Interview With Yatra
By Keith Clement
Greetings from Metalheads Forever Magazine, how are you today?
Doing great ! Thank you. Preparing for a show in Philadelphia tonight and then Saturday at Saint Vitus in Brooklyn which is one of our favorite places to play .
Blood Of The Night is getting released, tomorrow, Can you tell me on the writing process of this album?
All but three of the songs Dana had written before we went on a one month US tour last June. We had worked out and rehearsed the new songs and we were able to play them on that tour and really get them tuned in over the course of playing them every day for a month , and then we had studio time with kevin bernsten ,at developing nations, scheduled for one week after we returned from tour, and Dana wrote the rest during that time . He’s constantly playing and writing .
I had the opportunity to listen to this album, it is quite impressive, one of the best doom genre for me in the beginning of 2020, what are the next plans for you guys?
Thank you . We are doing a two week tour in march out to SXSW and back , and then in June we are doing another month tour around playing Monolith on the Mesa , and a few other US festivals . We have Desertfest Nyc in Sept and then another European tour either in august or october, waiting to hear the plans .
Can you tell how it all started for Yatra?
Dana had another band going with all the members already in other bands, but everyone’s other bands tour schedules made it hard to keep it going , so it lost momentum, and then with the help of Maria on bass, and a few fill in drummers including mike tull, who is on our first album, we started getting really tight and working super hard and playing as much as possible . Dana had already written all the songs for the first album so we had a lot to focus on. Sean Lafferty took over on drums right after the first album release because mike couldn’t tour , and sean has been super solid and an important link in the band ever since . We forget we even had other drummers because Sean has been the only touring drummer and we had only been a band a little while before him.
Yatra typically means a Spiritual Journey, how it is connected to your bands name, would you like to talk something about this?
Well yea it can mean that, but really it was just a cool word that Dana heard while traveling in Nepal and the Himalayas that he liked the sound of . The meaning in that context is cool too, but that wasn’t our intention for using the name, like to portray some spiritual thing, we just wanted to hijack the word to use for our name haha.
What do you feel as a biggest success for a band?
We are really into playing live and that’s what it’s all about for us . Reaching people with a brutal live show is the best ! In October we did our first European tour and got to play some huge sold out festivals. It was really great !! and then on top of that when people knew and asked for certain songs and knew the lyrics in other countries it really stoked us !
How do you compare this new one with Death Ritual, every album is something different, what do you feel that has changed in this album?
We have grown and evolved a huge amount since the first album. It’s only been a year but we played about 120 shows in between . Four US tours and a three week European tour. This album isn’t really a ‘doom’ album or ‘sludge’ in the sense of other bands that are in those categories, which we don’t fit in, it’s more just a ‘metal’ album with lots of different and equal influences from other aspects of metal. Some reviewers have used ‘death doom’ or similar, if you have to classify . haha .. On tour we prefer to play with heavier bands like death, thrash, black, nwobhm classic style , all of that , and that has influenced us a great deal also because that’s also more what we listen to. The next album is going to be even better. Dana has already written almost half of it and it’s the best stuff yet , even more evolved in the direction it’s going .
Message for the fans and readers of the magazine?
We hope you check out and love the album and can’t wait to play for you live where the real magic is !
MHF Magazine/Keith Clement
