The March on the Walls of Death: I-Interview with Al-Azif.
Well, since everyone is super excited about Walls of Death Vol. 6 - Demise of Sins gig on the 5th of September, I Wanna Rock is bringing you a series of interviews introducing you to the brutal lineup playing the gig.
Our journey will start with Al-Azif whom I consider one of the most remarkable Egyptian melodic death metal bands. I won’t waste more time and will let them tell you their whole story through our questions but first, let me introduce the members:
Mohamed Atef- Vocals.
Mohammad Sherif “Mafia” - Lead Guitar.
Hatem Sayed - Rhythm Guitar.
Abdelrahman Al Dewainy - Bass Guitar.
Mohamed Al-Assaal - Drums.
Photo courtesy: Lina Elgohary and taken off the band’s facebook page.
Well I would like to start from the very beginning. When and how did it all begin?
Mohammed Sherif: It all started in the beginning of 2009. I knew a bassist from Al-Mansoura called "Mohammed Tarek". We started sharing ideas about a band that we both could implement our ideas in and we started jamming soon after. It was just me and him until we were joined by the keyboardist "Mohammed Nazem" followed later by our ex. vocalist "Zak Hassan".
At first did you start playing some covers to define the band's sound or you started writing your own music immediately?
Mohammed Sherif: We played different genres just to get the feel of how different things played out. later I suggested a name, concept and genre for the band, Al-Azif that's how I named it and everyone in the band went nuts. The whole concept behind Al-Azif was to talk about mythologies and horror tales from writers like HP Lovecraft and Edgar Alan Poe. We decided that melodic death metal is the best way for us to go, so we started covering tracks for bands like Hypocrisy and Arch Enemy then we started writing our own material.
Do you all have the same musical influences or you come from different backgrounds and you try to mix it all in your music?
We all have a common ground and that is melodic death metal. Hatem has doom influences, Mohammed Hisham and Abdelrahman both have some Technical/progressive death metal taste, Mohammed Atef has some deathcore influences and Mafia has a lot of blackened death/technical death metal influences.
How do you define your sound?
We use down tuned guitars for heavy riffing and mellower tones plus a lot of harmonies and melodic licks in our music. As for our lyrics, they are very dark and have a lot of certain horror vibes in them and our songs' structure depends on the "Tell tale" progression.
Photo courtesy: Lina Elgohary and taken off the band’s facebook page.
What was your very first performance?
Our first performance was back in 2011 at Heavy tune Vol.3.
What is your favorite song to perform live?
From our first album we love to play "Al Hazred" and "I shall Prevail ". As for our upcoming album there is "Mutilated Assembly”, “Cull the meek” and “Raven and Berserker"
Listening to “Claiming the Sand Throne” I noticed the songs names and the band’s name of course all revolve in H.P Lovecraft’s world. Will you stick to this theme or it was just a concept for this album?
"Claiming the sand throne" was a concept album telling the tale of Abdulla Al-Hazred and his journey to write the book Al-Azif. In later albums we will be telling other stories.
How does your music writing process usually go?
We usually come up with a concept for the album, then Mohamed Sherif and Hatem start Writing some music and with the help of Mohammed Hisham we start writing lyrics.
Are there any plans for a new album soon?
That’s for sure. We are in the process of recording our second album "Singularity" and we can't wait to release it. It's going to be great that’s for sure.
Are we going to listen to some new material in Walls of Death?
We will be playing all new songs from our new album "Singularity"
What distinguishes Al-Azif among other Egyptian metal bands?
We Really have this good mix of melodic death metal mixed with some atmospheric and sometimes even oriental riffs. We are one of the few melodic death metal bands in Egypt and we really love where we are going with our music.
Photo courtesy: Lina Elgohary and taken off the band’s facebook page.
If you have the chance to play in any band in the world, who would it be?
Mohammed Hesham would love to join Fleshgod Apocalypse, Abdelrahman Aldwainy would like to join In Mourning, Mohammed Atef’s choice would be White Chapel, Mohammed Sherif would love to join Bloodbath and Hatem Samir SepticFlesh.
What's your take on the Egyptian rock/metal scene? What is missing? And what's to be done to deal with these things?
Our metal scene has really struggled in the past few years. The underground scene is really trying to work with what we have and those are the true heroes who keep the metal scene alive and kicking in Egypt. What we lack the most is proper recognition from our media and society, sponsors to hold big events and We need to start inviting some international juggernauts to play in Egypt. Also we need our metal fans to behave, Show them what we really are and what our music is really about.
Any messages to your fans?
To our fans we say, thank you for your support for all these years. We really apologize for the last year when we weren’t active. We promise you a great experience with the release of our new album and we are really looking forward to seeing you all at Sawy Cultural Wheel This 5th of September
we promise you its gonna be one hell of a ride.
Go see Al-Azif perform in Walls of Death festival on Saturday the 5th of September and support the scene.
You can follow Al-Azif on Facebook, Youtube and Soundcloud to get all of their updates.
You can download their album “Claiming the Sand Throne” for free from this link: http://www.mediafire.com/download/7c5m5bu4c7qqwwj/Claiming+the+sand+throne+Al-azif+%5B2012%5D.rar
