Coming together back in 2019, Illumishade are one of the more compelling newer acts on the international Metal scene. A band led by Vocalist/Pianist Fabienne Erni and Guitarist Jonas Wolf, both of Eluveitie, Illumishade also includes Bassist Yannick Urbanczik, Drummer Marc Friedrich, as well as Composer/Orchestrator Mirjam Skal. Debuting with their album ECLYPTIC: Wake Of Shadows back in 2020, a little under 4 years later they have signed on with Napalm Records and are ready for broader success.
Releasing the stunning follow up album Another Side of You back in February, Illumishade are now set for extensive touring in support of the music; including a Spring North American run with Korpiklaani and Visions of Atlantis. Exciting times for the band, Fabienne Erni took some time to chat about the formation of Illumishade, the concept behind their cinematic brand of Metal, the writing of Another Side of You, working with Eluveitie, plus more.
Cryptic Rock – You have been involved in music for some time now while a part of some interesting projects. A member of Eluveitie for quite a while now, in more recent times, you have led the band Illumishade. Before we go any further, how would you describe your career in music to this point?
Fabienne Erni – At the moment, I’m very busy with Illumishade. I think we have active times taking turns with Eluveitie or with Illumishade. At the moment, it’s definitely Illumishade; because we just had the album release recently. We also recently came back from our first European tour. We will go to The States in April and so on. Definitely things are rolling for Illumishade. Now, finally, we get to play live. We didn’t play that much live before. With Eluveitie, it’s rather quiet at the moment… although it’s the quiet before the storm, I would say.
Cryptic Rock – Well you have definitely kept yourself busy between both projects over the past decade. As you mentioned, you have been a fixture with Eluveitie for seven years now. That said, now that Illumishade has lifted off and you finally get to tour, how exciting is that for you?
Fabienne Erni – It definitely does feel different in that sense; because with Eluveitie, we dive into this Celtic world. Now with Illumishade, it’s a completely different atmosphere, which I love. I like this versatile thing where I can just be creative in different subjects. That’s actually very nice. Of course, it does feel different in that sense when you’re on stage with something that you created from scratch.
I created Illumishade together with Jonas Wolf, we were there from the beginning. We shape it and we do with it whatever we want. That’s, of course, very special if you see that people sing the songs as well when we play them. It’s like, “Whoa.” With Eluveitie, for me, I love diving into this Celtic world and to give this interpretation to these ancient words and so on. I absolutely love that too. So, I’m happy I have both.
Cryptic Rock – Right. It is great to have two different outlets like that. Illumishade, as you said, has a little bit of a different style; very theatrical with an uplifting sound. The band’s second album, Another Side of You came out on February 16th. What inspired the artistic direction of Illumishade and the direction you are going with this new collection of songs?
Fabienne Erni – Inspiration, especially on this second album, is taken by the different influences from the different band members. Everybody is more involved compared to the first album (2020’s ECLYPTIC: Wake Of Shadows); where it was mostly Jonas and me. Now we have big influences. For example, Mirjam (Skal) started the song “CYCLONE,” before it got into the band and everybody brought their parts to the song as well.
I think also the inspiration for this album was more life itself. It was a weird time… I think we can all agree on that. In the past years, we released our first album, and that was during the beginning of this whole Corona Virus situation. I think we all went through a little bit more difficult times after that. I think you can hear in the lyrics; especially about everyday ups and downs. It’s playing more in this reality. Still, as you also said, it has a bit of an uplifting atmosphere to it… especially in some of the songs. That’s always also a big part of our music as well.
Cryptic Rock – Right. As you said, you can feel in these songs that you are talking about the trials and tribulations of life. There is an uplifting aspect to it all though within the performance on each track. What is really interesting is that, while you are all musicians who have been involved in Metal for a long time, you have that X factor of someone who is also a film composer with Mirjam Skal. It is important to point this out; because it definitely makes a difference in the band.
Fabienne Erni – Absolutely, especially on the first album, because Mirjam contributed a lot with strings. We even had a live orchestra. We also do have some of the tracks with a live orchestra now, but a little bit less. We trimmed it down a little bit in that sense, but still, we had the pleasure to collaborate with the Art Orchestra in Budapest. That was because of Mirjam’s connections and this definitely helped. Overall, we went down a little bit with the orchestration and replaced it a little bit more with more modern sounds.
Sometimes it’s a little bit difficult… because some songs are very old-school. Some are with this more modern touch. That’s the essence of the band. We’re just being creative, and we just have this creative output with Illumishade. We let all the ideas flow and we embrace them. If somebody comes and says, “Hey, I want to do a Swiss-German piano ballad,” then we do it, or “Let’s embrace the Power Metal hymns.” We write in the darkness, kind of. I like that everything has its place in our music. That’s good.
