BRONZE

A few months ago, I was chasing down a video on YouTube for a band I'd heard about and came across BRONZE. What really impressed me about them, aside from their killer traditional metal sound, was how good their clips looked for being self-produced. This was a band committed to their music and ready to take on the world. I was a BRONZE fan from that point on. Their new record ‘In Chains And Shadows’ is out now and definitely worth checking out. I recently spoke with lead singer Mina Walkure and this is what we talked about.

WORMWOOD CHRONICLES: Hello Mina, thanks for taking the time to speak with me about BRONZE.

MINA WALKURE:  Hey!

WC: Let’s go back a ways. How were you introduced to metal, and do you remember at what point in time you decided that being in a metal band was what you wanted to do as a musician. Why not pop music or something else?

MW: I was lucky to receive an mp3 of a “band that I may like” through Messenger, back in my teenage years. The song took forever to arrive, goddammit... so imagine the expectation: A hungry teenager looking for new music, getting something that was promised to blow her mind!

And it did.

It was “Blood Brothers” by IRON MAIDEN, and I was immediately hooked. My life changed in that moment. I sold my soul to heavy metal right there and the spark to become a musician arrived very fast, even if I didn't know how to properly play any instrument yet. Every morning, I had to go on a bus for 40 mins to get to my high school, and with my mp3 and more songs other than “Blood Brothers” (still on repeat as well as the whole “Brave New World” album), I was plotting about forming my own band and dreaming about it.

WC: As I understand it, you left your home and moved to Madrid, is that correct? You sound like a woman on a mission completely determined to see your dreams come true. Tell me about this journey a little bit more, it had to be very hard to leave what you knew and relocate to a city you may not have been familiar with. Was your brother with you at this time?

MW: Well, I've been moving a lot through my adult life, mostly on my “mission” to do what I want: heavy metal. I was living in a small place before, and I always felt isolated. Then I moved to a small city and seemed better, but I knew early that I could not find people for my band as I needed.

After some years of trying there, in my early 20s, I decided to move my ass to Madrid to try to complete the line up. Madrid is a huge city, so there's a lot of everything: good and bad. But no, it didn't feel hard for me. As you say: I was on a mission and the world is just a larger map to explore. I've lived in many different places after that.

I moved alone. Lap has always been in the band, but as you say: this is my mission. When I managed to find musicians to have some activity, we kept the activity in the distance with Lap. Traveling is part of a musician's adventure, right? So why should it be scary? I mean, many people were turned off by the idea of being 3h away. 3 hours away is a problem? Really? Wow. I cannot see it.  Some people had an issue about having members of their band living outside their neighborhood and moving 15 mins in metro! C'mon. People make a huge deal about it, but I just don't see it.

Can you imagine how much they freak out when they find out that part of the band is split between Spain and Sweden? Not the first case of an international band, by any means, so I still don't get the big shock for anyone. As you were saying: I have my dreams clear, and that's my GPS to go whenever I need to so I can follow that path.  

WC: How long did it take you to get established before KRAMP (original version of BRONZE) came into existence? Was there a lot of hardship and hard knocks involved trying to put together your dream metal band?

MW: Forever! Hahaha.

Many years of struggle, trying to find people (the right people) to work with. It took me a long time to realize that maybe “people to work with” was not exactly what I needed, but the conception of “a full band” is too integrated into the popular belief. While I was constantly working to move forward and put my music out there, I found obstacles in many ways. The lineup changes were the biggest issue. Once I understood that I didn't have to follow the formulas, everything went better for me.

WC: And then KRAMP was born but as I understand it the band changed its name to BRONZE a few years back. What prompted this name change?

MW: I simply wanted to change the name of the band. Nothing more.

WC: BRONZE has a big power metal / classic metal sound – especially with your new record. What bands do all of you channel when you play live or write music? Personally, I hear a bit of MAIDEN meets SCORPIONS in BRONZE’s music.

MW: I'm a heavy metal maniac. This is the music that I love. This is what I want to do...No big secret that I'm boosted by bands like MANOWAR, CRIMSON GLORY, WARLORD, OMEN, RUNNING WILD, JUDAS PRIEST, RIOT... the list is endless! But I always try to let the music grow from me, from what I have absorbed and learned by listening to those bands and what comes naturally for me to write.

