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Holy Roman Empire are a female-fronted Chicago five piece heading for big things. With their debut album "The Longue Durée" recently released, and a US tour with Rise Against starting this week, they're tipped to be one of the hottest new bands of the year. We were lucky enough to sit down with them at their album launch show last month for their first European interview.

OS: Today is your album launch show, so tell us why you think people should go and buy the album.
Emily [Schambra - Vocals]: Because we worked really hard on it and we love it and we're really proud of it. And it's something different.
Geoff [Reu - Bass]: Those are all very sentimental reasons, but in all honesty... I dunno. I think it's a pretty damn good record.
Jay [Jancetic - Guitar]: Um... Personally, for someone who has the EP already, the songwriting is much better on this. This is kind of a redundant answer for us, but a lot of the music on the EP was written before we had [Emily] in the band, so this time through we focused a lot more on writing the music around her and her vocals and her ability.
Emily: We were just a lot more together, I think, as a group.
Jay: Right. We worked more as a unit, and the songs show it. It's just a lot more cohesive. In general I think it's a better record.
Geoff: To be totally honest too, we should feel strongly about the record. I don't feel like there's a lot of bands out there doing things a lot like us. Strong female fronted band with, you know, solid backing music too, so I think we're a little bit different what's going down right now.
Emily: Even some of the bands people compare us to, I don't think we sound anything like them.
Jay: I don't think we do either.

OS: Who do people compare you to?
Emily: I don't even wanna say. I'll start getting really upset...
Jay: Just ... other female fronted bands.
Emily: Other female fronted bands out there.
Jay: Emily doesn't get along well with other girls in bands.
Geoff: We get a lot of comparisons to Evanescence and Paramore.

OS: But surely that's just because they have female vocalists?
Geoff: None of us are even remotely interested in any one of those bands, we're not influenced in the slightest by that, so...
Tony [Tintari - Drums]: They do their thing, and that has nothing to do with us.
Neeraj [Kane - Guitar]: We're just a band in our own right.

OS: Who are you influenced by on the album, or just in general?
Jay: Uh, a lot of Helmet, lot of Sunny Day Real Estate...
Geoff: It's definitely just gone off in its own direction. We know how we sound and we know how we write, but I feel like it's just gone off in its own direction. So even though we're influenced by those bands, it's totally it's own animal right now, and we know what we do well, and that's what we do.
Neeraj: Sometimes we write songs, and we'll listen back to it and be like 'oh wow this really sounds like....' I dunno. Some band we all grew up listening to.
Jay: We don't really sit down and say 'let's try and sound like this' or 'let's try and sound like that'. We pretty much just work with what comes out.

OS: How did you form, and why did you pick the name Holy Roman Empire?
Tony: The name came from my friend. He just said to me 'Tony, I've got a great name for your band...'
Emily: Yeah. We had another name for a while, and it just wasn't really sticking, and then Tony said to me like, 'What do you think of Holy Roman Empire?' and we were like 'Yeah that's really it.' It's got a good ring to it, a good rhythm...
Jay: We thought that the name ... the way the name just stuck out in it's own right, that's how we wanted the band to be. As far as how we started, uhhh...
Emily: Well [the rest of the band] had been playing together for like, their whole lives. And they put out feelers for a singer, to have people audition for them. You know, they advertised in the paper and stuff. And then, we got together through mutual friends in other bands and I auditioned for them a couple of times and it just went from there.
Jay: Neeraj and Geoff and I had a previous project which didn't really go anywhere, and we found Tony almost immediately. We were trying to find singers for almost a year. We tried out a lot of people...
Tony: Which was hilarious.
Jay: Which ... we had some interesting experiences with that. The only thing we really knew was that we wanted someone that could actually sing. We were trying to take a different direction to all the hardcore bands we had been in previously. We weren't like 'we want a guy' or 'we want a girl'. We just wanted someone who could sing, we tried out a lot of people and we heard about her through the grapevine, and coincidentally her other band was practicing just next door to us. So she came and she tried out, and she just blew us away immediately.
Emily: Thank you.
Jay: Within a couple of practices we had her in the band and it just went from there.

OS: How extensively have you been touring? We know you're touring with Rise Against later this year.
Geoff: We haven't really toured at all. We did a little bit last summer, but that was the first time we've really done a quote-unquote 'tour'.
Emily: It was a disaster. We just like... it was doomed, yeah.
Neeraj: There was a lot of crying on Emily's part.
Emily: There was a lot of crying on my part, yes.
Geoff: But it worked out, it happened. Since then we've been working on writing. There's really only so much you can do with an EP, you know, six songs, so we've been working on this album and now we're ready to tour.

