Pic courtesy of: Arsenal "I think every musician has it; we are evolving into a different kind of band but never forgetting our roots. Its all about the new ideas that we want to develop right now"

CR: How about a little introduction?
Diego Corea: Well my name is Diego Corea, I’m Arsenal’s guitar player; and right next to me is Carlos Morales, we started this band ten years ago, there has been a couple of other guys come through Arsenal but Carlos and me have manage to stay since the beginning.

CR: Has there been a lot line up changes?
Carlos Morales: Not really, there has been only two line up changes, a year after Arsenal was borne we replace our first bass player and two or three years ago we change drummers, so I think that has helped the band to stay with pretty much the same idea that we had when we started this band. Both changes took place because of personal reasons not because of fights within the band or anything like that.

CR: Can you explain to our readers the music proposal of Arsenal?
Diego Corea: That has always been sort of hard to do; when we started we were very lucky to play one of our first gigs in a big event, and some of the people there even called us punk. We never really planned what sort of metal we were going to play, is just a group of friends that learned to play their instruments and then decide to put some riffs together.
Obviously each and every member of the band had his influences, you can never deny that, but after some time playing we decided to call our music melodic thrash metal, and we have label ourselves that way ever since. But like I said it was never a planned thing, it sort of just happed that way. A couple of months ago we have been working on new material and that new material does differ a little from that label of melodic thrash metal, is sort of a more extreme material that we are writing right now.
Carlos Morales: Yeah, it’s an evolution for Arsenal, I think every musician has it; we are evolving into a different kind of band but never forgetting our roots. Its all about the new ideas that we want to develop right now, we are trying to put a little more death metal elements this time around as well as a couple of progressive touches here and there. You can say we are evolving into something a little more specific.

CR: I wanted to ask you about this festival that you guys were in, Apocalypsis 3, how was it?
Carlos Morales: It was ok. We appreciate the effort placed by all the people that is involved in what we call the local scene, you know the bands, the promoters, the magazines and off course the people; we appreciate it because lately is very hard to find the physical space to play here in San José. The event was ok in assistance, but maybe the space to put all those people was the biggest flaw, you have to understand that we are in the middle of the rainy season. I like the idea of putting a lot of different metal bands in the same place; this I think is a new event it already has two years, so its getting bigger every year and the people are starting to recognize it so maybe the only thing that needs some work is to find a better more suitable place for this sort of event, and that is not really the promoters fault since they have to work with what they got, and there isn’t really a lot of places were you can set up a festival like this.

CR: I have noticed that Arsenal is putting a lot of work in promotion this year, with all the gigs, t-shirts, stickers, why all the sudden enthusiasm in promotion?
Diego Corea: First of all because of our 10th anniversary, that’s a huge motivation, we have many plans for this anniversary but we have to think what we can really do and what we can’t. We hope that we can put together an anniversary concert as well as finishing the recording and writing of the new songs. We want to focus a little more in promotion this year.

CR: When you guys started out the band, you were thinking about maybe naming the band Leviathan, why, and why didn’t you picked that name?
Diego Corea: Well we picked Arsenal not because we like guns or because we support violence it just sort of happed, we liked the name because is short and because back then it reflected pretty well on the kind of music we wanted to play. We picked that name over Leviathan mainly because it sounded good to us. The funny this is that the band wasn’t borne because someone wanted to have a band, it just happened; we started to play together, to write songs and then we realize that we had like 4 or 5 songs so why not making this a band, and that’s how everything started out. Back then, I think 14 years ago Carlos and I decided to look for a drummer and a bass player, and put a band together after we had some songs, It sort of evolve from two friends playing into a band; it wasn’t like it is today, that a group of people decides to form a band and they have Internet to stay in touch with the metal scene; when we started we didn’t knew anybody from the metal scene, we were isolated you can say…
Carlos Morales: Yeah, someone just mention the name, and we like it, without making any kind of research to see if anybody else was using that name. I have been now doing some research about it, and I found out that right now I think we are the only ones with the name Arsenal, there was a Hungarian metal band but they split a couple of years ago…
Diego Corea: I think there was a Christian glam metal ban that was called Arsenal; some people have told me that here in Costa Rica before the “Fosforera” (a famous concert in Costa Rica that was intervene by the police, many arrests were made and a persecution of metal fans began) there was a local band called Arsenal, but I don’t have any proof of that; they said they used to play covers from the 70’s and 80’s but like I said we don’t have any proof of that been truth.

