Hello everyone, we’re here with Emile and Adrien from the band Beyond The Styx. How are you doing?
Emile - Honestly, we’re good. We’re having fun.


Is the promo day going well?
Adrien - Yeah, it’s going well.


So you’re here to talk about your new album coming out on May 8th, called Divid. I was wondering about the pronunciation?
Emile - Yeah, that’s it. You can say Divid the French way, or “divide” in English, we don’t really know. Basically, everyone interprets it their own way.
Adrien - It’s not that we don’t know, it’s that everyone does whatever they want.
Emile - Exactly, everyone does whatever they want. Some people say Epstein one way, others say it differently. So yeah, it’s Divid, and for those who want, it’s “divide.”
(laughs)
Adrien - There you go, straight into the heart of the topic!! (laughs)


So, why did you choose that title for the album?
Adrien - It came from a brainstorming session with the band while we were in the studio. There were already a few ideas that had come up, but nobody was really convinced. And I wanted to talk about division, that was the idea that spoke to me. Then I suggested Divide, with the “e”. And Emile suggested removing the “e” for the palindrome aspect of the word, and also because it felt more visually impactful. That’s basically it. We talked about it, we voted, and in the end, that’s the name we went with.
Emile - Yeah, even though our guitarist wanted to call it David. But I don’t know why we didn’t go with that. (laughs)
Adrien - That’s it. And also, the number 4 hidden in it refers to the fourth album.
Emile - Actually, we’ve been hiding things in our album titles since the second one. And with Roman numerals, you can find the album number in the titles. I’m saying this for those who might want a little exclusive.


That’s really good to know. So right now, there are already two tracks available: Dust Off and Never Ending War. First, Dust Off is the opening track of the album. And it’s also the first single you released. Why this one to introduce the new album?
Adrien - Why this one as a single, or as the opening track of the album?


Both!
Emile - I called Pascal Praud. I told him, “Listen Pascal, I feel like right now in France the atmosphere is way too racist. What do you think if I release an antifascist track?” - “I could make it headline your news.” I told him, “Damn, Pascal, there’s no better promo than that.” He said, “Alright, let’s go for it. You keep stirring things up on CNews, and we’ll do our job on our side.” But beyond the theme, I think there was really an artistic crush on the track.
Adrien - It’s something we really felt. We said, yeah, as a first single, it works. We like it. It represents quite well what the album is going to be. And then, why as the first track on the album? That was more complicated. It was a bit of a mess. It took us a long time to figure out the tracklist. Less than the live setlist -that’s a whole other story- but still, it took time.

We settled on it, even if we’re not 100% sure yet. We did a lot of tests with the pre-productions to see how the songs would flow into each other. Since we changed things during the studio process, some transitions didn’t work anymore. So yeah, it took quite a while.

I’m the one who brought that idea. But it’s very personal. I love albums where you press play on track one and boom, you immediately get hit with a song. I love that. It’s completely subjective. And when I listened to all the tracks, I felt like Dust Off worked that way. But originally, it was already a featuring, and Emile was saying it felt weird to open an album with a feat.

So I convinced him with just one argument: I mentioned the best album by The Acacia Strain, Wormwood. And I told him it starts with a feature, with Jamey Jasta. And then he said, “Okay, you completely convinced me.” (laughs)
Emile - It’s one of my favorite albums. It’s true, I hadn’t thought about it.
Adrien - And in the end, everyone in the band agreed that starting with a feat as the first track is musically impactful. And that was it.


So the second one is Never Ending War. The video we got is very impactful, very expressive, and it matches the lyrics really well. For you, how important is the cinematic aspect in music today?
Emile - Essential. Unfortunately, I would say. Because I think too many great bands go unnoticed. Even in some musical genres, I think people rely less on visuals, but nowadays, your image is your business card. So if you have a bad video, basically, you’re a bad band. Whereas honestly, just because you don’t look great doesn’t mean you’re a bad musician. And that’s terrible, but that’s the world we live in. As for us, we approached that aspect while being well surrounded, and maybe from a less direct angle than what you’ll see in our next singles. It’s true that with Never Ending War, strictly speaking, you don’t necessarily find the explicit theme of the subject in the video. Even though the idea of war is something more… diffuse, maybe more abstract. You can’t limit war to literal images. Every day, we fight battles against ourselves, against many different things. That’s it.


Great. You are actually quite engaged - it’s even a part of your identity. For you, what is the place of culture, art, and music today when it comes to conveying a message and maybe improving things?
Emile - For me, it’s always the same answer. I think art is a form of counter-power, or at least, it used to be. I think there is art, and there is mainstream art, and as soon as something starts to work -or as soon as we start to work- the capitalist system wants it to work even more. And because of that, certain sensitive topics or areas tend to be silenced.

