Violent Peace released their self titled EP not so long ago. However, what is the story behind the EP?
Violent Peace has Joey Semaan on guitars and vocals, Kevin Semaan on the bass, back vocals, and keys, Joe Chamata on drums, and Roy Andraos on guitars.
This is the story they had to share with us.

It all started back in 2015 when Nathalie Jeha contacted us, and said that there was a new pub in Fanar that wanted a band to play weekly gigs.

So went there, and began to work out the details with the owner. We were supposed to play an acoustic set every Friday. The owner asked us if we’d play for free, but we had to explain to him that since we wanted to record our EP, we needed the money. The owner the agreed to pay us; however later that night he called us and said that his friend owned PLUR ( a recording studio) and that she agreed to record our EP for free.

 We couldn’t believe it.

What flashes to my mind are the WhatsApp fights Kevin and his brother Joey had (since I was in Canada), the laughs that broke out when we listened to my backing vocals and the legendary Wi-Fi that was available at PLUR. But after digging deeper I realized I learned a lot, the recording took me a step further, but i’ll always look back to that achievement that we’ve made using our music, and more importantly, our hearts.

– Roy Andraos
We decided to take him up on his offer.
So we went down the studio and met Nadim Kmeid, the guy at the studio, and we started recording in July 2015. Since PLUR is also an event organizing company and they were working on bringing Patrick Fiori to Lebanon, Nadim was busy and had to work in the office and couldn’t stay with us the whole time at the studio. So what we did at the time was that he taught us how to use the software, then we recorded and edited all of it by ourselves.

Recording this EP was the most amazing experience that could ever happen to me. I personally learned a lot about creating songs from scratch. We woke up early in the morning, drove to Jdaideh and 8 hours later, drove back home. The time spent at PLUR’s studios was not as productive as you think: we laughed a lot, discussed way more than we worked, we fought and argued, we ate tones. We had a little table with the names of the tracks that we needed to record: whenever a track was recorded we checked its square in the table. The feeling of checking was pretty satisfying. And once we had it all tracked, mixing it also thought me many things. We had lots of fun with the people who helped us getting this EP well crafted. It was awesome.

– Kevin Semaan
Roy Andraos was in Canada this whole time, so Joey had to record all the rhythm guitars. Roy ended up recording his solos in only two days.
What did we have to lose?
We were still at the beginning of our musical journey, especially Joe, who was a drummer for only one year and a half.  After a lot of experimentation, we ended up recording the drum track in one day.

The rhythm guitars and Joey’s solos took up a lot of time to record. Kevin, our bassist, kept a steady workflow throughout, he finished composing his bass-lines in the studio, and recorded them perfectly.

Spending the summer at the studio was amazing, I woke up everyday to do what I love most. I always dreamed of working in a studio and recording my music. This journey was what took us to the next level, as individual musicians and as a band. I learned a lot, and having a record was something really important for Violent Peace. I will always look back at this journey in my career because this is where it all started.

– Joey Semaan

The rest of it was completed in one day basically; time was running out because school was going to start. Vocals were recorded in the last day as well, but were then lost when we extracted the files.

We decided we were going to re-record the vocals and mix it at Roy Naufal’s home studio. Due to conflicting schedules, the work was only done in March 2016, even though we were hoping to release the EP at the Christmas Mission 2015.

What I enjoyed the most was waking up at 6 am, going to Joey and Kevin’s home, waiting for them to wake up, walking on the bridge next to CityMall that leads to Jdeideh carrying heavy gear on my back, recording and deleting, messing up things, anger, joy, laughs, depression, eating at the local “foron” and coming back home at 7 pm.
Man it was an amazing experience!! Life’s a journey not a destination!!

– Joe Chamata

After the physical and digital (above) release of their EP, the band is working on new material, material that will have a lot of spice.

Thanks to Nathalie Jeha for sending us to the pub’s owner Johnny Petyon, who sent us to PLUR’s owner Jessy Amer where we met Nadim Kmeid and worked together on the records. And thank you Roy Naufal for mixing this EP for us.

Cheers!

So that’s quite an interesting story from Violent Peace! What do you think of it? Drop a comment below.

– Antoine Kanaan.

Read more by:  Antoine Kanaan.
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