Carbon Black

Carbon Black is a very young band coming out from the No Remorse unit, the rock school for all-female rock bands. They play their own contemporary metal, with dark edges and tons of attitude. Check our interview to this promising formation.

Carbon Black was born in 2007; you are a very young band, so full of illusion and expectations. Which are them, and which is the next step you’ll take to reach them?
Well, we don’t have a checklist of things that we have to do in the future but there are a lot of things we really want for the band. Completing a whole album being one of them and of course playing live as much as we can to let people know who we are, that we exist. Also, we really enjoyed making our video so we’ll be doing another one as soon as possible. It all comes down to a lot of hard work and dedication to the art. We’ll do our best to write songs, perform and promote ourselves.

Have you ever performed a concert? If so, which is the best gig you remember and did your set list consisted in? If you haven’t, when is your debut expected?
No, unfortunately not yet. We’ve had the chance to perform if we wanted to but it just didn’t happen. We had some trouble recruiting members and we stood without a guitarist at that time. But we’re a full band right now, at last, and we’re working on some new material so we’re hoping to play our first gig this fall.

I knew you from a unit called No Remorse. Please, can you explain what is No Remorse about? It looks like a rock school for all-female rock bands, isn’t it?
That’s what it is basically. It’s a place where girls in bands can hang out and rehearse. Or if you don’t have a band get some help putting one together and also get the opportunity to learn how to play guitar, bass or drums. You get advice from great musicians who can help you become better as a band. You can get some studio time and also get to record your own music video as we did if you’re good at what you do. They also offer lessons in how to make movies because it’s actually both a music and film school. And it’s all about bringing more girls into a business that’s basically male-dominated which is what makes No Remorse so special. It’s definitely a unique organization not only in Sweden but in the whole world as well.

And do they take control over your career, or you are completely the responsible of all the band decisions?
No, not really. They’re mostly there give some musical guidance and support.

Was it being an all-female metal band intended since the beginning, or it was just a coincidence?
It was somewhat of a coincidence. It wasn’t like we sat down and said “Lets start a band with girls only”. But we just got talking about how much fun it would be to start a band together and make some music. Some of us we’re old friends since grading school but we hadn’t really talked to each others for years so it was a really fun reuninion thing going on as well. Then we found out about No Remorse and realized what a great chance for us it would be to take part in their organization and since it’s a girls-place-only that’s how it went.

Being such a young all-female band will open you many doors, but by the other hand you’ll have to fight hard to be taken seriously. Have you started to notice some of these facts?
Yes, we have. Both of those things. Being an all-female band playing the sort of style we’ve chosen will definitely set us apart from other bands. And that is a good thing. It’s a mans world among the metal bands and since we don’t fit that norm we won’t blend in so easy. To many people we’ll probably never be just a hardrock/metalband but a “girl-band”. They will compare us to the other all-female bands in a way that the all-male bands don’t have to with each other. We are aware of that and it sucks in a way but what are you gonna do? We won’t be intimidated by that anyway. We’ll just do our thing and hope that people like it even if we’re not a bunch of guys.

Your strongest weapon to be recognized is your music. At the moment you’ve got one song recorded, “You Can Run, But You Can Never Hide”, a strong mid-tempo with a dark edge. The lyrics also show attitude. What do they talk about?
It’s more fun when you leave it up the each listener to believe whatever they like but in short it’s about telling people that they better think twice before they mess with you because you might not be a pushover…

It follows the paths of Korn. Which are your main music influences?
To that song in particular, Korn was a big inspiration even though there are big differences between us and them. But we’ve got so many different bands that we listen to. Each member of this band have their own style but they come together just fine when we work on our music. Our influences are everything between Korn, Rob Zombie, Slipknot and Marilyn Manson to Ac/Dc, Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne, From first to last, Drop dead gorgeous and Bring me the Horizon.

If you could organize a music festival yourself, who would be in the folder? Who would you pay to share stage with?
That’s a really hard question. Should we choose bands that we simply love but might not sound anything alike or try to put together a couple of bands with whom we probably share the same fanbase? If we did a little bit of both we’d end up having a lineup consisting of: Korn, Rob Zombie, From first to last, Ac/Dc, Marilyn Manson and Drop dead gorgeous.

You’ve got five songs more ready to be recorded. When are you going to enter the studio? What can you tell us about them? Are they following the same style as “You Can Run, But You Can Never Hide” or we can expect some surprise?
Well, actually they’re not all completely finished yet but we’re working really hard on then and we’ve got some more written material that we’ll start turning into songs soon enough. Hence we don’t know when we’ll be recording them. It all depends on how soon they’ll be done. We don’t want to rush the process and compromise their quality. We don’t want to give away too much about them. They don’t sound exactly like “You can run but you can never hide” that’s for sure but we’re not changing our musical style completely either. We have one that’s a little “Black Sabbath” with the riffs and then there’s one that’s a little slower and more melancholic so there’s going to be something for all occasions. There will absolutely also be some heavier stuff and we’re looking forward to the final result of it all. If all goes well we’ll even be filming our next video within a near future.

You seem also to take care of your look. Is it an important part of Carbon Black concept?
Definitely, because there’s nothing more boring than a band who don’t go that extra mile to make their band worth watching. The music is of course what’s most important because it’s not quite acceptable to just look great when you sound like shit.

This look, your video, your music … it has always a remarkable dark element showing off. Is the name Carbon Black trying to transmit this darkness?
Actually, no. That would be a great story but it’s not how it happened. We just picked a name we thought sounded good. We had a lot of names to choose from but that’s what we ended up with. To start with we had “Carbons” so we elaborated with that word a bit, just trying to combine it with other words and decided that we wanted a two-word name. Carbon Black sounded like a good choice to us.

How important is Internet for the new young bands nowadays? Is it the best way to promote yourselves? Do you get international feedback/support through your myspace?
Internet is a great way to reach people who might be interested in your music. Especially for new bands who don’t have much of a fanbase already. You hear a lot of stories of now famous bands who got discovered through internet promotion so we’ll definitely get serious with that part as soon as we get some more songs online. We’ve been a little lazy with that so far but at least we have a site so that’s a start. We have gotten some international response on our music, actually most of the response we get comes from outside of Sweden. But we’ve also gotten some offers to play at clubs in Stockholm so myspace is a great thing.

Tell the readers why Carbon Black is a band worth to listen to.
Simply because we stand for something that’s rather unique with us being an all-female rockband exploring the darker “horror-side” of music. If they like what we’re doing, then great for us. If people hate it, then too bad for them.

Besök hemsidan där vår intervju ligger, och läs andra bandintervjuer:

http://www.metaladies.com/2009/09/15/carbon-black-interview/

This song we wrote in early 2008, and the video for it was recorded in late 2008. 

First video we made, the first time we cut and edited our own video ever. 

Now, we have contacts, people who have experience in the music video industry 

and can cut and edit the video for us, so our next video will be done more professional.

Carbon Black was formed in late 2007. 
We have made a music video for one of our songs, You can run but you can never hide. 
We are currently with 3 new songs, one of which will be recorded in the studio 
shortly.

Thought we should start with a short presentation of all the members of the band


Miss Decay, born in 1986: Vocals

Jeanette, born in 1989: Bass




JennLie, born in 1986: Drums

Sofia, born in 1990: Guitar

Välkommen till Carbon Blacks Blogg.

Här kan du följa dem och se dem utvecklas, vad de tycker och tänker,

foton, låtar och musikvideos.

Have fun!