GENRE: Afro-beat / Metal / Progressive
LOCATION: Barcelona, Spain
LABEL: Unsigned
How did you get started?
Will (Drums): Protest The Hero was playing here in Barcelona with The Human Abstract and The Chariot on March the 13th 2009. The day after the show, I commented on a random video of that night, a video where Marc sings ‘A Dead World At Sunrise” with Nathan Ells (former THA vocalist). A couple of days later I receive an email from Marc, telling me that they were looking for a drummer for a “progressive metalcore” project, and that they saw that I was a drummer myself and they wanted to try with me. I skeptically joined, but ended up staying until now. Absolutely worth it.
Luis (Guitar): The fun thing is that the current members of the band, except Sergio, were all next to each other in that venue, but of course we weren’t a band yet. I was the last one to join the band, after Gerard (the former guitarist), who was in there as well, left the band.
Marc (Bass): Clouds Over Normandy was basically born from that show. It’s kind of fun, because we ended playing our first show in that same venue. It’s a curious story.
Where do you get your inspiration from?
Jordi (Guitar): Everyone has its personal influences and sources of inspiration, but we also have a ‘common taste’ in music. Let’s say that I’m highly influenced by classical music, mainly baroque composers, Will is the more metal influenced one and Luis would be the most open-minded, so to speak. Everyone brings in many different influences and our music is the result of those which we share plus those with which everyone is willing to experiment.
What has been your favorite venue so far? And what's your dream venue?
Sergio (Vocals): We haven’t played that many shows yet, so there’s not much to choose from. I enjoyed a lot playing in the Buccas venue in Sabadell (Spain) this summer, and my dream venue would be playing in the O2 Arena in Brixton (London). We saw August Burns Red, Lamb of God, Job for A Cowboy and Between the Buried and Me there, and it was freaking awesome.
Marc: I would go for our first show in the Rocksound venue, and my dream venue would be the Lokomotive of Paris. Luis: I’d go for the Rocksound show as well. I don’t really have a dream venue; I would love to play anywhere in the US. Will: I liked our last show in the Q3 venue here in Barcelona. I finally managed to play comfortably during the whole show, so I hold good memories of that one. As a big August Burns Red fan, I would love to play in the Chameleon Club in Lancaster PA someday.
If you had a chance to interview a musician who would it be, and why?
Will: There are too many to choose, too many questions to be asked. We would go for a band that we can learn something from and have a laugh with in the meantime.
If you could thank somebody for helping you fulfill your dreams as a musician, who would it be? And why?
Luis: We don’t feel like we’ve fulfilled our dreams as musicians at all. The journey has just begun and we just hope it’s a long way ahead. But, of course, we appreciate all the things people have done for us thus far; people who have supported us, bands who have played with us, friends, family and basically everyone who has helped us keep our motivation and illusions intact.
Jordi: There’s, of course, people who deserve a special mention. People like Aleix Archs (Bloq Studio), the man behind the mixing and mastering of our EP, or our friend Macin Boushah from Belgium, who worked on our Myspace layout, never asking for anything in exchange. There’s a little blog in our Myspace regarding this.
If you weren't involved in music, what would you be doing in life right now?
Sergio: We’re all still studying and stuffs, so we would just go on with our lives like we’ve been doing to date. If the question was “If you weren’t doing in life what you are doing right now, what would you like to be doing?”, the answer would be “be involved in music; be able to do it for a living for as long we feel we want keep doing so”.
If mom was going to make your favorite home-cooked meal, what would it be?
Marc: Spaghetti bolognese.
Luis: Chocolate cake!
Sergio: Vietnamese food (his girlfriend is from Vietnam)
Jordi: Pasta salad
Will: Spaghetti carbonara.
What do you do in your down time?
Will: We try to spend our down time practicing, writing and doing anything related to the band. We don’t really practice together that much, but we definitely spend a lot of time trying to improve and grow as musicians. But there’s always time to hang out with friends, play video games, work, etc… of course.