Cryptic Rock – Most certainly. Another Side of You seems more direct with the trimming back a little bit of the more orchestrational elements. When it comes to Symphonic Metal or Orchestral Metal, it seems sometimes bands are a little self-indulgent. This is not the case with Illumishade. With Illumishade it seems to be enough, but it is not oversaturated.
Fabienne Erni – Yes. We tried to really cut it down, because when you have this huge orchestra, it’s also a question how to do that live? It felt right to start cutting down a little bit. I have no idea where we will go on the third album. Maybe we are back with huge orchestras or maybe not… we don’t know. It just felt right in that moment, and then we went with this intuition.
Cryptic Rock – You succeeded because the new album is excellent. Another aspect of this new record that is noticeable are elements of Gothic Metal. Would you agree?
Fabienne Erni – I never thought about it. Actually, it can be, yes. I would need to check it out a little bit more.
Cryptic Rock – There are certainly inclinations in there. As you mentioned, the first record came out at the start of the whole pandemic thing. Then you had three years to write this record. There were so many emotions brewing with everyone; no matter what corner of the world you were in. We were stuck at home, our freedoms were taken away, and it was just a very dark time. So, what was the writing and recording process like for Another Side of You?
Fabienne Erni – Absolutely, it was a time where everybody started to rethink – What are the priorities? What do we want? So, from the band’s perspective we thought – “Should we continue? What do we do?” We thought – How much time do we want to involve? How much time can we put into this project?
At some point, a year later or so, we just started writing music without having a full-length album in mind. We had no idea what was planned. We just wanted to write some music. A third of the songs were written without having an album in mind; but just were written because of the sake of music. For example, there were songs like “HYMN” and “ELEGY,” which made it to the album in the end.
Compared to the first album, Another Side of You is more like a collective of songs that were created over the years. The first album was a conceptual album.. this new album is not. Every song stands for itself, but they come together as a whole. I think that’s one of the biggest differences. The first album was written in a short period of time with a vision of, “Okay, we need 40 minutes of music. Let’s make it happen.” This one just came together.
Obviously, once we signed with Napalm, then it was kind of clear, “Okay, we will do a full-length album.” Then we started writing more towards this goal. We went to a hut in the Swiss Mountains and were just writing for a week or so. That was really cool. It was really good just to get ready for the rest of the songs to be recorded and getting ready for the studio. Then you can just concentrate on the actual music and are not disturbed by everything else that you have at home.
Cryptic Rock – It is interesting to hear how it all came together. You mentioned going into the mountains. You have released some stunning music videos thus far in association with Another Side of You. Where were they filmed?
Fabienne Erni – “HYMN” was shot in the mountains; not where we were… but we have many mountains here. That was in Switzerland somewhere. All the others since “Enemy,” since we started working with Mirko Witzki from Germany, we were always in the studio. I love working together with him and Kami Zero, they are a great team. Kami is the makeup artist, visual director, and Mirko comes up with all the other stuff. Together, they just make amazing videos. “ELEGY” was also one of the later ones; it was also shot in Switzerland in an old abandoned place. That was a very special one because it’s not that easy to find abandoned places or a little bit weird-looking places in Switzerland. We were really lucky.
Cryptic Rock – It is nice to hear that a lot of them were actually shot on location, because they are so beautiful. It looks real… but you never know nowadays because of digital technology.
Fabienne Erni – True. “Into the Unknown” is one worth checking out, because this was such beautiful scenery. We couldn’t believe it ourselves. It’s really hard to capture it on the lens, although of course it’s the professional. Still, when you’re there and you see this view, it’s incredible.
Cryptic Rock – It certainly is inspiring as well. Speaking of inspiration, you are obviously native to Switzerland and are surrounded by an amazing landscape. Would you say that the beauty and the nature around you serves as an inspiration?
Fabienne Erni – Of course, yes. I definitely take inspiration from nature in that sense. I never wrote a song in nature, although it’s kind of always in sight. If you have a nice view, it definitely flows easier.
Cryptic Rock – That makes sense.. You mentioned the tour with Illumishade, including North American dates.
Fabienne Erni – Yes. We will come in April, May with Korpiklaani and Visions of Atlantis. It’s the first time for us. Jonas, me and also Yannick, joined for the last US tour. Jonas and me, we were there twice with Eluveitie. It’s always very special to come to North America. It feels a little bit surreal to do this with Illumishade now. Everything goes so quick now; because we just didn’t play a lot in our whole band history. We just now, in 2024, started playing more shows than what we played before at all. We will have around a little bit more than 70 concerts this year. Many things are happening.
