Omega Sun (Aris Demirović)

If you’re missed the 90’s, Slovenian fuzz stoner rockers Omega Sun will definitely take you back in time, and you’ll get an authentic journey to mystic desert landscapes and legendary generator parties in the middle of nowhere.

I’ve been talking to Aris, guitarist and forming member of the band, who got me a closer view on his musical background, “hashish rock”, their debut album »Opium For The Masses«, touring the USA and much more.

https://www.facebook.com/omegasvn/
https://omegasun.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/omega_sun/

So, when you actually decided to form Omega Sun?
Aris: Actually I don’t know. I don’t keep any sort of diary so I have to guess and simply rely on my memory.
Must have been in 2013, that’s also the year we recorded and sort of released our rehearsal demo. That was 2 instrumental tracks. Shortly after this demo, which was recorded as a three piece, we augmented our line-up membership by bringing a singer into the fold. My idea at the time was to make a project that would be in the “rock style” with melodic vocals. Even if I was partaking in the so called extreme metal scene I always had this desire to create music with traditional, melodic, strong vocals in the style of the classic rock bands from the 70’s. As it always happens, as time went by, the project became an ordinary full band with gigs and releases.

How did you find the other members for the band? There has been also a few other bass players before your singer Medo grabbed the bass.
Aris: Yes. Our initial formation was Seba on drums, Aris on guitar and Dexter (Marko) from Human Host Body on bass. We were in search of a singer for some time and finally Medo (Igor) joined the band on vocals. Not much later we recorded the »Early Morning« single with this line up. After some time Dexter left the band as he couldn’t split the time between his jobs, all the bands he played in etc. So we invited Teo to join us on bass and he lasted for a good year or something like that. Later when it became clear that he also couldn’t put as much time into the band as we did, we decided to stop complicating our lives and simply decided Medo should play the bass as well, since he is basically capable of playing any given instrument. So this way we found out that we work best as a trio, went to record our full length album and the rest is history as they say.
Also to answer the question about how we found each other. All of us knew each other since our teens at least. We’re all from the same home town/area, we all played in different bands in the same venues, all had mutual friends and so on. Actually Omega Sun started because of another mutual friend, who was also the original vocalist in Somrak, he hosted parties at his granny’s house in the countryside. He had a basic drumkit and some shitty guitar amps there and every weekend whoever came by could jam his ass off. This is where I jammed for the first time with Seba I believe. So there you go.

When you got attracted to stoner rock? Why this fascination with 90’s stoner rock?
Aris: In the 90’s when I was tinny kid and this style of music was called hard rock, grunge, alternative rock etc. even though it was always simply just heavy rock. I was born into a family that was very much into rock music, so since day one I was listening to classic rock bands and always loved great vocalists, psychedelic sounds and groovy rhythms underneath a wall of fuzz. Funnily enough in the 90’s I was totally into bands from the 70’s and now I’m mostly into bands from the 90’s. Go figure. Anyway I’m into all sorts of music, I’m pretty much autistic when it comes to music, genres and it’s eras. As a wannabe musician however I’ve noticed that I’m in my comfort zone when playing this kind of metallic bluesy rock’n’roll. The kind of music we would call “hashish rock” or stoner if you will.

In 2017 your debut album »Opium For The Masses« came out via On Parole, in my humble opinion one of the best stoner rock albums in the last decade. How do you look backwards to it? Would you change anything or do it different now?
Aris: First of all thank you for your kind words, much appreciated. Honestly I wouldn’t change a thing. There were some things while recording and mixing that I wasn’t sure about. Like some of the guitar leads. Funnily the things that I wasn’t so sure about at the beginning later became my favorite parts of the album. We also had a really great time while recording it. It was stressful, time consuming, nerve wrecking but still we had the time of our lives while doing it. Especially with Cigo, in his Ostudio 6, there’s never a dull moment. Lots of sleepless nights, especially for Cigo.
If we ever lived the rock’n’roll lifestyle it was there while recording. One day if my memory won’t go down the shitter, I’ll write a book about our experience in his studio. Actually we should make a movie about it.

I’ve seen that you also got amazing feedback from all over the world. Maybe you know what touched your heart the most?
Aris: Honestly every positive review, reaction or just a simple kind word touches my heart. I can assure you we didn’t expect such a great response, especially being a tinny band with no big label or promotional tools to push us onto the so called market. We got some really nice reviews in some Slovenian printed magazines and also around the globe but the best part is when people keep ordering the album from us. Also getting invited to play to all sort of places and getting even more new fans as a consequence makes my heart warm.