CR: Do you guys remember your first gig as Arsenal?
Carlos Morales: Yeah sure, when we started out we didn’t know there was such a big and loyal scene in Costa Rica; thanks to our first drummer who knew Luis Lauretto, through him we got the change to play in an event he was putting together for a TV show of his in channel 54; so we went to play along side other 9 bands that we had never heard of…
Diego Corea: We knew Mantra, Colemesis, what we didn’t have were connections to those bands. It was very cool actually because that first gig was in a nice stage in the Laurence Oliver Theater in San Jose, it was great for us, because many bands start their careers playing at parties and stuff like that; we were scared as hell if you can imagine (laughs).
I can remember everything, because that theater was full, about 350 people there, and we had also the other 9 bands back stage listening to us for the first time, so it was sort of a double responsibility.
Carlos Morales: After that first gig some people started to ask us to play in different places, so it was a great opportunity and many great things came from it.
Diego Corea: That was back in 1996, right after that gig Mantra and Colemesis invited us to play with them in a couple of other gigs, and back them those two bands were very important for the scene; for us it was great, that two of the biggest bands in Costa Rica asked us to join them in stage was a privilege and an honor. I think that right now we are reaching almost 30 gigs in our career in Costa Rica, and for a small scene like ours, I think that’s a pretty respectable number.

	Pic courtesy of: Arsenal "If you have money is very easy. In our case, we have tried our best to record good albums, its true maybe some of our records don’t reach an acceptable level of sound, but this is just because we don’t have the money to properly produce them"

CR: Arsenal has one demo, one EP and two full length albums, how hard is it for a Costa Rican metal band to record their material in our country?
Diego Corea: I think is this simple, if you have money is very easy. In our case, we have tried our best to record good albums, its true maybe some of our records don’t reach an acceptable level of sound, but this is just because we don’t have the money to properly produce them; never the less I think that our records are at least listenable, you can understand our proposal. To make a record is not just record some songs, that’s just half of all the work involved, you need to think on the mix, the production, the promotion of it, there are a lot of areas that involve launching a record into the market.
Carlos Morales: The biggest problem for Costarrican metal bands is money no questions ask; it will always be hard to pay 350.000 Colones just for studio time. Maybe to record a demo now is not very expensive, at least we had a good experience recording our demo, some friends told us to try it, and so we did in a very homemade edition, people expect that from a demo I think, to be homemade or at least to sound homemade. But if you want to record a more professional material, then you have to start thinking about money, and people that will help you create that record that you want to release, so it’s a long, sometimes tiring process but still very interesting to see and to be a part of; I think that’s one of the reasons why you see such a long time from one album to another, because its expensive for underground bands like us that don’t have a big record label label supporting us.

CR: Why the label melodic thrash metal?
Diego Corea: Well, I think that “label” sort of happened thanks to two of our main influences; one would be the whole thrash scene from the 80’s, something maybe like Kreator; and the other one would be the heavy metal scene, we are talking Iron Maiden mainly. If you start to analyze this you could easily come up with something like melodic thrash. We didn’t really spend too much time defining this, it just sort of came to us as a necessity to “auto label” ourselves for a better presentation.
Carlos Morales: Actually, in some of the new material that we are working right now, you can’t really see that label working, you know is not that very melodic anymore.

