Interview with Cynthia Luna Frost
I got in touch with Cynthia Luna Frost front woman of the Swedish metal band Snow I.U., she was kind enough to sit down for an interview.
Me: Okay, this is a bit of an ice breaker, i ask every musician ive worked with this, if you could describe your bands music in one word what would it be?
C: Inspirational
Me: Your band created a festival i believe, how was that?
C: Correct, i founded the festival back in 2016 in response to that many venues close their doors and by doing so they make a huge dent in the cultural life of people.
I have always valued the underground scenes and I firmly believe that even the most unknonwn band out there can shiny brighter than a superstar act.
So the festival's foundation is to support the local underground in my hometown, with the hope of expanding this concept and bring in one or two somewhat bigger headline acts who can show the lesser-known bands what they're doing that has made them get to the level they're at. It's a mutual exchange really.
The first two festivals were great, we had a lot of interest from the general public. We had a one-year hiatus between 2016 and 2018 due to the venue being too small. In 2018 we kickstarted it again and in conjunction we celebrated "Ten years of Snow", the band's 10 year anniversary at the festival.
This year was also a great success with the festival reaching the eye of the local newspapers.
Me: You released your full EP in 2018 how did it feel getting it out there?
C: "Lost In The Forest", as we lovingly named it was such an odd experience. It seemed that along every step of the way we took to create it we took two steps backward. Some problems we experienced were: losing recordings in the recording studio, making us re-do already recorded takes and making us stress out a bit about the time we had to spend re-doing that and missing out on later during the recording process, the artist of the album cover breaking up contact with us, having problems with marketing the festival as the competition was very fierce among the other festivals that year for some reason and in the last minute the physical copies almost not getting to us on time due to a bug in the printer's system
Despite that the record came out as planned and we celebrated 10 years as a band the same day, at Snowfest 2018.
We're happy with the album itself, we very quickly found out that "Pirate's Night, the firts single off the EP was a favourite among our audience. "Inner Fury" is a newer version of one of the first songs the band wrote back in 2013, the original was featured on our demo, "Tales From utopia" released in 2015.
"Lost In The Forest", the title track of the EP is a 12 minute epic following the main character, "The lone wolf" as he faces his deepest fears in a maze that very few have ever traversed.
I personally would like to add more "oomph" to the songs and make them even more epic and have the listener really sucked into this wonderful world that we have created.
Me: The band seem very popular in Sweden, are there plans to tour outside of it ?
C: Why thank you! We're trying our best to get as many people along with us on this journey of ours. Lately we've experienced quite a boom, getting a lot of new fans in a very short space of time, which is unbelievable. We're humbled and eternally grateful for every single person who decides to follow us!
As a matter of fact, yes! We've sold merch to every continent on the planet now and we know that many of our fans are from the US and from around Europe.
We're currently looking into getting us over to the UK sometime next year, maybe earlier with luck. We also have contact with bookers from various countries around Europe and hope to be able to go on tour in Europe some time in the not-so distant future.
Me: Tell me if this one crosses a line its a really serious one, You are a trans musician, do you ever worry people would judge you and your band negatively for that?
C: I came out publicly as transgender in february this year and since then I haven't recieved any negative comments, judging or anything at all of the sort from my local community in my hometown or the people I know since before coming out. On the internet, however - I have recieved the occasional comment from a person who has called me out for being transgender but nothing that has been outright rude.
It's been the opposite for me, everyone's been very kind and understanding and supportive. It helped boost myself confidence to such a level that I besdies doing the music picked up modelling. Mind you, I am still far from a professional model but I hope to one day get to take that to the next level.
I think it boils down to me being so very open about it and I don't mind answering people's questions about it and I don't mind enlightening people about it. I don't have all the answers as I haven't come very far into the process yet due to que times but I'll gladly share my knowledge with anyone who is willing to learn. I aim to inspire others by just being the person I am.
You always have that fear as a public figure that people will judge you and start talking but so far it's been the opposite for the band aswell. I did worry before the first show we performed where I was performing as "my true self," as people call it that we'd be booed off the stage but it didn't happen and instead I got a lot of praise from people who told me I was an inspiration to them.
Since then I have told myself that there is no reason to worry about that. You can't please everyone and I am no stranger to stepping on people's toes so come what come may, i'm ready for it.
Me: Last one do you have advice for aspiring musicians?
C: My advice would be to never give up on your dreams. I’m a great example of an extremely dedicated person, hence why I have not given up with my band, despite the hardships that i’ve gone through with it over these past 11 years.
I firmly believe that if you really know that you can’t imagine a world where you cannot create music - you should absolutely be creating music.
A big thank you to Cynthia for being interviewed and you for reading you can find snow IU on Facebook and Instagram
photo by : helen