Cryptic Rock – You are making up for lost time and that is really exciting. You have obviously put a lot of work into this project over the past few years. Now you get to have the joy of playing the songs live to a larger audience.
Fabienne Erni – Yes. It definitely feels like it’s paying off. With all the work that you put into this online presence and writing the songs, wow we feel, “Hey, we’re actually a real band; because we play live now and we love it.” It definitely brings a whole different aspect and feeling to this whole band.
We only played around 11 shows before this year; and 2 of those were live streams. We have not played many shows in front of a crowd. We could already feel after the shows we did with Delain how we grew together as a band on stage and how everybody feels more comfortable. If you always play these one-off shows, you never really get into it. Once you play it several times after each other, it’s routine. It goes into your system. Then it makes it easier and more fun for everybody; that includes us on stage, and then also for the crowd.
Cryptic Rock – Nothing beats live music.
Fabienne Erni – Yeah, I definitely prefer playing live. There’s nothing that beats a live concert. I don’t think anything will ever replace that.
Cryptic Rock – Agreed. You obviously have a lot going on with all the other things you are doing. As someone who has been involved in music as long as you have, what are some of your personal musical influences?
Fabienne Erni – My influences from childhood… teenage years are definitely the big singers like Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Celine Dion. I always was fascinated by them, technique-wise. I love these ’80s, ’90s ballads with these certain sounds and with the harmonies, etc. I always also loved musical theater. I also love the big ballads… I’m a sucker for ballads. This was definitely one of my influences for my teenage years.
When I went to Sweden to study for one year, I got in contact with Swedish Folk music, which I really loved. It’s completely different from all these ballads and everything, but I absolutely love that. Of course now with Eluveitie, I am also more influenced by the Celtic aspect to the Folk. I’m also listening to more Metal as well. I did not do that in my teenage years, really, but now I love it.
When I joined Eluveitie, I was not in the Metal world at all. Then this door opened. It just feels like home now and that it was just the right place for me to be. The good thing about it is that I think Metal leaves so much space for all these influences to flow. It’s super awesome to combine it with all these different influences. I think that’s why we probably have quite some ballads as well on Another Side of You; it probably comes from me.
One other singer that was a big inspiration that I only discovered in my twenties is Eva Cassidy. She is just phenomenal. She is such a good live singer. She tells the story, she has such good technique, plus she’s so humble. I definitely recommend checking her out. She did a lot of amazing covers too.
Cryptic Rock – Very cool. There is something compelling about powerful vocalists like Whitney Houston. A lot of Illuminshade, the new album particularly, you can hear some of those ’80s Pop ballad influences in there. So, with the new album out and busy touring, are plans for a third record?
Fabienne Erni – Yes there are plans for it. Not like precise plans, but we sometimes talk about it. We want to work on it soon so that it’s not a three years gap again. We don’t want that anymore.
Cryptic Rock – Okay. As you said earlier, you are not sure what direction it will go though. You will let the music go where it goes naturally?
Fabienne Erni – Yes. My wish would be to have another concept album, but if it doesn’t feel right, then we just go with the flow. In the end, I don’t think it’s good to plan everything too properly. I think we should always have an open ear and an open mind to whatever ideas come together once we work on it. I just love concept albums… so we’ll have to see.
Cryptic Rock – Concept albums are really wonderful work space. When done right, they are amazing. Is it challenging to create a concept album?
Fabienne Erni – I think it can be both, actually, because it can be leading you, and because you can choose between everything. But then it’s this situation in this story where you will need this kind of song, so it also helps you. It’s a little bit both sometimes. I only look at it as a positive thing. Maybe we were just lucky on the first one, because everything fell into place and felt right.
Maybe you have to scale down your ideas because it’s – “Yeah, I have this idea, but this doesn’t really fit now into this story or situation we’re in with this whole concept around it.” I have both sides, I guess. So far, I personally only like working on concept albums.
Cryptic Rock – Good points. One last question for you. Since you said that you love theater, do you have a favorite genre that you enjoy in film?
Fabienne Erni – Not really. I’m always in a little bit of a different mood when I go, “Okay, now I watch only movies about World War II, or now I’m into fantasy stuff like Harry Potter or Alice in Wonderland.“ Then I have a phase where I check out all these robots, artificial intelligence Action movies, and so on. What I can definitely say is that I cannot watch Horror movies and Thrillers. Literally, my heartbeat races, and I’m like, “No.” When I know that somebody in the same room is watching Horror movies, I have to leave. I cannot handle this. Otherwise, I’m open to everything, and I love diving into these different topics.
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