New Website

Our new website has finally been launched! If you're not looking at it right now, head over to www.circusoflamia.com. There you will find news, info about the members, biography, releases, photos, videos, tour dates and much more!

Stay metal and beware of the zombies!
Fred

Of Goodbyes and Hard Work

We regret to inform that Matt had decided to leave the circus due to personal reasons. Certainly, we are very sorry to for this as it is a great loss to us as a band, and sets ut back several steps. We do however respect his decision and wish him all luck in his future professional as well as personal life. We hope to see him again in musical context someday.
   Because of this, we have been very quiet for some weeks, trying to figure out where to go from here. There is a lot to ponder and we have decided to not actively look for any sort of replacement for Matt - yet.
   BUT if you are experienced in singing harsh vocals and interested in joining our circus (a bonus if you can sing clean too), we will not automatically refuse any applications for the band. We are open to suggestions.
 
Instead we have been focusing on what we were doing before; perfecting and polish songs, deciding in which direction to go. There might be some quiet time to come since our material is now limping, we cannot perform at the moment with this material and a vocalist short. We are sorry about this, but in the meantime we'll do what we can to come back stronger than before, with stronger material and a stronger show.
This has given us time for work on the material and in ways, at least I am a bit grateful for that. Now I feel I am able to do nothing short of awesome, and I hope you will see the results soon.
In the meantime I have finally bought a new microphone (which does a lot for my peace of mind, and our rehearsals) and we have bought some percussions to finally experiment with. Progress might be documented.
 
We will be back, hopefully sooner than later, with updated material, show, costumes and line-up.
Thank you for understanding.
 
- Jade

Plans and Corsets

A lot has been going on, although not much have been heard from us. We are finally back from a little summer break and we have moved into another rehearsal space with lots of benefits that make our rehearsals so much easier and efficient.
Our ideas are finally coming together and we have started working towards perfecting some of the songs (an a new one, that even now in its early stage feels like its going to be a killer) and making them just right. Apart from the music itself we are eagerly discussing directions and designs for new things to come, like a website, among other things. That particular website is really on its way towards being finished and it will feel great once we have it. This place will of course not be forgotten, but incorporated into it.
 
Last Thursday you could have caught me whirling around at Story Hotel in Stockholm, giving out chocolates and socialising, for Viola Lahger as they showed off their new amazing Dessert Collection for 2012. I got to be all dolled up in a sweet pink corset from last years Candy Collection.
The new corsets are really extraordinary! There are a lot of thinking outside the box going on and not many pieces follow the classic how-a-corset-should-look-rules. The lines between corsets, lingerie, skirts, dresses and evening wear are very blurred and I love it!
Needless to say is that I am inspired and on the lookout (and thinkout) for new possible stage wear, if I wasn't already. Even here I am plotting. In a year or so I might get my hands on something white, shiny and rubbery, and I  can hardly wait, it is so right.
 
- Jade
 

Breaking Silence

We regret to inform that after roughly six months, Evelina has decided to leave Circus of Lamia; it is sad that it would turn out this way, but we wish her the best in her future endeavors.

And now because of that, we also have a vacant spot for a bass player, so if anyone feels so inclined, we are open for requests.
Hey

We just had a smaller club show at, Club Dislocated here in Sweden and we really had a blast, thanks all for showing up!
Check out our Facebook page ( www.facebook.com/circusoflamia ) for some really cool pictures, Or just click at this awesome long url, http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=496525757031037&set=a.496525113697768.132540.222537997763149&type=1&permPage=1#!/photo.php?fbid=496525837031029&set=a.496525113697768.132540.222537997763149&type=1&permPage=1

Cheers
Alex
Hello everyone!

Check out pictures posted by Molotov Studios at Facebook,

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=434584259896211&set=a.434582353229735.97651.280736401947665&type=3


Peace
Alex

After the show

Literally seconds ago, I got home from out gig at Stampen. I think the rest of the bunch are still there, partying. Before every show I think that THIS time will be the time when I got all out and party afterwards, but... All of my energy is used up on stage so afterwards I just want to sleep. I am always the first one to leave. Not because it isn't fun, I'm just always exhausted.
I'm still symbolically giddy and silly from the show and a glass of red wine (studying aestethics has its side effects, y'know. It's dangerous. You might become, dare I say it, pretentious).
As usual, we were the last band on stage, and we had so much fun, getting ready (me and Matt in the ladies room, since the back stage lacked any kinds of mirrors, which suuuucked), and watching the other four bands play.
We videotaped a little before the show and I hope that  it is enough for a short youtube film. Also, I hope someone photographed, and that I might see it, because we were gorgeous and soo hot (literally and figuratively) in our bloody aprons, shirts, suits, hats and pink dresses!