WC: Mina, what kind of vocal training have you had? Your voice is a weapon! Have you sung your entire life?

MW: I'm mostly self-taught, but I've gone to vocal lessons... let me explain.

I decided to sing for real when I was a teenager. Back then I didn't even know that vocal lessons existed. I thought it was a matter of “You know how to sing, or you don't”. But when I was 16 or 17, I finally found a place in my city that was giving singing lessons that were not classical formation. That city was small, and lacking professionals, so my first teacher was not a vocal coach. She was honest from day one. She got hired because she had a beautiful voice for singing and sounded amazing. But that woman had no idea about how she was singing... She was trained as a flutist and not a formal singer. Actually, I had two teachers who were flutists and not singers.

What happened? Well, in the following months of getting those lessons, I was in a very bad place with a lot of humidity and cold. Forcing myself, I started bleeding in my throat. That way I knew that what I was learning, were things to avoid. I went for many years on my own, learning to identify what felt wrong or right in my body when singing, and I worked for some time with some proper vocal coaches.

I will never stop learning, and I always recommend to people to embrace that idea. The main problem is to find the right mentor because the voice is “invisible” in the sense of not being able to follow the visual steps that you can follow when learning an instrument, you know? There are some things that can be obvious to the sight, but many others that aren't. So yeah, people: find the right vocal coach for your necessities!

WC: Are there certain singers you look up to, male or female, who’ve inspired you as a singer?

MW: I don't care about the gender of any singer; I care about their voices and its qualities. To make it short, because the list could go on forever: DIO.

WC: Your new record is ‘In Chains And Shadows’ which features a lot of epic, soaring metal especially on “Tale Of Revenge.” Who’s doing the writing and where did the idea for the subject matter for these songs come from, especially a track like “Jackals Of The Sea” with it’s Viking, almost folk metal vibe?

MW: I write the songs, and sometimes Lap or Ced bring some ideas, but it's me for the most part. I have strong influences of medieval, renaissance, and some folk music, which filters through my compositions, hehe. I would not call it Viking because that's mostly a themed label, and my songs may narrate different types of stories. But I get what you mean. Going deeper on the traditional heavy metal sub-niches, I guess the “epic heavy metal” sub-label can fit very well some of my songs, yeah.

WC: The artwork for ‘In Chains And Shadows’ and “Tyrant’s Spell” is outstanding, who’s the artist and how did you find this person?

MW: Thank you. I've always been taking care of all the graphic aspects of the band.

WC: I’m really impressed with BRONZE on many different levels. Your music is great, you’ve got a lot of striking videos on YouTube, and everything about the band from its logo to your social media to your website is so professional. How do you find time to do all of this, or do you have a team in place to do it for you?

MW: I'm in charge of everything. Right now, I'm counting on more with Ced, for example, and Lap, for some things and I'm very happy with that extra help in some areas.The music videos are done in a living room, and Emil, who occasionally steps in as a live bass player, films them. The rest of the videos, like our live ones or the rehearsal footage, are done by ourselves, placing cameras and taking care of them.

I like to expand the universe of the band as a whole experience, as much as I can... that's why I try my best to take care of social media and the website to match the whole aesthetic of the band. I have a strong concept for it. Right now, I'm at a point where the work eats me up sometimes, but I still can't rely on external people to do some things.

WC: BRONZE looks like it’s a great, fun band to be in and make music with. Does it ever become a grind? What do you do to avoid getting burned out from making videos, playing live, writing music, doing the website, etc.? What do you do to keep it all fresh?

MW: I love doing this and that's why I put all my energy and everything that I can onto it. So of course I get burnt out sometimes... It's a lot of pressure and we're an independent band. I just need to remind myself that I'm the one setting the rules, and if I need to stop or if I want to change the way of doing things:  I'm the only obstacle.

WC: Alright, final question. Thank you so much for taking time to answer these questions. What haven’t we covered that you’d like fans to know about. The floor is yours to plug or talk about whatever you’d like to.

MW: This is the Age of Bronze!

BRONZE