Metal Contraband’s Chelsea spoke with Nicol Hofman of Stellvris on everything from their latest release, Shattered Bloom, to her origins as a vocalist, inspiration from Arch Enemy, and more. Check it out below:
Chelsea here, joined by Nicol Hofman of Stellvris. How are you doing today?
Hello. Fine, how are you doing?
Doing great, thank you. Very excited to be speaking with you. You have a great new release, the new EP Shattered Bloom, which is out now, so it’s exciting to talk to you about what went into this. So, to start off, how are you feeling about the new release?
Well, I’m happy that it’s out already. It’s always so much work and so many things before the release, and when it’s released, you’re nervous if it’s going to be okay, if the fans will like it. So, yeah, but luckily it’s going good. So, yeah, I’m feeling good about it.
Oh, that’s awesome. Definitely. There is always a lot of hard work involved in anything, whether it’s an EP or an LP, it doesn’t matter – the same amount of passion and work definitely goes into it, and I would like to dig into that with you as well. So let’s start off by talking about the origins of Stellvris, because you guys have really made a great presence in the metal world in fairly recent years. You got your start around 2019. So how did it all first come together for you guys?
So, at the very beginning, we were just a bunch of musicians together, just doing rehearsals, and we tried to compose some stuff. Then, when I felt that it’s time to go on stage, a friend of mine was doing a show here in Prague, and she told me, “Come on. Just go on stage, let’s try it.” So I told the guys that we have to compose something more, and that we have to set up the name, social media, and all the stuff. So basically, that’s how it started. Since then, a lot of things have changed, but here we are talking together today.
You guys have been trailblazing in metal internationally. You’ve done a lot of touring, across Europe and all around, and that’s been very exciting, and you have some great music out there. So I’d like to dig into the creative process for your music. Like you said, you were already musicians. You just started composing. What was the first initial spark? What was the idea? Were you already set up to be a metal band?
Well, we were originally just a bunch of musicians, but then it was like, okay, we will be a band, we will compose the music, and that’s how we actually started. With Stellvris, I was actually learning everything – how a band works, what you need to be in a band to be successful, to do a lot of things. I didn’t know at the very beginning that it’s not only about being in a band, composing, doing rehearsals, and going on shows. You have to be a PR manager, social manager, graphic designer, and all those things. So I was learning with Stellvris, but I was lucky that I have really good people around me who helped us very much to learn these things faster and more effectively. When we decided to write music, all of us were metalheads, and we really liked metalcore, deathcore, nu metal – a lot of subgenres. That’s how it’s actually working. It’s weird, but I come up with some ideas, and the guitarists come up with some ideas, since we are not listening completely to the same bands and we are not influenced by the same artists, it makes it possible to create something different, maybe. Well, at least I think so.
You’re very right. That is always a great thing when different members of the band come from different backgrounds, because you’ll have a little hint of this, a little touch of this, and it starts coming together and building something unique, for sure. Honestly, that is definitely a big part of being a band, especially in the modern social media world that we have. You do have to do it all, especially when you’re first getting started and you’re just kind of starting to build your team. You’re making the graphics, you’re making the album art, you’re writing up little bios and press releases about yourself, sending them out there. It’s basically more than a full-time job – it’s a couple of full-time jobs in one, I’m sure.
Yeah, like, for example, right now I’m just thinking about it. Even though we released the EP, it’s not that old yet, and we are still promoting it. We already are writing new music, we have studio time ahead of us, and it’s continuing. Every day is the same battle – how to do the socials, create new music, answer the emails, do the interviews, go to the day job, go practice your singing, and go to the gym because you should be physically healthy and strong and all the stuff.
Definitely. It’s tricky, but at least even if you are struggling with it a bit, you’re doing the social media part right because it looks like you guys are killing it out there.
Thank you. It’s kind of like an illusion of success, you know? That’s what you have to create.
Exactly. It’s the whole “fake it ‘til you make it” thing. Well, let’s also step back a little bit before Stellvris and talk more about your origins as a vocalist.