CR: What about this new material I keep hearing about, would this be for a full length album or and EP?
Diego Corea: Yeah a full length. We want an album with close to 9 or 10 tracks on it; that would be the “goal” for this 2006. Right now we have close to 6 songs finished, and there are still three more songs that we have but that we haven’t worked on.

CR: So when do you think you could be releasing this new record?
Diego Corea: The idea is to release it this year, even if it is on December 31, but this year definitely. Like I told you it will be a nice “asset” to our 10th year anniversary.

CR: There is a huge difference between “Almas del Olvido” and “Abyssum Spectare”, why, what was done differently in this albums?
Carlos Morales: Ok, the difference was not a plan thing, our first full length “Almas del Olvido” came out in 1999 that record had all the songs we had…
Diego Corea: Yeah, all the material from 4/5 years of existence; we recorded what we had, if I’m not forgetting 4 years went by between the first album and “Abyssum Spectare”; in that second album, we didn’t include a lot of “old” songs, maybe just two, “Cielo Gris” and “Hasta el Final” the rest of the songs were new, even a track written by our bass player Guillermo Meneses and some lyrics from our back then drummer Luis Montoya. I think it just shows the natural “progression” of all the members of the band. Right now, after haven finished those 6 songs for the new album, I can definitely hear a huge difference between this new record and “Abyssum Spectare”; I would dare to say that there is a greater difference in this new record that what it was between “Almas del Olvido” and “Abyssum Spectare”.
Carlos Morales: It’s an evolution, each of us have “improved” in the craft of playing its instrument, we also demand a little more from ourselves and our music, we want some variation…
Diego Corea: Excuse Carlos…but hey we don’t want to keep doing the same riffs over and over, we want to place a little more “complicated” arrangements in our music. Its like for example, we wrote and liked the song “Sibú” and many people also like it, but why would we be writing a song like that again, I mean everybody is gonna notice that we are repeating ourselves. We want to try new things.
Carlos Morales: I think it has worked fine for us, to continue with the example of the song “Sibú”, when we play that song many “old” fans really like it, but then on the album “Abyssum Spectare” we had “Hada Negra” another song that seems to be among the favorites of our fans, so thanks to that evolution of our music we had manage to keep people interested in our music. Also the sound is way different, you know maybe in “Almas del Olvido” the sound wasn’t the best ever, so we had to work on that and I think we did improve the overall sound of the album with “Abyssum Spectare”.

CR: Were those two albums recorded here in Costa Rica?
Carlos Morales: Yeah, in the same studio
Diego Corea: Same studio different name.

CR: Many Latin metal bands choose to sing and write lyrics in English, why does Arsenal write theirs in Spanish?
Carlos Morales: I think this is simply because we speak Spanish…off course you can give me hundreds of names of bands that write their lyrics in English; but yeah is more about the way we feel, I mean if it is good metal, then I don’t think it matters that much in what language you interpret the songs. We are aware of the fact that singing in English does help in promotion and to reach a broader audience.

	Pic courtesy of: Arsenal "The biggest problem for Costarrican metal bands is money no questions ask; it will always be hard to pay 350.000 Colones just for studio time. Maybe to record a demo now is not very expensive, at least we had a good experience recording our demo"

CR: You guys have two videos if I’m mistaken, what can you tell us about them?
Diego Corea: Yeah, the first one was “Heridas Abiertas” for the album “Almas del Olvido”, that video came from some live shoots we had from a gig in which we play along side A.N.I.M.A.L; a friend of ours helped us edit the material, we mixed some live shoots and a couple of takes from the studio, so I think that been our first experience with that sort of material, I think I ended up pretty decent.
As you probably know recording a video is very expensive, but still I think we manage to release something worth watching. Later on we recorded the video for “Hada Negra” been that song the single we chose to promote that record; a friend of us Allan Matarrita directed and edit that video; it was a good and fun experience because we even use actors for that video.
This sort of things are like children to every single musician that has embark in such a journey; you know when you first see it, you are so happy and you like it so much because its yours, but later in time you start seen what can you do better next time. In this country there use to be a very big problem when it came to promote metal videos, many bands made videos but they didn’t have any TV station to play it on; lately things are getting better, we know have VM Latino and this TV show in the Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR) network, they help a lot when it comes to place a metal video on the air.
Carlos Morales: Yeah this last 7 or 8 years, there are more “ways” to promote metal music.

