SHIVA HYPOTHISIS

1. Please tell us about the history of your band and its members.

1I suppose the thing which brought us together was the shared love for music. The rest of the band have known each other for a while longer and started the band somewhere in 2012. They already wrote some of the songs we still play to this day and played a few instrumental gigs. I attended one of their concerts and the music really spoke to me. We arranged for me to audition as their singer and so the band took its current shape.

2. What’s the origin of the band’s name?
There is an overarching theme in our music and lyrics, which is creation and destruction, the duality in nature. The universe is in a constant loop of death and rebirth, with the old making place for the new. The god Shiva is the embodiment of those concepts and also lends his name to the pseudo-scientific theory which is dubbed “the Shiva hypothesis”. It states that there is a pattern in meteors from the Oort cloud impacting on our planet. These impact events trigger waves of destruction followed by periods of fast growth and evolution, much like how the forest is most fertile after a fire. We took the name both for its poetic value and for the concept it embodies, which fits in with our general theme.

 3. Where is the band based out of and what is your music scene like there? Are there any local bands that you could recommend?

We are from the eastern part of the Netherlands, rather close to Germany. There is a good metal scene here and there are many venues that host events on a regular basis. However, I feel that the main focus in our area is on death metal, whilst I am personally more of a black metal fan. We do certainly have some good metal bands in the Netherlands, like for example Morvigor, Yaotzin, Anarchos, Fluisteraars and Laster.

4. How would you describe your style?

It's mainly a mixture of death, black and some thrash oriented riffs, along with musical elements of different genres like goth rock. I have always felt that the general vibe, the atmosphere, was rather murky and mysterious, which I think draws us more towards the black metal side. The largest part of my vocal performance would also fall more comfortably into that category, although we do incorporate a lot of diffent types of vocals.

I would say ‘blackened death metal‘ is the most accurate description, but I have seen creative reviewers refer to us as avant-garde black, amongst other things. Some of the bands we have been compared to are Shining and Behemoth.

5. What have you released so far and what can someone expect from your works?

Our debut full-length has just dropped a couple of weeks ago. First time listeners of the album might be surprised by some of the work on there. Whilst the basis of the music is mystical blackened death metal, we have drawn from a multitude of sources for musical and vocal inspiration and have really tried to create something mulitlayered that gives the listener the opportunity to discover new things beyond the first few listens. 

6. Do you have any new music in the works?

We do. We have plans for an EP for which we have already written all of the songs and there is some framework for songs that will make it unto the full length we’ve got planned after that.
Expect us to further explore some of the eccentricities in our debut album while also retaining the firm extreme metal footing.

7. How about playing shows and touring, have anything planned out?

We are currently in the middle of some sort of a summer break, with our drummer travelling around Europe, but we have some interesting shows planned from september onwards. The first being:

07-09 Alkmaar (NL), Koel310
22-09 Bochum (DE), Matrix
29-09 Geesteren (NL), Anti Cover Fest
26-10 Hengelo (NL), Metropool: Special album presentation show with Necrophobic and Anarchos

8. What plans do you have for the future as a band?

To keep on writing new work and playing interesting gigs and to make sure The Shiva Hypothesis continues to be a band that we as the band members can find and lose ourselves in.

9. Where can we listen to your band and where can we buy your stuff?

Our new album can be found on most major streaming services, however if you are smart and/or awesome you buy it in physical form from either our website (www.theshivahypothesis.com) or www.auralwebstore.com

Another great way of getting your hands on our album and/or shirts is coming to one of our shows. Keep an eye on the concert planning on our facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/theshivahypothesis/).

10. What is it you’d like a listener to remember the most when hearing your music for the first time?

Listeners will likely have their own personal experiences which I cannot dictate, but I can state what I most cherish in our own music; it is the atmosphere and the diversity. I can only hope that our music enriches the life of some of the listeners in some way, like so many artists do to my own.