A band which is in Rock Sound's list of "Bands to look out for in '05" is going to be impressive. Or at least one would hope they'd be impressive and standards of cool new acts haven't dropped that dramatically in the last few months. Thankfully Eden Maine are an up and coming band who are managing to push up the stakes of what makes a band one of the "bands to look out for" in the metal scene and with their new album, "To You The First Star" being released on the February 7th the levels of success open to this are rocketing.
Having achieved a good response from music fans prior to the release of their 2002 EP "The Treachery Pact", Eden Maine have been receiving the kind of push from music magazines which many bands can only wish for in their first few years. Such support from promoters clearly also meant more touring for the band, who's label sent them across Europe to tour to the likes of Germany and France where promoters "really look after you and get you as drunk as they can". Or so Eden Maine's vocalist Adam Symonds will tell you. Germany's apparently the best.
Symonds himself will also confess openly to not only loving European tours due to the holiday like feel of being abroad, but that many of his musical influences are also bands from Europe, such as the now broken up Swedish band Breech who's influences on the singer's writing are increasingly powerful and also more obvious on the new album.
"Breech are my biggest personal influence, just the dynamics that they use and the chord structure as well just gives them a really big sound" Symonds gushes to me with the sincerity of a schoolboy whose just discovered his musical calling. Even the extremity of Breech's dynamic contrast have made "To You The First Star" much more of a loud/soft record, with greater melodic lines, chilled out tunes and epic tracks than on the EP.
This new album should be a hit if the critics are correct, however, the band itself also need to put in some work to get the machine working, admittedly something they didn't think to do after the EP was released. Whether the promotion or distribution wasn't up to par or the band took too long between the release date and the beginning of touring, Eden Maine are determined not to make the same mistake twice, with a seven week tour starting two weeks before "To You The First Star" is even released. This time around, the band are extensively touring the country, playing every possible venue they can find, in hope that by May this year they can cross the pond and conquer the US of A.
"I think they'd definitely like our music over there" Symonds remarks confidently, also taking into account that two, maybe three weeks of touring the UK means you've worn out the big cities like London, Glasgow and Manchester, and are then confined to small villages that only residents of the surrounding county have ever heard of.
"In American you can tour really hard for like 3 months and you still haven't played everywhere," Symonds elaborates, "I think it just gives you more chance to play to more people". Thus why Eden Maine is so eager to go out and tour the States, who are arguably more acceptable of new and different kinds of music and will inevitably welcome the band with outstretched arms, not only for those "awesome British accents" but for bringing an offering of musical delight with them.
A question for every band is "how big would you like to be"- whether the idea of stadium performances to 20,000 people is the soul aim in life of each musician. Some bands are considered to be "stadium performers" from the moment a critic sees their show in a seedy bar, but few ever make it to that Greenday or Bon Jovi level of popularity and record sales, but in 2005 heavier bands are starting to take over, and the possibility for a band with a relatively new heavy metal sound (we're not talking Slipknot/Slayer here) to headline a show in an arena is becoming more and more likely to happen in the next few years. Perhaps Eden Maine will be one of these bands;
"In a way I guess we do [want to tour arenas]. We all take music seriously and we have big aspirations for the band, we're like a real heavy band now, we have real expectations which we're trying to meet", but would the band welcome that kind of success and the weight that comes with it?
"We don't want to limit ourselves so we'd definitely tour arenas if it ever got to that point" and with that single statement I can rest assured that Eden Maine's expanding horizons are well deserved to this group of musicians who will hopefully go all the way.