Are you planning any new releases soon?
Aris: Actually we are. It’s hard to talk about it at the moment ‘cause nothing is set in stone yet. So I don’t wanna spread false information. I can tell you that we had some new songs ready for a while now and we just need to really find the time to record those musical pieces. We received some kind of an offer from a label but so far nothing is confirmed. When there’ll be some confirmation you’ll be the first to get the notice.

Tell me about your songwriting process. How your songs get the shape you wanted? Or you just go with the flow?
Aris: What we mostly do is jam. All three of us can play guitar, I might even be the worst guitarist in this band, so we all bring riffs to the table. Usually we spend months just jamming without any specific goal set in mind just doing what we feel is right and later when we feel that something might sound like a song we wait for Medo to come up with some vocals. So far it worked like a charm.

How important is promotion for you as a band? Which channels do you use for promoting your music?
Aris: We mostly use this new thing that is all the rage between the kids these days. I don’t know if you heard about it, it’s called the internet. Seriously that’s it. All the attention we got was through the internet, meaning Bandcamp, Facebook, Instagram and of course Youtube with it’s dedicated channels to various music genres and streams of full albums. This is where 99% of people discover our band and this is what leads them to our merchandise page where they buy our music and shirts. Promotion is obviously very important.
Having your video featured on a Youtube channel with lots of subscribers or a specific facebook page that deals with your musical genre helps a lot. People mentioning your band on their podcasts or in their album lists. I guess having some actual good tunes doesn’t hurt even.

Thank you for enlightening 🙂 So, you’re selling a lot of your merch online?
Aris: I wouldn’t dare to say a lot. We get couple orders per month, sometimes more, sometimes less. Also right now we don’t have many TS designs available and we have only one album released so far, so I guess there’s not that much to sell either.

Mainstream media in Slovenia usually don’t give a shit about alternative music, especially music with certain quality. How do you feel about that? Is that bothering you?
Aris: It doesn’t bother me at all. What is mainstream media nowadays? Who’s still watching TV and reading printed newspapers nowadays? What’s more mainstream, having your video featured on a Facebook page and getting 10.000 views from all around the globe in a day or being featured on Slovenian national TV five times a week during lunch time when 40 grandmas in their 80s are watching TV?
We need to be realistic here. In my personal opinion getting featured in national mainstream media is good just to make your elder relatives that don’t understand what you’re about proud of you.

Are you satisfied with shows here in Slovenia? Do you feel there are enough clubs and people that are supporting you?
Aris: You know as good as I do that we always had enough clubs, venues and talented bands, technicians, organizers and so on. Since our whole country has barely the population of a bigger city in an average western country it’s impossible to make something bigger out of this. You know that playing more than a couple of times in a year is already overkill as there’s not enough population to make it worthwhile. You end up playing for the same persons every time. I feel that in the last years globally there’s not that much younger audience getting into rock music, so the turnouts on the gigs all around the world are generally getting smaller. However I still enjoy playing live and travelling around the world.

You already toured Europe with bands like Three Eyes Left, Son Of Cain and Swanmay. How did you like it so far? You’ve been mostly cynical about places and the whole scene around here.
Aris: Yeah well, we were supposed to tour with Swanmay but the tour got cancelled due to the pandemic. So sadly we never even met the guys. I’ve been cynical about places and the whole scene around here? I’m not sure I know what you mean but I can be pretty sarcastic/cynical about anything. That is my defense mechanism ‘cause I’m an insecure little guy. Anyway touring around the world is great and dreadful at the same time. Lots of waiting and no sleep for those 30 to 60 minutes you get on stage. Sometimes you play to a great crowd that goes totally crazy about your music and sometimes there is no crowd at all.
But yeah, I enjoy playing live… I learnt to get in my comfort zone and totally enjoy jamming with my guys and I hope they do as well. Playing music on stage or even just in the rehearsal space is one of the few things that make me feel total joy.
The cool thing about touring is you don’t play the same places and for the same people every time. So in a sense it’s always a new and fresh experience. It’s like having sex for the first time many times.

