Emir Hot will be a new name to most readers of Virtuosity One, yet the quality displayed on his debut album "Sevdah Metal" deserves to make his name much better known.  Having shown true dedication to his craft from his upbringing in Bosnia to strugglers through University in England, Emir's music is a testament to hard work and perseverance.    If you have yet to check out Emir's music check out this album sampler as well as whats on offer at Emir's official website and myspace profile (links at end of interview).

Emir, congratulations on your superb debut album “Sevdah Metal” it’s a superb slice of neo-classical power metal.
Thank you very much for nice words. It’s always great to hear feedback like that.

When did you begin writing for the album and over what time frame did it all come together?
I started writing this album in 2005 while I was still a student of “Guitar Institute” in London. It has always been my dream to have a solo album with some famous people from metal industry and where I can show most of my composing, arranging and performing skills. It took about 2 years to have the product ready. There was a lot to be done especially because I was involved in absolutely everything. I was managing the whole project from the demo stage to the end. I was writing, arranging, financing, organising, producing, recording, mixing, travelling and a lot more. It was really a huge amount of work to be done but when you seriously decide to go for it then nothing is impossible.

There is a nice variety of material on offer here.  Where do your initial seeds for song ideas come from and how do work on making these “seeds” into “songs”.
I am mostly influenced by hard rock and metal roots from 70’s and 80’s. Besides I like classical music. I used to study classical guitar. I also listen to various different bands that have nothing in common with metal. All those mixtures of different styles somehow come together in my mind and I get ideas to make something comparable to my influences quality wise. I always tend to make my music as original as possible. I think this kind of song writing approach is the same for almost any songwriter.

The combination of neo-classically orientated metal with the traditional sevdah influences makes the album unique in sound.  Is this fusion of styles something you have always played or is this a recent pairing?
“Sevdah” is the name of our Bosnian traditional music. I had played that style in my country for many years besides all usual metal bands I’ve been with. It’s very different than any metal or any commercial music but there is something about that music. It wakes up strong feelings and energy but you really have to be born in that part of Europe to understand it properly. Lyrically it’s also very strong and emotional. I have heard many metal bands using some “eastern” scales and melodies but that’s usually just a little flavour on top of their “every day” metal style. I tried to mix some of its pure originality with no “make-up” at all, just like it’s played in Bosnia and that part of Balkan countries. That’s was a risky move because I don’t think I’ve ever heard a metal band throws accordion parts out of nowhere and shock all metal fans with something totally different. I tried to use that exact “shock” formula and it helped to get signed to “Lion Music” which is definitely a big accomplishment. Not everyone will like this musical mixture but this was my first and quite a successful attempt to be part of the metal industry.

     

How did you go about getting Mike Terrana and John West to play on the album as these are 2 big names for until know a relative unknown as yourself?
I've known Mike since 2003. I organised a show in my town in Bosnia for a friend of mine Damir Simic – Shime and Mike was his drummer at that time. Since then we have been in contact but until 2006 we never talked about working together. When I had my songs ready for the studio I asked Mike to play on the album and he accepted it. He knows very well how hard it is in the beginning of someone’s career so he really wanted to help. I really appreciate what he did for me. He is an amazing drummer and a very cool guy. Both Mike and my Label "Lion Music" helped to get John West on board who was definitely a real deal. I must say that I was extremely lucky with all these things as it’s not an everyday situation that you get to work with people like Mike and John when you need them as they are extremely busy musicians. John had just left Royal Hunt so he was available to fly in to London and do a great job as always. John really felt a strong energy on this record and he delivered something that has both feelings and amazing power. He is also an incredible vocalist and a great person.

Did Mike and John play any part in any of the songs arrangements? Or did you present them with the ideas/lyrics and give them free reign on those?
I wrote and arranged the whole album but I gave them an amount of freedom to do it their way. Of course they helped put it on a higher level than it was on the demo and they definitely succeeded with it. Something incredible was coming out of their mind when they demonstrated how they would like certain parts to be performed. I always accepted such suggestions as long as they don’t go away too much from the initial idea. At the beginning of recording I had to suggest many things that must be present in music and when they understood the whole point I left them do the job themselves.

Your guitar style is quite unique with the sevdah influences.  How long have you been playing and when did you realise you have talent on the guitar?
I started at the age of 5. It just happened when I saw my older brother playing some cool songs. I fell in love with the instrument and started exploring the whole new world in my life which is music. I was invited to play in bands when I was 12 years old and that was telling me that I was doing well so it made me continue and see what happens.

