The blog had an opportunity to do an interview with the Iranian progressive metal band Hyper Planet. Amin and Armin not only talk about themselves, music and plans, but they also show us what metal bands and other artists have to face in a world full of censorship. Maybe these facts seem unbelievable to some "western" people, but this is the reality.
First of all, please introduce the band!
Hyper Planet are, Amin Saffar on Electric Guitar, Armin Saffar on Bass Guitar, and our father on Persian Santur and also he plays Qanun in our albums. We are a progressive band from Tehran-Iran.
We both are brother and have grown up in a musician family, we started to play Iranian Traditional music when we were kid at the age of 6 (Armin) and 7 (Amin) years old. Since we’ve grown up in a house of full different traditional and western instruments and we were always surrounded with lots of varied musicians from all different genres, we intrinsically soon became interested in playing musical instruments and learning music, so with the help, guidance and support of our father, he started teaching us how to play Iranian Traditional musical instruments, and finally I (Amin) started to play and learn Persian Santur and Armin (My brother) started to play and learn Tombak (percussion instrument) by our father.
As I mentioned earlier, fortunately we were in such musical atmosphere and situation and everything was kindly provided by our parents for listening to a lot of different music styles from all over the world and also we had a really good knowledge of different musical instruments, finally; when I was at the age of 17 and Armin at the age of 16; we did shift our musical instrument onto playing electric guitar and bass guitar and went into metal music world because of our great passion for this style of music. Eventually, we started learning electric guitar and bass guitar by our self-taught. But after getting better on our instruments with performing underground music in different private celebrations and parties, as a result In 2010, we formed our own band called “Hyper Planet”, which includes me [Amin] on electric guitar, and my brother [Armin] on Bass guitar and on September of 2010, we released the first Hyper Planet’s song which was Self-titled. After that on February 2011 we released the band's second single called “Unrest Of Dreams”, and then on October 2011 we released the band's third single called “Grain Of The Truth”, and then on August 2012 we released the band's first epic song called “The Wind Of Ailanthus”, which was a 11 minutes song and Right now, we have 4 albums which are ready to be released; the first one is “Hyper Planet” and the second one is “Blasting The Wine” plus; two EP. We have recently released one the songs off of Hyper Planet’s debut album which is called “Beyond The Laniakea”.
Checking the history of Hyper Planet I noticed, you had released a song called The Wind Of Ailanthus in 2012 and had planned to release your debut album in 2013, but it seems something happened back in the day...
After releasing “The Wind Of Ailanthus” which resulted in obtaining and received valuable feedbacks. This song provided a clear reflection upon us on the road which resulted in grabbing the attentions of remarkable musicians such and the legendary guitarist Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal, Haken, unexpect and receiving their special comments and also some other great bands like Eden’s Curse, Glass mind, etc as well as receiving the noteworthy comment from the famous electric guitar instructor Troy Stestina about our song The Wind Of Ailanthus, so we had the special honor of receiving the top notched musicians’ comments who had shared their opinions about this song with us; in addition; thins song was also broadcasted on various radios in the United States, Britain, Spain, and Mexico, etc. We had various interviews with some magazines from the United States, the Netherlands, Mexico, Nepal and also we were broadcasted on well-known and recognized Iranian TV based in the UK called “Manoto TV” with millions of followers (This TV is also known as an opposition one against the Islamic regime in Iran) and at that time our band had been selected as the talented band of the week in their TV but after achieving continuous successions we mentioned above, we faced with many hindrances by the Islamic regime forces in a way that they put us in dangerous satiation and we were completely terrified, they put us down on receiving many threats and harassment so, we were urged to stop our musical activities for a while even though we were so shattered with having an unexperienced moments.
At that time the band consisted of you guys, Hadi Kiani, Elyar Khosravi and a violin player/vocalist Farnaz A. But later only your names came up supported by musicians like the violin master Hossein Tayebi or your Dad Ali Saffar. What happened to the early line-up?
Well, Actually the drummer, keyboardist and the vocalist Farnaz were as the guest musicians in Hyper Planet.
Have you considered to find more members for the band?
Yes, but unfortunately, we couldn’t find any experienced drummers or keyboardists in Progressive Metal style in our hometown who could play the type of music we play in the way that what we are looking for and more importantly; in terms of band’s chemistry. but instead; my brother and I decided to continue our music together but this time with adding some experienced musicians to the band for having a new insight and original approach and playing a sort of music that has never been heard before. So, we invited our father Master Ali Saffar to join in Hyper Planet on Santur/Qanun and as well as inviting Master Hossein Tayebi to collaborate with us who has got over 55 years of experience in playing the violin, so we are so proud of playing music next to those phenomenal and experienced musicians.
