Sonja Sign to Cruz Del Sur; Loud Arriver Out Next Year
Philly trad metal-style heavy rockers — or is it heavy rock-style trad metallers? — Sonja have signed to Cruz Del Sur Music to issue their debut long-player in the New Year. Titled Loud Arriver, the album will have been preceded only by the 2018 two-songer demo, Nylon Nights/Wanting Me Dead, issued by Creep Records. And I don’t know of those songs will make the record, but I’m certainly not hearing anything in them that wouldn’t make sense.
Interesting to read that the band have roots in more extreme fare. As Philadelphia has kind of become a hotbed of newer-school underground heavy metal, rock and psych, there have been a number of acts emerging whose pasts found them digging into more aggro influences — Ecstatic Vision come to mind first — but whatever works, frankly. Sonja obviously have their house order, otherwise I don’t think a label like Cruz Del Sur comes knocking in the first place.
Info from the PR wire:
Philadelphia Rockers SONJA Sign With Cruz Del Sur Music
Cruz Del Sur Music is proud to announce the signing of Philadelphia rockers SONJA. The label will release the band’s first full-length studio album, Loud Arriver, in early 2021.
SONJA formed in 2014 when vocalist/guitarist Melissa Moore and drummer Grzesiek Czapla started to look for new musical avenues beyond their extreme black, death, grind and thrash backgrounds. Instead of entrusting an outsider with the vocalist position, Moore took it upon herself to learn how to sing. Along the way, the band added bassist Ben Brand, completing a lineup that is rife with musical diversity with influences stretching from classic and doom metal, all the way to Goth and post-punk.
In 2018, SONJA released the Nylon Nights / Wanting Me Dead demo, a hook-laden display of metal that was immediately lauded for its catchiness and heaviness. The demo caught the interest of Cruz Del Sur Music.
“We immediately got a good feeling and it was obvious that we were dealing with a label that was about the music above all,” says Moore. “Despite our past bands, we had never toured with SONJA and didn’t have an official release, so Cruz Del Sur to be able to ‘discover’ us meant something. A very sick label found Sonja based on our songs only, and that’s the kind of omen we respect.”
“From day one this band has had a strong vision, and we consider it our duty to serve that vision,” she continues. “As a result, we take a long time to make sure that what we are crafting is totally on point. It’s a cohesive sound and we prioritize hooks above all. Real heavy metal fire has to be there in every song along with sensual dark rhythms. No one shows up to the dojo with a full song and says ‘play this.’ We write the music together in the same room. This is a band about songwriting and the songs are bigger than anything else about us.”
Speaking of songwriting, Loud Arriver will feature eight songs of “beautiful, dark, mighty and wicked” heavy metal and is the product of a tandem recording process with the music being recorded by Daniel Kishbaugh and the vocals being recorded by Arthur Rizk in Philadelphia at Creep Recording Studio. As 2020 starts to draw to a close, Moore and her bandmates leave with some words of encouragement for 2021:
“Whatever is going on in the world, whether it be death and misery, or MORE death and misery, SONJA will accompany you to the end.”
Artwork by Karmazid!
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