Lister

By Anne-Sofie Oppenlænder
Translation by Tanja Cim Olesen

”But, it’s no less than a boy’s dream come true”, the guitarist Alex Munck says and continues, ”instead of standing in front of the stage applauding and screaming, the roles were suddenly reversed – that vas really a totally wild experience”.

We are in the band’s camp, which is very desirably located in the front row of camp East. Around me sit the five band members, who besides the two guitarists Alex Munch and Danny Ploughstrup also count bass player Martin Hasseldam, drummer Brian Larsen, and the frontman Kim Jarhelt.

The successfully completed concert is not surprisingly a recurring subject throughout the interview, and the five guys also quickly agree that the concert is the absolute highlight so far of the band’s 13 months of existence.

New songs for Roskilde Festival

So far Vira has ”only” released one EP, which in connection with the concert on the Roskilde Festival has caused a somewhat special problem. The band simply had to write songs in record time to fill out their 45 minutes set. However, the band stresses that the ideas were already there and therefore it wasn’t difficult to get together and produce songs, even though the time was scarce.

A band with ambitions

There is no doubt that Vira is very aware of the trip that they have started taking. They are refreshingly sure that their product is good, but still keep the self-importance at a distance. Thus they are also conscious of their genre and the image in the wake of it. In that respect the attitude of the band is clear though: Vira shall not be pigeonholed! There must be room for playing heavy metal and be inspired by other genres at the same time – and to look fly while doing so. 

With this diversity in mind, Vira also have nothing but praise for this year’s Roskilde Festival programme, and they mention at random At the Gates, The Dillinger Escape Plan, L.O.C, Veto, Spleen United, Jay Z, and Robyn as absolute musts. In addition to this, the heavy metal colleagues in Judas Priest, Raunchy and Slayer will be paid a visit as well. Just to put the record straight.