Yeah, when you’re going cynical someone could easily think that you just don’t like nothing at all 🙂 What was the strangest/craziest adventure that happened to you on the road?
Aris: This is one of those really difficult questions to answer ’cause there’s a lot of weird things going on everytime you hit the road. I don’t know… all sorts of things happen like crossing borders without passports and hoping nobody will notice, forgetting about things in your pockets that shouldn’t be there when dealing with customs, renting vehicles that endanger your life, playing in super weird “venues” and later sleeping over in even weirder places. Sometimes we have some really strange encounters, however most of the time we are the strange encounter. One time we played in Czech Republic in what was supposedly an ex horse barn. Even though there wasn’t a single horse to be found around the whole place and the village were reeking of horseshit for whatever reason. Inside the barn there was a nice stage with a malfunctioning PA we had to assemble and repair ourselves so that we could play a gig for 5 raging alcoholics that couldn’t care less about the gig but felt a super strong need to shout “Zlatko Zahović!” (slovenian football legend) at us any time they found it fitting. This surely wasn’t the craziest adventure but somehow it still haunts in my sleep.

We’ve seen you also supporting some bigger bands, such as Kylesa, Yawning Man, Dopethrone and more. Can you tell me something more about that experiences?
Aris: I’m thinking hard and I really don’t know what to say. I mean I think it sounds better on paper than it actually is. Some of these bands we are fans of, some we are friends of so it’s cool to have the chance to meet them, chat with them, have a beer with or simply just share the same stage with. What I’m trying to say is that sometimes we’ll have a better gig, a bigger turn out, playing by ourselves or with our friend’s local bands than compared to these “bigger” bands.
On the other hand obviously if for example some Kylesa fan is surfing the internet and sees our band’s name on the same gig poster as them he might get curious about us. So in that sense it works as a kind of promotional or marketing tool if you will. Gigwise it’s always the same stages, same feeling. I really enjoy both, playing in a public toilet or on a big festival stage with huge names like Judas Priest.
A different and more heartwarming experience is when they invite you to open for a bigger and established band abroad. That happened also, the invitation that is, but the gig sadly never happened or even got announced due to the Covid situation. So sadly we won’t be ever able to brag about that we got invited to a specific country to open for a specific bigger band.

Do you wish bands like you would have more opportunities like that?
Aris: I guess so. What I would love even more is that people would be more open to discover new music and support smaller bands, not because they need the support, but because a lot of the times these bands are even better than the established ones. But this is nothing new under the sun. People in general were always more attracted to the image and sheep mentality.

What about Planet Desert Rock Weekend in Las Vegas last year? You also played two shows in Los Angeles and Pasadena that time. Tell me more about your first trip to the USA.
Aris: Okay, this is one of those things that should go on the list of the things that touched our hearts the most we were talking about before. We played four shows. Three shows in California (Los Angeles, Pasadena and Yucca Valley) and one in Nevada (Las Vegas). We need to thank and hail John Gist from Vegas Rock Revolution. He invited us out of the blue to play this weekend festival in Las Vegas and we sincerely thought it was a joke at first. Once we realized the guy is for real we accepted and started brainstorming how to make this thing really happen.
I have to say I’m really glad we managed to make it happen; especially now in 2020 when the whole world turned to shit and we don’t even know if we’ll able to tour ever again. The funny thing about our trip to the USA is that we went there as tourist, no working visas (since we weren’t earning any money) and without any instrument or piece of equipment. We landed in LA all of us with just a small briefcase each and that was it. We arranged everything there on the spot. We bought or borrowed what we needed as we went along and I wouldn’t change a thing about it. It all made for a better and more memorable experience.
In the months prior to the Planet Desert Rock Weekend, John managed to put us on another festival bill, that is Sounds Of Heavy in Yucca Valley, more specifically at Gadi’s, a beautiful bar&grill in the Californian desert not far away from the legendary Sky Valley (known and famous all over world thanks to Kyuss). It’s a fantastic place, totally Americana, with a magic vibe. The gig was organized by John Gist (Vegas Rock Revolution) together with Arthur from House Of Broken Promises/Unida fame.
We also got in touch with Andy from Metal Assault in Los Angeles and he organized two gigs for us. One in downtown LA and the other in the nearby Pasadena (home of Van Halen, some trivia for music historians).What can I say? We really feel blessed we got the opportunity to do this, we met some fantastic people, visited some crazy and beautiful places and had the opportunity to play on some of the best and worst stages there and I loved every minute of it. It’s really hard to explain how surreal it feels when you put your tinny band in tinny Slovenia together just for the love of music and a year or two later you find yourself playing in not only the USA but in the California desert of all places like you’re some kind of Kyuss or something. You cross the ocean to get to the other part of the world and there are people already waiting for you, knowing your music. Even if it’s just two or three people, it’s a nice and humbling feeling and it makes life worth living. I could spend the whole day just writing about all the experiences we had there but it’s mostly really personal and probably wouldn’t be much interesting for your readers. If any locals from Los Angeles or nearby are reading this interview please note that we spent most of our nights sleeping in south central LA so we had our share of interesting encounters with locals. One final thing, shout out to Captain Caravan our “friend band” from Norway with whom we shared the stage with in Las Vegas (Count’s Vamp’d, fantastic venue) and Downtown LA (fantastic shithole). You should check ‘em out.

