In March the Spanish metallers of Coffeinne released their second album, titled Requiem. In April, DutchMetalManiac’s Henric van Essen reviewed it here and now he also interviewed Coffeinne’s vocalist Iñaki Lazcano.
Hello, a good day to you. Thank you for allowing me to interview you. How are you doing? I hope you’re all safe from the current pandemic?
Hi! You’re welcome. Thanks to you for the interest. We’re all healthy at the moment if that’s what you mean. Worried and a bit frustrated, but healthy.
One of the reasons I picked your release to review was the band name Coffeinne. It does draw attention, but it in no way indicates what is to be expected music-wise. What is the story behind it?
Well, at the beginning it was a project between David and me more than a proper band. During the recording sessions at the studio, we started to search a name for the band, and the first one that came out was Circle of time (that at the end would be our first album’s name), but it sounded a bit typical and obvious. We didn’t want to have a tag from the first time you heard our name… Suddenly, we were recording Fragile (that talks about a prostitute) and wanted to title the song with an invented, non-existing, female name. We all (David, the engineer and myself) were such like addicted to coffee at that time, and like a joke, “Coffeinne” came out for the name of that prostitute leading role of that song. Finally, we liked the name so much that we decided to use it for the band and look for a new one for the song. It was exactly what we were looking for, a name that does not give you any clue about the style of our music and therefore does not bias you before listening to it.
I would like to congratulate you with Requiem. It took me a minute to adapt to it, but from then on it developed into a great album. What did the creative process leading to this release look like and who did what part?
It was a long and hard road… we struggled so much during the process that sometimes we were just about to give up, but in the end it was worth it. Regarding the composition, it’s always the same way. David sends me riffs or ideas, I put the melodies and lyrics to those ideas and we record the rough demos. Then, we share them with Miguel and Pako to complete the songs with their personal touch.
Your music is obviously heavily influenced by power metal, is there a reason for that?
We like power metal, simple as that, haha. But not only power metal. I believe that we don’t play just or only power-metal. Usually, if it’s metal and melodic, we like it and probably, it will influence us.
One of the things that struck me is the complete absence of keyboards, which, in my opinion isn’t a weakness whatsoever. Is there a reason they are?
It’s what we wanted and what we like for Coffeinne. You can hear or feel some background fills with strings or similar, but keys will never be the main character of our music. We like the way we get the power from the guitars and how we take out the melody from the other side without the need of adding standing out keyboards.
Despite the unmistakable power metal influences there is much more to be found and enjoy on Requiem making this all but a characteristic power metal album. What, if anything, influences your music?
We definitely like power metal, but also classic heavy metal, death, black, thrash, hard rock… You can’t say that we play any of those styles exclusively, but you can find brush strokes of all of them here and there within the album. We don’t like to auto-constrain us when we are writing. Obviously you won’t find urban pop in a song of ours, but you better don’t expect just power metal within Requiem or you’ll be surprised…
What are your lyrical concepts about and where do you draw your inspiration from?
Usually we write about everything that surround us. In this case, all songs within Requiem talk, in one way or another, about the death. From different points of view, in different contexts… there’s not a connection among all of the songs but the death. With that link, some lyrics are about social criticism, others about personal losses, re-incarnation, sci-fi or the death itself shown like a saviour angel coming to rescue a person that is suffering.
Being a relatively new band it’s imperative to get exposure in order to gain fame. One of the tools to accomplish that is touring. Do you have any plans on touring in the near future?
We had some, but then the Covid-19 came and ruined everything. Now we just want all this nightmare to dissapear and we can start to plan new tour dates. We hope it’s in the near future…
One final question, one that has nothing to do with your music: Suppose you had only one more day left on this planet, where would you spend it and why?
I guess the expected answer is in a stage playing a big gig… but in my case, it would be anywhere playing with my little daughter.
Thanks for the opportunity to do this interview, is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
Thanks to you for giving people the opportunity to know us a little more. The only thing we can say is thank you so much to everybody that follows and support us. Even in this pandemic era, we have got an amazing feedback to the Requiem release from the fans and we feel their heat and love everyday. THANKS!
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