Monday, February 17, 2014

Flashback (Jorge)

Hi there everyone!
I'm Jorge B. Canchola, bassist and songwriter (and orchestrations as well). I'm currently playing in symphonic progressive metal band Luziard, from Mexico, but I'll do a little flashback of how I became part of this project.

A couple of weeks before my birthday in May 2013 (how can I forget it? :D), I was searching for some Pathfinder covers in YouTube (one of my favorite bands), and that's the way I saw Dani's Fifth Element vocal audition. I said "This guy is fucking insane!"... I saw Sons of Immortal Fire guitar cover by Angel as well. I commented Angel's video "good job!", he later answered me on Facebook and asked me to join a symphonic power metal project online. I said "amazing idea! of course I wanna be part of it! but how would it work in online?", it was something completely new to me. He later showed me Kakhi - guitarist, songwriter and leader, as well as he showed me Dani's Fifth Element video saying "he is our singer ;)". I just couldn't believe it, the same video I saw just days before, a project filled with amazing musicians :O
So then Kakhi showed me the first song from Harmonium I heard called Warrior's Revenge, unfinished at that moment. I also had two unfinished songs that I showed to the band and they liked them. Those songs later became Battlestorm and Elfhaven Forest.
As a fan of bands like Pathfinder, Nightwish and Epica, I've always wanted to play in a metal band with orchestrations like that, so this was my chance to say "Let's take symphonic metal to another level!".
Kakhi and I co-wrote all songs from the album (with Angel's help in Elfhaven Forest and Warrior's Revenge), a total of 5 songs and some orchestral pieces (written only by Kakhi). The album is called Symphony of Steel which fits perfectly with the concept of orchestral music and metal sub-genres (mostly power metal, progressive and folk influences).
If I could play live with Harmonium, it would be something like a dream come true. It's my favorite metal sub-genres all together filled with orchestrations and wide variety of vocals :') Let's see what happens after the release of our first album and stay tuned, thanks to all!

Saturday, February 8, 2014

Flashback (Kakhi)

Here I'm going to write how the idea of HARMONIUM was born and how we began our journey.

First of all, I always wanted to make such kind of project with  my favorite artists and all those great musicians. The idea was born even then when I couldn't play any instrument at all. Later on I kept playing in different bands but couldn't really get what I needed. What's more, it was impossible to find people here to play this genre.
After all, I guess, in March 2013 I shared this idea to my Mexican friend Angel Huerta and decided to take this work seriously. I remember him sharing Dani Zapata's cover of PATHFINDER's FIFTH ELEMENT to me. "Hmm, why don't we ask him to join us?" - we said. So I messaged to Dani and he was happy to join us. That's what gave me the prospect of this project. (Here's that cover by the way). Then Angel showed me Jorge B. Canchola who was also glad to join the band. I've also met one great female singer Elena Garnes thanks to my friend Idaly. Elena was happy to collaborate with us but unfortunately later on we had to part ways due to her lack of time to work with us. So we started working on the songs of our debut album. I must mention the fact that without Jorge we wouldn't have had such a great orchestrations in this album. So while working on our album I've met Iliour Griften on youtube who told me that we could work together and I invited him in our project as well. He did really great job in "Elfhaven Forest" and I believe he'll do so in other tracks as well.
But this is not all, I had an honor to contact with some of my favorite artists and I'm really glad that I got acceptance from most of them. At the moment I can't mention all of them until I receive their full recordings. So the guest musicians are: Apollo Papathanasio (ex. FIREWIND, Spiritual Beggars), Andrea Bicego from 4th DIMENSION, Michal Jankuliak from EAGLEHEART, Gabriels Shiro from GABRIELS, Victor Hugo Santafe Ossa from ATTA. And I'm really happy to have Bob Katsionis (FIREWIND) on the sound production of the album.


So here's a little flashback from me. Stay tuned fore more :)

Have a nice day to you all!

KAKHI

Sunday, February 2, 2014

Short Bio

HARMONIUM is my multinational project with musicians from different countries. We play Symphonic Power Metal and also you might hear some Progressive Metal riffs in our first album (maybe for our next albums as well haha). Creation of our first album is inspired by the bands like Rhapsody, Pathfinder, Dark Moor, Stratovarius, Symphony X, Angra etc. At the moment we're working on our debut album called SYMPHONY OF STEEL and the current line up is:

Kakhi Kiknadze (Me) - Guitar
Jorge B. Canchola (Luziard) - Bass
Dani Zapata (Fateless) - Vocals
Iliour Griften (Clairvoyant) - Vocals
Angel Huerta - Guitar

Guest Musicians:
Vocals - Andrea Bicego (4th Dimension)
Keyboards/Orchestrations - Victor Hugo Santaffe Ossa (ATTA), Gabriels Shiro (Gabriels), Sandro Abesadze
Guitar - Michal Jankuliak (Eagleheart)
and more... (I can't say all of them at the moment)

Album art for SYMPHONY OF STEEL made by Angel Huerta

WELCOME!

Hey folks! I'm Kakhi and this is an official blog of my new project called HARMONIUM where I will post all the detailed information about our updates. So here we go! I hope you'll like this blog ;) 

Cheers from Tbilisi, Georgia \m/