THE METAL PIT:  Hi Gogo and thanks for answering some questions for THE METAL PIT.

GOGO MELONE:   Hello there!!!

Introduce the band and describe what they bring to Luna Obscura as musicians?

Well, I'm Gogo /vocalist, Aris /vocalist, Dimitris and Alexi on guitars, Stratos /bassist and George on drums. Originally formed on 2000 in Serrai, a small town in Greece ...today our basic locations are in Serrai and Thessaloniki too. Our vision was to create a mixture of our musical preferences and experiment with it. We didn't have a specific plan to make a gothic metal band or doom etc. that came after and soon we found our musical identity.    

As the vocalist what bands or singers were you influenced by?

I have always been fan of Doom metal, Melodic Death, Gothic and listen too many bands but I really admire voices like Aaron Stainthorpe (My Dying Bride), Jonas Renkse (Katatonia), Cathrine Paulsen (Trail of Tears), Vincent Cavanagh (Anathema), Lisa Johansson (Draconian), 
Liv Kristine (the old days when she was in "Theater of Tragedy"). It's always very difficult to shed your musical influences and if you love what you do, you have to find the limits and of course yourself otherwise you will be a copy of others and not you. This is very important for me and as an artist I'm working a lot and need to be myself in every thing I do.

Well, we listen different things... from Death Metal to Atmospheric and Gothic, from Progressive to Nu Metal and Rock, also some ambient and ethnic stuff. I guess we all have our limits which is normal but we try to be open minded. 

For sure, us to give our souls in a level of professional performance. We have played in several bands in the past and some of us are still 
playing with other bands so all these years we have gained many experiences in music, on stage etc.    
     Due to our works and our various obligations, we can't play a lot with Luna Obscura so everytime that we have a concert, we really enjoy it.

I thinK, I always knew it because I was addicted to metal music from 10-11 years old but there was a moment when I met Mixalis Kakepis (greek rock singer) in a concert and sang with him. I was 13, maybe 14 years old and it was the first time I sang public with real audience  so I guess that moment became a dream and then my personal goal on doing my own band.

We really want it. There are many countries that we like to visit and it's well known that trips outside of your area are really expensive but we're trying to organize some things. Recently we found a contest on Facebook about the "Flight of the Valkyries" festival in US.
Luna Obscura are in and people can vote for the bands that they want to see on the next FOTV fest. 
 You can see more about it here and vote for us: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=question&id=10150163713247061 

I guess not because I have never seen any band similar with our sound to perform there but if we have the chance in the main future would be awesome and great honor to be the first 

Yes, we're working on our new album which we're planning to release on 2012, 
I wish don't have any planet catastrophe until then  . Until now we have some music and lyrics stuff ready and recently found the album title too. I know that soon we'll revamp our official website so we'll also bring some news to our fans about it. "Feltia" album was really strange release, the album released on December 2008 but after a month 2009 came so this album should be a release of 2009. After a year we signed with the UK Casket Music / Copro Records and on January 2011 the album re-released by them in Europe. I really don't know if it's an old release or new one because we still do things for this album.   

Not always, sometimes music comes first and other times the lyrics or even a vocal melody which then will give us the idea for a song.  We usually don't do the jammin at the studio, we prefer to work alone (everyone has his personal home studio) especially our guitarist Dimitris who is the basic song-writter in the band. He never shares ideas if he isn't sure about what he has written but when you listen something from him, you always recognize that the music is Luna Obscura. Of course this reaction is only between the bandmates. 

What would be the perfect metal band out there for Luna Obscura  to open up for on a tour?

Anathema at the period of "The Silent Enigma"  haha..seriously don't know, I could only think the bands I like but I guess we can fit with every band with female vocals or brutal, whoever give us the chance would be good for us. 

This is our official merchandise http://www.lunaobscura.net/merch , here they can buy our debut album "Feltia" and other things.
Casket Music / Copro records and Soundforce are responsible for the distribution in Europe but with the internet people can find us everywhere, Myspace, Facebook, Last fm, Twitter, Youtube etc.

Our sound can't heard easily by people who love the sound of Evanescense or Within Tempation, Epica etc. because LO's music walks to more aggressively paths and usually remains underground but whoever is fan and love the combination between clean female 
vocals and harsh male vocals with heavy riffs, atmospheric keyboards and powerfull drums ...then he/she has to check us out and leave 
the melodies to inspire them.

Yeah, sure! Thank you very much 

Thanks for taking the time for this interview and we all look forward to Luna Obscuras  next CD  .Good luck to you and the band. Any closing thoughts for THE METAL PIT readers?

Thanks a lot for this great interview! A big hello from me and my bandmates to all "THE METAL PIT" readers and our fans. 
Support Metal, Support the underground, Support the good music. 

g o g o m e l o n e