American band Seven Spires has been the direct support for Finnish band Sonata Arctica on their recent UK tour. We had the amazing chance to talk to them about music, life and touring, so here’s what we talked about!

Benedetta

Hello guys, how are you doing?

Peter de Reyna

Good.

Jack Kosto

Doing good.

Dylan Gowan

Very good.

Adrienne Cowan

Very good.

Benedetta

You just released the acoustic version of your track. What made you return to “House of Lies” in an acoustic version after releasing the full version of the complete version?

Adrienne Cowan

It was the Japanese bonus track. When we first released the album, it was only available in Japan and now a year has passed, We’re able to put it out on the deluxe version, which is super cool because it’s the first show of tour and everything works out together. The song was born actually as a piano and vocal track. I think that even though I love how it exists in its orchestral grandeur, it’s nice to have the most honest meditation on grief and hope within life as the acoustic version.

Peter de Reyna

Yeah. And it translates really well, of course, because it originated that way. We often think about doing acoustic versions of songs and I think we could do that with a lot of our songs. This is one of the ones that sort of ends up that way on the front end. Maybe one day we’ll do, you know, more acoustic songs.

Benedetta

I guess that when you’re working on a record, some stuff gets published and some stuff doesn’t get published. Is there anything else from “A Fortress Called Home” that you didn’t release and then maybe you’re planning to?

Jack Kosto

I think not for “A Fortress Called Home”. It was kind of the first one that we used everything that we wrote and wrote up until it was done and then stopped. Normally there are big periods of writing and we write a bunch of stuff and cut it down and then cut some more stuff down. But “Fortress”, it took a certain amount of time from start to finish and then there wasn’t much extra.

Benedetta

Has your academic training influenced your approach to songwriting and composition?

Adrienne Cowan

I would say so, yes. Everything that we write, or that I write, or that comes from me anyway, is very much based in feelings and intuition. But the academic training definitely gives me the tools and the vocabulary to express things in a more nuanced and I think accurate way. Because I could say “This is a sad song” or I could say “This is a song about grief and heartbreak and mourning your childhood” or something like that. Also, the fact that Jack and Pete and I went to school together, we kind of speak the same dialect, I guess, of music nerd stuff. But then we have Dylan, who went to…

Dylan Gowan

University of YouTube.

Adrienne Cowan

But you’re so incredibly knowledgeable about everything and you were driven by spite.

Dylan Gowan

Well, not necessarily spite, but it’s just always wanting to just learn more about the instrument that I play and diving deeper. I wanted to learn everything, like all different styles of music, all different drummers that approach this instrument because it can be approached in so many different directions. It’s that type of knowledge combined with everybody else’s academic knowledge. There’s a kindred moments that kind of cross over, if that makes any sense.

Jack Kosto

It’s actually almost more impressive that you learned that way to the caliber that you did. Because for me, when I was in school, everything was handed to you. You learn this, then you learn this and then you branch out and learn those things. There was like an order to it and you just had to show up and be open to learning. But I can’t imagine having to find all of that information yourself. To be the library and tune out the stuff that’s not good, that just seems so much harder.

Dylan Gowan

The ADHD helps, that’s for sure.

Adrienne Cowan

It’s really a testament to, you want it so bad, so you make it happen. I think it’s amazing.

Dylan Gowan

Thank you.

Benedetta

Was there a moment during the creation of “A Fortress Called Home” that was risky or experimental that made you think, “Whoa, maybe we’ve taken this too far”?

Jack Kosto

Never. When we started this band, it was sort of under the whole idea that we want to make the music that we want to hear. And we like a lot of different things, we want to be able to use all of those colors to make the painting come to life whenever we can. It’s very rare that we think maybe we did too much of something. Pushing things to extremes is part of what is fun for us and what makes our sound our sound, I think.

Benedetta

Can you share with us if you have any film or soundtrack composers that influence you or that you like, that you’re inspired by?

Adrienne Cowan

Joe Hisaishi. He’s working with Hayao Miyazaki a lot. I think he’s a wonderful composer and has such an innate sense for capturing like nostalgia or like missing a place that you can’t go back to or that doesn’t exist anymore. He’s amazing. I think we’re probably all John Lunn‘s fans and Hans Zimmer fans.

Jack Kosto

I really love Bear McCreary‘s work. He was the guy that picked up where like Howard Shore and Hans Zimmer and those guys left off. And he’s like bringing a fresh thing to it that, I think is really cool and incorporating a lot of new elements that you don’t hear in a lot of film scores too. He got the singer from Meshuggah in to do like a troll song for “Rings of Power”. I’m a big fan of his work as well. And whoever did the Witcher series on Netflix, Joseph Trapanese.

Peter de Reyna

Then I tend to lean towards like Henry Mancini and Piero Piccioni as well. Those two come up a lot. Maybe not in the Spires music necessarily but some elements.

Benedetta

How important is the friendship that you have during touring and pressure from various things in musical life?

Peter de Reyna

It is the foundation on which everything that we do is based off of.

