Taipei Metal

Hibria: Redefining the Rules

There’s an age-old story about a lethargic tortoise and a potentially A.D.D. addled hare that ends with the adage, “Slow and steady wins the race.” These words of wisdom could be applied to many areas of life: sexual foreplay, playing the stock market, world travel. However, many bands who have tried to use this same strategy in their careers have ended up on a slow and steady steamboat to nowhere. They are overtaken by bands that understand that slow and steady is all well and good at the start of the race, but if that’s the approach you’re going to take, you’d better be ready to overtake the rest of your competitors in the final sprint. Run the whole race slow and steady and chances are you’ll be crossing the finish line when all the fans have already gone home, save for those last few diehard supporters.

But Brazil's Hibria is one band which has made the slow and steady approach work for them. The band was founded 13 years ago, and over the course of their existence they have released just two full-length albums, 2004’s Defying the Rules, a concept album following the personal evolution of a character called the Steel Lord, a former arena gladiator who starts another life on the open road aboard a motorcycle, and 2009’s The Skull Collectors, the band’s second concept effort about a fighter pilot turned tortured mercenary.

That's not to say the band has been inactive; far from it. They released their first demo, Metal Heart, in 1997, just a year into their journey. Then they toured Europe in 1999 with nothing more than their second demo, Against the Faceless, to promote themselves. This was more of a contact-building mission than anything else. And their perseverance and dedication to the concept of quality over quantity drew the attention of Germany's Remedy Records, and later the Japanese label Spiritual Beast, ensuring that their future releases would be on music store shelves worldwide.

Though five years passed between Against the Faceless and their full-length debut, Defying the Rules, it's not because the band members were resting on their heels or busy patting themselves on the back following their European tour. On the contrary, Hibria was busy writing, thoroughly immersed in cultivating its own style, combining elements of power metal, traditional metal and even touches of progressive rock, all the while developing a strong following at home.

Each song they wrote had to fit with the songs they had written previously. If anything at all was amiss or out of place, an entire song would be scrapped; not even a solitary riff spared. So dedicated were the members of Hibria to realizing their vision of the what the band was supposed to be that they even binned a year's worth of writing because it didn't measure up to their standards. They were like sculptors working with marble. They could have chosen to work with blunt instruments, a hammer and a chisel, to quickly force a rough work of art from the stone. Instead, they worked with the pinpoint precision of a laser, entering in the exact coordinates for every carefully planned cut, in order to emerge, after years of monotonous effort and struggle, with their true masterpiece.

It was a painstaking process which pushed the members of Hibria to their mental limits, but the results were well worth the wait for heavy metal fans and the band alike. Defying the Rules was HMV Japan's best selling metal record for six straight weeks. At home in Brazil, a well-known domestic metal website reader's poll listed the band among the top 10 Brazilian metal bands for three year's running on the strength of the release, an honor earned by only five other bands, among them Sepultura and Angra.

Still, two full-length records released in over a decade seems somewhat counterproductive. Ask a band like Symphony X what can happen when a band takes too long to release a follow-up album. The momentum from the previous release wears off, and the band is left to start from ground zero once again. Instead of building on the popularity of the last album, they wallow in the role of the unproven, rookie band, despite years of writing and releasing albums and playing shows.

But Hibria hasn't let this get in their way or wear them down. As bassist and lyricist Marco Panichi points out, everyone in the band is selflessly dedicated the band's mission statement. On each album, they all sign off on every guitar riff, every bass line, and every drum fill. There is no room for filler, and, as they have proven, they would rather scrap a year's worth of work than be left with something they aren't 100 percent satisfied with.

Staying true to such rigorous standards means it can take years, instead of months, for an album to be written, recorded and released, which also explains the band's second five year gap between their first album and their second full-length release. In the fickle world of music, if a band goes more than two or three years between releases, it can be more than enough time for another hungry band to swoop in and fill the void that was left behind, taking their place and rendering them all but forgotten.

So why hasn’t Hibria been forgotten? And why, over a decade after their inception, is the band’s popularity higher than ever, and still on the upswing? Moreover, how many bands reach their breakout stage nearly 15 years into their career? As a case in point, though their albums have been available in North America and Asia for years, and as stated they already enjoy immense popularity in the Land of the Rising Sun, 2009 marks the first time Hibria will actually tour these markets. Music In sat down with Hibria’s Panichi on May 22nd, 2009 before the band's first performance in Taipei, to find out why, after so many years, Hibria finally seems ready to turn their slow burn into a full-blown explosion.

Music In: How would you describe Hibria’s musical style?

Marco Panichi: “We play heavy metal. We like to keep it broad to have freedom. We don’t feel like we should be a sub-label of heavy metal. Most of the people consider our music power metal, but we don’t have keyboards, so we are something in between the two things.”

MI: What were the reasons for the large gaps between your albums?

