Unveiling of secrets about Xaitopia

Tell us about yourself and your music

Hi, we are Xaitopia, an extreme metal band from Sweden. The idea of Xaitopia started in 2015 when we started talking about doing something fun, meaningful and different than our previous and current musical projects. First, we didn’t know what kind of music we would like to play but we knew it would be something that sounds raw and aggressive and lean more towards the extreme subgenres of heavy metal, and it should sound horrible with a very raw and unfinished touch to the quality of the songs. We all grew up listening to both heavy and soft music, so we felt comfortable with that.

We are five members in the band and every one of us has a different music taste, but we all share the love of raw, heavy and misunderstood music. The idea of our band name (Xaitopia) came up when our bassist started designing our logo, and we thought it sounded new and good but also very weird, which suits our music in some way. We haven’t heard of that name before, some of our friends thought it was a joke when we mentioned it. They wanted to know what it means, and they still don’t know. Besides a few persons who know the member’s identities, we would like to be anonymous until we decide to reveal any member information. We like it that way!

Talk to us more about your latest release

Our latest song we released is called “The Moment” and is included in the Christmas compilation by Rottweiler Records. It’s a brand-new song we recorded for our latest EP that we released back in August of 2019, but we felt the song would better suit this season instead. We talked about it and felt it would be nice to release something new around Christmas and that’s what we did. The cold weather and dark days and nights during the fall and the winter inspire us a lot, and this song came to be a long time ago when it was a cold and rainy day. Our vocalist wrote the lyrics with some elaboration from the rest of the band, which was a new way for Xaitopia to write lyrics together. Usually one of us writes the lyrics while we as a band write the rest of the music.

What inspired you to write this release?

The music for “Sorrow” was written a long time ago during a cold season, because that’s what mostly inspire us, but the lyrics for the song “The Moment” were specifically aimed to be about Christmas, and what other time of the year would be better to release this song than just before Christmas? Not midsummer if you ask us.

Describe the writing and recording process

It all depends on what we feel at the time, sometimes we just throw stuff at each other, other times we send tracks with some recorded parts and then each member adds what they feel fit the song. When we are done with writing the song, we put the it on the shelf and forget about it. After that, we move on and forget what we have made and then come back and do more music. After a while, we revisit what we have written so far and see if we still like it or not. We try not to get stuck in the writing, recording and mixing process because that’s not what we aim to achieve in this band. A few of us have done and still do that in our other musical endeavors which sometimes can be very frustrating and that’s why Xaitopia is a band where all of us can relax and make music that sounds distorted, raw and horrible to our liking without any pressure from the rest of the world.   

Any plans to release a video?

Any plans to hit the road?

Not at the moment, some of us are active with other projects that gig and tour. We have some weird and crazy ideas that we would like to do if we tour but it all depends on the logistics, crew, and budget we have. The main point of the live show would be to do something very different and weird at the same time.

As an indie artist, how do you brand yourself and your music to stand out from the rest of the artists out there?

We don’t! We really do not care a lot about what the outside world thinks of our music and the quality of it. The most important thing is that we like and enjoy our horrible music. Our fans like and enjoy what we do and that means a lot to us. But we really don’t care what people want us to be than to be ourselves. We’re talking from experience and what makes every individual in this band happy and satisfied with their effort is to let them be themselves and have fun!

Another thing we do is that we try not to mix our songs in a conventional way, sometimes we barely do anything! From time to time, we can be very lazy, and we like it that way. We like how it sounds and that’s what’s important for us. If the mix sounds good and comparable with a radio hit, we’ll start all over again, and we have done that before. We also do spontaneous takes when we track and sometimes just use the first take when recording, even if it includes some minor mistakes, and that is because we feel it got the vibe of the moment and the musicians at the time of tracking. We also try to be up to date on social media and be available on lots of channels so anybody can listen, share, and hopefully, enjoy our music. Everything we do take a long time and we do our best (or worst, it depends on how you see it) to let everything flow naturally and not stress any part of the process.

Who have you been listening to lately?

We’ve been listening to a lot of progressive, post-metal and pop music lately! Port Noir, kent, Bryan Adams, Cult of Luna, Leprous, God is an Astronaut and some Japanese post-rock stuff. Our friends in the bands In Mourning and Currents Will Shift just released some new music, Misery Loves Co., a band we listened to when we were young, released a new album after 19 years which inspired us. Our guitarist just introduced us to another Swedish band called Soen which we think are very good, fresh-sounding and interesting.

Who are your biggest influences?

Let’s do this more in a personal way. We are five members, each one will tell you one band or artist and you can guess what parts we play in the band and what we take with us into the band, ok? Linkin Park, Crimson Moonlight, Antestor, Daft Punk and The Cardigans.

Tell us about your passions

We all have regular day jobs to fully enjoy what we do in this band. Some of the bands and artists we listen to and motivate us started out by making music and at the same time have a 9-5 job, and some still do. It’s all about being passionate and love what you do and who you’re doing it with. We are teachers, salesmen, programmers and touring musicians, some of us have families and other obligations to attend to but when we make music, we enjoy it and have a really good time.

Even if we don’t meet regularly, we still do our parts in the band like professionals… or maybe not, that must be a joke, we are very lazy actually! Our bassist is the one who gets us to do stuff and not just wanders around and try to joke about everything. He’s also the one who designed our logo. Our vocalist who also works as a teacher is an avid photographer and has been providing us with images for our cover arts. We as a band also try to hang out and meet outside band activities. In the past, that lead us to take some important decisions about the band from a different perspective and has really helped us know each other. We usually go out and fish, walk and discover unusual places in the woods and just travel to cold places. We love when it’s cold and snowing.

 

What else is happening next in your world?

A new year is coming up and we have an EP to release in the next couple of months. We will start tracking new music in January 2020 to be released later the same year, and we have a big thing coming up in the fall of 2020, one very interesting thing we have been planning to do for a while.

 

 

Thanks for an awesome interview, Xaitopia

 

 

Connect with Xaitopia

Website: https://elohimproductions.se/Xaitopia.htmlFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/Xaitopia/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/xaitopia/Twitter: https://twitter.com/XaitopiaMusicYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOyGfDKZ4WxaA1wuXzNfhFQSoundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/xaitopia

Genres: Metal

Source: ArtistPR Indie Artist Interview