Corrosion Of Conformity

Interview by Dom Lawson (Metal Hammer)

For the first time in over two decades, Corrosion Of Conformity have reverted back to the three-man line-up that recorded the seminal crossover classic Animosity back in 1985. With Mike Dean on bass and vocals, Woody Weatherman on guitar and drummer Reed Mullin back behind the kit for the first time since 2000’s America’s Volume Dealer, the band are reliving their youth and making one hell of a genre-shattering racket on their new self-titled album. As Mike Dean explains, some things are just meant to be…

The band has had a somewhat fragmented recent history. Why has it taken so long to make a new record and how did you end up returning to the line-up that made Animosity way back in 1985?

Mike Dean (bass/vocals): “Like you said, we’ve been doing it in fits and starts for the last little while. We’ve been kind of working Pepper’s schedule. He was such a big part of what we were doing, you know? So I guess we decided to do something without him so that we could really do it all the time and make it a full-time thing. We’ve come up with something that we can keep doing and we don’t have to wait around for someone else’s schedule to work out in our favour.”

When did Reed come back into the fold?

MD: “I’d been kind of out of contact with Reed since he quit the band. It was a combination of things being maybe not that good between him and the rest of us, as far as creative collaboration and also he was suffering from some kind of spinal issues. I don’t know what he did to himself, but most likely just from playing the drums really hard and banging his head and craning his neck to sing, doing something really athletic but without training or warming up. So it was kind of a combination of those things that led him away and he was getting married a couple of years ago and he invited me to his wedding, which I couldn’t make because I was working but I made it to the reception and I managed to say hello. Shortly after that, he was just playing music with a guy named Jason Browning. Woody had moved away from North Carolina and moved up to the mountains of Virginia, so me, Jason and Reed were doing something that we were calling Righteous Fool. So we’d been doing that since about 2008 and it was cool reconnecting with Reed and seeing that he’s a better drummer than ever. Playing some stuff that was in a kinda different vein was a lot of fun.”

How did that turn into the rebirth of COC?

MD: “We started getting a lot of offers to do festivals in Europe with Pepper and all that, and he mentioned all these invitations and we were all set to go and do High Voltage in London, and then we didn’t hear back and it turned out that Down was doing it and there were a couple of other festivals and Down was doing those too. Someone joked that we should just go back to being a three-piece and since some anniversary of Animosity was coming up we thought it would be great to exploit that and play those old songs again. The next thing we know, we came up with some good new material and worked it into the set right away and that’s how we arrived here today.”

This line-up was last active in the 80s, so was the chemistry between the three of you natural and did it feel like stepping back in time?

MD: “A little bit. I think it kinda felt that way when we took on re-learning the older material for the live set we were intending to play. It kinda was like stepping back in time, but it’s very easy to interact with those guys making music. It’s second nature doing it and from having, as Reed is fond of saying, from learning to play music together. The other point is that there’s not that other guitar taking up that space and there’s nowhere to hide. You can’t fake anything. Everyone’s mistakes are gonna be really apparent. If Woody fucks up a chord at a particular moment in time, it’s gonna sound wrong, you know? So everyone has had to step up, myself included. It’s a little different too, because the last time I sang and played bass I mostly played with a pick and so working the finger style into that over the years has been interesting. It’s worked out good.”

How vividly do you remember those Animosity days?

MD: “Yeah, I remember some stuff! Reed was 17 and he’d had that drum set for a year and another drum set for a year before that. I’d just dropped out of high school, so I’d say the median age at the time was 18 or 19. It was a long time ago. It was a weird, whirlwind existence. We’d tour a lot and live in a van and a place to stay would be somebody’s house and their way of entertaining us would be keeping us awake all night, so I definitely need somebody to fill in the blanks for me on some of those days! I remember some incidents and the general plot, but as far as the actual chronology of what happened, someone might need to clue me in and I’ll take their word for it. There are other people who remember those days a lot better, so maybe they had fewer head injuries than me or something! Ha ha ha!”

The industry, you as people & the world have all changed since Animosity…is it easy to reconnect with those old songs and how you felt when you were that young?

MD: “Yeah, I think so. It’s hard to say from my point of view if it’s completely reconnecting with it or if it’s a new version of experiencing it, but I think there’s a certain amount of reconnecting with the energy of it. It’s pretty hard playing at some of those tempos now that we’re all a lot older. It’s pretty much at the edge of what we can physically do, I guess, but that’s part of the fun!”

Was there a point in the writing process when you felt you were on the right track?

MD: “I knew we were on the way and that it was gonna be easy when we had our first four songs instantly. Everybody was like ‘Okay, we’re gonna knock out three or four new songs and do them on the first tour…’ which was in 2010, when we did some shows with Goatsnake on the West Coast. We wanted to have some new songs and the first few that we came up with were really on point and it was a really auspicious beginning that we had. We wrote Rat City, The Moneychangers, Your Tomorrow and The Doom…the riffs from The Doom were left over from the first version of Righteous Fool that Woody and I did with Jason Paterson playing drums. So we kind of recycled a few things and made them better, but the other things we started with were instantaneous creations so we knew pretty soon we’d be on a roll. It wasn’t long before we had the other seven or eight. It was pretty easy. When you do it in fits and starts and you haven’t made a record in a while, even if you don’t have some backlog of material that you want to utilise, it’s not so hard to put something out there.”

There’s a little dash of Voivod in there somewhere…was that intentional?

