Sweden based DAHLIA deliver in your face hard rock sounds. Their new single Everywhere happens to be inspired by one of my favorite shows, Stranger Things. Packing a stimulating wall of sound featuring passionate vocals, thick distorted guitars and enough energy to overwhelm your sensory system, Everywhere is the perfect addition to your indie/progressive/hard rock playlists.
In this interview spotlight, we chat with DAHLIA about their latest release, challenges, motivations and more.
Full Q&A along with links and music below.
Where are you from and what style of music do you create?
We are from the western part of Sweden, Trollhattan and Gothemburg and all bandmembers have different backgrounds regarding music genres. Rebecka Haak has been active a lot on the Singer songwriter and rock scene. Andreas Eriksson has played in various rock and progressive metal projects. Dani Delev has a modern Hard rock and Progressive metal background and Jesper Westerlund has been playing genres from funk/fusion to death metal in his past. Due to this mixture of different music genres the “Dahlia sound” is created. Media and different reviews have classified us as Melodic metal and also atmospheric rock, but we just say that we sound “Dahlia”.
What led you down this path of music and what motivates you to keep going?
During autumn 2016, singer and artist Rebecka Haak met with guitarists and producer Jesper Westerlund. Rebecka was looking for new musical possibilities and Jesper had just returned home to Sweden from studying music at MI, Los Angeles for a year and a half. The two had never met before until they ran into each other at work where they soon discovered a shared passion for music as well as ambitions around it. One evening they started jamming together and ideas turned into songs. Both had a good feeling about what was created and they decided to form a band with the name Dahlia. Now the band just needed a bassist and a drummer to be complete.
Jesper Westerlund had previously met bass player Dani Delev when they studied musicology at Gothenburg University together. Dani was also looking for new musical possibilities and he and Jesper quickly found each other through their common musical preferences.
Dani had previously had lots of bad experiences from playing in different bands and was at this time thinking of just going solo with electronic projects, but when Jesper showed him some musical ideas from the upstart project Dahlia, he soon changed his mind. Dani felt that this band could be something to really invest himself into, one last time.
Jesper had also been acting sound technician two times for drummer Andreas during different music performances. Andreas were at the time playing in many different bands, and had for some time been planning to start another one to express his own musical ideas. When he heard Dahlia´s music and felt the ambitious atmosphere of the band however, he felt like this could be what he had been looking for and soon joined.
We have the same goals and ambitions to establish our band and get a lot of fans loving our music around the world. We have a lot of passion for this and everyone in the band are great people and musicians. We want to do lots of shows, go on tour, get to know our fans and release lots music and so on and we are very motivated to work hard for success.
Tell us more about your music and your sound. Were you trying to accomplish anything specific on this record?
Heavy, ”in your face” songs with big atmospheric choruses mixed with bright vocals. Something between metal and pop, mixed togeather to get the DAHLIA sound. We are flirting with different genres and that is something we also enjoy doing. On this record Rebecka Haak and Jesper Westerlund wrote the songs, and they were inspired by bands like, Paramore, Bring med the horizon, Periphery and many more, just to mention some of them. The lyrics on the debut record is about difficult times or dark episodes in life that you are strong enough to get through, things happening in real life or in the world but we also find inspiration from tv-series, films, art and other media.
Rebecka likes to write lyrics with a dark touch, to get some drama, mystic and some passion. But she also loves to motivate and make people feel strong even in darkest moments in life.
Name one or two challenges you face as an indie musician in this oversaturated, digital music age? How has technology helped you (since we know it does help)?
Music producing for us and for many others has been made much easier with the rise of new technology. The hardest thing we face as a band in this era is to reach out and make a name for ourselves among all the other competition out there. We have a lot of technical and promotion competence in the band, and that is a very good thing to have. We created our own webpage, YouTube channel, and we work a lot on promoting our music on social media like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and so on. Today, just releasing a record is not enough. When the album is out, the real work begins with spreading the word, promoting, building a fan base, finding gigs, not lose the interest from the public, send out press releases, find music bloggers, reach out to newspapers, get your reviews etc.
Where is the best place to connect with you online and discover more music?
Our music is available on Spotify, ITunes and YouTube and you can always contact us on Facebook, Instagram, email or our official website.
Anything else before we sign off?
Spread the word about DAHLIA and let the world know that we are ready to take over the stages!
