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| Image compliments of Paul Brown |
Local grunge metal group Seneron will soon be launching their new single ‘Dead Stare’ after the release of their 2nd
album ‘Order Restored’. The group have seen massive acclaim globally
boasting tour date and media campaigns reaching the far ends of Europe
and America. Ivor Ferris, bass player explains how he first got into
music. “I started playing when I was about 13 or 14, a friend of mine in
school got me into playing music. I just really started from there
listening to rock music. Got into Nirvana, grunge music and the scene.
Then from that at a young age the same group of people at the age of 15
or 16 started playing bands and writing music, just trying to have fun
playing and see what comes of it. Trying to get into bars were you’re
too young and should be doing something else. From that I went to
education to do music, did my degree, went to the tech and did a HND in
Music Production so I was trying to incorporate music as a love into a
sort of business aspect. So as well as playing it I’ve worked on the
business side of things doing promotion and the managing side as well. I
don’t do any of that now because it’s too much tasking and effort and I
like to have some free time these days after working long hours.”
Before
Ivor reached his destination of Seneron’s line-up he had already racked
up years as a performer, even dabbling in the business side of things.
“I’ve played in loads of bands, cover bands, original bands, toured all around the UK & Ireland and all over Europe as well. I suppose whenever you start music you never lose it. You just have to keep playing, opportunities come up such as the one I’m working at now. You take it when it’s available and see what happens and then something catches and people like it. You see what happens with it. I try to keep myself busy playing and writing and do a lot of the press side of things, I enjoy meeting new people.
We’re all from Derry and been
together about 2 years now. We’ve all grown up with each other, playing
in bands in and out through the years. I play bass, the rest of the guys
play in a band together anyway and decided they wanted to do something
with their own music, and they asked me to come along. We got together
and after 6 months wrote some songs, it was sounding well so we played
some shows. Two years have passed and we have 2 records out.”
They’ve
gigged and toured substantially since forming but Ivor and the group
have the dream of making playing music the number 1 earner. “Aspirations
for me now are to try and survive in the music business. It’s hard
these days for anyone to try and survive the music business in order to
live off, create a career, create an income, most of the time it’s done
as a side project. You have a good time but you don’t really see that
aspect of it, turning it into a money making exercise which is kind of
what we’re trying to do now in terms of touring with a band,
merchandise, selling T-shirts and CDs, everything like that and create a
fan base. There’s a lot of mechanics to it. A lot of it’s actually
quite boring actually apart from getting up on stage and actually
playing for an hour or half an hour. If you’re sensible about it you can
try and make some money. There’s a lot of bands on the scene now making
money.”
The
group’s success took a major leap forward after the support and backing
of Globe Metal Promotions got underway. “We got a European management
deal with a company called Globe Metal Promotions. They promote mostly
metal bands, hard core bands all over the world but they’re based in
Russia. We’re currently working with them which has turned out very
well. It’s exciting, they’ve got a lot of mainstream press in Europe
for us. We did an interview for what would be the Russian equivalent of
Kerrang and that’s going to go to press next month. It’s an interview
with the band so we did a Skype interview for that. We were warned that
it was a very exclusive interview and that we need to do well. It’s very
interesting; we do a lot of European press now, to see the language
barrier because they say certain things, they like to talk about beer a
lot we’ve discovered. A lot of the German press, they approach it big
and most recently we were over in Belgium and France.”
Bringing
it back to the grass roots Seneron will be doing a local launch of
their single but they got more than they bargained for when a free video
opportunity came their way. “At the moment we’re promoting our second
record ‘Order restored’, that’s out now and we’re promoting our new
single which is called ‘Dead Stare’ which will be out on the 15th
July. We’ve also recorded a video, we’ve been working with director
Marietta Alvarez in partnership with the Nerve Centre, she’s a student
at the Nerve Centre and they asked us if we wanted the video done and
we’re releasing the single anyway so it was very cost effective and
great to do. We recorded over 2 days and it was very good. Our idea was
to have a comedy element to it, we do a thing called ‘LARPing’. We’re
trying to so something different because there are that many music
videos out there these days of people just playing. We have the
performance element in there but we wanted to do something different.
Hopefully, it’s going to be released in a couple of weeks time and
people like it. We’re really happy about it and really excited about it,
we’re going to get an American music channel, they’re going to go out
it on, it’s like local TV in the States. There’s lot happening outside
of Ireland because for us the music isn’t really mainstream.”
The
band will be playing on Friday night at Masons as part of the highly
anticipated Music City Festival. Have Facebook at the ready for updates
on up and coming gigs but if you don’t catch them visit their SoundCloud
on https://soundcloud.com/seneronband for some grungetastic heavy metal.
