checked them out and felt thrilled upon hearing their progressive metal. I strongly suggest anyone into prog music to check their music!
Since this band deserves as much exposure as they can get VM is more than willing to provide them with an interview. Guitarist Ryan Denzer-King answered it in 1 day so kudos to him!

The bio letter states that you couldn?t find like-minded musicians at your (former?) university but doesn?t state whether you were studying music or pursuing other interests. So did you study music or are you mostly self taught?
-I'm currently a senior at Vanderbilt University, about to graduate in May with a major in philosophy and a minor in classical guitar performance. I studied classical piano under Ken Newton in my hometown of Atlanta, GA, from 2nd grade up until my junior year in high school, and since then I've still had occasional lessons as well as learning things on my own, including progressive rock keyboard techniques this past year. I began studying classical guitar my freshman year in high school, as my school had several classical guitar courses open to all students. I've never really taken formal lessons on electric guitar, except for a few when I was starting, so in that I'm mostly self taught. I got most of my inspiration and technique from listening to and learning songs by bands like Metallica and Pantera toward the beginning, and later more technical bands such as Cynic, Meshuggah, and Dream Theater.

With what instrument did you start your musical career and what other bands/projects were you involved in prior to The Kolios Project?
-The first instrument I ever played was piano. I studied many other instruments casually, since my elementary school was big on art and music, but didn't find my second passion until middle school when I started playing guitar. My first real band, which I am still a part of, is Oneiros, based in Atlanta, GA. We play music with similar influences to The Kolios Project, but the style is very different, with more focus on jazz and progressive rock influences as opposed to true progressive metal.

Soon after The Kolios Project started you found jazz drummer Manfred Dikkers, mostly likely through the internet. But how did you end up finding him? Did you put out an online add or did you browse for drummers and e-mailed them?
-When I first started the project three years ago I started trying to find musicians by posting on message boards for bands I listen to. One of those was the message board at cynicalsphere.com, a site dedicated to Cynic. Manfred is a big Cynic fan, and also posted on the message board frequently. He emailed me soon after I first posted and said he was interested in doing something like my project and that he had V-drums which enabled him to record and mix in his home.

Did you also contact Alan Goldstein and Matteo Borselli through e-mail? I know Aghora but never heard of Anthelion, what kind of music do they play and are they an Italian band?
-I've been a huge Aghora fan since I discovered them through a friend soon after they released their debut album, and I checked their web site frequently to keep up with what was going on with them. I had already contacted Sean Malone as soon as I started trying to enlist musicians for my project, but unfortunately he was very busy with Gordian Knot at the time. When I saw that Alan Goldstein had joined Aghora as their full-time bassist, I decided to email him about working with us, and he said he was interested and quickly recorded a couple of rough demos with us. After several months of not being able to find a keyboardist, I scoured the internet for progressive metal forums and posted on many of them. It was through one of these that Matteo emailed me and said he would be interested in working with us. At the time Matteo was not playing in a band, so he recorded two tracks for us, and after that formed his band Anthelion, a progressive metal band in Italy. For a while he was busy with Anthelion, during which time I took over keyboard duties and recorded for two songs. Last year Anthelion broke up, and Matteo is once again working on keyboard tracks for us.

It seems like you have something with Dutch people. Besides Manfred there are guest appearances of Tymon Kruidenier (Exivious) and Andre Verholen. Did you find those guys through Manfred?
-I had heard of Exivious because of their influences from Cynic, and Tymon was one of the first musicians I contacted when I started the project. Andre Verholen was a guitarist Manfred recommended to me, and we ended up really liking the few solos he did for us. Hopefully we will work with both of them again in the future. As for all three of them being Dutch, there's a huge progressive metal scene in the Netherlands, and it helps that Manfred knows a lot of the players there.

I?m quite interested to hear how the song writing process for The Kolios Project takes place. Since you guys are all over the planet one can?t simply jam in the rehearsal room. How rudimentary are the musical ideas when you start swapping them around?
-It's all too true that we can't get together and jam in a rehearsal room, and because of this the songs aren't as fluid and changeable as I would like them to be, but it's inevitable in a project like this because it's simply not feasible to exchange ideas back and forth via email. Usually the way it works is that I will write the guitar parts for a song and transcribe them to midi. Manfred then uses this midi track as a reference to hear what the song will be like and to use as a click track. When he's done with the drums, I record the guitar parts, and then send it to the other guys who record keyboards and bass. Finally, I collect all the individual tracks and mix and master them myself with input from the other guys as to tone, dynamics, and such. So the songs are pretty much the same from the time I write them until they're totally done, which is why I try to leave all the other parts up to the other guys. Occasionally I have suggestions as to a specific style of drumming, or a keyboard part or something, but generally I leave all the other parts totally up to whoever is recording them, because I already have more control over the final product than I'd like to. Sometimes we do mix things up a little, for instance we're working on a song now that I envisioned an improvised heavy part in the middle, so Manfred recorded basically a minute of himself soloing and improvising, and then I wrote guitar parts to fit what he came up with.

