Welcome to the Artist Spotlight for Spanish rock band UVE.  They’re a heavy, melodic force filled with anger, passion and energy. Live, they’re outstanding. You can tell these are musicians that work at it.

‘Quiero Ver Al Mundo Arder’ (I Want To See The World Burn) there, from their 2015 Album ‘Hasta Al Final’

I got a chance to speak with lead singer Xavier Saez about the history of the band, how to survive as a Spanish band and their future plans

El M: “How did you originally meet and form UVE?”

Xavier: All the members (Pedro Duran-Guitar, ‘Mutha’ – Guitar, Manu Egido – Bass, Joakin Tortosa – Drums)  were playing in various other bands and knew each other from the circuit. We found that we had the same vision about music and it was inevitable that we would join together. We formed UVE in 2004 and began work on what would be our first album ‘La Fragil Sensacion de Euforia‘

El M: You’re currently playing a tour entitled ’10 Years Of Euphoria’ to mark the 10th anniversary of your debut. How do you feel the band has developed in the last decade?

Xavier: We’ve learned a lot since we started. Back in the early days , we didn’t think about structures or the way we wanted an album to sound, we just came to the rehearsal and threw up everything we had in ourselves.Nowadays we we’ve got a global point of view of every record. We take our time to think about every little part of a song, every musical arrangement.

El M: There’s some anger in your lyrics. How much is that due to the Spanish political situation?

Xavier: Everything! *laughs* I think it’s difficult to turn a blind eye with this whole  situation. We’ve been through a lot since the recession started, like the rest of the European countries but here we have a bunch of politicians that were stealing money from the people while blaming all the problems on people living beyond their means. Angry is the least we could feel. So I wanted to use the speaker that music brings to me to sens a message of revolution. I thought it was a moral obligation, so I did it.

El M: Speaking of the economy, how difficult is it to make a living as a band these days?

Xavier:  Here in Spain, it’s sadly impossible for a rock band to make a living through this. I don’t know about other music styles. I don’t care, honestly. this is what we do and  what we love to do and we’re keeping in this shit till the end. I can’t imagine my life without my band. Obviously you can survive playing in tribute bands, cover bands or big bands, in fact almost everyone of us does it, but make a living as a rock band? This is Spain, mate… Impossible.

(as an example, here’s a clip of ‘Orquesta Shadow’ , the show band that Xavier, Manu and Mutha played with in the summer. The drummer here, Murcia plays with Xavier and Manu in an excellent covers band ‘Superhits’ Murcia drums with the two piece rock band ‘Manual’ who are also well checking out if you’re dirty , stripped down noise.)

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