Who were your primary influences, how did they shape your sound and what influences you these days?
My guitar influences are rock legends from 70’s and 80’s and all the bands they have been with. I like Jimmy Page, Ritchie Blackmore, Tony Iommi, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Robben Ford, Gary Moore, Eric Clapton and many more different guitar legends… From 80’s and 90’s I like Yngwie Malmsteen, Vinnie Moore, Paul Gilbert and all big names similar to these. Not just because they are shredders, but because some of them have incredible composing and arranging skills. I could name hundreds of bands I listen to but from all the above you can get the idea. There are bands I listen everyday and never get bored. I love Gotthard from Switzerland or Swedish legends Europe. To be honest I don’t follow much what’s happening in metal industry these days but there are some very cool names out there. When I was younger I used to know every single line up of these rock/metal roots and every possible story about all of them. Now I don’t have time to follow everything as there are hundreds of names playing similar styles. But still I’m trying to be informed enough so I read a lot of reviews and every now and then I buy a couple of new CDs.

What form does your daily guitar regime take?
You won’t believe this but I haven’t practiced for years. When I was a guitar student in London, I used to have 5 different jobs every day to finance my studies and to live. This city is crazy expensive. I was all alone and that’s was a huge amount of stress for me. I used to sleep 4 hours a day during my 3 years of university. I can’t say I learned nothing but I finished the university mostly by using music and theory knowledge that I brought from my country. There was just no time to spend a couple of hours practicing. Today things are a lot easier but I still work a lot as a full time graphic/web designer for a London based company and I am still so busy that I hardly have time to spend half an hour with my guitar. 10 or 15 years ago I used to practice 10 hours a day but I could do it because I had support of parents so I didn’t need to have a full time job. I hope things will get better soon so I can continue improving my playing again.

What guitars/amps/fx did you use to get your tones?
My main guitar is an old 80’s Hamer completely customised. I bought it because it felt like a perfect neck for my left hand. You can see it on almost every picture on my website. I have 2 Seymour Duncan humbuckers and 1 single coil with Schaller floyd rose. I can get any sound on that guitar. As a backup I have some Strat copies and a couple of acoustic guitars. Recently I sold my Marshall and an Ashdown amplifier because I am moving to ENGL amps. They definitely have the sound I like. In the studio I used 3-4 different combinations. There was a Mesa Boogie and a couple of combo Marshall’s. I always improvise with the recording setup and every song is recorded with something different. Some amps give you better solo sound, some better gain, and some good clean sound. That’s why I want an ENGL because those amps have it all in one. About fx, I have 3 pedals. Overdrive, delay and wah wah. When I am recording I hardly use any of those. Natural gain from a good amp is the best sound you can get and you don’t have any headache when mixing it later.

What do you look for in your guitar tone and how did you record that (i.e. mic placement etc)?
I always try to have a nice and warm distortion which makes no noise. When I play a whole chord over 6 strings with gain set to 8, I want to hear all the notes clearly even when the amount of gain is nearly full. That also makes my fast riffs recognisable and nothing disturbs me when I am listening. About mic placement, every sound engineer has a different approach. I don’t go too much into their job but I always know when to say “stop, this is what I like”. On this album we recorded guitars with 2 Shure SM 57 placed on 2 amps, 1 Neuman condenser for the room ambient (don’t know the exact model) and 1 clean DI signal for using later in the mix. This DI thing sometimes saves your life when mixing. If you’re not happy with the rest of your microphone recorded parts, you can add an amount of DI on top of the other tracks and apply some different sound from computer plugins on it. Mixture of all those 4 can make it sound the way you want. Also it’s reversible because you can change those plugin settings at anytime and keeping the DI signal raw in case you want something different later. Every time I record a part, it is automatically recorded on 4 tracks with 4 different signals separately. Sometimes there are about 130 different tracks recorded in whole project (song) in computer recording software.

The production of “Sevdah Metal” is superb, did you have an initial vision of how you wanted the album to sound prior to recording, and if so how close did you get to that initial vision?
All I knew was to try my best to get the sound as warm as possible and as “metal” as possible. I went to Croatia to mix this album in a studio of a very good friend Dean Clea – Brkic. That guy knows everything about the metal sound and has mixed many great Croatian records. We had some CDs as a reference to compare our sound with. I liked Malmsteen’s “Seventh Sign” or Symphony X “Divine Wings of Tragedy”. Mixture of these two was our initial goal. We also listened to some Royal Hunt stuff but half way through the mixing this album went to a different direction so we gave up having them as a reference.

The lyrical aspect of the album is very personal to your and your homeland struggles.  Is it easy to write about such things and did the music influence the lyrics or vice-versa?
I write about human’s disrespect of nature. It doesn’t necessarily mean struggles of my homeland but situation in my country does affect my lyrics as well. Writing about where the world is going these days explains that we are becoming slaves of the future and technology where at the same time ignoring to learn how things were done before the computer era. There are various examples about destroying the planet with improper using of machines and it also affects the way people think. I hardly see a person in shops that can give me £2 change instantly without using a calculator. That’s really sad. They learn at schools that they don’t need to think because there is a machine to think for them and nobody takes serious actions to avoid potential catastrophe. If you read statistics, you find that the level of people’s intelligence is 40% lower than it was 40 years ago. Nothing is the same as before. Even the popular music changed to something that is almost not music. You find such disrespect everywhere. They have already started cloning animals and I wonder what will happen in 20 years.

