What Changes When a Band Signs to a Label?
By Ivan Amaya ( Vocalist & Guitarist Opensight)
For us, it started with being understood: When Opensight joined the Inertial Music roster for our latest album, The Outfit, the first thing that changed wasn't really practical. It was the vote of confidence.
That meant a lot because we've never made music by trying to fit neatly into a particular style. Opensight has often been described as a marriage of hard rock and heavy metal with film music, particularly the sounds and atmosphere of genre films from the '60s, '70s and '80s. We never sat down and decided to make "film inspired metal". It was more a case of pouring the things we love into the band and those influences finding their way into the music naturally.
In fact, it was listeners and the media who first started verbalising that side of the band: the crime thriller atmosphere, spaghetti westerns, suspense, vintage horror and hardboiled '70s action.
That uncompromising approach can be a double edged sword. It gives the band a clear identity, but some potential partners expect you to name a subgenre that immediately explains what you sound like. When labels, agents or promoters specialise in very specific niches, something “different” can quickly become something that "doesn't fit".
What was refreshing about Inertial was that they took the time to understand the music rather than looking at it purely from that pragmatic perspective. The things that made Opensight harder to categorise were actually part of what drew them to the album.
We had already spent time working independently: recording, organising releases, making videos and artwork, approaching the media and deciding how everything should be presented. Signing didn't suddenly replace all of that. What changed was having somebody outside the band spend real time with the music, visuals and overall idea and decide they wanted to help develop it.
That was particularly important with The Outfit. Even the title operates on different levels. There is the literal outfit, the suits that are part of our visual identity, but within the fictional world surrounding the record, The Outfit is also the name of an inner circle within a larger organisation. We deliberately leave parts of that world unexplained, but it gave us a framework for the artwork, videos and atmosphere of the album.
The label cared about those things too. They weren't simply interested in receiving the masters and putting them online. We could discuss whether the artwork made sense alongside the music, how the singles should be sequenced, the release schedule, promotion and how the record should be introduced to people.
I think some of that understanding comes from Inertial being built by musicians. Enrico, who runs the label, is also deeply involved with his own band The Moor and projects including Time and the Hunter. There is an immediate kinship when the person you're working with understands what it means to obsess over a mix, an image or whether the finished release actually represents the idea you started with.
Inertial is also a relatively young label, despite already working with established musicians such as Niklas Sundin through projects including Mitochondrial Sun and Time and the Hunter. There has been a feeling that we're building and learning together rather than entering a completely rigid system.
The practical benefits came with that relationship: another perspective on release plans, promotion, formats and logistics, quicker decisions and another pair of eyes capable of spotting things we might miss. It saved us a great deal of time and made the decision-making process considerably easier. The workload didn't disappear, it transformed. I still spend time promoting Opensight, contacting people, creating visual material and pursuing opportunities. What signing changed was that in relation to the album those decisions no longer existed entirely inside the band.
So far, that's probably the biggest thing I've learned. A good relationship with a label isn't necessarily about a label taking over. For us, it has been about finding somebody who understood what we were trying to make, believed in it, and became another trusted person in the conversation about what to do with it. That, more than anything, is what changed when we signed.
About Opensight
Ivan Amaya is the vocalist and guitarist of London based cinematic heavy rock band Opensight.Their latest album, The Outfit, is out now through Inertial Music with North American distribution via Season of Mist.
Get your copy of The Outfit
Europe: https://www.inertial-music.com/store/byartist/opensightUK: https://opensight.bandcamp.comAmerica: https://shopusa.season-of-mist.com/label/inertial/