But right now we would like to announce from your platform and inviting musicians who would like to corporate and join us for playing drums and keyboard and even vocalists for Hyper Planet, they are always welcomed by us; we would like to emphasize that the doors of the Hyper Planet are always open for drummers, keyboards and as well as vocalists. And we’d love to collaborate with all different kind of musicians all genres and, from all over the world.
Yes, after releasing our new song called “Beyond The Laniakea” we attended in some International songwriting contests such as: The UK songwriting contest in the UK, Unsigned Only in the USA, The Six Dimension Music Video Contest in the UK, and we selected as a Semi-Finalist for three of them and also we selected as the Finalist for another songwriting music competition called International Music Video Underground in Paris, France. But above all; we are enormously proud of announcing that our band Hyper Plant has been endorsed by the legendary guitarist Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal and this has been reflected on the article published by Guitar World Magazine with our new single music video on their website.
And also up to know, we have received a suggestion from a record label from Italy but for the time being we are in the process of evaluating it.
We can hear traditional elements in the song mentioned above. How important for you to introduce your roots/background through the music?
First of all we’d like to thank you very much for this very good question. We think that a musician needs to be able to play a wide range of musical aspects from technical, dark, fast, melodic, emotional, dramatic and etc. So having and mastering those elements in music provide a very good toolbox for a musician to use them in songwriting and this naturally always happens in the process of songwriting in Hyper Planet.
Regarding the traditional music that you mentioned, Iran has a very rich and original music in terms of variety of musical scales and specific unheard melodies; but unfortunately because of having this Islamic regime who are against the music from the root and see it against their Islamic policies, so there hasn’t been any opportunities for Iranian traditional music to be exposed and proven its capabilities for the international music industry as it deserves, and we are so excited about doing that as much as we can.
So; each district in Iran has its own music and rhythmic pattern, for example the rhythmic musical style in the south of the country is completely different from the north of Iran and as well as the east of the country with the west of the country, and all of these specific music styles, come together as a traditional Iranian music, create a very wide range of musical varieties in terms of melodies, scales, sense, emotion, rhythm, complexity, they have got its own specific way.
And fortunately, because as we said; we’ve grown up in a musician family and also our father who has followed Iranian traditional music since his childhood so we’ve had the chance of gaining and having our father's knowledge and experience in the field of Iranian traditional music and mix it with metal music, and when we were into playing metal music, at the same time in theory we personally realized and understood more about the similarities between Eastern music and Western music which were a lot especially when it comes to metal music, and those commonalities provide a really great platform for us to create music in our own specific style of music.
But at the same time, traditional music happens in our music and compositions intrinsically, and we never do this intentionally to show the roots of traditional music in our composition, but the intersection of traditional music and metal music happens quite naturally to us.
Beyond The Laniakea is an instrumental piece, while The Wind Of Ailanthus was a song with vocals. What can we expect from the debut album? Could you share more details about it and could you say something about your further plans?
First of all, I would like to mention that we have 4 albums which two of them are EP. The first one is Hyper Planet’s album which is a combination of Progressive Metal with Iranian Traditional music. This album consists of ten songs which are about 75 minutes of music in Total and with including seven songs with vocals and three songs are instrumental, and Beyond The Laniakea is the first instrumental song from that album.
We have another music album in the form of a band called “Blasting The Wine”, where all the music are instrumental and the music in this album emphasize on mixing traditional emotional melodies and its vibes with the heaviness, aggression, riffage and odd time signatures arise from progressive metal.
Basically, one of the reasons we made this album in instrumental was about the topics we always like to cover in our music which are based on; criticizing the Islamic dictatorship regime and the authoritarians, and as well as criticizing the total failed policies which has established and combined with religion and this matter even make it much more worsen for a nation going into misery and ruin and poverty. And above all, for us as a musician, there are really other important matters and topics which we shed light on them and have got the high priority for us as a musician in order to expressing them in our lyrics and music so the topics related and tied to human rights, freedom, democracy, discriminatory laws against women and political and social problems and denunciations. And because the topics I mentioned above are very serious crimes in Iran including of torture and harassment, long-term imprisonment and even death, so although with doing that we put our life in complete danger and running the risk of getting arrested by the security forces but as a musician we never be silence and give up, we have brought up all those topics plus the oppressions and injustices of the Islamic regime which has compelled to the Iranian generations into being hopeless, disappointed and not being able to see merely a light at the end of the tunnel for themselves and their future during the dominating of the Islamic regime in this Iran in the last 42 years ago, so we have brought up all those topics in Hyper Plant’s album.
