Stockholm-based rock trio Reach is back with a bang with “Prophecy”, an unique blend of jazz and classical elements to their rock sound, was released on March 29, 2024, via Icons Creating Evil Art.
This trio is making waves in the international rock scene with the electrifying first single, "Mama Mama", and the second and third singles, "Little Dreams" and “A Million Lives” are outstanding!
Reach, consisting of Ludvig Turner, Marcus Johansson, and Soufian Ma’Aoui, continue to push the boundaries of their musical prowess. Their collaboration with acclaimed music producer Christian Schneider in crafting "Prophecy" has refined their unique sound. These guys have what it takes to become big worldwide. Pay attention to their music and read this short but very interesting chat that Metal Imperium had with Ludvig Turner and Soufian Ma’Aoui, a few days before the album’s release.
M.I. - First off, let me congratulate you on the new album. The tracks are absolutely amazing and catchy! The band has been getting a lot of attention. How do you feel about it? Is it overwhelming or are you used to it by now? How much does the attention affect you?
Soufian (S) - First of all, thank you for the compliment, that a big compliment! We're super excited, we're really glad that on the second album we decided to try something kind of new for us and step out of our comfort zone and we're really happy that so many people seem to like it and and enjoy what we're doing. So, we're really excited and we hope that people are going to like this one as well!
M.I. - I bet they will because the singles are awesome!
S - Yeah, they are, thanks!
M.I. - You guys were definitely born to be artists! You have been creating excellent music!
Ludvig (L) - That's really flattering! Thank you very much!
M.I. - The band will have a “Prophecy” release party on the 28th March. Who can attend that party? Guests? Or will tickets be available? What can fans expect from it?
S - It's going to be open. We decided kind of last minute that we're going to do one of the venues where we play a lot called Pub Anchor. It's going to be an open night, so if you want to come down you're free to come down!
L - There's not going to be an entrance or anything. We rarely play at home, so we feel like now that we do, we just want everyone to come if they want to. It's like a big party!
M.I. - Will you be playing the whole album or what?
L - I'd say we are going to play most of the songs from the upcoming album and, of course, a few of our more popular ones from the previous albums!
S - It's gonna be cool! We're gonna have some guests and stuff… not for our songs, but we're gonna do like a little jam after! It's going to be a full rock and roll party night!
M.I. – Okay! And will there be any surprises for the fans?! You won't tell me, right?!
S – Yeah, but there will be at least one surprise for everyone that I guess people sort of expect… we're gonna play the album which isn't being released until the day after, so we're gonna play songs that haven't been released and you won't be able to listen to until the day after!
M.I. - This album will be released on Good Friday. Considering Good Friday is a religious holiday and the album is “Prophecy”… was the date intentionally chosen or is it a coincidence?
L – Right! It surely was, yeah, we didn't get to decide when to release the album. The label decided that so… for us, it is a coincidence but maybe our label has a plan with it.
M.I. - The album and the cover with the stained glass and all that really reminds me of something religious, like the stained glass in churches and stuff like that. And I think Good Friday is a good day to release that album because it will be on the top charts everywhere!
L – Thank you! As for the rest, you're not wrong at all and that's a coincidence because the whole the theme is a sort of a churchy theme and the name “Prophecy” correlates with that as well. But, from our side, the date of the release is just a coincidence, but it's a very good coincidence, yeah, very good!
M.I. - How was the writing process for this album compared to the last album, considering that there were no corona virus restrictions this time around?
L - I think one of the main differences is, the last one we did with Jona Tee from H.E.A.T, the keyboard player, and this one we did with a guy called Christian Schneider, a friend of ours. One of the main things is that he wanted us to record all of the songs live as a threepiece first because he felt that if the songs work as a threepiece, then they'll work when we add on all of the keyboards and all of the extras. So we started out recording everything just the three of us in a room and he would sit there and he would take notes and he would give suggestions on how we could tweak the songs and stuff. That was a really fun process actually. I think that's why the main part of the song in the album sounds like it does, because it's a new way for us to record like this, so it was very enjoyable, it was a lot of fun but it also shaped the sound in a way.
M.I. - Do you work individually or do you do everything together? Who writes the lyrics? Is there a responsible person to do that?
S - I think Ludvig is the main songwriter! He usually shows up with ideas and then we'll work on them together or we'll all take them home and we'll do our parts and then we'll try and put everything together, but lyrically, everything so far has been done by Ludvig.
L – Right! Yeah, that's on me! It's easier for me to write lyrics and top lines as a singer but we've always like pieced all the parts together and more now than ever before. For this album, I'd say we wrote everything together and it was very nice. I think it's going to be even more like this the future. The opening song of “Prophecy” was the first one that we wrote together for the album and that we started jamming on. I'd say it's been more of us three together composing the songs than before and I think it's going to happen more in the future.
M.I. - What inspires you? Do you inspire yourself in your career as musicians, because “Save the world” seems to be a bit about yourself?
L – Probably! I don't know! I think most of the songs lyricwise now can apply to almost anyone. They're familiar scenarios but often exaggerated, so I'd say “Save the world” is a common scenario and common place in which new artists or old artists get into. For us, it’s maybe not as extreme as the song suggests, but the whole point of the music is to paint that picture with many bright colors.
M.I. - Do you think it is actually possible to save the world by writing melodies with beauty in the words?
L - You can only save the world with love is what I say. But, yeah, absolutely, in some sense, if we're gonna go down that path, I'd say culture has quite a big effect on us all and we're nothing without culture. With no culture, we're robots, there's no point to life!
M.I. - The song “Save the world” is about a girl who goes into a major record label. Do you think labels, especially the major ones, can corrupt the artist’s essence? Can they shape the artist into something different from what he/she expected? It’s like signing a deal with the devil. Would you be brave enough to do it for the sake of fame and money or would you rather be a “smaller” artist and be true to yourself?
