Interview with My Doppelgänger's Alex Hilbert

Back in April I covered French metal outfit My Doppelgänger (http://metalmark.blogspot.com/2014/04/my-doppelganger-god-is-lie.html) and their very cool concept album, "God is a lie" (http://mydoppelganger.bandcamp.com/album/god-is-a-lie). Now it is my absolute pleasure to present an interview that I did with the band's guitarist Alex Hilbert who, in addition to performing with My Doppelgänger is also in the power metal outfit Lonewolf and has played with French legends Nightmare! I want to thank Alex for taking the time out of his busy schedule to share with all of us here with Heavy Metal Time Machine and I want to encourage everyone reading this to check out the musically adventurous "God is a lie"!


Andy-My Doppelgänger, what's it all about?
 
Alex-My Doppelgänger is a musical and lyrical journey through the madness of society and mankind. It's also mainly a matter of friendship and happiness to create music with no boundaries and people you like.  It's also a bet: 5 friends creating music, recording it themselves, making everything in the most professional way we could (except the mix and mastering in Germany with our friend Charles of Powerwolf), giving birth to that project from the writing of the songs to the booklet of the CD all by ourselves.
 
Andy-How did everyone meet up and then get down with this project?
 
Alex-R-general (my wife and bass) and V (guitar) were playing in the same cover band. They had a song (that will become later the opener "Somewhere in my head") but the rest of the band only wanted to play cover songs and no original ones. The band finally split up and, as a joke, we began with recording this song, we had fun... Then another, and another and we finally had enough songs to make an album !  So Antoine (drums in Lonewolf) joined and after a long time we found our friend Will (who helped Lonewolf on the choirs of "the fourth and final horseman") and he gave the final touch to the sound of the band.

 Andy-My Doppelgänger seems as if it is a million miles removed from one of your other bands Lonewolf. What's it like going from one extreme to the other?
 
Alex-Lonewolf is 100% what I want to play as a "traditional" metal guitarist. But I also like a lot of other styles (as long as there is guitar in it ) and I would say that with My Doppelgänger, every member can express his different sensibilities in complete freedom. We mainly love metal , but V is a Slash and GN'R fan, R General loves country music and southern rock, Antoine comes from the black metal scene, Will can sing almost anything and I also love southern rock and Dire Straits... So you can imagine that we still have a lot of things to say in the future ;-) 

 Andy-Naturally I loved it, but what has been the reception otherwise for your new album?
 
Alex-As we decided to make everything by ourselves, without the support of any label we make the promotion too, with the help of good peoples we know in the business . The bad thing is that it's harder to get reviews and contacts, but the good thing is that when someone say "I like your music" you know that it's true because there's no label paying for a good review behind ! So for the moment we had your good review in the US (and another one to come), a good one in Italy ,a good one in England , a good one in Germany, one in Japan... and 2 "not that bad " in France ;-) So I'd say that our own country seems harder to convince than the rest of the world !

 Andy-My Doppelgänger takes it's cue from sources other then rock, hard rock and heavy metal. I've got to say that it's kind of refreshing to see that I'm not the only one that likes the work of people like Johnny Cash and Mark Knopfler!
 
Alex-Yes ! We're not only metal fans as I told you ! This is the result when you write music with absolutely no boundaries ! But we really think (or hope !) that the music makes sense, it's not just a random melting pot of influences.

Andy-I'd say that it makes more then sense and that it translates over into some simply killer music! So, what made you guys decide to release a concept album?
 
Alex-The story was in "V"'s head long before we started the project and Will took the story to make it fit to every songs and he made it a concept album. The music and the atmospheres were good for this direction too.

 Andy-How are you guys planning to go about balancing this band with your day jobs?
 
Alex-Music is only a matter of passion, you can always find time for your passions!

Andy-Great answer! Now, please tell me that this won't just be one of those projects where you release one album and then we never hear from you again will it? My Doppelgänger holds so much promise!

Alex-You know, it started as a fun things with friends, we never thought about making a whole album. But now after all that work we have something that we like and are proud of, so we'll find a way to do more ! The whole creating process was made without having a singer, and now that we know we've found the perfect one for Doppel, it will be even funnier to write songs for him.

 Andy-Where do you guys go from here?
 
Alex-We're making promotion by ourselves for the first time so it's a new job to learn, and a lot of time to loose ! We're working on live performances too and begin to think about another album.

 Andy-For anyone reading this who is interested in the band where can they find out more?
 
Alex-Most of the things can be found here : https://www.facebook.com/my.doppleganger.official
with links for album order or downloading.
 
Andy-Great, thank you! Now, I always let bands have the last say. Is there anything we didn't cover that you would like to address?
 
Alex-Thanks for the support, and thanks to anyone that helps us following our dream. The idea behind the My Doppelganger project is also:  "do only what you want, and if you want it hard enough, everything can become real. Faith is also a matter of will." Cheers from France \m/