This has just begun for us – Interview with Delirare
By Rainer Kerber
A few weeks ago, I received a promo request for the debut album “Rising” by the band Delirare. The five musicians of this band live in the Central American state of Cost Rica. For me, this country has until now been a blank spot in the rock and metal landscape. The more surprised I was by the quality of the album. In the following interview I use the opportunity to find out more about this band.
MHF: Hello, I’m Rainer and write for the Metalheads Forever Magazine. Thanks for being able to do this interview with you. How are you?
Delirare: Hello Rainer, thank you very much for the opportunity to share our experience with you and your mag.
We are very happy. We just did a live show last September 13th presenting our album to our fans. It went great. We were able to record the show in video and audio, so, we will be sharing a few videos in the following days.
MHF: Until recently, you were completely unknown to me. Please introduce yourself and your band shortly.
Delirare: Delirare have 5 members in total:
Natasha Sheik: Vocals/Flute
Alfonso Chinchilla: Guitar/Vocals
Noé Urtecho: Guitar
César Bustos: Bass
Daniel López: Drums
Costa Rica is a small country. Three of our members are currently living in San José and two live in Cartago. These are two provinces of the seven in which our country is divided.
Natasha and Alfonso started the project back in 2015 but it could be consolidated until 2017, when our current lineup was settled.
MHF: “Delirare” is an unusual name. If I’m not mistaken, the word comes from Latin and means something like “being mad” or “talking crazy”. Why did you choose this name?
Delirare: The name was originally picked by Natasha. She actually was thinking about Delirium but that was kind of a common word for names of bands and songs, so, we started looking for variations of the word and Delirare came up.
By that time, we had this idea of producing a concept album about a mad man, so, Delirare was a suitable name for the project.
We ended up not developing the concept album, but we decided to keep the name. We liked the meaning anyway. Besides to go crazy, delirare also means to break schemes and rules.
Like you said, most of the world have never heard anything about Costa Rica. We’ve actually came across with many people that don’t even know our country exists or think we are some sort of jungle with beaches, so, somehow, showing our work to other countries (especially in North America and Europe) might break schemes about us.
MHF: You have already released your debut EP in 2016. Why did it take three years to the album was completed?
Delirare: As soon as we released the EP, the lineup of the band changed, and it took us over a year to form our current lineup.
In 2017 we had a fresh beginning with the new members, so, we started working on a new sound using our available resources. We replaced some keyboard sounds from our EP with just guitars and recorded back the four songs on the new album again. There are seven more songs, so, the whole production process took us around two more years. Each member of the band had their own occupations, so we did not have the chance to invest a lot of time on producing the album.
MHF: On your album we can hear a variety of musical influences. Which bands or musicians inspired you to write the songs?
Delirare: We all have been exposed to all kinds of music since we were kids, from tropical music to free jazz.
It’s very difficult for us to name specific bands or artists because one never actually thinks about that when is composing, and usually, the music we listen to, changes from time to time. You know, we are always looking for new songs to enjoy.
That being said, there are artists that of course have marked our lives and influenced us directly and indirectly, not only in Rock or Metal, for instance, Haggard, Therion, Trail of Tears, Lacuna Coil, Black Sabbath, Metallica, Héroes del Silencio, The Sisters of Mercy, The Cranberries, Emerson Lake & Palmer, King Crimson, many operas and art music composers. The list could go on forever.
MHF: Speaking of songwriting. How do you write your songs?
Delirare: All the songs in this album were composed by Natasha Sheik and Alfonso Chinchilla, except for “Fingertips”, Noé Urtecho came up with the main musical idea on this one.
Some songs were created by Natasha and Alfonso together, like “Flesh And Blood” and “Oblivion Island”. Some other songs were provided almost completed by the composer and just some arrangements were added later.
We tend to be more open to get musical ideas late at night, between 12 am to 3 am. Natasha also comes up with many melodies when she is driving.
As soon as we create something, we either record it on our cell phones or write it on a score app we regularly use. Once we’ve had the chance to develop the idea, we go to our studio to record some demos.
MHF: The final song of the album is called “Fuerzas”. You have written the song in your native language Spanish. “Fuerza” means “force” or “strength” in English. Why did you choose a Spanish text and what is this song about?
Delirare: This song was written entirely by Alfonso Chinchilla on a complicated phase of his life.
He was actually thinking of leaving the band back then, so, this song was actually created for a project he wanted to produce on his own. If you listen carefully, you’ll notice that the sound on this song is a bit different than the rest of the songs in our album, because it was actually not meant to be part the repertoire of Delirare, however, Alfonso ended up not leaving the band and we all decided we wanted to have the song in the album, to give it more variety.
Alfonso was uncertain about different aspects of his life by the time he composed the song. The text speaks about facing difficulties in life without even knowing why or how to deal with them. It’s narrative it’s metaphorical, it never states any specific situation.
Alfonso could not decide how to call the song. One of the lines translated to English says something like “cloudy paint strokes are created with crystal strength”, from here he took the word to name it.
MHF: You are the first band I know that comes from Costa Rica. What about you with the rock and metal scene? Do you have contacts to other bands?
Delirare: Costa Rica doesn’t have an actual music industry; however, we’ve been improving the quality of our productions a lot. We are pretty sure now we can compete with any international band or artist in general terms, no matter what musical genre.
Our country has had rock productions since we can remember and of course before that. We have record of rock bands since the 70’s, probably even before that, there were people at least experimenting with early rock sounds.
The names list could be quiet long, so, we will mention some current rock and metal bands with which we share the Costa Rican stages nowadays:
Heresy, Age Of The Wolf, Sight of Emptiness, Canvas, Ardens Luna, Fallen Flame, Elektra Stroke, Pneuma, Solsticio, Killing Instinct, Amethyst, Movement In Codes, Vodoo, Magpie Jay, Half Tangerine, Las Robertas, 424 and many others. We are friends with some members of the bands mentioned before.
MHF: What are your plans for the future? Live performances? A second album?
Delirare: We plan to keep going. This has just begun for us. We are developing a strategy to promote the band, especially abroad.
Like we said at the beginning, we recorded our last concert, so, we are going to release three live videos soon in order to continue producing material.
Fortunately, Natasha and Alfonso are compulsive composers, we have many ideas stocked and we are already working on some of them. We plan to release our next album in around two years from now.
Right now, we have two live shows confirmed in the next days, one in October and one in November. We are pretty sure more are to come.
MHF: Thank you again for this interview. Would you like to say something to the fans at the end?
Delirare: Thanks for giving us the opportunity to share a couple words with you guys. We really appreciate the interest you’ve shown in our project. We also want to thank all the people that took the time to read this interview and that listened to our music, you all are the spark that keeps this fire going.
MHF Magazine/Rainer Kerber