S - Are you thinking of the plot of Crossroads now? Signing a deal with the devil! Yeah, well, we've tried that and we got over it anyways. Now I believe, and I think I speak for the band, there is no quick solution, there are no shortcuts really, there's not the overnight rockstar anymore. For us to become a popular band means playing more shows.
L – I'm gonna bet on hard work and a plan and practicing and becoming better rather than luck if I had to pick one!
M.I. - The video for the song “Save the world” has a kind of “The Greatest Showman” vibe. Was it intentional? Do you agree with this comparison?
S – Yeah, definitely, there's definitely parts in there.
M.I. - It was produced by Janne Mattsson & The SRM crew. How much input did you have on it? Who was the mastermind behind the idea?
S – Well, Lud's the video guy actually. He has all of the video ideas always and then we workshop them with Janne who makes our videos, so it's usually the two of them. So Lud, you can probably explain better what your idea was for it?!
L – Right, yeah, you're not far off! I wasn't really thinking of “The greatest showman”. I love that movie, by the way, but I wasn't thinking of that movie as a reference to the video but it's theatrical and dramatic as “The greatest showman”. When I write songs, I often imagine a music video in my head to get me in the right place and usually that is the music video. I had this idea of this evil company and scary people and this innocent artist in this case… I just had sort of a rough idea, this is what I see and what I want to do and I go to Janne and he gives me what I really want, so a lot of credit goes to Janne for all of the music videos we made. I might have an idea but he's the one doing all the hard work.
M.I - There is also a video for “Mama mama”. Any new video coming out soon?
S - There are no more videos. We don't have any planned, we'll see what happens going forward, but there's none happening right now. I think we're going to focus on the album and getting gigs and we’ll be doing that for a little while.
M.I. - The album cover and the single covers have very interesting artwork, it looks almost religious, as a religious prophecy, with its stained glass… but the skull and all the different images kinda obliterates that. What’s its meaning after all? Who’s responsible for the designs? Ludvig as well as he seems to be the creative guy?!
L - There's a guy called Vagelis from Greece, he did the cover for the last album as well. Basically we come to him with ideas and he's just as Janne. He's really good at incorporating our ideas and getting them on the paper, he's a really talented guy, so we knew we wanted him to do this. If you've seen the cover of the album “Promise of life”, we have the same theme going through all of the singles with this one person who changes depending on the song. I just have to put in here that Sou deserves a lot of credit because all of the artwork for this album was his idea initially with the windows and everything!
S – Yeah, I had the idea for the layout. For the last album we basically went to Vagelis and told him to make something cool, and now we actually gave him something to work with which turned out to be the best one so far. He's really talented, we knew we wanted to have some sort of a theme going through the album with multiple pieces in the same way.
M.I. - A while ago you said it was “a bit churchy”. What did you mean by that?
L – I’m referring more to the aesthetics of it than to the religious aspect. It's like writing songs or making artwork referring to Satan. It doesn't necessarily mean we believe in any of the stuff, it's just that if you have to pick one, I believe Satan is cooler than God, so we're gonna mess around with his stuff.
M.I. - So how have people been reacting to your new singles? I've read a few reactions online but you probably have received tons more. What's the general idea?
S - So far so good! I think people seem to like it but it's really hard to know until the album's been out for a while, because a song might be streaming really well or people might be listening a lot to it, but then, after a little while, it will die down a bit… so it'll be interesting to see if people keep coming back to them or not. We're looking forward to it, hopefully they will!
L - With the last album, a few of our songs became more popular than others like ”The law”, “Motherland”, both singles. Then, on third place, was something we didn't expect and that was “Cover my traces”, something that was a bit odd for us. I think this album has a wider spread of songs, so I'm really curious to see what happens! If you listen to the singles we released, that is not gonna tell you what any other song on the album is gonna sound like, they all sound totally different, so I'm curious to see what songs people appreciate the most.
M.I. - I keep going back to “The seventh seal”… I don't know why…
L – Wow! Thank you! That's a really cool sign!
M.I. – Yeah, it's different, I don't know but I liked it a lot so I keep on listening to it every now and then I just play it, not the whole album. Sometimes I do that but when it's one song here and there, “The seventh seal” is my favorite.
“The Law” has over 2 million streams on Spotify. How rewarding is that?
S – Oh, it's great! Like I said earlier, it means that the song has staying power, people keep listening to it even though it's been a few years since the previous album, it's still going strong every day so that's great because, apparently, it means a lot to people which is what we want to achieve, so it's a great feeling!
M.I. - Is it usual for you to think a song will be a hit and then it doesn't happen and the other way around, you think it won't be so much appreciated and people enjoy it?
L - That's exactly what we did with the last album with “Cover my traces”. That was a bit odd and it's really difficult! Of course it matters, you want to pick a single that is your best or most popular or maybe most easy-listen-to song, I don't know, but there's thought behind it, of course. You think “Maybe this song could be a catch, so many people going to like this one” but we've been wrong, I was wrong with this. When chosing the singles I vote for what I believe could be a good single. I actually go for either song that is very much out there, something different like “Save the world” for instance or I pick a song like “The law” which is sort of easy listening compared to other songs.
M.I. - What are the plans to promote this album? A major tour? Will you finally be coming to Portugal? Thanks for your time. Care to leave a final message to your Portuguese fans?
L – We hope to play in Portugal soon! I hope so! I've never been there so if you have any gigs, email us, we'll come anytime!
S - I'd love that!
For Portuguese version, click here
Listen to Reach, on Spotify
Questions by Sónia Fonseca
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