ICARUS LIVES: Female fronted melodic metal band from Australia
Conducted on June 21, 2021
By Dan Locke
West Australian based Female Fronted Melodic Metal band Icarus Lives, consists of vocalist Aria Scarlett, twin lead guitar attack of Cameron Michael & Cohen Dennis and the thundering rhythm section of bass player Chris Ayling & drummer Naomi Treacy. Renowned for their no BS approach to their live show, you can always expect to see some pure craftsmanship in their on stage presence, once described as “Masters of Metal” upon their live release of their debut album “Vantablack” and more recently as “A band that’s been getting better and better every time I see them is Icarus Lives. The young quintet kept the party going with their own brand of heavy music” – Gareth Williams, Wall Of Sound.
Icarus Lives charged into 2021 with the release of their rendition of “Holding Out for a Hero”, originally performed by Bonnie Tyler, and have received many praises, both internationally and on their home turf. Stormrider 2021 saw the band debut their brand new vocalist, Aria Scarlett who gained recognition for “her haunting delivery giving way to stratospheric falsettos” (Gareth Williams ‘Wall of Sound’). These vocals are highly anticipated on the new EP, due for release in the near future.
Icarus Lives use and endorse Fishsticks Drumsticks and Machines of Nazareth.
What is your upbringing?
Cameron Michael: I moved to the Perth suburbs at a young age and had a fairly normal middle-class upbringing.
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How did you discover music?
When I was around 9 or 10 I had a School of Rock DVD that I watched a few too many times which made me want to play guitar more than anything. I started to discover a lot of rock music that was easy to get a hold of at the time. Bands like AC/DC, Wolfmother and Green Day. Then shortly after that, the Guitar Hero video game series launched and I started to discover new music and bands that I still love today such as Megadeth, Metallica and Iron Maiden just to name a few.
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How did you start to write music?
I spent a lot of time learning songs from the bands I love and one day just kind of said “I should try to write my own song.” They started out sounding terrible but more importantly, they were fun to play and because they were fun to play, I just kept writing more music that I had fun playing. Eventually the music just started to sound better and people around me were starting to like it.
How did you get your first guitar, and do you still have it?
My first guitar was a cheap little acoustic guitar from Toys R Us that I begged my parents to get me. It’s all
beat up, sounds terrible and feels terrible to play but I should still have it around somewhere.
My first real guitar was a Yamaha classical guitar which my parents wanted me to learn first to prove if I was serious about wanting to play guitar. That one I also still have.
What is your guitar of choice now? Year, make and model?
I have too many guitars now but I have two main guitars which I use. One is a 7 string ESP Forest and the other is my favourite guitar, my fairly new 6 string ESP E-II Horizon 3.
You are an Australia based Female Fronted Melodic Metal band. How did your band form?
We were taking a music course together and were required to form a band that we could write, record and perform live with for our course. When they told us we would need to form a band, we basically just chose each other as we were all sitting at the same table and mostly knew each other already. There weren’t too many other people in the course who liked similar music to us so we just kind of got lucky with that one.
How did you get your bands name?
One of our founding members (Taviri Starwood) came up with the name as he was interested in Greek Mythology. We all thought it was pretty cool so we agreed on Icarus Lives.
Describe your music.
We describe ourselves as a “melodic metal band.” It’s a little hard for us to define ourselves as we have many different influences between us. We work a lot with harmonized guitars, breakdowns and a bit of a dark atmosphere.
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What was your first performance at like?
Aside from looking like awkward newbies, it went pretty well. We sounded fine, had a good response and nothing went wrong. I don’t remember exactly when it was (some time in 2014) but the entire performance was filmed so that’ll be laying around somewhere.
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Royalties never appear like magic. Royalties are only sent to you through work undertaken by a PRO to ensure that their members are getting paid. If you’re not yet signed up to a Performing Right Organization like ASCAP, BMI or SESAC, you may not be receiving all the royalties you deserve.
Do you belong to any to songwriters’ organizations like the International singer-songwriter association, SESAC, BMI or ASCAP ?
We are apart of APRA and AMCOS which are Australian organizations, but it might be time to start researching some international organizations if we’re going to tackle the international markets.
What makes a good songwriter?
It’s very hard to define what makes a good songwriter… As a musician, I hear a lot of clever little techniques that some people use in their music and I think it’s genius in telling the story that the lyrics are written about.
I don’t think it’s something you can really describe, but it’s something you can hear.
What was the title of your first original song? Did you record it?
The first original song that we worked on was Deadly Education (Deaducation as we like to call it). It was the first song we played live and it is on our debut EP “Rising.”
What is the process of writing your music?
It varies a bit. Sometimes, one of us will write some music and present it to the band for opinions or adjustments and other times we might start out with a guitar riff or drum beat that other band members write a song around.
Recently, we’ve been just trying to see what we can come up with together as a band during rehearsals. Kind of just jamming to see what we come up with together. As for lyrics, sometimes the lyrics are written beforehand and other times, they will be written to music that we are working on.
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You have opened for bands like The Agonist, and Cellar Darling. Did they give you any words of wisdom?
