Rockfreaks.net

Waseem: Hello, thank you for this opportunity; it’s highly appreciated, I’m Waseem EsSayed, keyboardist and music coordinator of Bilocate, also the founder of Orjuwan project, I’m 24 years old and I live in Amman-Jordan.

Bilocate is a Jordanian Dark Oriental Metal band that’s built upon the dedication of six members as follows: Ramzi EsSayed (Vocals), Baha Farah (Guitars), Rami Haikal (Guitars), Ahmed Kloub (Drums), Hani Al-Abadi (Bass) and me.

Waseem: Mainly it’s our shared love for music, and our belief that music is one of the most powerful methods to express thoughts and feelings. We listened to music-namely rock and metal- since most of us were about 6 or 7 years old, and simply we found a connection, and we enjoyed every second of every song we listened to until we reached a phase when we decided to start developing such music and so we have, and here we are after a long 6 years of non-stop hard working, getting recognized for what we have accomplished.

Hani: So hard actually, imagine for a moment the whole society is against you, rejected and labelled as Satanist (which is totally not true), without having the right to defend yourself nor express your point of view.

The authorities made crystal clear we’re not allowed to perform live in our home country, and to dissolve the band, we’ve been though this pressure most of our entire life throughout our teenage until this moment!

Waseem: Metal music in our region is still in its infancy, although you can hear names who went international long time ago like Orphaned Land but still when you compare this scene to other scenes the difference is clear, some bands are trying to make an achievement working hard and the like, others think that metal music and establishing a band is something to show off, so it’s not much stable, if I should name a band as a recommendation definitely it would be Tyrant Throne.

Hani: There are talents in this region, but the problems they face suppress it, to the point they kill it, take for example Bilocate, we’ve spent 4 years prior to our 1st live appearance and we already had ("Dysphoria" EP and album out), so as any new band playing live is very crucial to express your music through stage performance, so it's so hard, but I promise you somewhere in the future the Middle Eastern scene will be like the Scandinavian metal wave. Mark my words, I've seen many young musicians trying hard and surly it will payoff eventually.

One of the factors that are being missed here is to have a professional metal label to promote and sign the bands in the Middle East and distribute their albums worldwide, in addition to dedicated metal festivals & concerts to be conducted in this region featuring Middle Eastern bands to attract the media and add the Middle East to the metal world map.

Waseem: I believe that when you develop music it should reflect who you are, as it becomes somehow of an identity for you in the music world, so yes it was a natural decision.

Ramzi: Local reactions were great from magazines in the Middle East (JO magazine – Jordan, TimeOut Magazine – Dubai, J Magazine – Kuwait, On Campus Magazine – Jordan & JorZine.com). Internationally the reactions were even more, getting featured in Terrorizer – UK, Metal Hammer – UK & for sure RockFreaks.net as well as many other magazines and webzines, this is regarding the media side, furthermore "Sudden Death Syndrome" attracted many distribution companies that are currently selling the album among a list of other major bands’ releases.

Waseem: We are definitely proud of what we have presented to the music world, I believe we have delivered something different and worthy of the time we spent preparing. We always tend to enhance in depth our way of thinking and our music with time, so I would spot angles of the album to be taken in consideration in our development plan rather than spotting weakness points.

Ramzi: Yes, you are absolutely right. Sudden Death Syndrome was recorded, produced, financed and released independently by Bilocate it wasn't easy as we are all working in day jobs so we can finance the albums ourselves, and you can say we are still suffering financially from this but the outcome paid us back the moment we officially released the album and listened to the final mastered CD we received from Jens Bogren in May 2008.

Since we released Sudden Death Syndrome we have received demo submission requests from labels and we have submitted the CD to almost every label in the metal music industry, but we haven't got any feedback so far except from some labels who tried to take advantage of us being from the Middle East and thinking that we would accept any deal just to add a label logo in our profile, most of the contracts we received were in the benefit of the label and nothing were mentioned to encourage us, so we took another direction as all of us come from a business background. We started looking for distribution at this stage waiting for the proper label to sign with as we are still looking heavily for the right one that will understand BILOCATE and appreciate our efforts to bring up our musical career with and jump to the next level, currently The End Records is selling our album in the USA which is a major breakthrough for us along side other major deals we signed with MetalZone (Benelux), Loco Music (Finland), Daxar Music (Middle East) and 279 production in Greece and Cyprus.

Still the doors are open and we hope after having the album got featured in the top lists of 2008 (rockfreaks.net) and nominated as the best Doom Metal album in 2008 by metalstorm.ee and after the 28 reviews with very high ratings in different parts of the world labels will be more encouraged, as Waseem mentioned above we have 2 other records to be out from now till mid of 2010.

Ramzi: I guess a straight forward answer to this question will be time and professionalism, we have high standards and since we have finished composing all the tracks and recorded them roughly we were controlled by our standards which prevented us from presenting "Sudden Death Syndrome" in any lower quality and performance than the one you heard, we knew it won’t be easy being in a region where you hardly can find engineers and studios and even when you do they won’t have any previous experience in metal music so the production will be weak, so we started a research campaign and contacted many but we only had one target which is to achieve a quality to project the album as it should be projected, in our style if the music isn't clear and the instruments are not mixed correctly the whole track will become weak while all the composed lines are strong and creative.

Again the album reflects our thoughts and beliefs and for sure we had to give it our full force performance as it’s what we believe in.

Waseem: We are trying to arrange a Euro tour later this year, hopefully our negotiations would be fruity, you know it’s a bit hard to be undertaken for an unsigned band.

Waseem: Touring the world, create more music, and express more ideas, get more recognized, and get the genre which we have founded "Dark Oriental Metal" more recognized to be a first level subgenre.

Waseem: Currently we are re-recording our first album "Dysphoria" or actually we are re-producing it, as it will include some changes in the songs and definitely the sound will be different from its current state, and we have already put plans for a new album to be released maybe in mid 2010.

Waseem: Music is a way of thinking, the more you are thoughtful the deeper your music is, this is one of our main guiding principles, so if this is interesting for you then you shall find what you are looking for in Bilocate who come from the Middle East/ Jordan.

Waseem: Thanks, it’s been really great to answer your questions, and we highly appreciate your support.