Establishing Your Own Musical Identity With JAKE E From CYHRA

Interview by Kris Peters
Forming a new band after having previously been a part of an
international success story is never an easy task. But when you
take two former members of popular bands and place them together to
start a new project then the chances of beginning with a completely
clean slate are slim to non-existent.
So it was when vocalist Jake E (ex-AMARANTHE) and guitarist Jesper
Strömblad (ex-IN FLAMES), joined forces some seven years ago to
create a separate musical entity in the form of Cyhra.
After putting out two critically acclaimed albums - Letters To
Myself and No Halos In Hell - Cyhra steadily became accepted as a
band in their own right, helped by the melodic metal approach that
distanced the members even further from their past.
With their third album The Vertigo Trigger - already being touted
as the band's darkest and most ambitious album to date - to be
released on August 18, Cyhra finally look set to claim their full
musical identity without the ever prominent shadow cast by days
gone by.
Jake sat down with HEAVY recently to discuss The Vertigo Trigger
and the long path to supremacy.
"We are ready to release our brand new album," he enthused, "and I
can't wait to get it out there because it's been cooking for a
year."
"There's absolutely no anxiety lingering on," he continued when
asked how nerve-wracking this period just before the album comes
out can get. "We don't want it to completely flop (laughs). The
problem nowadays is you cannot say that an album is flopping in a
sense because you can release a fantastic album, but the problem is
people just don't get it. They don't know that it has been
released. They can't find it because it's a fucken jungle with
releases these days. There's so many bands releasing at the same
time and people are listening on platforms, and it's really hard
for people to understand how well an album has progressed because
you have Spotify and Deezer and blah blah blah, so there's all
these different platforms all over the world. A band like Cyhra, we
are pretty big in Japan for example, but the Japanese people don't
even use Spotify, so when we go in and check how many people are
listening to us in Japan, and it's only 48 and then the record
label comes back two or three months later and says you pulled
10,000 for that album it's like… they are not listening to Spotify
then (laughs). You are a little bit anxious about the reception
from your fans, especially now where it's gone three or four years
since we released the last album."
In the full interview, Jake talks about the writing and recording
process on The Vertigo Trigger, why it is their darkest and most
ambitious album, self-producing the record and pros and cons of
that, playing the whole album live in Japan before it has even been
released, new guitarist Marcus Sunnesson and what he brings to the
band, finding your own musical identity and more.