“We always wanted a French or Occitan name to have a trace of our roots” – Introducing: Areis

Areis (meaning “to raise” in ancient Occitan), is a band from Bagnols-sur-Cèze (France), in the Occitania region. Formed in 2019 by ex-members from Kombur and Right To The Void, the quartet takes inspiration in music genres such as hardcore, black metal, post-hardcore, and punk which they’ve blended, using dark, occult, and Occitanian-themed lyrics, into no-nonsense, gloomy music. In 2020, the band signed a record deal with the label WormHoleDeath for a debut album to be released worldwide in 2021. Check out our interview with the band’s frontman, Paul Gonzalvez!

Beginnings:

We’ve known each other for many years. We played in other bands before (Kombur and Right To The Void) and shared the stage many times. So when the desire of founding a new band came up the lineup was obvious.

Behind the name:

We always wanted a French or Occitan name to have a trace of our roots. Occitan is the ancient language of our region: Occitania, located in the south of France. After the French revolution, the “Parisian French” became the norm. We found a medieval Occitan dictionary (so it’s even more ancient!) and found this word, which is short, but important to us and means something like “to raise”, even though it is difficult to translate in English.

Inspiration:

Band-wise, we have a lot of different inspirations and many different genres: Dissection, At The Gates, Converge, Code Orange… and many more!

Regarding the lyrics and themes of the album, we fond inspirations in the struggles of the human mind but also in our region’s culture, stories, and… weather. (laughs)
Inspiration behind the debut album

Teamwork:

Regarding songs, I am the main songwriter. Michaël helps me a lot by writing riffs on his own and helping me on the vocal lines. Antoine and Pablo help us adding finishing touches to the songs by refining their parts and giving their opinions.

No Nonsense Gloomy Post Hardcore
Describe the album in five words!

COVID-19:

We had 2 lockdowns, so it affected our band practice’s rhythm. And of course, since the band was created in 2019 and COVID-19 came in 2020, we never had the chance to play a show!

Fun facts:

At the studio, when we recorded the album, we fucked up our voice on the first song and had to wait 48 hours to speak and scream again. Lesson learned!