Speaking about Bosnia, 200.000 people died in a terrible war and more are missing or immigrated for absolutely stupid reason. The reason was mainly a religion and nationality difference and today those people live together again. Instead of getting education in something that can improve their life, all they know is how to hate people that are not the same religious orientation. Isn’t that sick? I lost my brother and hundreds of innocent good friends and close family in that war. It took those sick people 4 years to kill many between each other in front of the open eyes of the world that didn’t help much but watch and let those people die every day. But I think the reason why other powerful countries didn’t help much was obviously of their interest. Compare now those 4 years of deliberate killing with recent news where tens of thousands of people died in China from an earthquake in just 10 seconds. The natural disaster didn’t ask for their nationality. You don’t think of religion at that moment either and nothing is the same ever again. About 20.000 innocent people died whoever they were. They were people from our planet, doesn’t matter their name, colour, religion etc... Billions of pounds or dollars are spent every year improving the weapons and financing the wars. Wouldn’t it be better if that money were spent in something that would protect people of such disasters? That’s where the world is going from my point of view and you just have to be lucky these days to live your life normally. Nothing around you makes you feel safe.

Our review noted numerous highlights yet “Stand & Fight” seems to be drawing a lot of praise and rightly so.  How did this particular track come about?
That song explains a lot of what I sad in the previous answer. All you can do is to “stand and fight” and if you are lucky, “maybe you can get another chance to make up all you missed out yesterday”. Sounds like when you experience a reincarnation. Musically it’s a metal ballad. It is good to have a ballad on the album. Ballads are usually well accepted and also a normal radio will more than likely play it in a normal day time than some crazy shred stuff. I wanted to have a ballad so everybody finds something for themselves on this album. Not everyone likes fast stuff.

How did you hook up for Lion Music for this release?
I had an instrumental album recorded with my friend from Croatia in 2004. Later when I moved to the UK I was looking for a label to release it. I sent some tracks to Lasse Eric Mattson – Lion Music president. He liked it but answered that he is not releasing instrumental albums as much as before and asked if I have something similar but with vocals. Fortunately I had my first demo track “Devils in Disguise” done and I sent it back to him. I didn’t expect any answer after his last e mail but he got back to me sounding really happy with the request for a couple of more demos. After he heard 3 other songs, my contract was in front of my door.

I believe you will be playing some live dates soon, who will your band be and where can fans catch you live?
The whole point of this project is to play live as much as possible. We have some shows confirmed for this summer.

Wed 23rd July Split – Croatia (Special guest MARKONEE – Italy)
Fri 25th July - Arcole - Verona - Italy
Sat 26th July - Misano Adriatico - Rimini – Italy

The line up will be:

Emir Hot – Guitars / backing vocal
John West – Vocal
John Macaluso – Drums
Ivan Cvitkovic – Bass
Muhamed Sehic – Keyboards/Accordion
Lonnie Park - Backing vocals

For those who don’t know some of these names, don’t worry they are all highly skilled musicians.  Mr. Terrana is busy so he can’t do this one but we are planning him for autumn. You can see that Lonnie Park is doing some backing vocals. He is a great musician from a band called Ten Man Push where John West plays guitar. John and Lonnie will also have some acoustic shows in between these dates and that will make it a good fun. This is just a warm up tour and we are working on a big tour which should start in autumn together with some other metal bands, probably with Angel of Eden and Neurasthenia from Italy.

Do you have any plans to do more live dates in support of “Sevdah Metal”, if not how can any interested booking agents get in touch with you?
Sure, we are always interested in playing live. Interested booking agents can contact my management through the “contact” section on my website. They are based in Italy.

Your website is very good, how important do you see this visual representation for you as an artist?
It’s good to have a website but today it is more important to be on “myspace”. You can’t arrange “myspace” to look exactly how you want but for some reason that became a standard for getting in contact with musicians. Your website can be arranged exactly the way you want so it’s good to have both. Sometimes I compare number of visits on my website and “myspace”. I always have about 5-6 times more visits per day on “Myspace”.

What other plans do you have for 2008 and when can we expect a follow up album?
We are just working on the tour dates and I have already started writing a new album. It won’t be out before 2009 but I don’t want to rush. I am planning it carefully and the recording could start by the end of the year.

Anything else you would like to tell our readers please feel free.
Just to thank you for this interview and wish you all success with your website. Also I wish all the best to all of your readers. Every kind of promotion is good at the first stage especially after the first album.

Emir, many thanks for your time.
You are welcome.

Web Links
http://www.emirhot.com
http://www.myspace.com/sevdahmetal
Virtuosity One review of Sevdah Metal