Adrienne Cowan

I think we’re so honest in our creations that you have to have like a very deep trust and respect for each other musically. When we go to a writing session and I’m like, “Here’s my heart. How do we make it into a song?” I’ve known Jack for 12 years, known Pete for 10 years. You guys met when you were teenagers. We’ve known Dylan for?

Peter de Reyna

Two years. But that was another thing. We had a meeting to kind of get to know you and you felt like a friend right away, and I think that was a big part of our discussion too. It was like we all feel really comfortable and you can just kind of come in and be there. That’s another version of this that we had to learn because we’ve all known each other for so long otherwise.

Benedetta

Have you ever considered doing a separate acoustic project or some more acoustic tracks please?

Peter de Reyna

That’s something that we have in so many ways thought about, and we’ve kind of started that and stopped that and things like that. It’s something that I think really interests all of us and it interests a lot of our listeners too. Even if they don’t know it, I think it would kind of get to them in a certain way and that has a lot to do with our backgrounds as well.

Adrienne Cowan

I think a lot of our more like blackened vibed songs would translate beautifully for like dark jazz settings. We’ve done the “Paradox” in that way and… We did “Shadow” on an MSC and a dark jazz type of ensemble. And I also always thought I would love to have like a dark jazz ensemble to play with but who would I call to have this band? It would be these people.

Peter de Reyna

With guests. The more we hear people ask for it the more we’re likely to do it. So we want to see it in the comments.

Benedetta

So you’re touring like now with Sonata Arctica and then you’re also touring next year with Sonata Arctica. How has this relationship come to start and what does it mean for you to do your thing for such a historical Finnish band?

Jack Kosto

There’s a very boring answer to this question. We signed with a booking agency who also works with Sonata Arctica and they were like “This would be a good fit“. And we were like “Yeah“. Sonata Arctica said “Yeah“. And here we are.

Peter de Reyna

That is the job of a booking agency.

Jack Kosto

A cool thing about this is one of our first bigger shows as a local band in our hometown when we were all still in Boston was opening a show for Sonata Arctica at the Palladium Worcester. So it’s an interesting full circle moment to be playing with them in London now so far away.

Adrienne Cowan

I wonder if they remember that. But it’s also just to say like they are such a significant band within the genre. It feels like an honor as well to be part of the bill with them.

Peter de Reyna:

A lot of the tours that we do come up because we kind of know the other bands and they kind of know us. And so sometimes they’ll ask for us and sometimes we’ll reach out to them and ask for them. So there is like a little bit of a relationship there. It’s not like we’re all super good friends, but we’re all kind of like respecting each other or seeing what we’re doing. There’s kind of a general awareness that that is a really nice thing about being in the metal world in general.

Benedetta

Do you think that it’s harder for a woman to be in the metal industry?

Adrienne Cowan

It’s hard to say because I’ve only ever been a woman and I think you’ve only ever been men so we can’t really compare. I think that the struggles are different. If I were a male vocalist would I have creepy fans? Probably yes. I think to be a woman in a band in the metal world makes you more of a visible target, because there just aren’t that many of us. I do think that it is way better than it was 10-15 years ago. Nobody’s throwing used condoms on stage or anything. We’ve been pretty lucky that nobody’s really been very disrespectful to us. We had a couple like, “Are you going to play it all by yourself sweetheart?” type of moments but I think in general it’s been okay.

Jack Kosto

If people start out with a disrespectful attitude they shut up real quick. It’s true.

Adrienne Cowan

I’ve heard a lot of I’m sorry’s.

Peter de Reyna

There’s a couple aspects to this. We have our experiences but I think we’re able to understand each other’s struggles well and work together in that way. But to Jack’s point, I think we are all musicians and this is the primary value. We’re all friends, we’re all musicians. If somebody is giving us a problem, usually it’s not people in the industry. People in the industry, that has generally been a very positive thing. A thing that garners more interest maybe, so that’s a nice thing to see. But then there’s also if somebody’s acting shitty or something like that, we get on stage and we’re not men or women or whatever. The music speaks and then those people apologize. I think as musicians a big part of being a musician is that you have that to fall back on in your life in so many ways and that’s what I think.

Jack Kosto

I think in my experience over many years, I’ve never met someone who is disrespectful towards female musicians or women in the industry that didn’t also treat me poorly. So I think there are just people that treat everyone like shit and that’s sad.

Adrienne Cowan

I would also say that the people who have been rude to me on this topic, it’s typically in more underground scene. When we play festivals and stuff, it’s never a problem. But I think it’s kind of the same in the video game world. The guys who are shitting on female or women players are usually the ones who are ranked quite low and kind of have the most to lose if a woman is powerful.

Peter de Reyna

They have other problems.

Benedetta

Thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview with me. Is there anything else you want to add to our readers?

Jack Kosto

Thank you for listening to our music and hope to see you at a show very soon.

Peter de Reyna

We go on tour with Ad Infinitum for all of Europe until November 8th. So that’s going to be amazing. And please follow us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, and Patreon. Check out our Patreon. Because we are doing so many different things and they’re all going to be awesome. And there’s a lot of great news coming in the upcoming years.

Adrienne Cowan

And you can see silly videos of us writing music on our Patreon.