CR: There is a song that was very interesting to me, Sibú, a song that speaks about Costarrican aborigines believes, is there always some sort of message that Arsenal wants to pass on to its audience?
Diego Corea: We always want to write lyrics that make sense, that mean something. I don’t know about you, but there are times when I read some bands lyrics and they just don’t do absolutely anything for me, or they are way too deep for me to understand (laughs). At the beginning of Arsenal our lyrics were more social oriented, you know against war, drugs, but for the second album our lyrics change into something a little more about inner struggle. We never write lyrics just for putting something on paper or just to have a singer involved in the songs, we want to send a message; maybe different people would get that message in different ways, but they are still going to get something out of our lyrics. For this new record, we are going to maybe go back to that social conscience that you liked on the song Sibú.

CR: To continue with some songs analysis, why don’t you tell me a little more about the instrumental piece, Yugoslavia?
Carlos Morales: Ok, that song came out in lets called it, a “social context” of the times we were living, you know the whole Yugoslavian conflict, that war that was killing innocent people every day for reasons out of our understanding. Back them the news were all over that conflict, so we were always concern about the situation. We also liked the idea that some thrash bands from the early 80’s used in some of their albums, to always or sometimes place an instrumental piece inside their productions. We never it could turn out to be such a good track, but I think it did, and I think it good even better on the acoustic version, because there it had some more atmospheric elements that enhance the deep effect that the conflict had on us back then.
We also have a song called “Sin Piedad” and that was about the Palestinian - Israeli conflict.

CR: Can we say then that Arsenal has a big social conscience?
Carlos Morales: Yes, I respect bands that base their lyrics in elf’s stories and things like that, you know every band those their own thing, but we like to focus on events that affect us all.

CR: Is there any specific areas in which you guys want to improve in this next album?
Carlos Morales: Everything (laughs)
Diego Corea: Yeah, I mean like we were telling you before, when an album comes out, you are very happy and you think is the best thing in the world, but then as time goes by, you start to notice some flaws, some details that you could have corrected but you didn’t, or something’s in which you are better now than you were when you recorded that album, so yeah the idea is to improve in every aspect.
Carlos Morales: Everything, even when you talk about technology to record an album, we can now use new technology, and we also know more about recording than we used to; I’m still very happy with the results of the previous album “Abyssum Spectare”.

CR: What album would you recommend to someone who wants to hear you guys for the first time?
Carlos Morales: All of them, because they need to listen to the evolution of the band to understand the band. You can tell in each album how we started to include a more professional approach to every single song.

CR: What songs would you include in a “best of Arsenal” album?
Diego Corea: You can approach that from different directions, first it will be what songs have the people liked the most, and sometimes those tracks are not necessarily the ones you like the most; some songs that the people seem to like a lot are Sibú, Heridas abiertas, Escudos humanos, Hada Negra; I think those are the songs that people like the most. I think they liked the song Hada Negra thanks to the video it helped a lot to promote that song among metal fans and I think something like that happened when a radio station allowed us to air Sibú, man was that day great, we felt amazing (laughs). I personally like Heridas abiertas, Mendigando Ilusiones; yeah those two are like my favorites.
Carlos Morales: I like more the old stuff; I’m a thrash metal freak, songs like Destructor, Hasta el Final, Sibú, Escudos Humanos, I like a lot both instrumental pieces, Yugoslavia and Agonia, and a couple of sort of hardcore punk tracks like Sin piedad, Tatuaje, yeah so pretty much I like the old stuff, but off course there are great songs to play like Cielo Gris, in which we had the opportunity to have a soprano, I think that was the first time we recorded a track with a more “acoustic” sense a bit more calm per say.

