Interview with Raam of Hypernova
By: Sam Houghton

In a loud bar situated somewhere on the bustling Bedford Avenue, Raam, the lead singer of Hypernova, sat and talked with Knocks about life as a true underground hooligan, hiding from the confines of the Iranian police force and the boring drone of the singer/songwriter.

Your story is an inspiring one, living in a society that served up floggings for playing rock and roll. Do you have a distinct memory or dream when you knew you wanted to be a musician?

Raam: When I was a kid I had no idea I wanted to be a musician. The only thing I was sure about was that I did not want to give into the conventional sort of routine of life, you know, being miseducated, going through the structural norms, getting a degree, hopefully finding a job, working 'til I was 57 and then retiring. That would take way too long. I knew at a young age just to do what I love, what makes me feel good.
I was always very creative with different things. When we first started the band, it was more like fun and games. Kami, the drummer, told me that his only dream was to come to New York and play. I told him to have faith in me and I’d make that dream come true. At the time, I was just flirting with the idea of being in a band. I didn’t know any instruments, I was the only one in the band who spoke English because I grew up in the States. So I became the singer. We just started playing around. It was just very fun. Our only fans were our sisters. It was the only way to express ourselves in that sort of repressive Iranian regime: there were no clubs, no bars, if you got drunk you got whipped, you couldn’t have sex with girls… everything is just so restricted. You find a way to let it out. As a teenager you naturally rebel against everything. You don’t even know why you’re rebelling. And we did what we did. We just liked it. It took me a couple of years for the music to sink in. After being in the band for four years, just being in the underground scene, we had this one concert… we played like 50 songs for four and half hours. No one left. People just stood the entire time and danced their asses off. Everyone was just dying by the end of the show. They just stayed and poured their hearts out. It was that moment really that it hit me that, wow, if kids really love us this much, we have to be doing something right. Maybe this is the path I should be taking, seriously. At the time, I was studying international relations in the hope that I could change the world and then I said, "Ahh fuck it, I could be a rock-star. It’s much easier to change the world as a rock-star.”

What are the other underground bands in Iran like? Did they do similar things as to what you guys were doing?

Raam: Yeah. The scene is cool. It’s very raw. The equipment is very limited. The state of the art equipment we have here, they don’t necessarily have, and if they do, it’s very expensive and very hard to afford. With the limited capabilities, these kids put their hearts into their fucking music, and when something that is so raw and beautiful, you automatically connect with it. There are so many talented musicians and even those that aren’t even talented but are getting there, you connect with them on a very strange level because what they are doing is being so sincere. When you watch them playing in front of you, you know they’re playing their fucking hearts out. To an extent, here in the States, so many bands, some of them are extremely talented, but a lot of them lack soul or heart and they’re just standing there. What exactly are they trying to convey through their performance… their music. I think that if you have the right vibe, the right energy, the right intention, people will automatically connect with that.
When we first came to the States, we sucked ass. I didn’t understand why people cared about us. I didn’t feel our music was worthy of attention. It was awful. I still have a long way to go to become a great musician. The truth of the matter is people connect with our energy, our passion and our drive.
People wanted us to succeed. We were overwhelmed by this support. We were going against all odds and people connected because of that. Somehow we were making it. People were rooting for us and we didn’t want to let them down… didn’t want to let ourselves down. We always felt that if we were given the right opportunities, we would take things to the next level and we got that opportunity and we’ve never looked back. It’s been a crazy ride.

I like the song: “American Dream.” The song references a certain lifestyle in LA. It starts out with you saying, “I never wanna go back home,” and ends with you saying “You’re all so dead in inside.” Who are you referring to when you say, “You’re all so dead inside?”

Raam: It’s referring to ourselves actually. A lot of crazy shit happened to us in LA. Very, very random. Very crazy.

What happened?

Raam: I can’t say, I’ll keep that for later, when we look back. But…

We’re looking for some good stories… [laughter by interviewer]

Raam: Of course, of course, but some stories are best left untold.
But what that song means is that after experiencing all that we’ve experienced, I can’t go back to being the innocent kid I was in the underground where I was doing things without knowing the reasons. We’re no longer innocent. Now there’s a purpose, a higher reason. It’s music. It’s politics. It’s love. It’s universality. It encompasses many themes. When you live outside of America, you see Hollywood as where all your dreams can come true. We went there and started living a very Hollywood lifestyle. We got caught up, enjoying our fame, living our 15 seconds or whatever, and we reached a point where I turned into everything we hated. It’s just a criticism of the dream and how it became perverted into this very weird thing. We became a victim. It’s a very beautiful place. I love LA, but I’ll think twice before moving back there.