I was singing since I was a little child, and my mom always told me that when I started, maybe I was first singing and then talking. She told me that whenever I was singing as a small child, the louder it was, the better it was. I was really loud. Then I was singing at school, and I was doing some kind of school competitions and all those things, but I was still singing clean vocals. It changed when I was studying at university, and a friend of mine introduced me to Arch Enemy with Alissa. When I heard this, I was like, “That’s what I need. That’s what I was missing all the time.” So I found a teacher who taught me how to do the screams and growls in a healthy way. I was practicing a lot. It hurt a lot at the very beginning, but now I’m able to sing and scream, and it’s perfectly fine. I’m really enjoying it because it’s kind of like therapy.
It’s a great outlet; it’s a great creative outlet, emotional outlet. I’m sure there’s a lot of being able to explore different sides of your voice. And you are also now a vocal coach nowadays as well, so you went from finding someone to help you in that path to now being a coach yourself. So when and how did you first get into that side of it?
Well, because a lot of people were asking me about these things at the shows, I first had to think about it. I had a pause doing these things for a couple of months because of my day job. I wasn’t able to do these things. But now I’m getting back to it, and it’s amazing, especially when people tell you that it helped them hold more and go through the whole set or whole song without any hurting here and without any damaging. I really like to find the potential in people and what drives them, because this is something incredible that I found out about doing growls and screams. Because if you’re singing, these emotions are strong. I’m not saying that they are not strong, but for me, to be great in harsh vocals, there has to be some driving force. For me, it’s aggression and that I’m just pissed off. This is my energy, even though you wouldn’t maybe say it because I’m smiling and all these things. But inside of me, it’s always there, so that’s helping me to scream and growl. For example, I had a girl, and she was amazing. She was beautiful – black hair, all goth – and she was so nice, so sweet, and so gentle. She told me that she had a teacher before me, and that the teacher told her, “You have to be louder, and you have to be pissed off and push it through”. It’s not actually true, because for her, the driving force was something else. It wasn’t aggression. It wasn’t frustration. It was something very deep and emotional. It was so cool to explore these things because it’s always something different than my driving force. So this is something I find very, very, very interesting.
That’s very cool. And yes, I feel like that probably also helps you think about your approach as well. When you’re hearing what motivates other people, it probably returns to your own motivations and what’s helping you push that creativity out there. And you also mentioned the motivation behind the growls and what really drives them. Does that also factor into your songwriting as well – that the parts that you highlight with harsh vocals are something that have extra meaning lyrically, or something that you feel like you can only convey with the growls, the harsh vocals?
Yeah, that’s basically it. As I said, when my friend sent me Arch Enemy with Alissa, I knew that this is something I need because some things I can’t express in any other way. I have to scream them. I really, really have to scream to the world, like, “F you, somebody,” or whatever, and you can’t do it properly if you’re just saying that or singing that. Screaming is totally different, and it goes really deep in your soul. For example, my therapist told me she really likes our music, even though she’s not a metalhead. She really likes the lyrics, and she really likes the energy. She told me that whenever she has group sessions or something like that, she was playing Rammstein for them, or other metal music, and now maybe she’s playing our music. She told me that there’s maybe no other genre that goes so deep in your soul and so deep into all the emotions but metal. And this is beautiful.
Metal is very meaningful to many people for a lot of different reasons, and that’s definitely one of them. So let’s come back to the current EP, of course, Shattered Bloom, and a little bit more of the creative process for this one specifically. What were some sparks and some inspirations for the tracks we hear on this record?
There were so many inspirations. Every single song is about something totally different. When I started with Shattered Bloom, this is something like when you are working with people. When you have a band, it’s always difficult to deal with people because even though you sit down at the very beginning and you are talking about what you would like to do, if you want to be successful, there will be some sacrifices. You will have to sacrifice something to go up and to be successful. Even though you say that, even though you agree on that, people don’t know what they are going to do, and what I said is actually true. There were multiple times during Stellvris when I wanted to quit, when I was very frustrated and disappointed, and there were so many bad things. But then I realized that if you want to bloom, if you want to have something nice and something that is going to bloom, you have to shatter something. You have to destroy something. That’s basically what Shattered Bloom is about. I wanted to be crazy. I wanted to be fast because this is something that I felt I had to do with my life and with the life of the band. That’s what I had to do. “Silence After Violence” is a warning to all the people that the aggression and frustration amongst society is getting worse, and younger and younger people are affected by these things. When the guy was shooting here in Prague at Charles University and he shot and injured a lot of people, it was terrible. I was there in Prague when it happened. I was like, “What the fuck?” It was terrible. I decided to write music about this because I felt I had to say something. It was terrible what happened, and I can see that the frustration and aggression are growing, and it’s not getting any better.
