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BIO | INTERVIEW
2008 - David Potvin about *One-Way Mirror'
Hey David! Your self titled debut album is going to be released soon. What can the fans expect from ONE-WAY MIRROR?
We’re very excited about this album coming out cause we’re all very proud of it! We are offering a new sound that can appeal to both metal heads and rock fans as ONE-WAY MIRROR is the perfect mix of heavy riffs and catchy choruses. I would say that ONE-WAY MIRROR showcases a great modern sound, and I’m sure that metal and rock fans who are looking for something fresh will dig the album.
Your band consists out of members from bands like SOILWORK, MNEMIC, SCARVE and others. What can you do with OWM what you can’t do with the other bands?
ONE-WAY MIRROR members are Guillaume Bideau (MNEMIC, ex-SCARVE), Dirk Verbeuren (SOILWORK, SCARVE, PHAZE I), Loic Colin (SCARVE), my brother Franck Potvin and I (LYZANXIA, PHAZE I). We are having a ton of fun with this new band! We’ve known each other for ten years. Together we play the music we want to hear. I guess ONE-WAY MIRROR is the kind of band that doesn’t give a fuck about musical movements or trends. We play what we like to play without asking ourselves any questions. There’s no stress, no pressure, and everything is going cool. We can explore new sounds, new ways of playing, we can combine many styles without being afraid to disappoint our fans ‘cause we’re a brand new band! Hahaha! I mean we create our own style. It’s still mainly metal though! I think the main difference between ONE-WAY MIRROR and our other bands is that our style extends rather wide musically.
When did the idea form to start this band?
Guillaume came up with the idea a couple of years ago. He wanted to play in his favourite band! Haha! He called each one of us explaining that he wanted to create a band that would be catchy and melodic. Actually that’s the kind of music he loves to hear. That was perfect for us ‘cause, as I said, we’ve known each other for many years and we’re close friends. We have shared the stage with our other bands many times so that was the perfect occasion to unite everybody and have even more fun together.
Is OWM just an all star project that comes together on a random basis? Or is it a real band with touring plans and stuff?
ONE-WAY MIRROR is a real band with more albums to come and many touring plans. We’ll have confirmed gigs in a few days. It seems that we’ll start touring in September in France first and then Europe. I can’t wait to play the songs live! At the very beginning we were not sure that we would do something more serious than drinking beers and composing for fun. But the thing is that so many of our friends wanted to listen to a full album and see us live that we definitively had to work on some songs, which was great! So, Guillaume and I decided to produce the album ourselves. The drums were recorded at the Dugout studio with Daniel Bergstrand and the rest of the album in our studios, the Dome studio and the Dogs in the House studio. We wanted Tue Madsen to participate in this album ‘cause this guy is a killer, so we mixed and mastered the album with him in his Antfarm studio. Finally the “project” turned into a real band after the mix, so we decided to contact Metal Blade to see the possibilities of working with them.
Your sound is pretty modern. Please describe in your own words why OWM is the perfect example of how modern metal has to sound.
I think the mix of heavy riffs, heavy drums, loud bass, melodic vocals with catchy choruses and very cool samples make ONE-WAY MIRROR a real entity and a band from the next generation of metal. I love extreme metal and melodic bands, too. Guillaume loves every band with catchy choruses and melodic vocals, even pop music, funk music or mainstream rock. Everybody in the band has different influences and I guess the mix of the musicians creates this modern sound. We really wanted to produce something fresh. I guess we were a bit tired of listening to formatted sounds.
What is a one-way mirror?
A one-way mirror is a mirror that you can use to watch people without them seeing you, which is pretty exciting! That was really hard to find a name for the band because we wanted every musician in the band to like it. One day I received the cover art designed by Alain Tréhard and the name just came up to my mind. If I look at the cover, I can see two meanings: a girl showing her hand to you or trying to touch her reflection in a mirror.
You did a nice cover version of FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD’s “Relax”. Why did you choose this song?
That was my brother’s idea! We wanted to do a cover from a band of the 80’s because in the band we’re pretty much the same age and we grew up in the 80’s. When we were younger we all listened to FGTH on the radio, on TV or on vinyls. That was a good synthesis of the cult 80’s pop music style! This song sounds really metal, when you play the main riff. You just need to turn up the distortion level to 11 on your guitar and that’s it! Haha!
Please name your main influences when it comes to songwriting and explain your songs are created.
When we were composing the album, we were not listening to other bands so much, but of course we have several influences. For example, I love thrash bands like METALLICA, MEGADETH, PANTERA, TESTAMENT and also bands like QUEEN or THE ROLLING STONES. These bands have shaped my musical culture, and it’s the same with the other guys. We grew up listening to many bands which are now part of our influences. During the composing process Guillaume, my brother and I were in our studio with tons of beers and whisky! It took about 15 days to compose this album. During the day usually it was Guillaume and me or Guillaume and Franck working on a song. We usually went through a song step by step stacking up individual parts: a killer riff, the drums parts, the bass line and the catchy vocals! At the end of the day we opened the bottles and drank them all listening to the song 10 or 15 times! Haha! Then we arranged the songs with Dirk and Loic for the final recording.
Please describe OWM with three words only.
Fun, loud, party!
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