What is it you turned into that you didn’t like? I know you partied, but what…

Raam: The lifestyle with the drugs, the alcohol… It was a very materialistic lifestyle. Nobody grows old in Hollywood. Everyone’s just trying to live forever. I felt I was loosing my mojo. My creative juices weren’t flowing as much. I work better when I’m living like a bum like I am in Bushwick now. It’s my comfort zone. I feel like in LA we got a little too comfortable. We still party like crazy in New York, but we stay committed and focused to our work. We’re very hard workers and we got to keep it that way. If we don’t keep a certain discipline, the band will fall apart. We’re driven by our passion for music. I didn’t come here to become famous or to look cool, or hip… I don’t give a fuck about any of that. I came here to make good music that people from now 'til whenever will relate to and enjoy.
I feel like we’re only getting better every day. When we first came to the states, I gave ourselves a 1 out of 100. Now I’d say we’re a 10. All the new material we’ve been writing is astronomically… it’s so much different than it was before. It’s got a life of it’s own. I can’t wait to put it all together. It’s gonna be a fun experiment.

What do you consider good music?

Raam: We all listen to different stuff. I’m a big Pink Floyd fan. Kodi, the guitarist, is a Nine Inch Nails fan and Queens of the Stone Age. Grandaddy is one of my favorites. To be honest I don’t listen to that much rock music. I listen to classical a lot, like Requiems.

What do you think good music will do? If you create good music, what do you want it to achieve?

Raam: Anyone can pick up a guitar and put together some sweet tunes. I want to put something together that’s a bit more challenging – a bit more diverse. Right now we’ve incorporated a lot more electronics into our new music with a lot of playback. It’s getting much more complex and sophisticated. It’s not just a simple standard four piece, five piece band where you just play your parts. I love Godspeed You! Black Emperors. They’re very progressive stuff.
But at the same time, I don’t want it to be too progressive. I really like how people enjoy going crazy. Obviously our attention spans are all really low… we want everything now like our fast food. I like the idea that live music has to be intense and engaging. I can’t stand singer/songwriters. I get bored to death. As good and amazing as some of them are, I have a hard time. I like being somewhere that’s extremely loud and the music’s pumping. It really engages you as a listener. That’s an experience you can take home with you. That’s what I love about live shows.
My whole theory is that music will be free in five years. You know, everyone’s always downloading music. The culture has really changed. It’s shifted. You really have to focus on your live show. What separates good bands from great bands is that live show. It’s an art of its own. It takes quite some skill and time to master.
For me, there’s no better drug than performing. It’s like our religion. Go anywhere in a church or synagogue or mosque, anywhere that has a group of people focusing their energy or prayer on some common thing. You totally feel and sense that unity. Music is the same way too. There’s this mutual respect and energy and love and appreciation. For me it’s just about expanding that and pushing it as far as we can

Are you still in contact with bands back in Iran?

Raam: Of course. A lot kids back home look up to us. I personally have gone after these kids to get their visas together and hook them up with festivals. I send journalists in. These kids are the ones that believed in me. I owe it all to them. I feel totally responsible.
But I have to believe in them. A lot of them email me and ask, “What the fuck how come you’re not helping us out?” Everyone should be given a chance, but those who work harder deserve a better chance. I help out the ones that aren’t necessarily the most famous, but definitely the ones that have the most potential. I’m in touch with a lot them, trying to get them to come out to New York. One of the bands I’m hooking up are The Yellow Dogs. They do what they do because of their love for music. For a lot of them, it is just for an escape, and once they get out here they end up working at Starbucks, forgetting what their main objective is. I want to help out the kids who are focused on the music.
We focus on our music 24/7. I haven’t had a job in ages… I’ve been fired from every single job I’ve had in my life. Thank God for music. It’s the only thing I’m decent at. I pick my own hours. I’d rather be poor and hungry than have to be a slave to the wage and constantly worrying about paying for this and that. I’ve been very fortunate. I don’t know why the universe loves me so much. As long as I can commit the majority of my time and energy on my music, I’m the happiest mother fucker on this planet.

Do you ever doubt yourself?

Raam: All the time, man. If you don’t, you’re not a true artist. It’s not like some day you wake up and go, "Everything’s perfect." I don’t think there’s a single artist out there… maybe a few think they are. For me, everyday, I wake up asking how I can be better. How can I push the envelope, how do I create better and better music? Many times I hear a great song and I’m so jealous. I think, “Man I wish I would have wrote that song.” But it makes me work that much harder. I don’t want to be a mediocre band or that band from Iran that had a couple cool songs. I don’t believe in boundaries. I consider myself a citizen of the earth first. I just want to be able to play music around the world, to as many people as I can for as long as I can.
I don’t think it’s just music. If you follow anything with a true passion, the only thing that can prevent you from your dreams is yourself. I’m the kind of person that lives with no excuses. I take responsibilities for everything in my own life whether it’s good or bad. If I failed, I failed on my own terms. [pause] Failure is not an option. That’s what I love about our band. We just keep working and working and going forward. We’ve had many opportunities. Many we’ve taken advantage of, and some we haven’t.