“Monster” is about toxic relationships, and it doesn’t have to be a relationship with your partner. It can also be your friend, your colleague, your bandmate. That’s actually what I was writing about. It was very intense, and when I was writing this song, it was really releasing all the bad energy into the lyrics and all the stuff. I was like, “Now it’s perfect.” Even the final breakdown – “I used to be the beauty, now I chose the beast”.
Then we have “Time’s Up,” and it’s not really my story. It’s the story of somebody who is very close to me. Somebody hurt this person very badly because this person is like a child in an adult body. He doesn’t know how to live offline. He knows how to live online. He’s validating his thoughts and everything through likes, shares, and all those things. He doesn’t know that it’s not working, that there’s also life outside Facebook and Instagram. It’s not really that I’m telling people to get out of social media or whatever. I’m just telling them that there’s also a real life and that they should enjoy real life and have real relationships, not only online.
The final thing is “Starships,” which is a metal cover of Nicki Minaj’s pop song, and we had a lot of fun doing this thing.
How did you go about making that track metal?
Well, it was easy because when we were searching for the right song, we were searching, searching, searching, and then the guitarist was like, “Hey, what about Nicki Minaj?” I was like, “She’s rapping”. He was like, “Have you heard ‘Starships’?” I was like, “What’s ‘Starships’?” Then he played it, and I was like, “That’s it”. I was listening to it the whole night, and I knew that it was right. I knew that I was going to sing the first quarter, then I would be screaming the verses, and then the breakdown would be very easy to put in there. And that’s how it happened.
Very fun. It’s great. It sounds like you do combine a lot of different topics, lyrics, and material. You’ve got a lot of different range covered in one short EP – five songs – and there’s so much that you’ve already said through that, which is great because it means you’re really conveying and expressing what you want to through your music. Of course, in between Stellvris, you’re also doing covers of other songs as well, ranging from American pop songs to international metal to some Czech songs. So how do you go about selecting your covers? What motivates them?
Well, it’s basically just something that comes to my mind. For example, when Alissa quit Arch Enemy, I was like, “Okay, I have to do ‘War Eternal’”, because this was the song I started with. This was the first song I tried to scream, so I had to cover it. Also, I was thinking about something cool for Halloween. I was like, “Okay, what can we do? It has to be something where I will start as a cutie pie and sweet, sweet girl, and then I will turn into something”. I was like, “Hey, Electric Callboy. They’re good for that”. So I did the cover of the cover, “Every Time We Touch.” The Czech song was actually an idea from our manager. I didn’t want to do that because covering Cocotte Minute, which is a famous band here in the Czech Republic, is nothing easy because he has a very specific voice. It’s like if you decide to cover Korn. It’s not easy. He has a specific voice. It’s really, really difficult. You have to take it, make it your own, and recreate the whole thing. But if you want to do it as he is doing it, it’s difficult. It was the same with Cocotte Minute. So I was like, okay, they also did covers, so I did a cover of the cover. Because it was a cover of a cover of one old and famous song, it hit so many normies, and they were so pissed off that I was screaming their song from their childhood or whatever. When I saw the amount of hate, but also the amount of support and the numbers growing, I was like, “Guys, I’m going to do more”.
That’s funny. Honestly, anytime you put any creative work out there, there’s always going to be the haters and the supporters. But that is kind of funny because it’s something a little bit more classic. It got the attention it needed, honestly, and it just helps fuel you more. That’s great. Now, of course, talking about Arch Enemy and their influence on you, what are your thoughts on the latest news? Of course, Alissa’s departure, but also Lauren Hart coming in on vocals.
