With their fifth album, V, just released and garnering excellent reviews around the world, Voyager guitarist, Simone Dow, chats to SHANE PINNEGAR about Voyager’s forthcoming national tour next month, which culminates in a homecoming show at Amplifier Bar on Saturday, July 26, with Eastern Staters Caligula’s Horse and Orsome Welles.
Voyager guitarist Simone Dow is justifiably happy with the response to the band’s new album, V, which was largely financed by a crowd-funding campaign through Kickstarter.
“Absolutely, a really great response,” the flame-haired guitarist says, excitedly. “We’re really proud of this album and we want to really put the pedal to the metal and actually get it out there to as many places as possible because we knew we had something pretty special with the record.”
The band’s Kickstarter campaign aimed to raise $10,000 to part-finance the record, a goal they reached in just three days, eventually ending up with almost double that figure.
“Yeah!” Dow says, “That was another thing that just blew us away. We wanted to give it a go because most people should know by now that working in original music is not exactly paying the bills for a lot of us out there. Everything we’ve done in the past has all been from our own pockets and it’s hard sometimes – you work full-time jobs as well trying to do all of this and it’s a lot of money.
“We thought, ‘well, let’s give it a shot’. We thought we could epically fail and get $10 or something like that, but at least we gave it a go. We’re just so lucky that we have such a loyal fan base – they’d do anything for us. We try to do as much as possible, throw a concert with them and chat away with them on Facebook and things like that as well. “We didn’t think that in three days we would have that much money pledged and it actually ended up nearly being double what we asked for. We’re just forever grateful to our fans for doing that.”
Not that that was enough to cover the full cost of the album…
“It covered a lot of it, though. It covered pretty much most of the actual CD portion of it and actually getting it produced and mastered and the CDs pressed. That side of it was covered, and a little bit of the primary cost, but yeah, we’re still at thousands that we’re paying out of our own pockets. There’s still a lot to pay for but it helped a huge amount.”
Musically speaking, Dow says V is a definite progression for the already-progressive metal band.
“I think that with the last album, The Meaning Of I, we really took a bit of a change in direction. It became a lot heavier, and was a lot darker. It still had some old school sort of elements in it, but there were a few songs that were really taking a lot of the new modern metal influences as well.
“This time round, basically the whole band wrote this whole album, rather than it being Danny (Estrin, vocals/keyboards) coming in with 80 per cent of the tracks and then us adding some pieces to it. This time ‘round most of it was actually written in the jam room.
“All of us have got such an eclectic mix and taste in music that it’s just turned out a lot different from what we’ve done in the past. It’s still got these poppy, synth elements to it, it still sounds like Voyager. I think it’s a natural progression from the last album but I think it’s quite a bit more polished and heavier and it’s a lot more focused than our previous albums.”
Voyager play Amplifier Bar on Saturday, July 26.
Get your tickets here.
