When was Heaven Rain formed?

Goran: "I started with Heaven Rain in the summer of 2006 when I started recording the instrumental track Rain Will Fall Again in my home studio. But the ideas for Heaven Rain were already living inside my head for a long time. Because there was a guitar part I had composed for Rain Will Fall Again I called up Igor Paspalj who was also a student of the Academy of Art I was studying at. For the other compositions, which also required vocals, I got in touch with Božidar Šević and through-out 2007 we recorded 5 songs and we won several competitions from local radio stations. In the beginning of 2008 Nebojša Lakić (drums) and Bojan Jokšić (bass) joined Heaven Rain and the band was formed."

Did your Academic study influence your music?

"At the Academy we learned about classical music, but in our daily lives we listened and played a wide-range of genres. My academic education was mostly supplemental to my style. It helped me to perfect my musical capabilities, which I believe is the very purpose of studying."

How hard was it to find all the members of the band?

"I already knew Igor and the search for a singer didn't last very long. We met Božidar trough a mutual friend and that is how he joined Heaven Rain in the fall of 2006. I knew that Nebojša was around as a musician for a long time and that he played in many bands. So, I had no doubts that he would fit in. For Bojan it's more or less the same story. I got many recommendation for him from my friends and so I called him up and that is how we started our collaboration."

Are you happy with the final result for your first album?

"When we signed with Moonwolf Records we knew that the whole album would be recorded again from scratch and we all agreed that this was the right choice. We recorded Far and Forever in the studio of our friend Pavle Bogdanović during the months March, April and May where we also did the mixing and postproduction of all the tracks. We are very happy with the final result."

How did Heaven Rain get a record deal?

"Most of the credit for our contract with Moonwolf Records goes to our friend and manager Dražen Žigić. He had already worked with The Moonwolf Entertainment Group in the past. When they introduced their own record label in January 2008, signing with them seemed like a natural step. We are very happy with Moonwolf Record, they financed the recording of the first album for us and they are working very hard on the promotion of this album and on the preparation of our upcoming tour."

Heaven Rain has the melodic power of progressive metal but is also strongly influenced by the Finnish school. What was the influence of these genres in your music?

"When I started working on Heaven Rain, my goal was to make music that I would like to listen. I wanted to make good songs and if someone else liked them that’d just be great. It looks like many people so like it if you consider all the visits on our webpage, our success on the radio and the fact that we got signed by a label from abroad. I’m not hiding, not even a bit, that my role-models were Finnish bands such as Nightwish and Sonata Arctica but we started working on Heaven Rain to make something our own, without any limitations and I hope that in the future our originality will only continue to grow."

What are your goals after the release of the first album?

"We will give our best to play wherever we can this year. We are preparing a tour in western Europe for September and we also plan to shoot a music video for our first single Can't Stay during September. I think music videos are a great help, promotion-wise, for any band in any kind of genre. If we put enough effort in it we can get a lot of TV stations to air that video and if they don't then there's always YouTube and MySpace, hahaha...

By the end of the year we will start working on a new album if everything goes well. There is already a lot of material for the second