Furthermore, since the music is multi-layered I wonder when you get the feeling that a song is completed. Perhaps at the point when you think more alterations or additions might make it a weaker composition?
-Generally the songs feel like they're finished once Manfred's done with the drums, I'm done with all the guitar parts, and the keyboards and bass are done as well. Sometimes there's still room for solos, in which case we get people like Tymon, Andre, or Santiago Dobles to record some solos for us.

The music works like a story teller with many stories and subplots to tell. What is The Kolios Project trying to tell the listener with interesting song titles such as ?Low men in yellow coats?, ?Teleological suspension of the ethical? and ?The silence of infinite spaces?? What sources influence you to come up with such titles and is there a concept in the band name, music and song titles?
-Usually the titles are pretty random. I try to come up with something that fits the mood of the song, but as for the actual words I usually get them from whatever's influencing me at the time. "Low men in yellow coats" is a reference to a Stephen King novel, "teleological suspension of the ethical" is a philosophical concept from Kierkegaard, and "the silence of infinite spaces" is from a quote by Blaise Pascal. I read a lot of literature, popular fiction, fantasy, and poetry, and I'm always learning about interesting new things in my philosophy courses, so whenever there's a certain phrase that catches my ear I'll keep it in mind for a song title. If we ever get a vocalist to sing and write lyrics the song titles will probably come from the lyrics, but until then I just try to find something random that I like and that fits the mood of the song.

Are you still looking for a singer? In my review I indicated that it might be difficult to find a singer who can really add something to the music since the music already has so many layers. So you think a singer can add something, what kind of a singer are you looking for?
-I think some of our songs would definitely sound better with vocals. When I'm writing songs I often get ideas for vocals, but I'm no good at writing lyrics and am a pretty poor singer, and so far have not been able to find anybody that's up to the task of recording for us. I think if we ever do find someone he or she would need to be very versatile, someone who can be very aggressive (though probably not distorted death vox) and also do quieter, mellow parts. I also envision having spoken word segments or whispered parts like Insomnium's music.

Don?t you miss getting in a rehearsal room with a bunch of guys and jam until you drop? Just cranking up that volume and writing songs as you jam. Sounds like bliss?
-If I didn't have my band Oneiros in Atlanta to get together and jam with, I think I'd probably go nuts. It's very satisfying for songs to come together for The Kolios Project, and it's a major creative outlet for me, but sometimes you just need to crank up the half stack to 10 and rock out for a couple hours. I'm hoping that eventually I will be able to get together at least with Manfred, and maybe with some of the other guys as well, and at least work through some stuff and have fun, if not get into a studio to record some stuff professionally.

Can you put all your musical ideas into this band/project or do you foresee that you?ll start another to have outlets for all the ideas you have?
-Since it's not really possible to exchange ideas very well over the internet, The Kolios Project has (at least so far) turned out to be pretty much whatever I'm into at the time. Sometimes that's soft jazzy parts, and sometimes it's really heavy, dissonant stuff. More recently I wrote a song that's almost all in 6/8, and sounds much more like Opeth or Insomnium than Dream Theater or Cynic, which generally we are more in the style of. I don't foresee running into a problem of not getting all my ideas to work in the context of our project, because progressive metal is a very fluid genre and label, and I can do pretty much whatever I want and still string it together into something that works as a coherent whole. I am working on putting together some other projects, possibly including a doom metal project with Kevin Leeds from Fall of Empyrean (who is also working on some keyboard tracks for us), but this other stuff is more just to have fun and write some different music rather than as a needed creative outlet.

I imagine doing live performances is rather tricky for The Kolios Project. Is this something you would like to do with this band/project? Would you consider performing live with guest musicians?
-If we get signed to a label and release a full-length album, I would love to play live and tour Europe and/or the United States. I love playing live, and I think this music would be really fun (if difficult) to perform live. I don't know if all of the other guys would be up for it, but hopefully it wouldn't be just me and all new guest musicians.

If you could participate in your dream tour, with what bands would you tour and where would you go to?
-Probably my dream tour would be anything involving Pain of Salvation, Dream Theater, or Aghora. Those are three of my favorite bands, and I get influences from all of them. I'd like to tour the U.S., because it's where I'm from, but there isn't much of a prog metal scene here, so Europe would probably be a better option, but if we tour it would really depend on what label we sign to and what kind of audience they think we play for.

Here?s a cliché question but I like it hehe. If you?d be stranded on a deserted island what 10 albums would you take with you?
-Whew, that's a really tough question, so I won't try to put them in any order, but off the top of my head I would definitely have to have something from the Pain of Salvation catalog, maybe ?The Perfect Element Part I?, and Dream Theater's ?Scenes from a Memory? album. Opeth's ?Blackwater Park? would have to be there, and ?The Day It All Came Down? by Insomnium, and I probably couldn't live without ?Panopticon? by Isis or ?Storia di un Minuto? by PFM. Of course I'd need Gordian Knot - Emergent. I know it's not very metal, but I guess I'd also have to have a couple albums by Sigur Ros: Agaetis Byrjun and ( ). Agalloch's ?The Mantle? would probably be my final pick.