Today I found something out that I from now on will consider essential for shows, except from earplugs, and a setlist (provided that the clothes I wear are somewhat covering)! A sports bra. I'm serious.
I had always thought that the difference can't be more than barely noticable and that they were ugly as hell! But from now on; if it won't show through my outfit, then I will wear one. It is still ugly, though, don't get me wrong, but as long as it doesn't show, I'm fine with it. Sure it makes the bust smaller and whatnot, but frankly that's okay, because I have bust to spare, lol. If you don't, then I can't help ya.

And with that imagery in your mind, I bid you a good night.

-Jade
Hey

Check out our interview we had at Molotov Studios before the Show at Stampen, the 12th June.

" Ikväll så förvandlas Stampen till Circus of Lamia's alldeles egna matiné. Ett band som rent musikmässigt blandar melodisk metal med gothiska influenser, men som visuellt jobbar efter att hitta en balans mellan lite madness och skräck "

Translation:

" Tonight Stampen is going to transform into Circus of Lamias very own matiné. This is a band that musically mixes melodic metal with gothic influences, but visually works to find a balance between a little madness and horror "

Read the full interview at the link here: http://fight-club.se/clubb/20120612/

And if you have forgotten, Circus of Lamia Live at Stampen the 12th June. Doors open at 19 and we will enter the stage at 21:30.

See you there!

/Alex
Hello Everybody,

Dont miss out an awesome party night with Circus of Lamia at Stampen in Old Town of Stockholm.
We will be performing live and partying with you untill the place close up.

Why dont you join us in spreading the madness!


/Alex

Life goes on in a steady pace

Just thought to give you a little update on the events I announced earlier.


Thanks to all of you who were there to support us at Harry B James!
Also, thanks to all of you who were there to see us but had to leave early because early in this case means really late. We fully understand and we hope to see you next time instead!
Soon we will announce some more chances for you to see us live. We do have some things going on, some more intimate and some things bigger. In any case, you are running out of excuses not to come and see us ;)

Lately we have slowed the pace down a little since we feel like we are finally starting to have everything under control.
Also, me and Sam have had insanely amount of school work to do, now that the term is drawing to its end. (Fredrik probably has a lot of school too, but... he's not complaining nearly as much as me or Sam).
But seeing as we have most things under control, we have started to put our remaining energy (that does not go into shows) into writing new material!
Hopefully we will have something to listen to soon.

-Jade
Tomorrow it is time for us to hit the stage!
If you are in Stockholm, come to Harry B James at Regeringsgatan 47 around 10-11 PM and join us in our madness!
I can promise you several songs never heard before as well as those you may know.
It's going to be a ton of fun.

This week will be hectic. But You have lots of chances to catch scattered glimpses of us around Stockholm.

Apart from our gig tomorrow, and if you haven't had enough of metal and amazing live shows, you can catch our Sam play with Midvinterblot at the Emergenza semi-finals at Klubben, Fryshuset this Saturday, the 28th!
There is still time to get tickets from the members and get there to support them!

If you have had enough of music for this week (I don't know why on earth anyone would, but I'm not going to judge), and is an early bird, then you can do some serious shopping for glam and catch me in a runway show for Viola Lahger, the finest corsetry in Sweden, at Burleskloppis this Sunday, the 29th!
Last years I got a splendid, authentic nurse's uniform that is about 40-60 years old, for mere pennies! Yeah, I'm serious. That is just to mention one thing.
Also there will be loads of fantastic burlesque shows with talented (and attractive) ladies in corsets and sequins. I know I don't wanna miss that.

-Jade


The Circus

Amanda Light was so kind as to photograph us again. Here we are, with the correct line up, humble and simple. Nothing extraordinary, just us.

Matt - Vocals




Jade - Vocals


Alex - Guitars


Fredde - Keyboards


Evve - Bass


Sam - Drums

We went to our rehearsal space yesterday to hang out, fix some vocals and plan around about the live show.
When we arrived we saw some guys tampering with the soda machine, mending it.
They checked the cables and everything, they also tried it to see that it worked fine and it seemed to be working fine.

We went into our room to rehearse and started to talk a bit and plonk on instruments and exchaning ideas and different views of random subjects within the band.
After a little while we got thirsty, so we decided to send me to get the drinks from the new soda machine.

When I got to the machine I inserted 10 SEK, as is the usual cost for a coke, pressed the button and waited a few seconds..

