“Please, be our voice!” – we received this e-mail at the end of June. Amin Saffar sent this e-mail, who is the guitarist for Hyper Planet, which is a progressive metal band from Iran. After watching their video message and knowing more about their, and the situation overall in Teheran, there was no question that we will feature them on our blog.

Beginnings:

Amin: Well, we are a family. We are both brothers, in our music band, with our father. We grew up in a musician family and started our musical activities at 7 (me) and 6 (Armin). I started to learn and play the Santur (Iranian instrument), and Armin started to learn and play the Tombak (Iranian percussion instrument), so everything began with the support and teaching of our father to us.

After that, when we were passionate about rock and metal music, I started to learn electric guitar at 17, and Armin started to learn bass guitar at 16; we both are self-taught.

In 2010, we formed our band called: ‘Hyper Planet,’ and we continued our musical activities and made four albums up to this day and in the latest and forthcoming album, we mixed progressive metal with traditional Iranian music. We have released two singles from the album. The first one is ‘Beyond The Laniakea’ (Instrumental), and the second one is ‘To Live With Wisdom.’

Behind the name:

Armin: This name is based on humans living in a place beyond the earth, a place where there is peace, security, love, and freedom, away from any ideologies to explain everything in the past, present, and future to control over the life of people, away from prohibiting people from thinking. Away from the tyranny caused by a belief and away from any sources of hatred and conflict, we can consciously wait for further evolution in a place called: Hyper Planet.

Armin: Regarding inspiration, first off, our writing switch mode is always on, and we are inspired by whatever happens around us; then, we turn them into the musical language to bring them into real life.

Amin: We inspire by many bands and solo artists such as the legendary guitarist/musician Ron ‘Bumblefoot’ Thal, Billy Sheehan, Dream Theater, Rush, Opeth, Metallica…, and Iranian traditional music. When we get inspired to write songs, we come into the writing zone with a vivid and clear view of traditional Iranian music and then mix both these schools’ Eastern and Western music, but there’s no limitation in writing and playing for us, and we are always open to experiment the contemporary unheard fashion visions in our writing process.

Teamwork:

Amin: We write music differently; most of the time, we work together as the band from the beginning on a seed of an idea and work to grow it till the end. Another way is that when we come up with an idea, we record it immediately, but it could be in many ways. For instance, each of us has a library of ideas on our cell phones or computer, and during writing, we put them on the table to see whether or not it has a great potential of being whole a song; we select it and then continue the writing process. Yet another way is that we sometimes work individually on a riff, melody, or chord progression. When we want to write music, we show it to each other to confirm if they have a solid capability to become a whole song. Then, we work on it. 

Inspiration:

Amin: We are often inspired by our father’s playing and improvisations in Persian music, and it helps us a lot to go to the zones and places in writing music that we haven’t touched before. As well as seeing and hearing artists and bands that we gravitated towards.

Armin: Other times, we encourage to write by seeing, for instance, a bass or guitar lick on a magazine’s website, Instagram, YouTube, etc., and also, we are inspired by things such as watching movies and reading books. Or by our society, surroundings, and the critical, important matters that could impact our lives inwardly and outwardly. We always love to push forward ourselves as a person and play better, write better, act better, always have an attitude to moving forward, not being lazy, and doing everything as best as we can on every level. We’d love to surround ourselves with people that have the same philosophy.

The situation in Iran:

Armin: First, it is necessary to point out that we live in a religious, totalitarian regime of a radical type with a maximum of unfreedom, throwing out freedom of thought and freedom of speech. We make our music in a regime that creates fear, threat, and insecurity for us, as well as if we question authoritarians or religious elements in charge.

In Iran, a leader intervenes in all realms of subjects, such as culture, art, and music, and determines and imposes anti-human rights laws in a way that only their Islamic laws are the truth and must be enforced. It should be noted that banning our music, invading our private life, censoring and suppressing our music, and trying to silence our voices are the nature of this Islamic totalitarian regime.

Amin: The Islamic regime claims our music satanism and western culture promotion, which is contrary to their ideals of Islamic laws; our band and albums are banned from being published, sold, and performed in the country because of the political content; they cannot tolerate and accept any criticism of the existing miserable and deplorable situation from our side. We use this platform to inform people that you can only support us by sharing our music and message with the world on your websites, social media, or wherever you think it could help us that our voice to be heard louder by the world.