Have you heard any reactions from interested labels yet? Do you have a preference for a specific label, i.e. one which focuses on a certain genre, or does anything go?
-I've been waiting until we have something totally polished to contact labels, but I'm hoping to start with Laser's Edge/Sensory, because I listen to most of the bands in their catalog, and I think we'd have some good luck with a smaller progressive label like that as opposed to one of the big ones. Glenn Snelwar has been kind enough to give me some feedback on approaching labels and how to build a good web site, so hopefully he will continue to guide me through this, as I've never approached a label before.

You live in Nashville which to most people is known as the country capital of the world. How is the musical culture nowadays in Nashville? Is there a local rock/metal scene?
-When I was applying to school in Nashville, I was nervous about it being the country capital of the world, because I don't listen to any country, and dislike the vast majority of it. People kept assuring me, "Oh, don't worry, there are lots of other music styles there." This turned out to be a lie. It doesn't bother me too much, because my band is back in Atlanta, and I don't have much expendable income to spend on going to concerts anyway, but Nashville is a country city, through and through. There's some blues, folk, bluegrass, and a little jazz, but very few rock bands, and metal shows are pretty much unheard of.

For some reasons (nostalgia, money, music, etc.) there have been many comeback and reunions of old metal bands. What?s your opinion about this, do these reformed acts still have something to say musically or would they be better left dead and buried?
-Most of the metal bands I grew up with are bands that started in the late 1980's and 1990's and are still together or broken up for good, like Metallica, Pantera, Opeth, In Flames. I don't listen to much of the old classical metal bands, so I'm not really up to speed on who's getting back together and touring and all that. The way I see it, though, it just depends on what their goals are. Sometimes they get back together because the creative spark is there again, and when that happens it's usually great, but other times bands that were really creative the first time around now just want to make some money, and that's always disappointing to see.

Let?s take a specific example of the previous example. My fellow Dutchmen Gorefest have returned to the scene with ?La muerte?. Have you heard it, what?s your opinion about it? Quite frankly I was sceptic at first but the new album made me shut my big mouth.
-I've actually never heard Gorefest, but I'll be sure to check out the new album. It's always great when bands get back together after a long absence and prove they still have that spark.

The year 2005 has ended recently and hence asking what your 10 favorite albums of 2005 are is mandatory. Do you have high expectations for certain releases/bands in 2006?
-Let's see, there were a lot of great albums out in 2005. First on my list would be Dream Theater - Octavarium, Sigur Ros - Takk..., and Opeth - Ghost Reveries. ?The Campfire Headphase? by Boards of Canada was another I enjoyed a lot, as well as ?The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw? by Pelican and ?Catch 33? by Meshuggah. Porcupine Tree's ?Deadwing? was another good one. Akercocke - Words that Go Unspoken, Deeds that Go Undone was a good release, and though I don't usually listen to much alternative, I have to say that I did enjoy Coldplay's latest ?X&Y?. In the jazz arena I greatly enjoyed ?Day Is Done? by the Brad Mehldau Trio.

A lot of people tell me progressive rock/metal musicians are always so serious. When I did an e-mail interview with Sean Malone the label warned me to put only relevant questions into the interview or else they wouldn?t be answered? I can understand one wants to be serious about their music but wasn?t Frank Zappa right that one should be able to make some fun with it as well?
-I'd definitely agree that musicians should be able to just have fun once in a while. I think it's when bands take themselves too seriously that other people stop taking them as serious musicians. I definitely take everything I write with a grain of salt. Though I love music and believe it's one of the most important things in life, I don't sit down to change the world. I just write something that I think sounds good, and if I think a silly jazz section in the middle of a really heavy song will sound good, I do it. Sometimes stuff I did just as a joke ends out sounding really good and sometimes even serious in the context of the whole work.

What are your ambitions with The Kolios Project? Are you content if you can release your albums and basically be a studio band or do you want to get out on the road and strive for world domination?
-My goal is to get signed to a label and get together a permanent band to write, record, and tour with. If we don't get signed to a label there probably will never be any live shows, just because of the difficulty of finding people to work with that aren't thousands of miles away. Even if we don't get signed, there will be a full-length album coming out in the next few years, because it is pretty much done being written and I know everyone wants to continue working on music.

The final question is your opportunity to call out to our readers and tell us what I didn?t cover in the questions.
-I think we've covered about everything that I want to say. I'd like to thank you for doing this interview and giving us some exposure. It will definitely be a help in trying to get signed to a label. In parting, I want to say that we are always looking for additional musicians to participate in our project, so anybody who plays an instrument and can record themselves can go to our site and email us.