Not one, but two cokes came out and I thought "splendid", got two from the price of one!
I then noticed that the amount on the machine for already put in money, still showed 10 SEK, so I pressed it again..

Another one came, I pulled a happy awesome face --> :D:D:D (that was how happy I was) and pressed a few more times until I felt ashamed of abusing the broken machine (read system, cause that's more metal).
I then realised that the number for money put into the machine, still hadn't changed at all so I pressed the return button and got 11 SEK back.
I went back to the room with the instuments and couldnt hold my evil sadistic laugh!


To summarize; I put in 10 SEK into the machine, got 5 sodas of different kinds and got 11 SEK back! I made 1 SEK but got 5 sodas.

Later Jade did the same thing and we laughed like hell again.

We are the true anarchists of the state and in metal! \m/

HORNS UP

\\Matt

Easter?

Perhaps I should wish you all a happy Easter, but the truth is that I don't celebrate Easter, not in the least.
I do enjoy celebrating holidays as a principal, almost every one including Midsummer, Halloween (throughout October, every day during that month), Christmas, waffle day, cinnamon roll day, towel day...
I usually put a spin on the traditional decoratives or food (like making a ginger cemetary, ginger eiffel tower... Or decorating our Christmas tree with lots of studded belts, bats, spiderwebs and skulls. Yeah, I was fourteen and sick to death of Christmas).
But I have never celebrated Easter. Sure, I dressed up as a witch and harassed my neighbours until they gave me sweets once when I was a kid, but I think my mom set me up to do that. Also, I think I just enjoyed being dressed up as a witch, because I got to walk around with a broom and eat a lot of sweets...

This was not what I was supposed to write about today. I'm being forced to read "The Iliad" by Homer for school, and you could say that it's taking up most of my energy. That might be the reason for this unorganised post.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy it immensely, it's just a little heavy for my mind. Okay, very heavy.
Well... Happy Easter anyway, to all of you who do celebrate it. If I painted eggs, I would paint skulls, because I am so hardcore. So all of you who do paint eggs, please paint some skulls for me. Spiders are cool too, and bats. Paint that.


What have we been up to lately?
Well... the usual, we have been rehearsing. More and more of us have started bringing our dinners to rehearsal space during Wednesdays. That is kinda cozy, in my opinion.
Oh yeah, and we shot new promotional pics in a studio. Lovely Amanda Light held the camera this time as well while we made snarly faces and such.
Other than that we are working on new songs, as usual. And since Sam is going home to the more northern regions of the country during Easter, we are going to take that time to finish some songs, redo some and you know... just polish some of them until they shine.
Also we are planning for our first (official) gig here in Stockholm! On April 24th we will play on Harry B James. If you are in town, come see us!

So yeah. Happy Easter if you celebrate it.
For me and everyone else, let's enjoy our time off. And the weather. Make tea and scones and enjoy the fact that yellow is an ugly colour and we won't have anything to do with it.

- Jade

Sam: "I know what a Sweet Release is! (The name of our most recent song) It's a sock and some apricot perfume!"

On growling

 

I’ve been into the metal scene for quite a while now, with the interest turning serious in my early teens, and I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of growling. For many years, music was not primarily playing drums for me (I did play, but without the genuine passion that I have today), but instead learning how to produce weird noises with my mouth; the wish to be able to do what the cool, big boys were doing was so strong that I can actually remember the exact moment when it finally clicked for me. I was sixteen years old and on vacation in Florida with my family (second time visiting the United States for me), walking down this beautiful beach that I don’t remember the name of, and all of a sudden, I just tried imitating this singer that had this fiery vocals going and it worked! It finally clicked in that special way when you know that you’ve actually improved – a true level-up. Since then I’ve been happily roaring away, focusing less on maintaining a single-stable voice but instead on learning what my throat can and can’t do, while getting more into drums, joining bands and so on.

 

But that was just the background for my interest, and not the focal point of this little essay; instead I’d like to share a few thoughts about the WHY of growling: why is it actually practiced? What is the appeal? What are its qualities, strengths and weaknesses?

 

My first conclusion after spending much time actively listening to – and analyzing – growling is that good growling works with the three M’s: the Monstrous, the Majestic, and the Maniacal; some people wish to use growling outside of these contexts, and those people are generally considered the dickheads and attention-whores of the metal scene, to put it in nice terms. Why? Because doing that is an insult both to the art of growling and the music where they applied the growling to; and if there are any hesitations about this quite judgmental statement, have no doubts, I will prove my point soon enough.

