Stratuz is one of the oldest extreme metal bands in Venezuela, evolving from a fairly traditional death metal sound to an increasingly atmospheric doom/death style. Guitarist Gerónimo Egea joined the band in 2005, and was an important part of the songwriting team of the band’s 2022 ‘Osculum Pacis’ album, which was the first ever extreme metal album to be awarded a prestigious Pepsi Music Award.

“That was really special for us, because the Pepsi Awards are always given to pop artists”, Egea smiles. “Even in the rock category, they were always given to more pop/rock-oriented bands, or softer stuff. So the fact that we even got nominated and won, being an extreme metal band with no radio airplay or stuff like that, was really cool.

It was also weird going there and sharing the stage with people who play reggaeton or stuff like that. They gave us the best rock album and the best rock band of the year, but all the other awards were mostly for artists playing reggaeton and pop music. So we were truly the only guys wearing all black. But it was fun!

We won at the Premios Metal Hecho en Venezuela too. It’s really nice to receive accolades for something. But we don’t want anything to think that we’re better than anyone else or anything. It’s just really cool that metal made its way into the Pepsi Music Awards. And maybe some other bands will start winning those awards in the future too.

They were really nice to us. They treated us great. Actually, after the awards, they also invited us to a homerun derby with a big party – baseball is a really big thing here in Venezuela – where they invited a lot of artists and people from the media. We also went there. In black. Looking like we do, haha!”

A Really Easy Transition

“I started playing guitar when I was 9 or 10 years old, and soon after, I took my first acoustic guitar lessons to learn to play songs with simple chords. But what I really wanted to do was to play rock music, like all the bands I liked. Which at the time wasn’t extreme metal, but bands like AC/DC and Metallica.

So I found a teacher, and I took lessons from this teacher. His name was Gregory Carrero, and he was the guitarist in Stratuz back then. So I knew of Stratuz since I was just a little kid, and my dad was also a metalhead. I was always asking my dad to take me to see my teacher’s band. Eventually we went to a rehearsal, and my dad and those guys ended up being friends.

My dad (Ronald Egea) actually ended up producing the first Stratuz cd ‘In Nomine…’ when I was a little kid. So I was with the band; I have known them most of my life, and they have been my friends forever. So when they asked me to join the band all these years later, I was very proud, and very happy. When I joined, it was really just like hanging out with a group of friends. It was a really easy transition. Also, they are really easy-going people. They are really pleasant to be with.”

Always Talking of Coming Back

Egea joined Stratuz during the long album drought between ‘Osculum Pacis’ and 2000’s ‘Spirt Seduction’. “What actually happened was that when I joined the band in 2005, we started working on a new album”, he explains. “And it turned out being a really small release of an EP instead of an album. Very few people have that EP. It’s called ‘Without Original Sin’. It came out as an EP because the recording wasn’t so good. And at the time, it was a difficult time in Venezuela. Well, Venezuela is always a difficult time, haha!

That kind of took us down. Our vibes went down after that. And soon after, Venezuela went through an economic crisis, and we took a break. At first, we said it would be maybe a two-year break, but it turned out lasting around eight years instead. We would meet, and we were always talking of coming back and doing something new. But it just didn’t happen for a long time.

That lasted until 2017, I think it was. That’s when we said: it’s time. I’m not going to say the country really got that much better, but it did get a little better, and we found the time to do it. We started rehearsing, we played a few shows, and that’s when we said: let’s make a new record. And right in that moment, the pandemic happened. So of course, all live shows were cancelled. But the good thing is that we had a lot of free time to write new music. Pretty much the entire album was written during the pandemic, in about a year and a half.”

More Heartfelt

Despite ‘Osculum Pacis’ being Egea’s first full album with Stratuz, he played a significant role in the songwriting process. “It was nice of the guys to trust me”, he says. “Of course, we all pitch in, but yeah, most of the ideas were started by me. I also have the easiest means to record in my house, to make the ideas into something tangible. It’s modest, but I have had the time to learn how to record something and not make it suck. I think the pandemic hit me really hard in some ways, but creativity was high.

