Mixer-uppers HEEDLESS ELEGANCE have their debut EP out, along with a debut album and their second album to date titled "Libra". The band just wants to focus upon this new release for now, with plans to hope on playing shows real soon.
1. Please tell us about the history of your band and its members.
The idea of creating a band came to our minds around 2015 I think, we were in a rock/metal festival in Hungary. Zsolt and I were totally sober and we said to ourselves “lets try it one more time, but this time do it for real“. We had projects where we were playing together with Zsolt, but something was missing from them, so we decided to follow a path where we’ll be very conscious about what we are going to do. Of course we were continuously bumped into problems and mistakes, but in a different level. Since the official start of the band which was in 2018, we had quite a few band members on each instruments, cause there was always something that came up to the surface. Those things were in a scale from ‘problems with the attitude’ to ‘the person literally went insane’! But eventually in 2020 the final line up of the band was found and now I can proudly say that I’m in a band with amazing musicians and friends: Zsolt Forgó, Mátyás Erős, Dani Varga and Albert Csobán. Since than we got into the top 25 "Best Emerging Bands of Hungary" as the only metal music group by winning a showcase talent show in Herend and a major governmental showcase competition.
2. What’s the origin of the band’s name?
The name was created almost in the same moment as the band itself. In that time when someone asked us how we are going to do something we jokingly always answered: in Hungarian language “hanyag eleganciával” which means “with heedless elegance”, so the name was giving itself. The main concept of the band, the duality, comes from the duality of the name.
3. Where is the band based out of and what is your music scene like there? Are there any local bands you could recommend?
We are based in Budapest Hungary, most of us lives in the capital or in the suburban. Hungary is a small country so the subcultures are small as well. To be honest, it is very hard to prevail as a metal musician in the world, especially in our country. In Hungary there is no proper “industry” and the gap between the the underground and mainstream couldn’t be bigger, but there is no middle class. For example a successful metal band in Hungary who plays on big stages in festivals, and have thousands of followers can not be a part of the mainstream, but can not be called underground as well, so what are they? I’ll tell you what, they are mostly amazing musicians who work two jobs as bartenders or delivery guys or an electrician to pay rent and food and stuff, and in occasion, they are playing in front of 5-10 thousand people, but the radios are not playing them, because it’s not acceptable in their visions for the average people. But there are a lot of no name artists with shitty music with nothing to tell, and making a lot of money out of the radio cause that is “acceptable” for the audience. I think we can see the irony. But of course there is a few metal bands in the mainstream who can make good money, but you can ask yourself by right, how they got there under these circumstances? It would be great to develop an industry which pay equal attention to all genres, and pull them up if they are worthy, so the musicians only job would be to pay attention on making real, honest professional songs. If you are looking for bands from Hungary, you definitely need to check out these bands: LAZARVS, Stubborn, As Karma Brings, Meristem and to mention a non metal band, my dear friends ANTARES. Everyone in these bands are wonderful people, and amazing musicians, love them all!
4. How would you describe your style?
It is a good question, because I always wanted to make music which is not labelled with a specific style. I always wanted the name of the band to be the description of the style, like when someone say “sounds like Rammstein or Slipknot” and not say it is so industrial metal, or it’s so nu-metal, cause the band is more than just the genre. If I need to describe, I think our music is somewhere between the classic metalcore and the modern deathcore with elements of nu-metal, but there were many other genres like classical music or grindcore which inspired us to make that music what we are playing today.
5. What have you released so far and what can someone expect from your works?
In 2018 we released our debut EP called “Into Nothing” with 3 songs on it and started playing concerts around Budapest with a previous line up in the band. In 2019 our first LP called “Wanderer” was released which has won the best metal album of the year awarded by online magazine Metal.hu, and we started to participate in talent shows around Hungary. These songs are representing a previous chapter in our path, these tracks were our start and I’m really proud of them, but we needed to grow, we needed change. In 2021 January 31 we released our second LP called “LIBRA” with new additions to the line-up, and we begun a new chapter in our path. Here are we now. As far as we are able to look back from now to the past two years we truly think that it has become a colourful, yet coherent album overall.
6. Do you have any new music in the works?
I think for the next year we are not planning to release new music, but soon probably we will start experimenting with new stuffs, I don’t know yet.
7. How about playing shows and touring, have anything planned out?
Unfortunately the situation around the world is having an effect on us as well. Last year we only had 2 concerts, one in January and one in September, we had to cancel many shows including festival performances and gigs around Hungary and abroad as well. There was a regulation in Hungary that said there can be concerts with the maximum individuals of 500, but a few months later they changed it that there can’t be any concerts at all. This regulation is still running so we are praying that the situation around the world will change soon, and we can start to get back to playing shows, we really miss it!
8. What plans do you have for the future as a band?
With our new album “LIBRA” we hope that we will find new opportunities to show ourselves to the world, I really believe it will happen. Our plans are to play as many concerts in as many places to as many people as possible in the next years, and we will continuously work on to make our shows bigger, smellier, more colourful and more professional. We hope that the belief what we have in our music, and the attitude we trying to follow will takes us to where we want to be.
9. Where can we listen to your band and where can we buy your stuff?
You can find us mostly in every social media platforms on the internet. Our main platforms are Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and the Spotify, but you can also find us on Bandcamp as well.
Here are the links for them:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heedless.elegance
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heedlesselegance
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7yNr78pUKCO7heCTAoSlF8?si=koEjmcmbT-6WCNmLhLqFIQ
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJc7CBQEV75-AIWdQl4UuJw
Bandcamp: https://heedlesseleganceofficial.bandcamp.com/releases
If you would like to order merchandise or the albums, you can do it here in the web shop of metal.hu
https://metal.hu/zenekarok/heedless-elegance/
10. What is it you’d like a listener to remember the most when hearing your music for the first time?
To be honest, I hope that if someone is listening to our music, especially the new album “LIBRA” they will feel something different when they are hearing it, something that makes them say this is not just another metalcore-deathcore something, and they want to listen it again and again, and find new moments in it every time they hearing it, and maybe in the future the name will grow on the style and someone will say instead of “This is so metalcore”, but “This is so Heedless”. Thanks: Samuel Konter
