Interview: Joviac

Recently, DutchMetalManiac’s Tim van Velthuysen interviewed Joviac’s Viljami Jupiter Wenttola.

Hey, how are you?

I’m great! Thanks! I’ve had a really fruitful week so far with songwriting! I hope you’re doing well and you and your loved ones are safe.

Can you tell us something about the history of Joviac?

I founded Joviac in late 2016/early 2017 when my previous band disbanded. I’ve been making music since I was a teenager and I just needed a new flag to sail my ship under. I did take all the lessons learned with previous projects and bands to heart, though.

Antti Varjanne (bass) and I put out Joviac’s debut album by ourselves, I did everything except play bass on that album. Looking back on it now it feels more like a glorified demo than an actual album, but I’m proud of it never the less. It was in the fall of 2017 when Joviac became a full fledged band with the addition of Rudy Fabritius (drums) and Janne Korpela (live-guitar). We’ve just been making music ever since! The only thing that’s changed is that Joona Niemi is taking care of the live-guitar duties at the moment. We’ve got a pretty special thing going here and I never take for granted that I’m able to make music with these talented people. On top of that they’re also some of my best friends!

For people not knowing Joviac (yet), how would you describe your music yourself?

Well we’re a progressive metal band, but I don’t subscribe to all the tropes that come with that label. For me music is about feelings and emotion, so those come first. I don’t feel a lot of emotions for self indulgent technicality for example, it just doesn’t do it for me, so there’s very little of that in Joviac’s music. To me progressive metal is about freedom. You are free to make a 40 minute long conceptual prog song, or you can make a song with the most used song structure in the world. We don’t have a 40 minute long song yet, but maybe one day.

When someone doesn’t know Joviac yet and you can choose one of your songs to present yourself, which song would that be?

It depends what kind of music that person is into! A safe bet would be the title track of our newest album, Here And Now. It encapsulates pretty much all of the musical directions present in our songs at the moment. So it’s like a crash course into Joviac!

What makes Joviac unique?

We do! My music is 100% honest and comes from a personal place. You may or may not like it, but at least the songs are 100% me and there’s not many of me out there!

Any future plans you can already tell us something about?

During the summer I almost drove myself to the brink of burnout. I had set myself a very ambitious goal to write our next album and a very narrow deadline. It didn’t quite work out, luckily I had the sense to yell “stop” before I stressed myself out into insanity. I did come up with some pretty cool new music though, and we’re tentatively looking at recording some of it this winter. In fact I’ve been reworking one of those songs this week and I’m am incredibly proud. It’s Joviac at its rawest and heaviest, but also softest and most expressive, and all within one song! So I have as of yet no idea what exactly we’re recording this winter, a few songs, an EP or an album, but I’ll let you know!

Any upcoming gigs for Joviac? Maybe coming to The Netherlands?

Corona has our gig calendars taken care of pretty much… We were able to play two amazing shows here in Finland (one was streamed and you can find it here!) just before the infection numbers started to rise up. The one solid dream and goal we are working toward as a band is to go on tour in the near future, so once Corona is over and it’s safe, we would absolutely love to visit The Netherlands and play!

How do you think your life would be without music?

I don’t know if I would have a life to be honest. Music has been my guiding light and my therapy over the years and it’s the one thing that’s given me direction and comforted me when times were tough. I couldn’t imagine my life without music.

That being said, I’m very interested in linguistics, so I always thought that maybe I would’ve gone on to study something in that field if I didn’t have music!

What advice would you give to young and starting bands?

Be yourself and don’t listen to others (me included) that much. The songs are the #1 priority and if you have that, then just keep on making more.

That being said, no one really talks about the fact that you’ll have to put in an endless amount of your own money before you see anything come back. You need to already be the full finished package for anyone to get interested. That means you have to invest a lot. Social media marketing, PR, all of that non-musical stuff costs money unless you somehow have all of those bases covered within the band. So surround yourself with good people!

Thanks for your answers! Is there anything you want to say to DutchMetalManiac’s readers?

Thank you for this interview, it was a pleasure answering your questions, even if my answers were a little short (sorry I was in a hurry!).

If you want to check out our particular blend of progressive metal, you can find everything related to Joviac here.

Sincerely,

Viljami

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