Most of the album was recorded in my studio. We couldn’t record the drums here, and some of the stuff we recorded here – the guitars for example – were later re-amped by our engineer in Chicago, Arturo Banús, who is a friend of mine. So even though they were recorded here, they were re-recorded somewhere else anyway.

Me being the youngest one in the band – we actually have a drummer now who is actually younger, and I’m 43 – I don’t actually like most newer metal bands. I’m always listening to the old stuff. One thing I don’t enjoy among newer metal bands is that it has kind of become like a sport: who is faster, who is more technical, who is more proficient at their instruments? We kind of discussed the idea of taking it the other way: let’s make it slower, and groovier.

But of course, what we do is dark and heavy. When we talk about taking it in a different direction, it isn’t necessarily a matter of going softer and slower, but more a matter of being more heartfelt. Also, this is just the way the songs came out when we were writing them.”

Not Conditioned Properly

“The metal scene here is really small, and it has kind of been the same few people for twenty, thirty years. There’s always a new wave coming, but most of them don’t last as long. There’s a new band that recently played at Wacken, they are called Vhill. I hope they last long and have a wonderful career. Because it would be a shame for them to go the same way that most metal bands go in Venezuela, which is to do something nice and then disband. There’s only a few bands here that have more than two albums.

We live in Caracas, and there are people here in the scene. Not that many, and as I said, most of the audience here is not young. But there is a really nice scene in Barquisimeto, which has always had a really nice metal scene. That’s actually always been like a second home for Stratuz. I have played there with other bands as well, and the people are always great. Puerto La Cruz also has a really nice scene. There have always been several clubs to play, and some really nice bands.

Finding good places to play is difficult enough. In Stratuz, we decided that we are too old for tolerating bullshit, so we decided we are not playing pubs that are not conditioned properly for our music. Because what happens is: you go to these places, and the equipment they have is terrible, the speakers are broken, the mixing desk is forty years old, so when you go and play there, it will sound like shit.

When that happens, people will think the band sounds bad. But it’s not the band; it’s the venue. So we decided we are not going to play those places anymore, and we are going to play very little, maybe one or two shows a year, but at least we do them right. Like in a theater, with better production. It’s harder to do, and more expensive, and we prefer it this way. We want the audience to have the best version of the band they can get.”

Respect for the Recordings

“The guys give me all the freedom I want when playing the Stratuz material from before I joined. They tell me: do your thing. But I try to stay as close to the original recordings as possible. Just out of respect for the recordings. They are really important to me. Also, I do that out of respect for Facundo (Coral, former guitarist) or Gregory or whoever recorded the parts back then. I try to play their stuff the right way.

When I first joined the bands, we had two guitarists in the band, because Facundo was still with us. It wasn’t until fairly recently that we decided: let’s just keep playing with one guitar for a while. Maybe we will get another one sometime. We really don’t know. Also, Leo (Rangel, bassist) has to fill more space; he has to more stuff to fill in the blanks when I’m doing solos.

There is stuff on ‘Osculum Pacis’ that I don’t do live. There are different acoustic guitars, for example. There are nylon-string acoustic guitar parts, there’s a folk acoustic guitar on another part, and also, there’s a heavy part with an acoustic solo. So that’s not doable with one guitar live. So I just do the solo on the electric guitar, and make it work similarly. Plus, I can use an acoustic guitar simulator effect.”

Worlds Apart

“If you listen to the first Stratuz album, and then to ‘Osculum Pacis’, it’s worlds apart. But if you go through them in order, you will understand the journey. Since the new stuff is more refined, more clear, there are people who prefer that. If those people listen to the old stuff, they feel like it’s too heavy or too extreme. But there are a lot of people – and I truly mean a lot of people – who complain that we have mostly been playing new stuff, because they really want to hear the old stuff that we haven’t even released in years, haha!

