THEE PROjECT - Makshoof Profile

Another in our series of features on the leading artists in the region, we stop by Bahrain to talk to the members of THEE PROjECT, an interesting and diverse metal project that has captured a lot of attention from triplew.me's metal fans.

THEE PROjECT have impressed our regular metal man, The Squid, with the attention to detail on production and song-writing, and mixed with a perfect attitude towards their music means that THEE PROjECT are providing a unique and fresh take on metal in a region, and country, that produces some great metal bands.

Check out THEE PROjECT's Makshoof Music submission and leave a comment.

We caught up with band recently on a wide range of topics - check out the interview and get voting!

Firstly, we’re digging the tunes and the whole concept – it’s really creative, and most of all, musically done with purpose. Your name implies that this is a project, is it an ongoing thing, and if so, what’s planned next?

The band kicked off as a small side project, where it remained un-named and we referred to it as the project, after recording a few tracks and getting the sound we were looking for, we realized that this was not just another project, in fact, it was “Thee” project, thus the name was born. We decided to keep the name as it is, and continue creating records. It is an ongoing thing, so far we have independently released our first album “Thee art of Mehyawa”. We’ve been working on our 2nd release since then, we will most likely be releasing a 6 track EP, just to give people a taste of things to come.

It’s hard to put you into a ‘box’ – none of the music belongs to one genre, or theme. Is this an intentional part of the songwriting process? If so, how do you keep yourselves from re-visiting genres?

Yes! The whole idea behind the band is to simply do whatever you want to do!

Although this is a Metal band, we do not try to restrict ourselves with certain sub-genres of metal, playing everything from death metal to thrash and hardcore.

When we made our first release, the idea went astray when we mixed different genres of music (reggae, punk, ska, jazz, country..) with metal music, which made each song sound as if it was played by a different band… as good as that was, it made writing these songs more challenging than expected, as the ideas were randomly drawn… from a box!

Your take on experimental metal, with almost every song having a different flavor, perhaps with origins in thrash, is really cool. Tell us how did you come up with the concept of the band, and what keeps you going?

The concept evolved from having lots of ideas and then having to go through the agony of giving up lots of good ones. Not long after that we thought to ourselves “why limit the number of ideas we’re coming up with and not do all of them”? What keeps us going is the environment around us. The things we see everyday fuel our love/hate and inspire us to write a song about the simple pleasures in life such as drinking Chai Karak to absolute hatred, and everything in between!

It’s hard to pick any one inspiration in your music, although we can hear lots of acts seeping through. Who are your musical influences?

As each member has his own taste when it comes to metal, we can all agree that 90s metal bands such as Pantera, Sepultura, and Slayer are major influences on the band in general.

The production on your songs, Samboosa is a great example of it, is really well thought out. Do you intentionally write your songs with the production in mind, or wait to the studio to sort that out? What is the songwriting process for the band?

The production is all done in-house. We try to keep the “band” vs “studio” processes separate and independent to maintain a certain standard for each of them. All songs are first jammed and written as a 4 piece metal band so as not to depend on anything extra to make us sound like us. Recording and mixing is another process where we get to experiment with other funky ideas, use sound effects, and add some new instruments using keyboards and stuff like that to juice it up.

For example, the song mentioned before, Samboosa, shows how a piece of samboosa expresses its love for its maker and how it devotes itself to its sole purpose in life, which is to be eaten and enjoyed. But if you live in Bahrain, you’d know that there’s no such thing as a good samboosa without drinking some Miranda Citrus right after it (very popular in these parts), so we just dedicated a whole section in the middle to the citrus drink to complete the union.

What inspires your songwriting? Is it just having fun, or is there a deeper message you’re pushing across?

Usually our songs are based on stories, fictional or out of experience, which covers local social happenings, we like to infuse these stories with positive messages most of the time... in some cases some songs have indirect messages, but nothing subliminal, just a song with 2 different stories for example.

An underlying theme in all the interviews and chats we’ve had with bands from Bahrain is that it’s a difficult place to get heard, play live and generally get respected as an act. Do you agree with that, and if so, how do you think it could be improved?

Oh yeah, it’s not easy being a metal band around here. It has to start by people accepting metal music and not keep thinking it’s some sort of cult. Once this root has been fixed, bands will grow and blossom until there’s no tomorrow. Until then, the struggle to be heard continues.

We’ve asked this question of others from Bahrain, but are interested in your response, mainly because the metal scene seems to be thriving there. What do you guys think of the Metal bands in the Middle East, and in particular, Bahrain?

There are lots of good bands forming around here these days, it makes us proud to have the honor of coming out as one army and showing everyone else that we can rock out just as hard as any other metal band. Bahrain’s scene is still a bit weak compared to our neighbors but it definitely has the potential to be something huge and we’re looking forward to that.

Finally, any shows planned in the future in Bahrain or beyond?

We wish… lol

Check our THEE PROjECT's Makshoof Music profile, listen and leave a comment.