I don’t know. The thing is that when you start to do something, and when the band or the artist or the singer changes your life that much, as Alissa or Arch Enemy did, it’s never easy to accept any change. But because I also have a band, I know that these relationships are difficult. She was in Arch Enemy for quite a long time, and maybe she wanted to do something else. There are so many things that could be wrong, so many things that just didn’t work or whatever. Then I was like, “Okay. I wish both of them all the best”. I’m going to follow Arch Enemy and Alissa on their separate ways. Still, it broke my heart because I thought that Alissa was going to remain part of Arch Enemy forever – ideally, forever – and now it’s not there. So, yeah.
Definitely. It was a really tricky, hard time for fans, and you’re also seeing the mixed reviews and reactions to it online as well because people are excited for Lauren Hart. It’s a great new opportunity for her, and she’ll do great. But there’s that attachment to Alissa because, like you said, she was in the band for such a long time. Even though Angela was before her as well, people have come to the point where they fully associate Arch Enemy with Alissa. They’re one and the same at this point, so it’s definitely a tricky time for fans.
Absolutely, and that’s the thing, because I understand it, but it’s difficult for me. But Lauren Hart – I think they couldn’t find anybody better. I saw it, and it’s the same energy. Even though it’s different, it still fits. It’s really nice how Angela welcomed her into Arch Enemy. I saw her post, and she was telling the story of how they met and that she wanted to support her, that she started scouting musicians for her, and then this happened. So she asked her, “Hey, do you want to be part of Arch Enemy?” So, yeah, that is difficult. It was the same with Linkin Park. You have to get used to it. I love Emily. It’s so cool, it’s so great. Her vocals are something else.
Well, so are yours, and that’s why it’s great to see the community of women in rock and metal just growing every single day. New bands keep popping up, and new vocalists and other musicians keep coming up. I’m pretty sure I saw a picture of Alissa’s new solo band that she’s forming, and it’s mostly women as well, so that’s cool to see.
Exactly, exactly. You’re totally right.
And another thing that I find funny about the similarity and the inspiration that you draw musically from Alissa is that you’ve also made it known that you’re a vegan, which she is as well, so that’s a fun connection.
Yeah, I started to be a vegetarian and vegan, and I didn’t know that she was a vegetarian and vegan. I found out later, which connected me to her maybe even more because she’s an animal rights activist and she’s vegan. Whenever I was listening to her interviews, I really liked how smart she is and that she really knows what she’s talking about. She’s very strong, very independent, and I like this kind of energy. I saw her multiple times live, and I’m very happy for that with Arch Enemy. It was always professional. It was always with the same passion. I have never seen her in bad shape. She was always…very true.
No, she’s one of those people who just shows up consistently every time. She has this image of herself and this sound of herself, and she meets it – and even exceeds it – every single time.
Exactly, exactly, exactly.
So now, coming back to you, of course, and your current projects and plans for Stellvris, what do you have coming up right now?
So, we have a short tour with Disillusion, and we’re going to perform in Germany and here in the Czech Republic with them. We really look forward to joining them because the last time we played with them was, I think, three years ago when we were supporting Jinjer together in Vienna. We have multiple single shows and weekenders, then we have festivals, and for this fall we are currently discussing a tour. I really don’t know if it’s going to be Europe only, Europe and the UK, only the UK, or if we make it to the US because we are already discussing this. We would love to go there, but I think for now the biggest problem for us is that we don’t know if we can get visas because the president is changing the rules every single day, and we are not sure if we can make it there. We would love to.
Well, the U.S. would love to see you and have you, for sure. I know it’s pretty much always been a tricky thing when it comes to international travel for bands, especially crossing borders and crossing continents. I wish you the best of luck with it. I hope that you can make it happen because we would definitely love to see you in the U.S. Either way – Europe or the UK – it’s going to be a fun time and a fun tour, and you guys are just going to continue to grow your fan base and your community as well. So best of luck with everything, and thank you so much for your time.
Thank you so much for having me.