Newswire interviews BABYMETAL's friend Frederic Leclercq from Dragonforce!

Newswire: You started to play with DragonForce a few shows in North America and Japan in 2005, how did you join Dragonforce?

 

Frederic Leclercq: "I was in a power metal band called Heavenly and back in 2000 we met Herman who came to one of our second show (well, he came to see Symphony X, and it was a festival and we were opening. still he saw us (Laughs)) and we became friends and always kept in touch.

 

When they had a problem with their bass player they asked me-its actually the manager who mentioned my name and apparently they said "well he is a good guitar player he will probably say no to bass" but Herman approached me and said "yo, we are doing 3 shows, Montreal, New York and Japan, and our bassplayer can't make it. would you like to do it?" and I thought "I've never been to those places and I especially always dreamt of going to Japan so YES, let's do this!" and it went well! Actually the NY show was a little special cos only 3 of us could make it to the US due to Visa issues, so we ended up doing only 1 ballad at CBGB with a drummer we found at the venue...it was....interesting.

 

Anyway in January 2006 Dragonforce had a European tour and since everything went well they asked me if I wanted to join them again on that, while they were still looking for a permanent replacement. I was totally ok with it. After a week, we were having dinner at the venue, and I kinda felt like they wanted to tell me something...  they went "so, erm, youd like to join the band?", nothing super enthuiastic, just like "what time is it?" kinda. and so I answered with the same tone "well, yeah, why not". thats that! :) (Laughs)"

 

Newswire: DragonForce and Japan have a beautiful relationship, what is the difference of playing in Japan and why is so special for your band? 

 

Frederic Leclercq: "I can only speak for myself but this is no secret that I love Japan. I made that very clear each and every time I had the chance to say it :) Now as a musician, the fans are just really polite, generous, they are the simply the best. They wait for you, bring you a little present. They are super reactive during the show, they sing along. Its just...its always been amazing each time we played in Japan. Even when we had technical difficulties, its still a great memory each time. So therefore we LOVE to play here, and that makes me double happy of course."

 

Newswire: Talking about Japan, according to Herman Li, along with Sam Totman they started to collaborate with BABYMETAL in 2013. What was your reaction when Herman and Sam tell the rest of the band about the collaboration with BABYMETAL? 

 

Frederic Leclercq: "I thought it was great!! I knew about BABYMETAL back then already, so I thought it was awesome to have a collaboration with them!"

 

Newswire: How was your reaction when you first heard "Road Of Resistance"? 

 

Frederic Leclrecq: "Well I heard the demo version as I helped Herman and Sam a bit in terms of harmonies chords etc, so I already could hear the potential of the song! It turned out to sound awesome so my first reaction was a big smile on my face!"

 

Newswire: You guys played with BABYMETAL twice, first at Download Festival 2015, BABYMETAL was your special guest there, and then together played "Road Of Resistance" and "Gimme Chocolate" at the Metal Hammer Golden Gods 2015. How was the experience of playing with BABYMETAL? 

 

Frederic Leclercq: "The first show, Download, we were kinda nervous because we didn't rehearse anything with the girls. We learned the song, we knew how to play it, no problem, but it was more like "what do we do/where do we stand" because BABYMETAL have their choregraphy, but also we didn't wanna stay in line behind. So we just prayed (to the Fox God I guess (Laughs)) that we wouldn't bump into each other. We watched some live videos to see what they were doing and I'm not sure if we talked about it with them before the show, that I can't remember for sure..I think we did.

 

Anyway it went very well, no accident! For the Metal Hammer Golden Gods we had time to rehearse the songs with them, as well as what to do on stage when etc, so it was even more relax. It was a fun experience! The girls are very professional, I think they had fun with us as well, we were all smiling and joking both on and off stage. So all in all, yes, a fun experience!"

 

Newswire: What was the reaction from your fans after playing with BABYMETAL?

 

Frederic Leclercq: "It's always the same, some will be happy, some will criticize.. I think most of our fans enjoyed the collaboration! It was just a one off, you know, but enough to get some people go "oh my god this is not real power metal anymore blablabla" but yeah, mostly it was very positive. At both shows it went really well anyway, no one booed or left-I think!

 

I respect die hard fans who don't see this collaboration as a good thing, I hear what they have to say but we personally did what we wanted-we always do- and I hope they can respect that too. We had a great time and yeah, most people who witnessed both shows did, too! So all in all yes, positive reaction!"

 

Newswire: You are probably flying back from Japan right now where you promoted your new project with Sinsaenum where you are playing guitar. Tell us about this new project, and what are your future plans with Sinsaenum and also with DragonForce.  

 

 

Frederic Leclercq: "Well actually now I'm back home, I stayed in Japan for a little week only-unfortunately, it's always too short. Sinsaenum is something I've always wanted to do, it shows a darker side of my personality that not a lot of people might know because I have that smily, funny, social side of me, and I embrass it totally, you know, when people bring me Dr. Slump presents because I have an Unchi Kun tattooed on my leg (and a few more Akira Toriyama characters actually), it's great because it's me. But it's a only one side. I also have that very dark, sad, depressed side of me, I love extreme, violent music, I love horror movies, I have this nihilistic vision of life, and I guess I need a way to express this musically at least. Sinsaenum is that. And so I have the privilege to do this with my friends Joey Jordison, Attila Csihar, Stephane Buriez, Sean Zatorsky and Heimoth who are all extremely talented musicians and all play or played in respected and very well known bands in the metal genre. We all have this strong connection and when I presented them the songs (I wrote all the music and half of the lyrics) they totally got it and just made everything 10000 times better.

 

The album "Echoes of the Tortured" came out end of July and the reviews have been extremely positive. It's black death metal. It's not out there to please the masses, and ultimately we don't really care if people like it or not because we know we did it the way we wanted to-but it's great when people connect, when they get what we are trying to express. I am very proud of Sinsaenum. We are working on new songs and well, touring is difficult because we all have busy schedule with our other bands, but I promise you this, we will come to Japan one way or another! I got the opportunity to come here and meet Ward, our label in Japan, and I have nothing but good things to say about them so it's a great collaboration and yeah, we will come to Japan. Not now, people need to be patient and they have a lot of songs to listen to until then, but we WILL COME, I swear.

 

As for Dragonforce we are working on a new album, it's been written, we are recording right now. It will come out next year, not sure exactly when, first half of 2017 I'd say. And right now, as if I wasn't busy enough, I'm replacing Loudblast's bass player, so I'm rehearsing with the band and it's great cause I've always loved the band (which is why it's great that Stephane is in Sinsaenum-he became one of my best friend and we first met like 20 years ago) and I also worked on a Massacra tribute band. Massacra was a death metal band from France and they stopped in 1997 but were a big name within the genre back then, so we payed tribute to them, it was all the big names of death metal in France, plus me, I was really happy to be part of this, I think it's about time I explore that darker side I was talking about, so yeah Ive been doing quite a lot of death/black metal stuff at the moment and it feels right."