EMQ’s With Liva
EMQ’s With Liva
Hi everyone! Welcome to another EMQs interview, this time with Canadian Power Metal Opera, Liva. Huge thanks to their founder, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist, Pier Carlo Liva, for taking part.
What is your name, what do you play and can you tell us a little bit about the history of the band?
I’m Pier Carlo Liva, the composer, arranger, singer of tenor and death vocals, I play the guitar and all electronics. Liva’s four members are Pier Carlo Liva, Nadine Guertin (soprano), Martin Tremblay (bass guitar) and Claude Lacroix (drums).
Liva came together as a band in Sherbrooke, Québec (Canada), in 1997 and recorded its eponymous four-track demo in 2001. These pieces also appeared on the group’s first album, Requiem (2002). This Heavy Metal version of a requiem, in Latin, was a hit with many music lovers. Then, in the spring of 2007, Liva released its second album, De Insulis, putting music to the Latin texts of French poet and theologian Alain de Lille, said De Insulis (12th century). In the fall of 2013, Liva’s long-awaited third album, Human Abstract, was launched with texts in Shakespeare’s language. With Ecce mundus launched in the fall of 2023, Liva returns to its roots with medieval poetry and Latin texts.
Since the beginning, Liva has shown their talent when playing opening acts for international bands such as Voivod, Gorguts, Nightwish, Kataklysm, Therion and Leaves Eyes/Kamelot, to name a few. Liva also featured in a show dedicated to the future of metal music in the province of Québec, at the “Week-end extrême” held in 2002.
Liva has been the subject of various reports and articles, one among others in the fall of 2001 on the television program Bande-à-part on ARTV, Radio-Canada’s specialized art channel. Then, on March 8, 2002, Liva performed with a chamber orchestra consisting of 13 musicians and chorus members during a radio concert that was recorded in front of a live audience for Bande-à-part and broadcast in April of 2002. This memorable event gave the audience a taste of the band’s wide- ranging and innovative musical talent.
How did you come up with your band name?
Liva is my family name. It’s an Italian name that comes from my father. I’d seen other bands when I was young that were named after the leader, like Dio, Bon Jovi, Dokken, Slaughter. It was then possible in my mind to do so. But I named the band like this also because I saw the opportunity to create something visual with the name, like a logo. Even if my father at the time did not want that, I used his name… LOL.
What Country / Region are you from and what is the Metal / Rock scene like there?
We are from Sherbrooke, in the southern part of the Province of Québec, in Canada. Sherbrooke is well known for many good acts in any style, since the mid twentieth century. In Metal, Gorguts was the biggest. However, we’ve always had a good relationship and stayed in contact with the Montréal metal scene.
What is your latest release? (Album, EP, Single, Video)
Liva’s new release, Ecce mundus (“This is the world”)! It is the most ambitious work since Requiem in 2002. Extensive sonic explorations elevate the group’s characteristic blend of Power Metal and classical music. Grand and elaborate orchestrations further open up the instrumental universe. Liva returns to Latin texts, here medieval texts on themes from Antiquity and some others, timeless. It talks about the glory of Rome, the story of Samson and Dalila, and about human flaws such as greed, corruption and hypocrisy, the same from ancient times to the present day! All this is propelled by a majestic orchestral music.
For this new album, I’ve pushed all of my limits. I worked a lot to write Symphonic orchestrations in a way that would give a rich sound, using good sound libraries. With my nine-string guitar, I pushed the limits of the instrument, meaning I played in the super low end and the very high end of the instrument. Also, my voice technique has improved a lot, so I went and pushed the same limits with my voice: with deep death vocals and up to the high end of my tenor voice. On the lyrical side, I read a thousand poems during the last few years to find jewels that inspired me. On the sonic side, I recorded and mixed all the band, so I think I became a better sound engineer, all in my home studio.
Who have been your greatest influences?