Then there are songs like ‘Dawn’. When I wrote ‘Dawn’, I thought: this is too soft. I overstepped it with this one. This is almost a ballad. They’re not going to like it. But I sent it to the rest of the guys to check it out anyway. Because as I said: it was in the pandemic, so I was always sending files and working remotely. So I sent it anyway, and they really liked it. Okay, cool, thank you, haha!

We recorded the videos for the songs from ‘Osculum Pacis’ songs in a nice theater with nice equipment. It’s kind of weird to go to a theater to see a metal band, because you are seated. But the sound is great, and the lights are good, so I think it’s better. We were playing with a little orchestra, like a string quartet and an eight-piece choir.

We even want to work with a bigger orchestra, and we are actually working on that. That’s going to happen. We are already writing new stuff, and it’s going in that direction, with symphonic elements as well. So I think it’s all going to work out great.”

Fortunate to Be Privileged

“Back when I was a kid, but even now, if you want to buy a really good guitar, you won’t find it in a store here. You have to ship it from somewhere else. But back then, it was worse. I got a really crappy guitar at first I think I was 9 years old or something, as I started playing in 1990 or 1991. Because I remember I started playing, and really soon after, Metallica’s black album was released. It was a big thing for me.

I had a crappy guitar until one of my sisters traveled to New York for work, and she brought me a black Jackson Randy Rhoads, which I still have today. It was my first very good guitar. I was also fortunate that I was privileged. My parents could afford to get me a good guitar and pay for me to have music lessons and things like that. I know it’s not like that for most people in Venezuela. I was really lucky.

My parents have been really supportive. Of course, when I finished high school, and I told them that I wanted to be a musician full-time, they asked me if I was sure that’s really what I wanted to do. ‘Don’t you want to be something with a computer?’ So I tried that, and it didn’t work for me, haha! So I stuck with music. But fortunately, they were really supportive anyway.”

So Many Projects

“I live off music. That’s all I do. I play in cover bands, at weddings, and every kind of music that you would never relate me to, haha! I was in a lot of cover bands before, and I had a rock ‘n’ roll band that made original music, which was kind of like AC/DC meets Aerosmith. But it didn’t really make it big. We didn’t release anything worth mentioning. But it was a good time. I got to travel around Venezuela with that band, and that was nice.

I have always been playing with different people, and I still do. I am in Stratuz, but I am also in so many projects that you wouldn’t necessarily imagine me being in. Like right now, I’m starting playing the music for ‘Mamma Mia!’ here in Venzuela, the musical with ABBA music.

Apart from that, I have been teaching guitar for almost twenty years. It’s really cool. Every kind of music too. Most people who approach me know that I’m a metal and rock guy, and most of my students are metal and rock guys too. But I have had every kind of student, and I have taught them different kinds of music.

Most of my students are kids, mainly teenagers, but right now, I also have a student who is 55 or something like that. He used to play drums, but now he decided that he wanted to do something different, and he’s learning to play guitar.”

Arranging a Tour Within Fifteen Days

‘Osculum Pacis’ was released internationally by Sliptrick Records and WormHoleDeath. Does that mean there will be more activity outside Venezuela for the band? “We almost went on a South American tour recently”, Egea says. “But we had to cancel because of visa issues. We arranged the tour with enough time to take care of things, but the Chilean visas didn’t arrive in time.

When they eventually did, we tried to rearrange the tour, but it was difficult. When Chile gives you a visa, you have to enter the country within thirty days. If you don’t, you will lose the visa. So we had to try to arrange a tour within fifteen days, and we just couldn’t. It wasn’t doable.

We are going to try and get something going in Europe, but that is much more expensive for us. But it is something we are working on. Stratuz toured Europe before I joined, and they had a great time there. And it’s something I have always wanted to do as well, but it never really happened.”