FINDING YOUR OWN SALVATION
A CONVERSATION WITH FUTURE PALACE
One of the potential mainstays in the scene that offer something unique in terms of delivering a melodic and nuanced hardcore edge are bands like Future Palace. Since their debut release Escape, in 2020, the new rising stars of the hardcore scene have consistently delivered decadent, nostalgic, harsh overtones with their own kind of unique blend of pop elegance. Such dulcet consignment to filling the negative spaces that surround the combative forces that make Future Palace an uncommon force in the rock genre is what has put them above a lot of other bands in the genre. Above all, however, front vocalist Maria Lessing is the mysterious, all-powerful force that quietly drives the band’s success forward.
Having established over two albums in their careers and coming on their third, it’s hard not to acknowledge the past four years, and how they shaped a lot of shapes and sounds that came out of many bands’ careers, including theirs. For Lessing, the energy shift is being felt considerably as they approach this new chapter of their careers. “It’s been nonstop working since we started if that is a way to sum it up,” says Lessing. “We released album after album, and if we didn’t release an album, we were on tour. So, we were always productive with our time. It is chapters, but we keep going, you know? There are no breaks in between to reflect that much or even think that much. That’s also part of what this album is about. What it means to me to kind of reflect on what has been happening to us for the past few years and to the world, and the people around me. And I was trying to get these expressions into my music lyrically, and I think also musically. Manuel Kohlert, our guitarist, does all the instrumentals and writes them, and we build them together. Then we work on them again in the studio. But I think he also had a lot of impressions from playing in different countries we have never been to and playing in front of so many people we were not imagining playing in front of. We played in front of 14,000 people, for example, with one show, and many times with that one tour. Then we had our headline tour last year, in which we had big shows as well for the first time, and sold-out shows at that. It just felt so surreal a lot of times, but also the work and the amount of power you put into it can be exhausting. When there are moments of quiet and peace, it sometimes hits you that you are very exhausted from this. You go a bit crazy, almost in a manic mode, at times, and I notice my body is so overwhelmed. When you come back from a huge tour to your job and be normal again, the switch is very intense and it’s very hard to transition. So, Distortion has so many different influences and emotions in there, it’s a bit of everything.”
In the often waterlogged, aggressive universe that is hardcore, “Distortion” stands out above the surface as a beautifully solemn and explosively stimulating example, bringing a breath of fresh air to a scene that has become overly comfortable with itself. Despite the band still being relatively new, hardcore music has needed a fresh perspective, and Future Palace’s “Distortion” delivers exactly that. While the time constraints kept the band from fully engaging in the experience, what resulted in a culmination of all the tones the band has absorbed up to this point.
DISTORTION ALBUM REVIEW
“There are a few new things that we tried for the first time on this record,” says Lessing. “We were in a little bit of a time rush with this album, so there was not much of a thinking process in between, to be honest. It was like we have an idea, and we are going to make this work. That was how it went with this album, there was not too much back and forth with these songs compared to Run. Run was written in the pandemic, there was a bit more time and we could think a bit more about what we wanted to do. This is also how we made the decision about integrating the screaming into the tracks. There was a bit more time to rehearse because I couldn’t do the screaming. Now with screaming, I was touring…Now that I think about it with Run, I only had one or two tours in my life, so I was ill-experienced, haha. With Distortion, in these two years, we did it all. We just got that experience. Four or 5 tours and festivals. I dunno how many shows… we have done 80 or 90 shows this year, I think. I don’t even remember, haha, in just one year. So that’s just so much more experience that you collect, and as a vocalist, I grew more into the role of a heavy vocalist, but also struggled a little, because it was way more challenging for my voice. I had to get coaching because I was struggling so much with my vocals. I was just trying to show on this album what I learned and how much I had improved. We wanted to embrace this even more and the heaviness.”
While Distortion offered the band an extensive amount of opportunities and the chance to embrace new and exciting territories, a state of uncertainty hung in the balance within the wait for such positive change that had come from the extension of depression and mental anguish that manifested from the mental instability of overstimulation. Whether it was personally or embarking on the challenges of the new frontier that was Distortion, Lessing had to be her own salvation.
“I personally was in a conflict with if I wanted to continue screaming or not,” confesses Lessing. “Because it ruined my voice kind of for a few aspects. So, there were only two ways I could get better. I either had to find a way to do this healthier, but I never had time, because we were already on tour. There was barely time to learn this or stop doing it. But then I heard the demos for the album already that Manuel prepared, so there was almost no way that the songs could not work without screams. It wouldn’t be us. I think he really wanted to go heavier in a lot of aspects. So, I didn’t want to stop even though it presented itself as this big challenge. So, I made the time for it to improve as a screamer, then decided to keep it. The producers really liked it and told me, ‘Please, don’t stop screaming, It’s so cool, It’s a big part of your band,’ haha. I think people very much like it. So, that was one of the decisions I had to make myself. ‘Do I really want to do this and go through all of this again?’ Now we have an album that has screams on every track. So, the evolution is pretty clear that we are heavier than we ever have been before, but we still wanted to keep that ambiguous charm as well,” she smiles.
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