HAPPY: What are you up to today?
ICE CHEMICALS: Actively trying to avoid admitting the fact that I am getting older. My birthday was a few days ago and people keep telling me about this, even though I decided to stop the clock a few years back.
HAPPY: Tell us a little bit about where you are from, what do you love about it?
ICE CHEMICALS: We are all currently living outside of Paris, France, close to Normandy. It is a great spot because you can access the capital city and all its opportunities in less than an hour’s commute : friends, culture, jobs, airports… While also being able to enjoy a few things normally associated with living far from Paris : nature and forests :)
HAPPY: Can you walk us through the creative process behind The Pyre, how do you typically approach writing new music—does it start with a riff, lyrics, or something else?
ICE CHEMICALS: A new track typically starts with an idea from the lead guitarist or the bass player for a few guitar riffs or a bass line. The rest of the band joins in to mature the structure in band rehearsal, and Alex adds the drums.
While the instrumental structure takes form, I find a theme and write lyrics. After that, Nana takes my lyrics and composes the vocal melody.
Finally, we try it in rehearsal for at least a few weeks, to see what works and what needs to evolve, until we get to a version that satisfies everybody.
But the track really gets to its final form when we get to recording, as we may have new ideas very late in the process – typically, on who sings what (and how) between Nana and me.
HAPPY: How did Ice Chemicals originally come together, and how has the band evolved since its inception?
ICE CHEMICALS: The inspiration came from Stéphane and Kevin, who are long time friends and already played together in a band called Nepenthes. After this project ended, they wanted to start something new together and began composing a few instrumental tracks.
The next phase is the most French anecdote : I was regularly shopping at the local cheese shop, and Kevin was the cheesemonger. One day, I mentioned I was taking singing courses and he then proposed that I joined the band.
I then started to write lyrics on the demo tracks, but as a starting musician I was not really comfortable at composing melodies and Nana helped me with it (let’s be humble : she did most of the job).
Then when I recorded the vocals, she also helped me to get the pitch right by singing with me. And it sounded so much better that I said : ok, let’s keep both. That’s how Nana joined and how we recorded our first EP, “Primal”.
The next to join was our drummer Alex, who we recruited through an ad on a specialized website. Together, we composed and recorded a few more tracks to have enough material for a 30-minutes live set – that’s the album “Alchemy”.
A few months later, we recruited Jérôme the same way, and we were finally ready to get on stage. That’s when Kevin left the band for personal reasons, but that did not stop us – we began doing gigs and composing “The Pyre”.
Almost two years and several gigs after, we recruited Tommy as rythm guitarist. Then in the last months, our lead guitarist left for another project, and we recruited Lucas as the replacement.
HAPPY: What inspired the name ‘Ice Chemicals,’ and does it hold a particular meaning for the band?
ICE CHEMICALS: That was Stéphane’s idea. It came as a reference to “Ace Chemicals”, the infamous factory in the DC comics universe where the Joker gets is white face and green hair. This name is chosen to inspire some kind of modern and dehumanized, cold industrial atmosphere.
HAPPY: What artists or bands have been your biggest influences, both as individuals and as a group?
We all listen to a lot of metal genres. For individual influences, I can list In Flames, Slipknot, Machine Head, Black Bomb A, Rammstein, Devildriver, Lamb of God, Mudvayne, System of a Down, Limp Bizkit, Igorrr, Marilyn Manson, Death, Korn, Children of Bodom…
I think what you can hear in “The Pyre” is that we are all in our 30’s (except for Tommy and Lucas, who joined after the EP was released).
Our taste in metal was shaped by the wave of Nü Metal and Industrial Metal that we could hear everywhere when we were teenagers, in the early 2000’s.
Movies had metal soundtracks ! But past the nostalgia, we also listen to more modern bands, like Orbit Culture or Electric Callboy, so we wanted to create music that sounded like the 2020’s.
HAPPY: What’s the most rewarding part of being in a band, and what’s the most challenging?
ICE CHEMICALS: My most rewarding moment was just after a gig, when somebody came up to me and said “Thank you very much for your energy. Thanks to you, I felt alive tonight”. I love when people begin to move in the pit, and that I feel that I give them something, an emotion, an energy, a momentum. That’s also why I love coming down in the pit : to come to them.
HAPPY: How does being based in France influence your music and creativity?
ICE CHEMICALS: France is very contradictory when it comes to metal music. One one hand, the country hosts one of the biggest metal festival in Europe (the Hellfest) and dozens of metal festivals all around, a lot of fans, as well as an incredibly active underground scene.
On the other hand, metal culture has a lot of difficulty to take a credible place in the media. It’s mainly being ostracized and made fun of – many venues don’t even consider letting metal bands play. In this context, seeing Gojira playing at the Olympics opening ceremony was a huge surprise ! I hope it will bring some kind of awareness about metal music here.
HAPPY: What’s coming up?
ICE CHEMICALS: A new album ! We already have 4 tracks pretty much finalized.
And more gigs, of course.
HAPPY: What makes you happy?
ICE CHEMICALS: When people from all around the world listen to us !
Cheers, Australia !