Talk about how you came up with the name Through the Chaos.

Raam: I think the idea was basically us and all the shit we went through to get here today. Just imagine where we came from. Sometimes we don’t even believe our own story. When I look back and wonder, “Wow this is us? How the fuck did we all do this.” We went through so much shit, being denied visas because we’re from the axis of evil, getting a New York Senator involved, coming here with 400 dollars a guitar and nothing else. We were only supposed to be here for two weeks. Two weeks turned to two years. Somehow, we just survived. We’ve lived on the road, living at random people’s homes, on couches… It’s been a crazy adventure. It feels like the longest holiday of my life.

I’ve been reading about how you basically lived underground while writing your music. What were you listening to, what inspired you to keep going?  Not necessarily musicians, but family members and what not?

Raam: We had this common bond, a common passion, after we realized we should really be taking our music seriously. This was the only way to express ourselves in this fucked up world. It was our sanctuary. It was a place we felt safe in.
In Iranian society, there are two sectors to life. There’s a public life and a private life. In the public, you know, everyone’s all religious and this and that, and then behind close doors, everyone’s the exact opposite. It’s madness. So for us, we were just trying to find a way to express ourselves. We would practice for 10 hours a day. We’d just play and play and play. The guys were questioning me, you know, asking me: “What’s the point? Why are we rehearsing so much?” I just told them to have faith. I was just driven by this blind passion that I had to keep doing what I was doing. And it paid off. No one believed in us. Everyone was like: “You guys are fucking insane. You’re never going to be able to compete with bands outside of Iran.” And I always told them if you can’t dream about achieving great things in life how are you gonna achieve anything in reality. You gotta dream. You gotta believe in something. What’s the point of living if you can’t dream.

Did you have any close calls? From what we hear, you can get flogged for playing a show.

Raam: I’ve been caught by the police many times. For our shows, we’d tell people to meet somewhere in a specific region. It’s was all very well organized. We had cops on a kind of payroll that would watch out for us. It’s very stupid underground shit. This one time a band we knew, they had a big show that was raided. They got fucked. There were a couple busses full of people going to jail from that show. Whenever we got raided, we ran away. I have so many stories. One time I had to run from the cops and I hid from the cops under a car for six hours waiting for the sun to come so I could go back home. That was the thing… the rush from the underground… People ask me if I get nervous for shows over here. I tell them “Dude, everything is legal here. What do I have to be nervous about?” When we used to play in Iran I’d have one eye on the door so if the cops came in, we’d run out the other door. Imagine playing in that environment under those circumstances. It’s insane! And the kids at these shows, they’re jeopardizing their lives, too. They get in just as much trouble as we did. There’s this mutual feeling of adrenaline, there’s this rush… To be honest I’ve never experienced anything like those underground shows over here in the States. That fear ads a whole new element to the show.

I bet. In the sixties, here, it might have been similar. There were riots sometimes. You have any riots?

Raam: No musical riots. I used to go to protests. I remember the first time, I went to a protest and these anti-riot police raided the protest. They started beating us all up. I was like 16 or something, and I was like, “Oh god, this is so exciting, getting beaten by riot police.” I looked in the papers the next day to find pictures of myself getting beat up, but there wasn’t any story about it. The riot never happened in the paper. Obviously. That’s when I realized how evil politics were and how manipulative everything is.

Do you ever feel like going back to Iran and bringing some change?

Raam: I think change in Iran will only happen through time and slow reform. Nothing overnight. Our culture is very rooted in a traditional, conservative, and ancient culture. It’s not gonna turn into a western style democracy overnight, which I don’t know is even good or not to be perfectly honest, but, it’ll take time to become a more progressive country. I’m optimistic. I think it will get there. The majority of the country over there is under 35. As the youth take over the country, I think they will do the right thing.
For us personally, I can’t wait to go back home and play some more shows. But I think that before I do, I have to reach a certain success, be so established so that if I do go back over and they throw me in jail… “Do your worst to me!” you know. I‘ll be on the cover of Time magazine or something. I’m not afraid of going home and going to jail, but if we reach a certain success, that could be our get out of jail free card.
The more success we achieve, that gives that much more hope to the kids back home that they too can achieve all this. But if we go back as failures… 'cause no has ever come out of our country and even come close to as far as we have. It could be very historical in our country. And I’m gonna keep pushing it as far as I can to make sure it happens.

Alright, well thanks for your time.

Raam: Thank you, brother. You should come to our show.