We all had our own chats with different members of touring bands and have received all sorts of advice. One that stuck out for me was talking to Paco from The Agonist. What he said to me was along the lines of ‘do not be afraid to let other members write their own parts of the song.’ Unless there’s a very specific part of the song that I want to remain the same, I’ll usually just say “do what you want for this song” to other members. This approach has been working out pretty well recently.
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Tell me about the band’s debut album Vantablack?
We released Vantablack in 2017 and it was the first project we worked on since leaving the music course where we all met. It’s 12 tracks (plus one bonus track) of our brand of melodic metal which we wrote and recorded between 2015 and 2017. We generally consider this album to be an introduction to the identity of Icarus Lives.
Tell me about “Holding Out For a Hero”?
We had a lot of fun putting this one together to give it a darker and heavier sound. We dropped the key of the song, replaced some of the piano with guitars and sped the song up a little. There is also a music video to go along with the song which has a few nods to Bonnie Tyler’s original music video as well as some other little easter eggs.
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Why did you decide to redo a Bonnie Tylor song into your own version?
I don’t really know why we didn’t do it sooner. I always thought a hard rock or metal version would do the song justice and I’d thought about doing a cover of the song. I also knew that our vocalist at the time Sara loved the song and one day it clicked that we should do a cover. We agreed to do a cover and started recording almost immediately.
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How did you find your new Frontwoman Aria Scarlett
Aria is an old friend of Naomi’s and we’ve known her for a while, even working with her for one of her WA Exposé shows in December 2020. When she heard we were down a vocalist, she stepped up and with very short notice (less than a week), filled in on vocals with us at the Stormrider Heavy Metal Festival.
We soon discovered that not only did people enjoy this, but we also worked very well together so we asked her to join the band.
Your brand new EP ‘Scorched Reprise’ due for release on April 22nd, 2022. Tell me about the recording of it?
Scorched Reprise is kind of a showcase of three different musical directions we’ve been thinking about taking since releasing Collision of Counterparts. They’re songs that were pulled from a scrapped album we started recording in 2019. We painfully scrapped the album as we weren’t happy with the direction it was headed and decided we would take a few of the best songs to use for an EP while we write a whole new album. Even then, the EP took a long time to finish writing and recording. We recorded all instruments with Luke Dunford, then finished the vocals with Peter Renzullo at Scudley records before sending it off to be mixed and mastered by Chris Themelco at Monolith Studios.
Tell me about the making of the “Secret Keeper” video
From the words of our bass player Chris Ayling: “We wanted chaos, so we made chaos.” We also added a lot of smoke for a bit of extra spookiness!
How was it to work with Peter Renzullo ( producing the music video ‘The Fat Lady Sings’) on the filming of the video?
We love Pete and we’ve enjoyed working with him on several projects since Vantablack. Always fun to be around and always has plenty of useful tricks up his sleeve.
What are you’re feeling about streaming music?
I’m mostly positive on streaming. On one hand, I’m a consumer who loves the convenience of being able to search for music I love and discover new artists that I may have never heard before. On the other hand, I do wish artists were being paid more from streaming.
The symbol # is known as the number sign, hash, pound sign and a sharp sign in music. The symbol has historically been used for a wide range of purposes Since 2007, widespread usage of the symbol to introduce metadata tags on social media platforms has led to such tags being known as “hashtags”, and from that, the symbol itself is sometimes called a hashtag.
Are people forgetting that the # is a part of music?
I wasn’t aware that people already knew that the # is a part of music. Maybe they have already forgotten? I guess I’ve never thought about that sort of thing before as I don’t think it’s all that important to people outside of music.
Digital vs. vinyl?
I don’t actually own any vinyl and I don’t think I’ve listened to any modern album on vinyl. However, there is definitely something special about listening to classic albums on vinyl rather than digitally. When it comes to the classics, I definitely prefer vinyl.
If “Video Killed the Radio Star” do you think that the Covid-19 virus has killed live music? Do you feel the Covid-19 virus going to affect the music business in the future?
Well, COVID-19 is definitely going to continue to affect the industry. Between new outbreaks, venue caps and the difficulty of interstate and international travel, we’re still going to be waiting a while. But live music will most definitely come back. Local acts and even some interstate acts are still performing in our city where we’ve been fortunate enough to have had very few COVID cases and surely we’re not the only ones seeing live music return. Not only that, but people seem to be very eager to get back out to live shows.
Do you think that Covid-19 has been a plus to an artist career?
Maybe for some. Though, I think being able to rehearse and play shows is still the best way to further your band. Lockdowns and restrictions have made both very hard to do in our part of the world.
What have you been doing with your self-quarantine?
Well, we didn’t have much time to self-quarantine because we’re mostly unaffected by the virus here. I basically spent some more time recording and songwriting at home. I started learning piano so hopefully in the future, we’ll be adding some more piano or synth playing in our music.
How do you stay healthy during the lockdown?
Well, I tend to do the opposite in lockdown. I work a labor intensive job so when I’m not working, I’m pretty much just relaxing.
Have you discovered or rediscovered any new hobbies?
Apart from learning piano, I started a little creative project for fun involving video game mods. I hadn’t done anything like that since I was in high school so it was like a fun little throwback for me.