	Pic courtesy of: Arsenal "It’s an evolution, each of us have “improved” in the craft of playing its instrument, we also demand a little more from ourselves and our music, we want some variation…"

CR: Back in 2004 you guys opened a concert fro Cannibal Corpse, how was it?
Diego Corea: Ufff, you have to be close to them to really appreciate just how good they are, they are very impressive. Personally they are great guys, they talk to us we shared some time back stage, really cool guys. You know I remember when I was in school, I had their albums, I mean those guys were heroes of mine, and to have them here playing after us, and to know that they actually listen to our music was a great experience. Also there was a huge crowd so it helped Arsenal a lot.
Carlos Morales: Yeah I mean those guys are a machine out there, and even with that status of almost legends in metal, they are very humble people, very professional musicians.

CR: Arsenal is view for many metal fans here in Costa Rica as one of the most professional bands when it comes to play live shows, is there a secret for that, to be a professional in music in Costa Rica?
Carlos Morales: Respect, maybe my answer will not be among the most “popular” lines of this interview but, I will never agree with the fact that some bands get on stage to tune their instruments there, you know when they go on stage and they don’t even have the cables already connected and sometimes they get on stage looking for someone to lend them a guitar. There is a thing that some promoters try to accomplish in some gigs, and I totally respect that, and that is that they want to let every single band have the change to play, and that’s ok with me, but there is again the problem of time; you know you have to at least know what songs are you going to play before you arrive on stage, not get up there and write some set list to get rid of that problems, you know you have to go prepared, it shows respect to the people that is watching you, even if there is just 5 guys in the place. Is respect, you first show respect then with time and experiences you begin to develop a professionalism towards your craft.

CR: What do we, the fans and the bands of metal need to do in this country to help our scene grow?
Diego Corea: First we have to understand that there is something in the nature of pretty much all the Costarricans, and that is… that culture of when someone is doing something right, you try to get him or her down; you can see that on all the forums on Internet, you know their criticism is just destructive. I can like or dislike some band, but I have to respect them, I mean if I don’t like a band I just don’t go to their concerts or buy their albums; I’m not going to start some personal quarrel with the band just because I don’t like their guitar player, or because I despise their drummer.
I can like or dislike a band, but you have to always recognize and respect other people’s effort, other people’s work.
Carlos Morales: Like I said before is all about respect, I have even heard some people that take that attitude of taking you down just because you are better than them, not even because they don’t like you in a personal level, and that is just incredible. I know that there is a lot of people that don’t like our music, and that’s fine, that happens, but what I can stand is when people attack me for no reason, when they attack me and I haven’t done anything to them. What we need over her is that, respect; to respect each other. I have also seen that sort of behavior in other countries in Central America, so it is definitely something we need to work on.

CR: What can we expect from Arsenal in the near future?
Carlos Morales: Solo bueno!!! (Only good stuff) laughs. A new album, I dare to say its going to be way better than our previous album, we are working a lot in every single song, we are trying to add some interesting elements to the new production, even reggaeton (laughs) just kidding, well maybe just when I’m drunk (laughs). We are trying to place some more death metal influences this time.
Diego Corea: The people that have gone to some of the latest concerts have heard some of those new songs and ideas so, will see what they think when the album is out.
Carlos Morales: We are working on interesting lyrics. We also want to work a little extra hard on promoting this new record.

CR: Well guys, thank you very much for this opportunity, good luck with the next album, please send us a copy when you are done.
Carlos Morales: Thank you, and yeah sure, like I told you, we are gonna work a little harder this time around on promotion so yeah, we’ll let you know.
Diego Corea: Thank you man.