Walking Rumor - From Symbiosis To The Next Album

Tell us about yourself and your music

Walking Rumor started out as the idea of musicians being 100% honest towards ourselves. We needed to be self-aware about what we could and couldn’t do as individuals, where did our skills lie and what would we need to compensate. That’s mainly the reason for us having 2 vocalists, Anders Mørch and Keino Gustavsson. Keino and Andreas (guitar) started the band back in 2015, after leaving a 10-year-old project behind them.

“I was the only vocalist back in our old band. I’ve always struggled with keeping notes clean when I wanted to sing bigger choruses, so we needed someone who had that strength. That’s why we found Anders and he is an absolute beast at it” – Keino.

Walking Rumor contains 4 key members that all come from a variety of backgrounds and everyone grew up listening to different stuff.

We ended up mixing all these backgrounds into the sound that is now Walking Rumor, which many has compared to the sound of the early 2000s.

This we don’t see as criticism, but more as a great accomplishment because that sound had such a huge audience behind it.

The members in the band are:

Jacob Nielsen – Bass

Andreas Løvenhorst – Guitar

Anders Mørch – Vocals

Kenio Gustavsson – Vocals

When it comes to our situation with a drummer, we mainly use session drummers or people in our network.

Having a drummer full time is definitely a goal of ours, but it has to happen naturally.

Talk to us more about your latest release

We recently released our debut album Symbiosis, which contains 12 tracks that pretty much symbolizes us as a band and where we come from.

The title Symbiosis is inspired by how we were able to mix all of these genre backgrounds into one album, where one can’t stand without the others.

Removing one of these elements wouldn’t provide the sound that is Walking Rumor, so you could say, that this record is more like us kicking in the door, to the musical journey we are about to take.

The album was recorded at LAK Studios in Albertslund, produced by Claudio Andersen and Mixed/Mastered by Chris Kreutzfeldt.

We worked on the pre-production in our home studio, which back then wasn’t much.

It was pretty much just a laptop on a desk, with 2 small monitors and a homemade vocal booth in the corner.

We had set up this “studio” in the corner of our rehearsal space, so we were pretty cramped in but it had an amazing vibe to it.

What inspired you to write this release?

Before Symbiosis we had already released an EP named ‘The War Within’ and 2 stand-alone singles, ‘Dedicate to This’ and ‘Tears me Apart’.

When we started writing the album we were signed over to a different label and they actually encouraged us to write an album.

Because they were like; You’ve already released an EP and 2 singles, your fans are going to want a full-length album by now.

But writing a full-length album was not something we’ve expected to do so early on in our career as a band, so we barely had any idea of how to proceed to accomplish this new goal.

“I remember us, sitting around this small table we had back in the old rehearsal space, looking at each other and practically thinking the same thing; Can we actually do this?” – Jacob.

Describe the writing and recording process

It all started in our old rehearsal room at Kansas City, Odense (DK), which is this union that provides rehearsal rooms for upcoming, local bands.

The pre-production was recorded at our small “home studio”, that was set up inside our rehearsal space and us kind of working together in teams.

One day it might have been Andreas and Anders working on guitar ideas, some other days it could be Kenio and our old drummer (Anders Rasmussen) who were working on recording drumming ideas, then Jacob and Andreas tracking bass and rhythm guitar parts the third. This process wasn’t the fastest way to write an album but it felt safer for us as this was our first time.

“Sometimes we would have meetings just to get an idea of where the album was headed. We had put up this overview of the project on the wall in the form of small notes, kind of like post-its, just to keep track of how far each song was in the writing process.” – Anders

When the pre-production deadline came, we came into LAK Studios in Albertslund for a whole weekend, so that we could start the recording of our first single on the album, which turned out to be the track called ‘Wasted Years’. This gave us an idea of how the working process inside the studio would be like and getting to know our producer.

Shortly after we started recording the rest of the album at LAK with Claudio Andersen behind the wheel, which was such an amazing experience.

He and the team at LAK are like mind readers when it comes to our genre. It’s like they knew what we wanted to do, before even mentioning the ideas.

“A lot of our songs got shredded into pieces and built back together while being at LAK. The same goes for the vocals. Having the courage to be that flexible and being able to write something new, very fast, that suits the idea of where the team wants it to go, is a strong ability to have and I believe we achieved that while at LAK Studios.” – Andreas.

Any plans to release a video?

Any plans to hit the road?

Nothing would make us happier than to hit the road, tour the world with Symbiosis, and meet all of our fans.

Sadly, like many other artists around the globe, we are held back by the Corona Virus.

We do have a show in our home town Odense at Musikhuset Posten on August 21, together with Junkyard Drive – which we are very thankful for still seems to be an option.

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

We can quickly agree that music these days is for free, which forces musicians to be more innovative.

This goes for getting people to listen to your music, attending shows, and buying your merch.

“What I think this band is good at, is asking ourselves the critical questions and mainly asking ourselves ‘Why?’. Why should people listen to our music, why should they attend our shows, why should they buy our merch? – It’s about adding that extra, secondary value to your audience so that they actually want to be part of your journey” – Kenio.

When we are writing music, we like to be as honest as possible. Making sure that we are writing about what we are actually feeling, experiencing, and thinking at that moment. This makes, for us, the music more relatable and ends up speaking to our listeners in a way that says; we hear you, we understand you and hey, you’re not alone. Bringing that same value into your live shows gives us a very special connection to our fans and we get to know them more personally – which is also a deep value for us.

Who have you been listening to lately?

We are listening to a variety of artists and it always changes.

Lately, we are listening to Issues, Bring me the Horizon, Northlane, While She Sleeps and NF.

Who are your biggest influences?

We prefer to get inspired by artists outside of our genre, just because we feel that a lot of times artists can end up sounding a little too similar, within the same genre. We are currently writing our second full-length album, where we’ve been looking at artists as Issues and NF.

Tell us about your passions

We love being artistic, engaging and of course, make music.

If there is an opportunity for us to inspire and help out the mental health community, we’d be on board right away.

This is inspired by our own experience with mental health, which we don’t see as a weakness, but as a strength to be used for our own self-development.

What else is happening next in your world?

As we mentioned before, we are in the process of writing our second album – that we already can reveal will be a little heavier than what you’ve heard from us prior. Hopefully, when this pandemic is over, we will be looking at a tour with some amazing artists, so we can get out there and meet the people we miss the most, our fans. There are some projects here and there, for example, Kenio is working on his solo album, and the band is working on a potential festival project in cooperation with musical schools around the country. We obviously can’t reveal too much yet, but we are trying our best to keep ourselves working, even under the current conditions.

 

 

Thanks for an awesome interview, Walking Rumor

 

 

Connect with Walking Rumor

Website: http://www.walkingrumor.comFacebook: http://www.facebook.com/walkingrumorInstagram: http://www.instagram.com/walkingrumorTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/walkingrumorYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNonqNs20vU

Genres: Metal

Source: ArtistPR Indie Artist Interview