But for me, I’m still convinced that art is one of the best forms of counter-power. I’ve always said there is no revolution without women and without music. We have women, now it’s up to us to bring more music back into the equation, maybe to break through certain barriers that keep persisting over time. But it also requires educating yourself. It’s through reading, watching, meeting people that I’ve gradually built a more militant, conscious, and deliberate discourse, without any moralizing intent, I want to stress that. That’s just my perspective.

Adrien - I’d add a nuance to that. Art that wants to be engaged -whatever form it takes- can be, because it has the freedom to do so. And it’s important not to censor yourself if you feel the need to be engaged.However -and I want to emphasize this, especially as a teacher- a student once told me: “I feel like today, for contemporary art of the 21st century to be considered valid or recognized, it has to carry an engaged message, and ‘art for art’s sake’ sometimes loses its aesthetic value in favor of the message. And I’m a bit tired of always being confronted with that, as if there’s engaged art, and then everything else.” And I think we shouldn’t believe that art only exists to be engaged, all the time.

We should also allow art to exist without a message, for beauty, or for questioning, without necessarily being political. It can simply be reflective. But at the same time, we do have the ability to speak out. So if something upsets us, if we disagree with something, we should say it. We shouldn’t hide behind things like: “I won’t say it because I won’t be invited on certain platforms anymore” or “I need to stay politically correct.”

Emile - I don’t want to become Blanche Gardin.
Adrien - Exactly. If you feel like saying something, then say it, because you have the ability to do so. A lot of people don’t have that freedom, either because of external constraints, or because they limit themselves. So we have to use it. And clearly, art is a vehicle for political engagement, precisely because of that freedom. It has always existed, even when it was disguised to please royalty, there was always an artist mocking the king or twisting things. So we should take advantage of it. We can do it. Today, in France, you don’t risk dying for expressing political disagreement… at least in theory.
Emile - You can die artistically, though.
Adrien - Yeah, exactly. But you won’t get the death penalty for it.
Emile - No, but you can get kicked off radio stations.


So I’d like to come back for a moment to the featuring tracks. You mentioned the first one, could you tell us more about the second one, on Flowerviolence?
Emile - It’s a song that deals more with our sense of care and responsibility toward Mother Earth. So for this track, it felt important to me, ideally, to find a woman to share it with : Delphine, a female singer.

She was part of the first hardcore band from Tours that I ever saw live, a band that no longer exists today, an all-female band, at a time when, I think, the question of women in music wasn’t really being raised, unfortunately, but they were there. At the very least, they existed. The band was called Sisterhood Issues. And so I asked her -because, sure, it’s fun to do karaoke together- but I approached her more seriously about contributing to this track. And no, the karaoke part isn’t a joke.

I genuinely asked her, properly, and she accepted, very spontaneously. So it was a real pleasure to create this with her, especially on a theme that resonates with both of us. Because, concretely, I’m a social worker, and Delphine is as well. So the question of ecology and more broadly, our place within it, as well as the place of the people we support in our work, concerns us both directly and indirectly. So it made it even more meaningful to do this together.


And for you, how did these two featuring tracks influence the album?
Emile - Well… I don’t know if… Yes, they obviously influence the album, since they’re part of it and they act as additional members of the band. And because of that, they may also influence the listener in one way or another. But…
Adrien - I’d say they influence the individual tracks more than the album as a whole. If you removed them, the songs would be very different. They wouldn’t have the same color at all. There are a lot of things that wouldn’t happen the same way. If Emile had sung everything on Flowerviolence, or if he had written different lyrics on Dust Off -because Okan actually wrote his own lyrics on Dust Off- it wouldn’t have been the same, and he wouldn’t have placed his voice in the same way. So the songs would definitely have a different tone. But I don’t think it changes the album as a whole. What it does bring is something extra; a form of sharing. We were talking about human values earlier, and that’s part of it too: relationships between people. That’s how I see it.


This is your fourth album. What is the main evolution you’ve felt throughout the albums?
Emile - Earlier, we were talking about our influences and all that. I think there are things on this album that came out very naturally. We’ve also learned to trust each other. So David brought in riffs, and we were able to say yes or no, but it was really just a matter of taste. It wasn’t about saying “this album needs to sound more like death metal” or “more like black metal.”It was more… I feel like this time, we didn’t approach it by thinking “we need more of this, less of that.” We had already moved away from that a bit on Sentences, but even more so here.

I think this is an album that, for many reasons, just flowed naturally; also because we were a bit limited in time. But what I really liked was the connection that formed between all of us, especially around David’s riffing, and also the work we did on ego. It’s not something we talk about a lot, but a band is made of egos. And being able to accept “no, we’re not going to use this,” or “we’re not going to use it like that”… myself included.

There are songs that changed and we kept only 20% compared to what we had prepared before going into the studio. There are even parts of my lyrics that we threw away. And honestly, a few years ago, I don’t think that would have been possible, or at least not as easily. Even if, for the sake of the band, I would have done it, ego is something everyone has to work on. And for me, that’s something really important.