OS: Are you nervous about the prospect of playing in front of new audiences when you do tour with Rise Against? They've got quite a different sound to you.
Emily: I'm not...
Jay: You know, I think if you were to ask that question a couple of years ago, I would have said yes, because I think we were kind of nervous about that at first, but we've played with some diverse bands and some bigger bands now, and it just seems like ... we seem to be the kind of band that no matter who we're playing to, we kind of draw people out of that and get a reaction.
Geoff: It'll be a really good opportunity to play to people who probably normally wouldn't come out to see us. Different places, up in Canada ... you know they're pretty open minded.
Jay: That's a good point, too. Especially being from the Mid-West, they're very.... people put a box on things. And especially in Chicago. Getting out there I think is going to be great for us where people are more susceptible to...
Emily: Well, Rise Against have a lot of fans of a certain age, who are more receptive and more willing to stick around and listen to newer bands like us.Where as older fans who have been around the block are more like 'Oh I only want to listen to this I don't want to listen to anything else'. I guess I'm not nervous. I'm excited.

OS: Why do you think it is hat so many successful bands have come out of the Chicago music scene?
[Long pause]
Geoff: It's funny, because I feel like there's been a lot of great bands in Chicago that no one has ever really heard of. So for all the really great bands that come out of Chicago, there's like, half a dozen or a dozen that no one's ever heard. The rare band like Alkaline Trio or Rise Against that establishes themselves nationally or internationally, I think it's almost an anomaly. And I think a lot of bands that come out of Chicago that really get known have to work really hard to get that stature. It's not like being on the East Coast like New York or something where any weekend you can go do shows in Baltimore or Philadelphia or whatever and hit some really big cities that are really big markets for music, or being on the West Coast where you could do a tour of just LA in like, a week, you know?
Tony: A band in say, California can automatically kind of pick up a manager and stuff like that, whereas in Chicago it's more like you have to do more of the work yourself. We did a lot of the work ourselves.
Neeraj: I feel like Chicago is really good because they're tough audiences. You have to work hard to win them over, you know? A lot of bands from the Mid-West and from Chicago are really grounded. They know they have to work hard to get a following and to get a manager, so they write good music and make good records.
Emily: It's kind of weird because even though Chicago is a big city, it's still in the Mid-West and it's still quite isolated, so it's kind of like we've got a little bubble going on in Chicago, Milwaukee kind of area.
Jay: A big part of it, too, is that Chicago has a really strong image and a strong work ethos, so there aren't a lot of bands here that are going to put on makeup or anything like that, or you know. A couple of them might...
Emily: There are some bands that do.
Neeraj: But in that band's defense, they also worked really hard..... We won't name that band.
Tony: It's just like the bands we all grew up liking and listening to like Helmet and stuff, they're just regular bands. Just regular dudes wearing regular tee-shirts, you know, play some fucking music, and you like it or you don't, but it's great music.
Neeraj: It's all about connecting with the audience, too.
Jay: That's a good point too. The difference between a band from the Mid-West and from say, LA or something is that we try to be very personable. We appreciate the fact that you like us, and we know the only reason we exist is because of you, so we try to just keep it simple... kind of reach out a little bit.

OS: Leading on from that, what do you think the next big band out of Chicago will be, other than yourselves?
Neeraj: In Chicago right now?
Jay: I honestly think as far as like, metal is concerned, we have a band out here called Plague Bringer, which are just fantastic. Just like, a two piece metal band...

OS: Two piece!?
Jay: Yeah! Two piece! Two piece.
Geoff: Any more pieces would kill you.
Jay: It's kind of hard, just because we're in it, you know? We don't really think about it.
Emily: We think a lot about ... ourselves.
Geoff: And we try to play with our friends, so, you know, some of them have had a lot of success, but I guess we don't really think of them that way. They're just these dudes we've known forever.

OS: Finally, do you have any plans to come to the UK at all?
Jay: Not yet. Obviously we would like to. We actually talked about it a few months back, but we'll have to see how some things pan out after the summer.
Geoff: We'd probably do better in Europe than we do in the US.
Jay: We probably would, and that's one reason we talked about it. You're so much more open-minded over there. We think we'd do really well.
Emily: Why don't you guys take us home with you?
Geoff: We'll do you a concert in your living-room!
Neraj: We really would love to come over sometime, though.
Jay: The label we're on has a UK subsidiary. A European one. They help distribute... you know, do tours and stuff, and they've expressed an interest in having us come out there but we'd like to get ourselves established a little more over here first. Although like Geoff said, we do appreciate that we would do better over there.

Holy Roman Empire's debut album "The Longue Durée" is out now on Hewhocorrupts Inc. and is available to buy from iTunes or their MySpace page, along with the 2005 EP "Lost In Landscapes". They embark on a tour of the US supporting Rise Against on July 16th.