Magic Fire Music : Hello men! First of all congratulation for your new album.
For a start, could you introduce the band please?
Tommy White/Cirrha Niva : Of course: We are Cirrha Niva from The Netherlands and we’ve been active in the metalscene since 1997, during which we recorded 4 albums. The line-up consists of Legrand on vocals, Rob Willemse and Carlo Heefer on guitars, Daniël Huijben on bassguitars and Tommy White on drums.

Magic Fire Music : What is the meaning of Cirrha Niva?
Tommy White/Cirrha Niva : The name is based on a book written by Dante Alighieri, in which he's talking about the mountain tops “Cirrha” & “Nisa”. Some members of the band read books by this writer and came across these names, which they thought were very original to use as a band name. So we put both names together, changed the last one in “Niva” and “Cirrha Niva” was born.

Magic Fire Music : Could you introduce the new singer LeGrand?
Tommy White/Cirrha Niva : We were looking for a new singer since our former singer left the band. After searching for 2 months we came across Legrands name on Myspace. We gave him a call and asked if he’d like to audition. Although he's living on the other side of the country and has to travel for two hours, he came to our studio and did an awesome audition. We had other vocalists audition as well, but when Legrand finished it was a done deal. We knew he was the man for the job.Luckily he agreed.

Magic Fire Music : There are many guests on this album, who are they? How did you contact them? Did they all accept immediately?
Tommy White/Cirrha Niva : When we were close to finishing the writing process we agreed some of the songs needed some extra’s to make them sound even better.
In our opinion "The Fooling" needed some screams and grunts to add strength to the story. Legrand's brother (Robin de Groot, singer of progressive deathmetal band "Chiraw") was exactly the guy we needed for this job and he was happy to help us out.
Manda Ophuis from Nemesea was contacted by us because we needed female vocals on "Dreamon".
Joost van den Broek, who used to play keyboards for After Forever, was also happy to help us out. We gave him carte blance for "Running From The Source", "Framed" and "Spring Before Winter". The parts he recorded were amazing.
For the song “Golan Hights” we wanted some of the lyrics in spoken Hebrew. Who better to ask for this than someone who is actually speaking that language. We asked Yuval Kramer from Amaseffer and he was happy to work with us, recording his parts in his own studio.
Finally our producer Bouke Visser, who also plays saxophone in his own band, recorded a solo for "Spring Before Winter".
Since we’ve been around in the metalscene for quit some time now, some of our bandmembers got acquainted with a lot of other musicians personally. It was a matter of asking people if they were available and wanting to do it. Luckily all musicians were willing to be a part of “for moments never done”.

Magic Fire Music : What is « For Moments Never Done » about? Is this a concept album?
Tommy White/Cirrha Niva : No, this time we decided our next album wouldn’t be a concept album. Our last album "Liaison de la Morte" was a concept album and we were about to record a new concept album in 2005, but the songs were just not good enough. When we took Legrand on board, we started writing new songs which were recorded for this album. It's an album with 7 separate songs. The lyrics are about the things in life you sometimes have to deal with, weather you like it or not. Most of the lyrics topics are about Legrand's own personal experiences.

Magic Fire Music : Nederland is not very well-known for its progressive metal bands, but more for its female-singer bands which are very wildspread in the media.. Knowing this, isn't it too hard to make yourself a name out there?
Tommy White/Cirrha Niva : Yes it is, but we’ll keep trying, haha... We used to have a female bassplayer/singer too when we did the "Liaison de la Morte" album, but now we're back to all guys. Given the fact a lot of bands nowadays are having female singers, in our opinion some of them are just another band with maybe a great looking girl holding the microphone. In the end it's the quality of the songs that counts.



Magic Fire Music : Bu the way, how is the progressive metal scene in your country? Is this, commercially speaking, a good vein?
Tommy White/Cirrha Niva : Commercially speaking a good vein? No, not at all. Of course there are some very good progressive metal bands in our country, but like us, they all seem to be stuck in the same area. National Radio & Televison doesn't pay much attention to our kind of music, maybe they don't get it. The progmetal scene is very much alive, but seems to be doomed to be more or less underground. The members of Cirrha Niva all have day jobs, as we can't live of the band.

Magic Fire Music : I described your music by this sentence: « Between Rush and Fates Warning, between Presto Ballet and DeadSoul Tribe or between Wastefall and Megadeth, that is Cirrha Niva's music! ». What do you think about that?
Tommy White/Cirrha Niva : Well, it's great to hear that and we’re very honoured to be compared with these big names. We heard people compare us with all kind of bands. It's what people hear in our music we think, from Dream Theater to Rage Against The Machine, from Thin Lizzy to Meshuggah. Most of all we like to think we sound like Cirrha Niva. We try to write original songs we like ourselves and hopefully the people like ‘em too. So far we have received great response only which we are very happy with!

Magic Fire Music : Jochem Jacobs produced the album, how did you contact him? Did you progress on some points that you would never have expected, thanks to him?
Tommy White/Cirrha Niva : We already contacted Jochem Jacobs and Bouke Visser from Split Second Sound Studio's in 2005 as we had completed the writing of a new album.
They found the music to be ok but weren’t too happy with the vocals. We took their advise and started going over the vocal lines again. Eventually this resulted in having to let our former singer go. After 2 months we took Legrand on board and when we finished writing "For Moments Never Done", we contacted Split Second Sound again. This time they were very exited about the whole package. During the recording of the album especially Bouke Visser suggested a lot of great ideas, like some of the backingvocal parts. He also gave some good advise to the entire band to reach the best possible performance from each member as possible. So, yes we did progress on some of the songs and made them even better than they already were.

Magic Fire Music : How do you compose? What inspires the band for its lyrics?
Tommy White/Cirrha Niva : One of the members comes up with an idea, weather it's a guitar riff, bass line or a drum pattern. The other bandmembers are getting inspired by that and start adding new ideas. It never happens that one of the members writes a complete song. It's like jamming together until we have something special to work with. When we finish the music (sometimes during composing), the vocal melodies and lyrics will be written by our singer. As mentioned earlier, for this album Legrand wrote about his own experiences and thoughts on certain subjects. In the past guitar player Rob wrote most of the lyrics.

Magic Fire Music : You will soon participate to the Prog Power Festival, it is an opportunity for you, isn't it? Are you apprehending?
Tommy White/Cirrha Niva : Yes we will be playing the Progpower festival. We tried to play the Prog Power Festival for many years, but this is the first time we actually got invited to play there. Of course it's a great opportunity, because you're playing for a large audience from all over the world. We are very excited to be playing at progpower and we will be playing the entire new album.

Magic Fire Music : Cirrha Niva's career is already long, what memories do you keep of these 12 first years?
Tommy White/Cirrha Niva : For me personally, when joining the band was a great experience for me. But since then there were many more. Of course the "Liaison de la Morte" tour was great in its entirety because it was so different from what other bands were doing at the time. The short tour we did with Pain of Salvation was also a highlight for me. And of course playing with the Cirrha guys is giving me a boost each time, they all have their own sense of humour and we never fight, no really... hahaha
14. What can we wish you for the future?
As we just released "For Moments Never Done" and reviews are great so far, playing live is what we would like to do the most at the moment. In the meantime we are also writing new material for our next album, because we don't want to wait another eight years!



Magic Fire Music : I let you speak to finish this interview, and see you for the next album!
Tommy White/Cirrha Niva : Thank you very much for taking interest in Cirrha Niva, and hopefully we will be able to give you more beautiful music in the future. Hope to see you guys live.
Greetings... Tommy White/Cirrha Niva