Controlling Your Own Destiny With MONIQUE PYM From RELIQA

Interview by Kris Peters
Reliqa are one of the current emerging crop of must-see bands on
the Australian music scene.
Since lighting up the scene with the delightful 2022 EP I Don't
Know What I Am, Reliqa have poured blood, sweat and tears into
cementing their status and earning their stripes. They have toured
relentlessly and kept up a high level of engagement and generally
gone noisily (but quietly in their own sense) about their business
- which is delivering kick-ass, confronting music backed up with a
breathtaking live performance that delivers the complete
package.
Following the earlier release of new singles Terminal and Killstar
(The Cold War), Reliqa last week dropped another pearler with Dying
Light, all three of which feature on the band's debut album Secrets
Of The Future which is due out on May 31.
HEAVY sat down with vocalist Monique Pym to find out more, starting
with how she is feeling the closer the official release date of May
31 gets.
"I'm terrified," she laughed. "This is the longest record that
we've ever released because given the landscape a lot of people
listen to shorter form material these days. We've tried to honour
that through our singles, but it will be interesting to see who
latches on to this full 52-minute experience - and experience is
one of the words for it because it is quite a diverse album. I'm so
excited. I think that this album… it feels like we're sitting on a
precipice right now, and once we release this album I think it's
gonna open up a whole lot of doors, so let's just see what happens.
We're taking it one day at a time."
We ask Pym to go into more detail about what to expect from Secrets
Of The Future.
"It's something that honours how diverse and open-minded we are as
people," she measured. "The four of us have such different life
experiences and different influences and musical tastes, and that's
something that we've always tried to hammer on through our music.
Try to keep making records that we want to hear and ones that we
want to listen to. Things that feel representative of us as people,
not just as artists, but people as well. That's something that
we've really remained true to on this album. I'm only speaking for
myself here, but I think we have captured the right formula for it
now. On our I Don't Know What I Am EP we sort of threw everything
at the wall, and we went pretty crazy with it, but this album
exorcizes a lot of restraint and I think that that's really cool
because it shows that we've matured as people and as artists. It's
also shown that we know how to write now in a way that services the
song and services the wider product, rather than zooming in on
parts and making each part perfect. Ultimately, I think the one
word that captures this album is diversity or open-mindedness.
There are so many different sounds on there. We call it progressive
metalcore, but that progressive is the kicker. The progressive
means that we've taken metalcore, and we've drawn in a whole lot of
different influences, sounds and styles from other places.
Hopefully there should be something for everyone on there.
Something for the pop fan, something for the rap/hip hop fan, and
then also staying true to our progressive metalcore roots.
Hopefully people still love us for that (laughs)."
In the full interview, Monique talks more about Secrets Of the
Future, how you gauge success in the modern age of music, the three
singles released and how they represent the album as a whole,
advancing their sound, maturing with their music and more.


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