Adrien - Yeah, I completely agree. And I’d add that our style has become more defined over time. We’re more and more comfortable with what we play, what we want to write, and what we want to deliver. A band naturally -and I hope that’s the case for all bands- goes through phases of searching, trying things out. There are albums where you might miss the mark more than others, it all comes down to taste. Some people will say “I prefer this one,” others will prefer another. And luckily, we don’t all have the same tastes, otherwise it would be boring. You’d have too many people at one show and none at another. Actually, maybe that already happens. But for Beyond The Styx, there’s clearly something that has solidified over time.

Is this an album you specifically designed for the live experience, or are you already working on adaptations for upcoming shows?
Adrien - All of our albums are designed with the live aspect in mind. We’ve always composed that way -well, not at the very beginning, like I mentioned earlier- but our live experience has shaped our approach. It made us want certain types of songs, certain riffs, certain feelings. Very often, while composing, we ask ourselves: “is this going to feel flat live? is it going to be boring? Do we really want that? or should we try something else?” There’s always this live-oriented mindset around composition, a search for efficiency on stage.
Emile - In the end, we’ve already reworked some small arrangements for the live versions of certain songs. Because of dynamics, we need the songs to flow and interact with each other. So there are always small adjustments. Not necessarily within the songs themselves. If you take Kiss of the Cobra or the intro of Chaos System, there are elements we add.
Adrien - Not inside the songs themselves.
Emile - No, it’s more things we add around them. External elements.
Adrien - Basically, we don’t compose a “studio album,” we compose an album meant to be played live. If you write songs just imagining them in your living room, it won’t feel the same as composing with the mindset of: “I want to play this, I want to perform it, I want to share it.” What we put on our albums is what we deliver live. We don’t play to a click track, so we’re not always at the exact same tempo. But that’s the point - it’s alive.


You’ve got a show coming up soon. I saw a “celebration” on May 9th at Le Nouvel Atrium.
Adrien - You saw the word “celebration”?
(laughs)


That’s the word I was given, yes! A celebration of the album release. What can we expect from this release party?
Adrien - Songs from Divid? (laughs)
Emile - First of all, a lot of friends gathered together. It’s almost like a festival. Let’s be honest, five bands, including us, it’s going to be pretty special. And then… a birth, in a way. Because, in reality, we’ve never played the album live before… or maybe once, a track we tested on stage. But only the real die-hard fans will recognize it.
Adrien - And even then, it’s changed.
Emile - Yeah, it was just the demo version that had been played. But now, we’ll finally be able to present new material.


Do you have a message for the people who listen to you?
Adrien - No.
(laughs)

Emile - Of course we do. I always say the same thing -sorry to those who’ve already heard it- but it’s simply about encouraging people, again and again, to support their local scene. Maybe even beyond that, but first and foremost locally. Because without a local culture, you end up with cultural deserts taking over. And I think there’s nothing worse than that.

We all have small bands that could one day become medium-sized bands, or even big ones. And we’re well aware that the cultural foundation doesn’t only exist in Paris. I mean, Gojira didn’t come from Paris. It just shows that even if you come from the middle of nowhere, you can become one of the biggest modern metal bands out there. So I really encourage people to believe in their local scene, believe in their own abilities, dare to try, and stay attentive and kind to others. Because we all need love.

Adrien - And supporting local scenes isn’t just a slogan on a t-shirt. It’s genuinely how things work. If some associations are struggling or have disappeared, it’s because fewer people showed up. And on the other hand, when some associations keep organizing cool, accessible events, sometimes even with pay-what-you-want systems…

Emile - Like our release party.
Adrien - Exactly. It’s important to have those places, those communities.

Emile - You have to follow your heart. And without trying to moralize, at some point, you shouldn’t always postpone what you could do today. Everyone supports in their own way, depending on their means and availability, but you shouldn’t forget where you come from. I see so many “hardcore dads” saying: “I can’t, I’ve got a barbecue, I’ve got football…” Okay, but you’re still wearing the band shirts. And that’s a bit sad, because in reality, apart from some big festivals, you don’t see much anymore. And that’s a shame.

Adrien - Because it’s also live music. Metal is…
Emile - Heavy! (laughs)

Adrien - It can be intellectual too, of course, and I’m not ranking anything. But the metal scene is mainly about sharing, live energy, feeling the power of sound. And that, you can only experience in a concert venue. Whether you’re at the front or in the back doesn’t matter. There’s a vibration there that you just don’t find anywhere else. You can blast music at home, but it won’t feel the same.

Emile - Something unique happens. Something real. Even my parents, who aren’t into extreme music, I managed to get them to come to festivals.
Adrien - We’ve had many people tell us: “I don’t listen to it at home, but I saw you live and I loved the moment.” That really shows how powerful live music can be.
Emile - It really matters.


Thank you for your time today.
Emile & Adrien - Thank you!