SOURCE – We’re about a week off from your highly anticipated album Tenace being released, what are you and the rest of Mass Hysteria feeling as the countdown getting smaller?
Jamie Ryan (Bass) – Excitement! I can’t wait for this first part to finally come out. Some of the songs on the album are nearly 2 years for us and I can’t wait to hear what our fans think of all this work. We really took our time with these songs and hope that people love them as much as we do.
SOURCE – In your mind, what kinds of themes or emotions do you think the music is expressing?
Jamie Ryan (Bass) – There’s always a kind of duality going on in our music. The instrumental part can be super heavy and dark but the lyrics are often touching on subjects of hope and betterment. We acknowledge that times are difficult and life isn’t all sunshine and rainbows but we feel that it’s necessary to be a beacon of light and bring people to a better place than they might be in. As the song “Mass Veritas” says “everything is going so bad that the best is yet to come.”
SOURCE – How does the band balance out satisfying your own creative needs and approach for the songwriting, while also hopefully pleasing the faithful following the band has built over the years? Do you believe your music has now crossed multiple generations of fans because you’ve been together for so long?
Jamie Ryan (Bass) – Yann, our guitarist, decided about 15 years ago that he was going to write music he likes. Stuff he would like to hear from a band. Which is a great way to do things because it helps everything stay real. We write these songs for ourselves first and if fans like them that’s amazing. If they don’t that’s their right.
Now when we write songs we know that some parts will make our fans go wild and we imagine what big festivals will be like playing a cool breakdown and getting people to do a huge wall of death.
And yeah definitely our shows have 3 generations of families coming to see us nowadays. Parents from the early days that would bring their kids that are now bringing their kids. It’s so cool to see whole families rock out together. And we’re noticing a lot more younger people as of late, teenagers singing along to our songs with older fans next to them.
SOURCE – With the current sad state of the music industry, how do you determine expectations for an album?
Jamie Ryan (Bass) – We have a fanbase that is still really into buying records. But there’s definitely a huge shift to the digital world. That’s one of the reasons we’ve decided to release the album in 2 parts. The attention span for albums is fading and a long album will have the songs at the end of it just go unlistened to.
SOURCE – Do you think the tendency of consumers to download single songs more than albums will mean that the idea of a concept album will fade?
Jamie Ryan (Bass) – Definitely, but it depends on the genre I think. Metal is still a very album driven genre. Although some of the bigger acts are changing their ways. I think the album won’t completely disappear especially with all the vinyl lovers still in the metal community.
SOURCE – What are your thoughts about social media and how it’s affecting the music business?
Jamie Ryan (Bass) – It’s insane when you hear the stories of artists being told by labels and management that they need to be online content creators, they need to write a new hit to go viral on TikTok. That they need to create content for social media daily. I mean artists are supposed to be free to create their art, their music, not 30 second videos for social media. That’s not their job.
SOURCE – Have you experienced any differences in how the foreign press treats you and the band compared to how native press and media treats and writes about you?
Jamie Ryan (Bass) – Well the main difference is we’re presenting ourselves and our music a lot more to the international press. French press knows us pretty well by now after nearly 30 years.
But everyone has been super chill and really nice. It’s great to be able to talk about our music to a bigger more international crowd. Hopefully people read this and go look for our music and join us in the fun.
SOURCE – What’s planned following the release of Tenace?
Jamie Ryan (Bass) – Touring! And part 2 of the album releasing in the autumn which will lead to more shows haha. I love playing shows man, such fun and great energy. Getting to meet people at our shows. Hopefully also getting to play a lot more shows outside of France and even outside of Europe!
Contacts:
Video: