-Hi J.L. and thank you for your time to answer the questions. For those that are not familiar with Hoplites, can you tell us a little bit about this project?
Hoplites is a one-man metal band that explores progressive sound by combining elements from different genres. One interesting thing about this project is that everything is written in a dead language, i.e. ancient Greek.
Hoplites released two full-length albums this year, and would probably release another one within this year.
-The band’s name and the lyrics are in ancient Greek.Can you tell us about the extensive use of the ancient Greek language in your project?
It’s like a bold linguistic experiment. There are a lot of bands that quote some Latin here and there, despite some grammar flaws. But could we actually try to bring back a dead language in a musical project? That’s one huge motif of Hoplites. I really had fun doing this experiment.
On the other hand, you can consider the extensive use of ancient Greek as a mockery of some big names in the scene. I’ve seen bands citing ancient Greek and Latin while making a ton of stupid mistakes, like what I’ve said in an interview before, “Satan can’t understand your badly written Latin”. It’s quite imbecile for a band to do serious religious stuff while writing lines that are grammatically awkward in dead languages.
-All 3 releases have amazing covers[Works of famous painters].With which criteria do you choose the album art?
Topic, expressiveness, attractiveness...
-You also have another one great project Vitriolic Sage[梦路 is my favorite V.S. album].Give us some info.
VS is my first musical project. Basically you could see how I’ve grown musically by observing this project’s works.
For the moment it doesn’t grow in an avant-garde way, though VS definitely aims at modern sounds. Compared to Hoplites, VS has a more melodic approach. You can even call it mainstream-sounding.
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