It is easier for me to mention music styles rather than specific artists, because there are so many of them! My musical inspirations since so many years are Classical music, Opera, Contemporary music, Baroque music, Electronica like Dub, Ambient, IDM, Acid Jazz, House, Jazz, French music from Europe and from Québec, Thrash Metal, Power Metal, Death Metal and Pop music. For our new album Ecce mundus, I focused on my principal musical roots: Classical music, Opera and Electronica. I’ve tried to push the sound of the band to a next level in relation to what I used to do. In comparison to the other albums, the vocal lines are developed in a longer mode, the guitar parts are heavier than ever because of the nine-string guitar low end, and the orchestral parts are majestic, more than ever! On the lyrical side, I made a comeback with ancient poetry from the Middle Age. I guess this is what the fans expected of Liva’s sound.
What first got you into music?
Although I’ve always listened to music since birth, where it all really started was when I started to play guitar at the age of 11.
It’s been my life and my lifestyle since I was a young boy. I always have known that I would be in the music world since I was six years old and I knew then that I wanted to be a musician. I remembered laying down under my mother’s old stereo console, listening to old Rock and Roll and I was looking at the power amp tubes glowing in the dark. Since then I’ve never stopped listening to all kinds of music. Also, when any band was playing on television, on “American Bandstand” or “Star Search” or “Solid Gold,” I was totally absorbed. I said to myself that one day, “I’m gonna play live like these musicians.” As a challenge to myself, I was striving to remember and make a list of all the bands I knew, of all genres, written on a notepad. I surely developed my listening and my memory like that! It is around that time that I started to practice classical guitar, at the age of 11, and never stopped playing guitar since. I got my first electric guitar at the age of 17, and it was a revelation: I spontaneously started creating one riff on top of another, in addition to learning to play my favourite songs by ear. The style that imposed itself was Heavy Metal, which I have been
listening to for a few years. I guess the evocative power of this style to convey feelings and emotions spoke to me. It also has many similarities with classical music. I worked in a record store for many years, and for a long while, in the classical music department, so I gathered a vast musical knowledge and appreciation, be it for the latest issues, the classics of all types of music and new takes on the classics.
If you could collaborate with a current band or musician who would it be?
Steve Roach, a pioneer in the electronic music of the ’70s, and the guitar player Tony Macalpine.
If you could play any festival in the world, which would you choose and why?
Probably at Wacken in Germany, as it’s the biggest and seems very well organized.
What’s the weirdest gift you have ever received from a fan?
No, I don’t remember receiving a weird gift.
If you had one message for your fans, what would it be?
Thank you for buying our music to support us.
If you could bring one rock star back from the dead, who would it be?
Jimi Hendrix
What do you enjoy the most about being a musician? And what do you hate?
What I love most is that I make music and that there are people out there who love my music like crazy. What I hate most is investing in expensive, high-quality equipment that takes a very long time to pay for itself.
If you could change one thing about the music industry, what would it be?
To be paid decently for all the work I do.
Name one of your all-time favourite albums?
“Operation: Mindcrime” by Queensrÿche
What’s best? Vinyl, Cassettes, CD’s or Downloads?
CD. It preserves better, sounds better, costs less, sells well at shows and the artists get paid!
What’s the best gig that you have played to date?
20 years ago, opening for Nightwish in front of 2200 people in Montréal. What a night!
If you weren’t a musician, what else would you be doing?
Working in forestry or with the elderly.
Which five people would you invite to a dinner party?
Geoff Tate, Monica Bellucci, Bruce Dickinson, Johann-Sebastian Bach, Gilles Villeneuve
What’s next for the band?
I would like to make a concert with a full symphonic orchestra, maybe next year, to enjoy all this work on orchestrations with live musicians and instruments. We also planned to shoot our very first video clip as a band. I would like to release Ecce mundus on vinyl too. Of course, we continue to play on stage here, we also hope to play in Europe, as there is a great Metal crowd!
What Social Media / Website links do you use to get your music out to people?
https://www.facebook.com/www.livaband
https://www.instagram.com/livametalband
https://www.tiktok.com/@livametalband
Time for a very British question now. As an alternative to the humble sandwich, is the correct name for a round piece of bread common in the UK either a Bap, a Barm (or Barm Cake), a Batch, a Bun, a Cob, a Muffin, a Roll, or a Tea Cake?
I’d say Muffin!
Thank you for your time. Is there anything else that you would like to add?
It was a pleasure to do this interview with Ever Metal, and we hope that someone in England will invite us to come and do concerts for English metalheads.
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