We have so many planes for the future, the first and important priority for us is to release our albums and also doing concert is another future plan for us which we are so thirsty about it, on the other side; we have our own individual songbooks plus guitar and bass exercise books which we are so excited about releasing it in a safe and peaceful condition. We really love teaching so we a long-term plan to teach guitar and bass widely through the educational guitar and bass websites. And yet another plan we have is about how to compose progressive music with emphasizing on a new insight into mixing western and eastern music together in an interesting musical way. We’d also like to create a twitch channel in order to be able to break up our songs projects and teaching how we have done the process of mixing and mastering our albums plus, talking about and sharing with other our different approaches toward writing music, recording, our tips and tricks for music production. Not to mentioned that we have received so many great and direct feedback on our music and the songwriting process, a lot of people ask us how do we mix and mastering, drum programming, and asking us to share with them our approach for writing orchestration or how do we get the sound of guitar and bass’s tone, so we are very much looking forward to do that but unfortunately the biggest obstruction is that this app has been blocked by the Islamic regime in Iran but most importantly; because of the massive economic corruption in this regime, they don’t allow us and we are the victims of their massive corruption which obliges Iranian people to be disconnected in all respects from the rest of the world and this is an extremely painful matter to put in this ways; it’s a real pain for us that we are not able to have any international credit cards as an Iranian nationality and opening any PayPal accounts in order to making money from our music.
Since metal music is illegal in your country and there are also many strict rules in other areas of life, if your debut album is released, how will you be able to share it to gain more attention?
Well first off, we should underline a preface and point out the living condition in Iran which is in very miserable and difficult way because of the incompetence and inefficiency of the Islamic regime that has dominated and ruled over this country for 42 years which caused people to be in the worst living condition which has never happened to any of Iranian’ ancestors in any period of the contemporary history of Iran. According to the latest news, one out of every three Iranians live in an absolute poverty, while Iran is a rich country and it’s got a lot of natural resources including oil, gas, gold, coal, steel and iron …etc. It should be noted that Iran has got the second rank in world gas reserves and also has got the ranks 4th in world oil reserves. But, as I said, because of the ruling, governing of this Islamic dictatorship regime which the resulted in nothing but this massive misery, ruin and poverty for the nation.
Therefore, with the explanations I mentioned above, it is easy to conclude how difficult the condition is for performing artistic activities in Iran and even this situation is much worsen and exacerbated for metal music which is out of mind, and we would like to point out that as you know we are in such environment, for making metal music but all the successes we have achieved in the field of metal music so far have been achieved under the shadow of living in a country of Islamic dictatorship regime and in such miserable economic and social conditions.
We believe that in order to create a music or any artistic works, an artist, a musician needs a series of important and essential elements such as freedom, safety, peace plus; not being worry about the consequences of its own artistic works like getting arrested, repressed, threatened and censored our mind is always occupied by all of them in our daily life. Therefore, for the full release of our albums, we need a normal condition, which currently doesn’t exist in Iran at all.
We have already heard about the case of the Iranian bands Confess and Arsames. You can also be found for example on YouTube. Have you ever had any trouble with playing/promoting metal music?
First of all, once again we would like to emphasize that we live in an Islamic dictatorship country where the suppression of threats, censorships and the creation of fear in the foundation of society are one of the main tools and means which they utilize for continuing its own survival of savage and inhuman barrique regime. And this corrupted system brutally attacks and suppresses any tools, gadgets, apps or any means that build people's awareness in the society. So, Art and all its sub-categories and music are one of the most important cultural goods for a civilized society, so the dictatorship regimes always see them as the great enemies of their existence because of its main innate which is growing awareness, so, they always apply severe repression and censorship in the field of art and music so this regime is not an exception from other dictatorship regimes which human history observed but this one I Iran is even much more worsen than them it’s like Frankenstein, please pay attention to this point that from the beginning of its sinister existence in 42 years in Iran, they first began to attack our cultural centers, art centers, cinemas, theater, music halls and fire them and they destroyed the cultural foundations of society from the beginning so they established their sinister regime with firing and attacking to the cultural centers. They first destroy our culture artistic centers or whatever related to art and music and cinema order to be able to weaken and debilitate and destroy a nation’s identity and dignity and then dictate them their own believes, thoughts and Islamic laws. So, metal music is in the same frame that I mentioned above even the repression and censorship of this style of music in Iran is much more worsen than any other artistic fields because they call it satanic music.
So, we haven’t been safe from this razor-sharp of repression, censorship, threats and attacks, and among the many dreadful events happened to us. In one of the underground private performances, we had in Tehran in where about 200 audience in the hall, suddenly during the performance, the security forces attacked the venue, but as far as all the hall’s doors had been locked before, so with the help of the hall's staff, we were able to flee from the backstage in the right time before violating the security forces into the hall and arrest us.
But the bigger picture, that was just a small part of the dark events that happened to us among a lot of others.
