After initially scheduled for a May 2020 release date, Ego Kill Talent’s sophomore full-length effort, The Dance Between Extremes finally arrived on March 19th. We asked vocalist Jonathan Dörr to share five things he learned from releasing a new album during the COVID-19 pandemic.
01) We’ve learned how important it is to be with our loved ones and how balance can help us to endure this situation. When the whole world was paused, we had to understand the situation and standby. Like everyone else, we found ourselves under clouds of uncertainty and fear. Anxiety took place, in a heavier way. Then, the truth came up in front of our eyes: no one is going anywhere (like always). We must wait till the pandemic is gone. But as the majority of the human beings, we’re always trying to control everything. We’re part of a living environment ruled by the laws of nature, which is constantly changing, so we can’t control anything. It’s the eternal fight between chaos and order.
02) The year of 2020 would have been a great year for us in terms of touring. We had 40 shows booked for the first semester of 2020 that were postponed due to the pandemic. A five-stadium tour in South America with Metallica and Greta Van Fleet, some of the biggest festivals in the U.S., like Sonicsphere, AfterShock, Welcome To Rockville, and also the biggest festivals in Europe such as, Rock Am Ring, Rock Im Park, Hellfest, Lollapalooza Stockholm, RockWerchter and an arena tour with System of a Down, and shows with the Foo Fighters. As we’re not going on tour, we decided to test ourselves for COVID-19, and once we had the green lights to gather up, we started to produce studio sessions (audiovisual content). We made a bunch of different sets, all recorded in our studio that were released on YouTube as a “digital world tour” that is called: LIVE ON THE FLAT SCREEN. It was really cool to make it and the closest we got from touring so far.
03) Creativeness arose during these hard times we’re living. Although we’re in the middle of the releasing campaign for the new album The Dance Between Extremes, we never stopped to write new music. There’s so much going on in the world right now that is impossible to not write about the way we feel.
04) We launched a newsletter and a Facebook group to keep our fans informed about everything we’re doing and it’s been really cool to see them participating on the construction of Ego Kill Talent’s community. A band needs it’s fans to move forward and our “Ego Killers” (they called themselves like that, and I think it’s really cool), are really engaged, and we feel their love for EKT emanate by supporting us, which helps us to go through these hard times with more confidence.
05) We learned how to be pro on “waiting.”