Is pay to play still a thing? Now pay to play also means thinks like playlist on the internet and opening slots for a major band on tour.
Pay to play is very common, especially since it’s become harder to make money from music alone. To most musicians, it seems like the only way to be heard is to put more money into your music.
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The show Star Trek introduced people to the holodeck: an immersive, realistic 3D holographic projection of a complete environment that you could interact with.
Today holograms are already being used in a variety of way, such as medical systems, education, art, security and defense
Performers like Tupac, Michael Jackson, Roy Orbison, Frank Zappa, Elvis Presley, Amy Winehouse, Buddy Holly, Ronnie James Dio, Marylin Monroe, and Whitney Houston have done it already. The band ABBA just announced that they will be doing a comeback together after nearly 40 years as holograms on their next tour. With ABBA it was with the help of George Lucas .
If the cost was down to the point you could do it also, would you be willing to do Holographic concerts in our living room?
I’ve never heard of anything like that before but that sounds awesome!
In the past if a musician stop doing music they find a new career. For example David Lee Roth from Van Halen became a licensed EMT in NY for 6 years, Dan Spitz (guitarist for Anthrax) became a master watchmaker, Dee Snider (Twister Sister) voice over work for SpongeBob SquarePants.. If you can’t do music, what would you like to be doing?
I’m a car nut so I think I’d like to do something around cars. Perhaps building customs or maybe restoration.
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What is your happy place?
If I can hear great music, I’m already in my happy place.
Red Hot Chili Peppers are about to sell their entire song catalog for $140 Million. In the past year a lot of musicians such as Stevie Nicks ($100 Million) , Bob Dylan (over $400 Million), Taylor Swift, Journey, Def Leppard, K.T. Tunstall, John Legend, ZZ Top and Shakira have sold their catalog rights within the last year. Bob Dylan sold his entire catalog for a reported $300 million. Neil Young song 50 percent of his worldwide copyright and income interest in his 1,180 song catalogue to Hipnosis Songs Fund limited . Once you get to the age of about 70. Publishing is far more lucrative then the mechanical royalties paid to artist based on sales, airplay and streams. A good example of this is Michael Jackson brought the rights to the Beatles catalog in 1985. And in the late 80’s the Beatles Revolution appeared in a Nike commercial.
The lump sums being offering by publishing firms are more tax friendly concerning estate planning.
On January 19, 2021 Hipgnosis Song Management acquired 80% of Kenny Chesney’s recorded music royalties, covering the country superstar’s discography from his 1994 debut In My Wildest Dreams through 2017’s Live in No Shoes Nation.
Someone who was totally against selling his rights was David Crosby. He did not want to sell his publishing rights. In addition, it was not an easy thing for him to do. However, by making a deal with Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists Group, it took a big weight off his shoulders. He could pay off his house and cover other bills. Now he does not have to work for a living. It should be noted that David is battling tendinitis in his hands, which hurts his ability to play guitar.
Do you think you would be willing to sale your back catalog if someone like Universal is will to buy everything, such as all the rights to all your songs?
Yeah I probably would if the price was right. If someone buys the rights to your music, chances are they’re going to want to make their money back on that music. I assume they’d have some ideas to keep that music circulating and to make that music heard. If not, then at least I’ve already been paid for it!
Over half a billion active users around the world share their favorite music on TikTok either with something like a dance challenges and lip-sync videos or creating a funny skit or candid camera moment.
TikTok has became a great platform for music promotion, sharing songs, and finding new listeners. In which it has become a place for music artist to earn revenue when people use their music. Which in many cases the daily promotion on TikTok has led to hug boosts on other platforms like Spotify, Facebook and YouTube.
TikTok does this with the the algorithmically generates a feed of content for each user, which you see as the displaying of #. The more a user engages with content, the smarter TikTok gets at guessing what kind of videos the viewer wants to watch.
Because a song can go viral because of this.
Sony Music and Warner Music Group- , The ByteDance-owned video app revealed that it has struck an “expanded” global licensing agreement with Universal Music Group. Now that TikTok is now fully licensed by all three major record companies, will you start using TikTok more?
This is something we’ve been working out. We’re trying to figure out a way we can use TikTok to our advantage but we’re still a bit new to the platform. Hopefully we’ll have that worked out soon.
Breaking news: TikTok is launching TikTok Radio, a full-time SiriusXM music channel going live this summer.The station will be available in vehicles and as a streaming channel on the SiriusXM App, desktop, and all connected devices.
Some of the on TikTok include Cassyette, YukoEXE, Ashinikko, Palaye Royale, Josh Dun (Twenty One Pilots), Yungblud, Morrissey, Ozzy Osbourne, Joan Jett, Gene Simmons, and Mick Jagger.
The station will be part of a new TikTok collaboration with SiriusXM and its subsidiary,Pandora, to jointly promote emerging talent. Do you think this platform could become a force in the future of streaming music?
Yeah I suppose it could. I’m definitely interested to see where that will lead.
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Anything you would like to say in closing.
Follow me on Instagram: @cameronmichaelau haha
Also @icaruslivesau
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