MP: “We wanted to release a first album that would make us really proud. It was our first professional album and there was a lot to learn about how to record. Our second album was more difficult because we wanted to build up based on Defying the Rules. We didn’t want to repeat it. We wanted to go a step further, but not three steps further and lose the base we have developed. Certainly there were some personal problems during this period. Also the way we decided to arrange it was a bit complicated because when we put the songs together we started to see that some of the things didn’t match and had to be redone.”

MI: You mentioned some personal problems. Could you elaborate on that a little bit?

MP: “We had some depressive moments. Sometimes a member loses his will to work. When somebody was down, the others were ok to keep pushing. And then some other soldier came down but the others were coming with more power.”

MI: Over the course of your career, you’ve only had one lineup change. That’s almost unheard of in metal circles. How has Hibria managed, for the most part, to maintain its stability?

MP: “I think we complete each other pretty well both as musicians and personalities, so each one has his defects as well as his good things. We learned how to combine ourselves and even if it’s been 10 years we still have fun working and that is the reason for being together for this time.”

MI: How would you describe your role within the band?

MP: “I’m the one trying to push for new limits. But sometimes I don’t push my own limits. So sometimes I’m very demanding with the others but the others say I should demand the same for myself.”

MI: Describe the evolution of the band’s sound from Defying the Rules to The Skull Collectors.

MP: “I feel that our second album is more rock than the first. However, we have improved a lot on the arrangements. If you listen to each instrument individually you’re going to hear much more riffs than the first one—guitar riffs, bass riffs, drum fills.”

MI: Very few bands have been able to break out of your home country of Brazil. Sepultura, Krisiun and Angra are a few exceptions. Why is it so difficult for bands to make it out of Brazil?

MP: “The main point is the bands don’t have enough space to develop themselves, to feel energized, to surpass certain difficulties because it’s not easy to get the concerts, the venues. Nowadays everyone has Myspace to promote themselves and that helps, but the real fuel for any band is the live concert and sometimes that’s not very easy to get. We are a continental country and there are many local scenes. Sometimes you are very strong in your local scene but they’ve never heard of you on the other side of the country. Making a national tour is almost impossible. It’s really difficult to find one booking agent who can book everything in Brazil. There are many business and structure difficulties that make the bands lose their will to break out.”

MI: Hibria took the unusual step of touring Europe with only a demo released in 1999 (Against the Faceless).What led to this decision?

MP: “Since the beginning our band was done to be a live band. We always felt that our live concert is much stronger. We really enjoy being in a live concert to recording. The best decision we made was to go to Europe where we could make many contacts and it’s kind of easy to get many concerts. We did 29. That was the idea, to improve ourselves both as musicians and being in contact with different bands.”

MI: You once said in a previous interview that in Brazil it is difficult for bands of different genres to play together. Is this still the case?

MP: “The main point is death metal is kicking ass in the underground. They are pushing much more than the heavy metal bands. Most heavy metal bands don’t get comfortable to take part in the death metal bands’ festivals or concerts. I don’t know how the audience reacts also. For some reason we feel comfortable and the audience has no problem with us. Many people tell us after the concert, ‘Wow guys I’m not in to heavy metal or power metal, but I like your band.’ I’m not sure if the other bands don’t do that because they are afraid or because they are rejected by the other band.”

MI: Rather than putting out an album every year, or every couple of years, Hibria seems to have taken a slow and steady approach. Was this a conscious decision, or is this just the way things worked out?

MP: “It’s our decision that we want to make a product that can make ourselves proud. We don’t want to put out a record where three songs are good and the other ones are shitty. We had one year of work, I think it was the first year, and I think we had three songs ready. And then we listened and played and said, ‘This is not it.’ They went straight to the trash basket—one year of work. Not even a riff was gotten from that. We started again.” –This was before The Skull Collectors. Sometimes it’s like a whole body; you can’t save only one arm. You have to cut it. It’s dead. It’s better than living with a CD that you don’t like.”

MI: Does the band have any plans for the next album yet?

MP: “We feel much more confident that we can go broader now. Now we feel confident we can work with death metal concepts to hard rock concepts. We really want to work with this and have lots of freedom on creative direction.”

MI: Why does Hibria tend to favor concept albums?

MP: “The thing about a concept is it’s much more related to what you do in a graphic way, in a lyrics way, and also it helps us to have everybody in the same boat, thinking about how it should sound.”

MI: Do you have any idea about what the concept for the next album will be?

MP: “We have talked about phantom ships. We have talked about phantom airplanes. Sometimes we look at a statue on the street—‘What’s the story behind this statue?’”

MI: After your Asian tour is done you’ll tour North America for the first time. North America is not necessarily the most receptive environment for power metal or traditional metal bands. How are you feeling going into this tour?

MP: “One of the cool things that I like about this band, to be part of it, is that we can play for any audience, and at the end there is always somebody coming and telling us ‘Guys you made me remember how I used to like Iron Maiden, how I used to like Judas Priest.’ Or, ‘I never listened to metal before but I got really interested after I listened to you guys.’ So I’m really proud of it.”