Is the scene there much different as here in Europe? Some pros and contras…
Aris: It’s really difficult to compare since we played just four gigs and three of those were in California. So I don’t have enough experience to do a proper comparison. It’s no secret that in Europe you usually get better conditions. That means you get enough beverages, food and a sleeping place. In the USA most of those things you’re expected to take care by yourself. On the other hand we came to every show without amps, drums etc. and every band was kind enough to lend us their gear. Also most of the gigs if not all in Europe are all ages shows so it’s easier to get a better turn out. In the USA all of the gigs we played were in bars so you don’t see kids in the audience. Also, especially in California, people are more fashion-trend driven and they don’t really care for some lame ass rock show in the 21st century haha… Europe is more into traditions and we love our rock’n’roll and follow our favorite bands till the end not matter if it’s fashionable or not.

How did Covid-19 lockdown affect you as a band?
Aris: It got our 10 days tour across Europe cancelled and made it impossible to visit our rehearsal space for a few months. It sucks big time.

You are also in charge for concert series StonerBoner in Koper and one of the people behind Bunker Fest in Izola. Can you tell me about your work on those projects?
Aris: I’ve been booking shows as long as I’ve been in bands, yes. What I do is, when I have the time and the conditions are right, I like to help bands on tour or invite bands I would enjoy to see in concert to our small hometown. Honestly I don’t know if I’ll be doing much of this in the future not only because of the uncertain times we live in right now, but also ‘cause the conditions in the area where I live are getting worse for live music. We’ll see about that. As for Bunker Fest it’s a bit different ‘cause it doesn’t entirely depend on me and that makes it easier for me. Shout out to Matjaž (ex-Noctiferia drummer) who’s the president of the organization and main man behind the festival.

What about this year’s edition of Bunker Fest?
Aris: Due to the Covid pandemic we had to cancel this year’s edition of Bunker Fest in Izola. Hopefully next year.

Would you like to introduce some other Slovenian artists that definitely should be heard?
Aris: Since I’m sure every worthwhile Slovenian band will be (rightfully) featured in this zine of yours, I decided to do something different. Here are some fantastic albums from various ex-Yugoslav rock bands from the 70’s. Maybe some of your readers that are interested in discovering more “obscure” music will enjoy some of these. All of these albums are still great inspiration to me and are a testimony of a great era in music. Here you go:
Buldožer – Pljuni istini u oči
Drugi Način – s/t
Leb i Sol – s/t
September – Zadnja avantura
Smak – s/t
Time – s/t
Indexi – Modra rijeka
Atomsko Sklonište – Ne cvikaj generacijo
Bijelo Dugme – Kad bi bio bijelo dugme

What a great music selection! What else could be found on your playlist recently?
Aris: On my playlist right now is Sepultura – Quadra, Type O Negative – World Coming Down, King Diamond – Fatal Portrait, Smashing Pumpkins – Siamese Dream, Focus – III, Leeway – Born To Expire, Turnstile – Nonstop Feeling and lots of random shit like Ava Max and whatnot.

Thanks for the interview! Any last words and special messages for our government?
Aris: Thank you for the interview, this must be our first written interview in English at all. So thanks for giving us the space in your zine.
As for the government they don’t care about me and I don’t care about them.
I ain’t no fortunate son.
Also follow us on Instagram, Facebook and all those rad things you kids like. You can still buy our album and merch directly from us on our Bandcamp.
Cheerios!

Bojan Bidovc // music enthusiast, promoter, misanthrop and sometimes a journalist as well