Have you had any really embarrassing mishaps on stage?
Marc: In our first show, during the ending of Redemption (August Burns Red cover), Luis and Jordi were playing this nice mirrored lead riff when I accidentally unplugged Jordi’s guitar, and when I tried to quickly plug it in again, I hit him with my bass God knows where. It was VERY embarrassing.
That first show was full of little mishaps and unfortunate things happening. I remember how Will’s right crash cymbal wasn’t properly fixed and it fell in the middle of a song. A guy from the crowd had to come up the stage and fix it, it was actually pretty funny. Everyone had their little problems, but they were probably things that have happened to any musician in the world at least once.
What positive message do you want to send through your music to your fans?
Will: That no matter whether you are an unnaturally skilled musician or an average one, the creation of a good piece requires nothing else than all the passion you can put in its writing. For me, the greatness of a song is measured by the feeling the band or composer has managed to transmit through it, not by its complexity. Needless to say that complexity can also stand for beauty (just listen to The Human Abstract, for example), but there are a lot of masterpieces that are ABACABB structured and just have 3 or 4 different riffs and a catchy melody, and they’re not less awesome because of that, at all.
What I mean is that no one in this band feels like he’s a highly skilled musician, but we do really think that we have managed to create an EP that can make people feel the things we wanted them to feel through our music and lyrics.
Any favorite songs/bands at the moment?
Marc: ‘The Promise’ by Michael Nyman. It’s hard to choose a favorite band, but I guess I could say Sky Eats Airplane.
Will: It really depends on my mood and the time you ask me. Right now I would go for ‘Letter Experiment’ by Periphery, and 36 Crazyfists as the favorite band.
Jordi: My favorite song is ‘Vela, together we await the storm’ by my favorite band, The Human Abstract. It helped me to improve a lot as a guitar player and it definitely changed my musical taste.
Luis: For the song I would go for ‘Octavarium’ by Dream Theater and ‘Shine On Your Crazy Diamond (Parts I - IV)’ by Pink Floyd. I just can’t choose one between these two. My favorite band ever is Dream Theater, probably the only band that I’ve always liked during all the musical taste stages of my life.
Marc: ‘The Promise’ by Michael Nyman. It’s hard to choose a favorite band, but I guess I could say Sky Eats Airplane.
Will: It really depends on my mood and the time you ask me. Right now I would go for ‘Letter Experiment’ by Periphery, and 36 Crazyfists as the favorite band.
Jordi: My favorite song is ‘Vela, together we await the storm’ by my favorite band, The Human Abstract. It helped me to improve a lot as a guitar player and it definitely changed my musical taste.
Luis: For the song I would go for ‘Octavarium’ by Dream Theater and ‘Shine On Your Crazy Diamond (Parts I - IV)’ by Pink Floyd. I just can’t choose one between these two. My favorite band ever is Dream Theater, probably the only band that I’ve always liked during all the musical taste stages of my life.
And lastly, what does your band name mean to you? And, whats its origin?
Will: The Normandy landings, of course, one memorable chapter in the history of humanity. The landings took place in no suitable weather conditions because very few days of each month were appropriate to engage, and the forecasts for the 5th of June, which was the initial fixed date for the operation, were not optimistic at all. The allied troops would have had to wait for 1 month to find the suitable weather conditions again, but the forecasts predicted a brief improvement for the 6th of June, so General Eisenhower decided to wait no more. The Germans didn’t expect an invasion in such conditions, many troops and officers (including the great Erwin Rommel) were off their positions, so the landings turned out to be a surprise attack.
And that’s the idea of the whole “Clouds Over Normandy” metaphor. The clouds cover the skies of Normandy again, the sign that something unexpected is about to happen. And this unexpected ‘something’ is what we would like to be someday in our music scene.
Clouds Over Normandy is:Will - DrumsLuis - GuitarSergi - VocalsJordi - GuitarMarc - Bass
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