2015 is going to be a huge year for Melbourne progressive metallers, Ne Obliviscaris. With a world tour on the cards and a new album under their belts, drummer Dan Presland talks to JESSICA WILLOUGHBY ahead of their show at Amplifier Bar on Saturday, December 6, supported by Canada’s Beyond Creation.
When a band chooses to walk down the crowdfunding path, they tentatively prepare themselves for the results to be very hit-and-miss. But sometimes the sheer dedication of fans blows all expectations out of the water, as was the case for Melbourne outfit, Ne Obliviscaris.
The progressive metallers set the ambitious goal of raising $40,000 to set out on their first world tour next year. Even though they knew their fans from foreign soil were desperate to experience them in the flesh, they never expected the surge of support that saw them collect more than $80,000 towards an international run-of-dates.
“We thought from the start that our original quota of $40,000 was a very high goal,” drummer, Dan Presland, tells X-Press. “I was extremely nervous about it and unsure about how it was going to go.
I never thought we’d get over $80,000 in our wildest dreams. All of us are still pinching ourselves because that’s an unbelievable amount of support from people we don’t even know. But it’s made us want to work even harder to achieve things we never thought were possible.
“We’ve got some ideas in concrete for the tour and are talking to quite a lot of bookers and promoters overseas now. The only thing we’ve decided on that we are going to be hitting up Europe next year. It’s just about putting all the pieces together now. After that, we’re looking at North America and, hopefully, South America.”
So with the outfit raising almost double the amount needed, does that mean they’ll be doing twice the shows? “We’d love to have double the amount of shows,” Presland says. “With the result we got from that, which we totally didn’t expect, there is a certain amount of pressure to get to as many places and see as many faces as we can. That’s what we really want to do. Going forward and booking the world tour, we will definitely be looking to explore as many places as we can.”
Set to align with the release of their sophomore full-length, Citadel, the six-piece is already on the road and bringing their new material to Australian crowds. Also joining the Soundwave bandwagon interstate in early 2015, Presland is interested to see how fans react to what he has described as a “very different” album live.
“Some of the other guys were a little bit daunted when we first started writing Citadel because of the success we’d had with our debut,” he explains. “I was extremely excited to get right into it because we had been playing the Portal Of I (2012) stuff for some time. But once we got into the thick of things, the rest of the guys really got into a rhythm and ideas were just flying around – it was an exciting process.
“I am much happier after the release of this album than I was with our first one. I just think our playing and songwriting has matured. We’re at the stage now where we are writing music we really, really enjoy.”
