Napoleon
Photo Credit: Mike James

Napoleon – Five Questions With

NAPOLEON RELEASES POIGNANT NEW SINGLE & VIDEO “HEARTLESS”

Toronto’s Napoleon has recently released a brand new single & video, “Heartless.”

Heartless sees Napoleon going stronger, sounding heavier, and playing faster than ever before. Over the last couple of years, the band has been making a forceful sonic transition from hard rock into a staunchly heavier sound. A shift that is apparent not only in sound but also in the vocals in the new single, where they lyrically spit in the face of a God they have come to know as false and share a sheer disgust for preachers and followers – “am I not worthy? // they told me that you’d always be there for me // but I know now, they were just lying through their teeth.”

Heartless is a step forward for the band and just a taste of what’s to come,” comments Jon Elmaleh shares on the single, hinting at more new material on the way… Stay tuned!

The track was given the full treatment, coming paired with a compelling music video that’s almost as hard to pull yourself away from as the song.

Reflecting on the video, Elmaleh comments:

Heartless is my favourite video we have done so far for a few reasons. It was really cool and fun to play a small show, to get some friends/fans involved, and we had a ton of fun filming it at the bunker – who we’d like to shout out for donating their space to us for it. Also, because the video connects thematically into the next one, which will show the ending of the female character’s journey. Both Michael “Crusty” Amaral who directed it and Mya Manion who played the unnamed character absolutely crushed it, and we’re grateful to have had them working with us to make this video come to life.

First off, care to introduce yourself to our readers?

My name is Jon Elmaleh and I sing in a band from Toronto called Napoleon!

Tell us a bit about your recent release.

We just put out a new single/video called “Heartless.” It’s a bit faster and more aggressive than our listeners are used to but the reception has been fantastic so far.

Lyrically the song deals with themes of struggling with faith in religion, lack of belief in god, or wondering even if god has just chosen to skip over you, having doubts in your own value as a person, etc.

The video is also really cool. The story follows our unnamed character (played by Mya Manion), she is seen mourning the death of a loved one at the beginning and then struggling with religion, and towards the end we even see her buying some pills and then ominously driving to a hotel. The ending of her story is still unanswered, and will be continued in our next video, but more on that soon!

How do you typically go about the songwriting process? Do you have a specific method or creative routine that you follow?

I don’t really have a specific routine or anything, it usually either starts with a guitar riff or a chorus idea, and then I sort of build the song from there…one thing I’ve been trying to do a lot lately is follow up parts with drum beats that I feel fit naturally after certain selections in the song, and then I’ll write the part around that drum beat. I demo everything in logic and then send it to the rest of the guys, then we’ll workshop the tracks together in a room, then eventually we get into pre-production where we work on making certain parts (usually the chorus) pop a bit more. A big thing that I’m always keeping in mind when writing is how the songs are going to go over in a live setting, especially bearing in mind that a lot of our shows are support slots, where most of the people will be hearing us for the first time ever, so I try to make sure our songs have big, catchy choruses and things like that, memorable parts that stick with the listener

Looking ahead, what are your plans for supporting this new release? Are there any upcoming tours, music videos, or additional content that fans can look forward to in connection with this project?

So we have another single coming out in just a few weeks, as well as a few more songs over the next few months. If you’ve been following Napoleon for a bit, you already know we like to tour a lot, and we intend to keep that going, especially this coming summer.

Looking back on your musical career, is there a particular moment or accomplishment that you consider a turning point or a highlight?

A huge moment for me was getting Shane Told from the band Silverstein on our track “I Better Run” which came out back in 2021. Silverstein was one of the first heavier bands I ever got into and was a big gateway for me into post-hardcore/metalcore music, so having him on our track was kind of a full circle moment.

Last but not least, it’s time to pay it forward, what upcoming band or artist would you recommend your fans check out?

There is no way I can possibly limit this to only one, I have so many friends in so many great bands that we’ve had the privilege of playing with over the years, but to name a few, Riverside Drive is a pop-punk band from Windsor, and they’ve been killing it. Junko Daydream is another post-hardcore band from London, they put on one of the best live shows I have ever seen. Drug Wolf is a hardcore band up in Sudbury that we just did a couple of shows with this past February, and they are ridiculously good, and the nicest dudes. Deathnap is a hardcore band from Montreal, also stupid good, our bassist Camilo pretty much lives in a shirt he picked up when we played with them this past summer haha. Julien’s Donkey Boys are a brand new band out of Milton, really close friends of mine, it’s been cool watching them get started, every time I see them it’s always better than the last. Dammit Goldie are a band from Hamilton, also crushing it…I should probably stop there, I know you only wanted one haha, and there are so many more, I’m sorry to anyone I missed.

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