www.facebook.com/heedless.elegance
From: Hungary
Sounds like: Metal
1. How did you get started with music and how did you develop your sound? Who thought of the name “Heedless Elegance" and is there any meaning behind it?
The idea of creating a band came to our minds around 2015 I think, we were in a rock/metal festival in Hungary. Zsolt and I were totally sober and we said to ourselves “lets try it one more time, but this time do it for real“. We had projects where we were playing together with Zsolt, but something was missing from them, so we decided to follow a path where we’ll be very conscious about what we are going to do. Of course we were continuously bumped into problems and mistakes, but in a different level. Since the official start of the band which was in 2018, we had quite a few band members on each instruments, cause there was always something that came up to the surface. Those things were in a scale from ‘problems with the attitude’ to ‘the person literally went insane’! But eventually in 2020 the final line up of the band was found and now I can proudly say that I’m in a band with amazing musicians and friends: Zsolt Forgó, Mátyás Erős, Dani Varga and Albert Csobán. Since than we got into the top 25 "Best Emerging Bands of Hungary" as the only metal music group by winning a showcase talent show in Herend and a major governmental showcase competition.
The name of the band Heedless Elegance is kind of an inside joke of us, when we founded our band with Zsolt we always said when someone asked us how we are going to accomplish something or how we can get there where we want to be, in Hungarian language: “ hanyag eleganciával” which means: “ with heedless elegance”.
2. What do you want people to take away from your music?
To be honest, I hope that if someone is listening to our music, especially the new album “LIBRA” they will feel something different when they are hearing it, something that makes them say this is not just another metalcore-deathcore something, and they want to listen it again and again, and find new moments in it every time they are hearing it, and maybe in the future the name will grow on the style and someone will say instead of “This is so metalcore”, but “This is so Heedless”.
3. How would you describe your sound to the average listener?
Our main motive is the Duality. You can find it in our music as well, we are trying to make our songs heavy but very melodic in the same time so the audience could feel very emotional when the heaviness hits them hard.
4. Who are three bands you’d like to tour with?
Parkway Drive, Twenty One Pilots, and Iron Maiden.
5. How has Covid affected what you do as a band?
These are dark days in this industry and unfortunately a lot of people suffer because of this situation and the government in Hungary doesn’t give a crap about anyone involved in this industry, except those who has really close connection, friendship with them of course. Especially the background workers, technicians, roads, engineers are left behind. So the overall situation in Hungary is really bad. As much as I can say fortunately, our band is not our number one financial income so this situation for us is not really bad, but we feel the impact by the lack of concerts and opportunities to show ourselves to the world live.
6. What’s your take on the current state of Metal?
I think there are a lot of problems in the industry generally, but there are problems individually in bands with the attitude and the concept about the legacy what we call “metal” or just “music” as well. I’m not pessimistic, don’t get me wrong, I think metal is growing again, there are tons of amazing bands out there and they will be close to the mainstream in the next 10 years I think, but as much as I can see now there are a lot of bands under the name of “modern metal” which made by the same formula, and for me they are look like a transformation from the current soulless “mainstream” into metal, especially in Hungary. For me it’s looks like there was one highly successful band and since then everyone wants to copy them, cause they think if they follow the same things they can be successful as well, marketability is in the focus. Of course they have a huge amount of people listening them, cause not everyone can hear the difference, but there is a huge difference between something what is successful because it is truly good, and something what is successful because the genre is popular in those years, but time always dose it’s job and what is real will be with us for a long time, and what is not, will be forgotten quickly after the hype is gone. We need to realize that this is all about honesty and passion, that is what people deep down truly want, something real, and as soon as we musicians realize that we are not slaves who need to satisfy the audiences needs by making music for them to be successful and make money, but for ourselves to take out a peace from our souls and bring it to the material world and give it as a gift to the people, a peace from our existence, something real, than we can live a utopia of “Music”!
7. What’s the current music scene like there in Hungary?
Hungary is a small country so the subcultures are small as well. To be honest, it is very hard to prevail as a metal musician in the world, especially in our country. In Hungary there is no proper “industry” and the gap between the underground and the mainstream couldn’t be bigger, but there is no middle class. For example a successful metal band in Hungary who plays on big stages on festivals, and have thousands of followers can not be a part of the mainstream, but can not be called underground as well, so what are they? I’ll tell you what, they are mostly amazing musicians who work two jobs as bartenders or delivery guys or an electrician to pay rent and food and stuff, and in occasion, they are playing in front of 5-10 thousand people, but the radios are not playing them, because it’s not acceptable in their visions for the average people. But there are a lot of no name artists with shitty music with nothing to tell, and making a lot of money out of the radio cause that is “acceptable” for the audience. I think we can see the irony. But of course there is a few metal bands in the mainstream who can make good money, but you can ask yourself by right, how they got there under these circumstances? It would be great to develop an industry which pay equal attention to all genres, and pull them up if they are worthy, so the musicians only job would be to pay attention on making real, honest professional songs. If you are looking for bands from Hungary, you definitely need to check out these bands: LAZARVS, Stubborn, As Karma Brings, Meristem and to mention a non metal band, my dear friends ANTARES. Everyone in these bands are wonderful people, and amazing musicians, love them all!
8. What’s your take on the royalties that streaming services pay out to artists?
To be honest I never payed attention on the salaries, because I know that you’ll only be able to take out good money from these services if you are really famous and successful, for smaller bands like us these services is only good to share our stuffs. If my motivation would be to make money with HEEDLESS than I would have quit after the first year in the band.
9. What’s next for Heedless Elegance?
With our new album “LIBRA” we hope that we will find new opportunities to show ourselves to the world, I really believe it will happen. Our plans are to play as many concerts in as many places to as many people as possible in the next years, and we will continuously work on to make our shows bigger, smellier, more colorful and more professional. We hope that the belief what we have in our music, and the attitude we trying to follow will takes us to where we want to be.
10. Any shoutouts?
We would like to say thank you to everyone who was involved in the making our second LP called ‘LIBRA’, we are really proud of this release and we are really grateful for their amazing work, we love you all!