The Monstrous: the first M is quite obvious; growling is generally not considered a very human sound to make: it’s not specifically roaring, it’s not even someone speaking with a sore throat, but instead something almost predatory and bloodthirsty, a displacement of the self and an embrace of the ID and the reptilian part of the brain. There is no surprise that bands that use both clean and growled vocals, especially if the clean voice is female, are described as using the Beauty and the Beast-technique in their performances, as such an expression cuts down into the very heart of the matter: the haunting, awesome (traditional sense) and angelic clean vocals are contrasted with parts of pure, feral instinct. The Monstrous of growling allows it to present a different side of the world created by the music, a side where normal conventions break down and chaos reigns, a primal state of being; the man before you baring his sharp fangs as the werewolf emerges.

The Majestic: this one might not be as apparent at first glance, but is very much true nonetheless; growling is a powerful way to deliver lyrics. You will notice as this paper goes on that many attributes already mentioned in one paragraph will show up in the others, with this being the first: the displacement of the simple human. Growling can be Majestic because the almost transcendental impression it may give the listener: the imperial feeling of looking up at a giant throne, the voice booming down to you, otherworldly and detached from the common people milling about below. That is the reason why so many symphonic bands employ growling segments, or even only growled vocals; it adds to the power of the arrangement through its inherent Majesty. Why is this so? Clearly, it has very little to do with bared fangs and bloodied claws mentioned above, unless you’d count fear of the beast as majestic that is. I believe that one reason behind this state of being is that growling is not really a single voice; it is a distorted, twisted sound that happens to allow for words to be formed, and is delivered almost like a thick, off-key choir, despite being a single vocalist. This wall-of-sound effect transforms the vocalist into, in this context, not a monster but rather an Other and Higher, which is why Dimmu Borgir for instance uses the harsh growled vocals to present an infernal Majesty, while Extol on their song Undeceived used deep booming growling to enact the Majesty of the voice of God.

 

The Maniacal: lastly, we have the Maniacal, which we could also call the Breakdown; growling is extremely handy when it comes to playing with moods and mental stability through its in-your-face intensity: a song dealing with philosophical conundrums or the agony of loss can benefit from the addition of precision-growl-strikes that keep the listener on edge. Likewise the Maniacal feel again ties in with the downplay of the Human, but while the Monstrous deals with tapping into the primal urges and the Majestic handles transcendental issues, the Maniacal instead uses the growl as a form of regression, almost as the dark side of the Monstrous; indeed, the Maniacal is what ties the Monstrous and the Majestic together into the three M’s; the Majestic becomes Maniacal in its detachment and turns into the Monstrous, for instance. The Maniacal is also an excellent way to throw the listener directly into the mouth of the madness, the growl presenting the emotions of our “narrator” seamlessly:  Prince Hamlet’s soliloquy could for instance start of off normally, working up steam as it goes, before turning first into shouting or intense mumbling before regressing into fury-choked growled lines without anyone batting an eye (unless growling in itself is offensive for them). The same goes for sorrow once it gets to the point of the character no longer wanting to feel; you kill off the human shell and release pure emotion, regardless if those are anger, sorrow, despair or even bittersweet gratefulness; as long as the emotions have a stain of darkness in them, the Maniacal can work its charms.

 

The simplified theory of the three M’s as presented above should be seen as a good guideline over how to use growling as a seasoning to your vocal performance; breaking the boundaries set up here is not recommended unless you’re completely sure of what you’re doing, or if you simply do not give a rat’s ass about letting the vocals dance with the lyrics and music on equal terms. The reason for this is simply because the three M’s are what messages are sent through growling, and creating a balance between all the aspects of a song is often crucial for the aesthetic appeal of it; the times growling is used successfully out of such contexts is in comedy, where the contrast in itself fuels the humor of the work. Unless the song is comedic, the result is always sub-par, for the same reason that you do not want bombastic opera-vocals in your quiet guitar-based ballad or a punk rock singer only rocking the falsetto: it simply does not fit. I’m not saying this to downplay creativity and originality, neither am I saying this with the authority of a rock legend, but instead as a person who enjoys twisting concepts about, because no matter what, if you stick brutal growled parts in situations where they do not fit, you’re not avant-garde, you’re not a pioneer, you’re not even making a postmodern statement about how music is like clay – you’re just making terrible or at least sub-par music. Original and creative artists are successful not because they have the guts to mix everything in a big bowl and see what comes out; they’re successful because they have the eyes and ears to pick out what piece could fit where, even in contexts not obvious; growling is a great tool for accentuating a word, a phrase, a song or even an entire album, but like all tools, it has its own inherent limits, and as you don’t use a hammer to cut boards or a drill to weld, you should not use growling unless the song benefits from it.

 

/Sam

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