MD: “Oh dude, whenever you do a fast tempo and then do something strange and sideways, it sounds like Voivod! But yeah, the song Time Of Trials was called The Voivod as a working title, right up until we recorded it, because it had a chord you wouldn’t ordinarily hear in a hardcore or metal song. It had this sweet Jimi Hendrix minor seven hammer-on, but when you play it that loud over a blazing drumbeat it’s suddenly more like Voivod. It was actually less of a strange chord than Piggy would’ve come up with, but it gives that effect. Maybe there’s some Voivod in the brief fast moments in the bridge of Your Tomorrow too. It goes like Yes, Voivod, Yes, Voivod…ha ha ha!”

The production is great: really raw but still super heavy…

MD: “Yeah, we’re really happy with it. Most of the basic tracks were recorded in a fairly fancy place called Studio 606 West, which is actually where the Foo Fighters rehearse and usually record. They do outside projects there too. It came to being when Dave Grohl got enough resources to build a place as close to the place where Nirvana had tracked the drums for Nevermind, because he really thought that went well. That was a place called Sound City where a lot of famous recordings in the 70s, 80s and 90s were made, and he basically reverse-engineered the live room, to the point of using seemingly obsolete building materials to recapture it. The floor is real simple, it’s just vinyl composition tile like you’d see in a grocery store. The walls are made out of this broadcast gypsum board with holes in it that you can’t really find anymore. He copied the angles exactly and it’s got to the point now where he’s even purchased the desk from Sound City. He’s gone further and he’s making a movie about the desk! So we did the drums and 90 per cent of it there, and then the intention was to do the vocal overdubs in North Carolina. John Costa had a place where he was working, a simple place. Then when we were on tour in Europe, doing Roadburn, a tornado came through Raleigh and just levelled this place and dropped 70-foot trees on it, so we had to come up with a plan B. We didn’t know what to do. We had more shows coming up. We met a guy that had a simple studio, nothing fancy, and we asked him if we could rent it for a month. It had a vocal booth that was isolated from the control room, not very well designed or anything, but in terms of Feng Shui it worked, so that’s where we did the vocals. We did some of them at our rehearsal space and some of the guitar overdubs at Woody’s barn, which is one of the places where we rehearse up in the mountains. It was mostly done in a fairly super professional facility, but it’s raw. It’s a large and clear documentation of something raw. We did benefit from the large soundscape that you’re afforded when you record through a full-size console like that. We didn’t go to tape or anything like that, but we did mix on the board.”

Was it important for the album to be distinct from In The Arms Of God in production terms?

MD: “One thing we didn’t do was we didn’t labour every drum hit and every guitar accent. We fixed a few mistakes that were glaring, if we didn’t actually have the opportunity to go back and do it again, but the way a lot of these recordings are crafted these days, strangely enough especially in metal, they take all the human element out of it with the drum samples being more prominent than the real hits and the entire thing is put on a grid. They may have started off with a performance that was magic but by the time you’ve made it perfect, it really does get boring. It’s really about the performance and I think we succeeded in capturing those moments and stringing them together in some songs with the spirit, without overlabouring anything.”

Would you work with Pepper again in the future?

MD: “I think we will but I don’t know when. We’re enjoying doing it this way right now and I think we’ll keep doing this for a while longer. But we’re open to working with Pepper again some day. That would be interesting for everybody, I think.”

What are your plans for 2012?

MD: “I have to dig deep to see what’s conjecture and what’s definite. There’s gonna be a lot of touring, I know that. We start in the US in the Spring and then Europe in the later spring and the summer with some festivals. It’s gonna be fairly non-stop. And they want us to make a music video, which I don’t really see the need for. I think what they’re gonna get is a short film about the length of and vaguely related to whatever song we decide. I don’t see us dedicating more than a couple of weeks to that and we will not be pretending to play our instruments and sing!”

Where do you think you guys will fit in for the new generation of kids listening to heavy music? How will they see what you do?

MD: “I don’t care, man. I just hope people have some ears for it and it’s good to have some fresh ears out there. I really hope, my sincere hope is that it will stomp some people into thinking beyond some of those categorisations, you know? What I see among younger people beginning ten years ago or so and increasing now into this preposterously amazing level, is this hyper-classification of music into smaller and smaller subgenres of metal that are fairly similar but you’ll meet people who pledge allegiance to one or two and denounce the other, very similar, strikingly similar varieties and also shut out other forms of expression in a kneejerk way. To me, I always had big ears in terms of the different styles of music I grew up listening to, so I’d like to see more open-mindedness going on.”

October File

Interview by Dom Lawson (Metal Hammer)

This is the first album to be written and recorded by the same, stable line-up. Has that made a huge difference to the outcome?

Steve Beatty (bass guitar): “It took a long time to get to this point. Me and Matt were the nucleus when we started and Ben’s been there since day one. Me and Matt were the organisers in our band and Ben was the organiser in his, so we wanted to get someone else like that to complete it, but we didn’t!  It’s one of those things, when you’re in a band and you need a drummer, but he had to go and he did. We just felt that we had to put up with it because although he wasn’t perfect, we had a band and you have to get on with stuff. How long do you wait for the right person? It’s like falling in love. You can’t try to fall in love. It just happens. Then the next guy came along and he was just another nightmare.  We’re not snobby or up our own arses but we’re all decent people and we’re interested in talking about events, politics, religion, well the world…and we have adult conversations. We asked him ‘What books have you read?’ and he said ‘What’s a book?’ Matt kept saying to me, ‘Just ignore it, he’s a good drummer!’ but he didn’t do his job so he had to go as well! In the end, John (Watt) came along and it took a while to fit personally with the rest of us because he’s a very reserved and quiet character but he clicked and he’s the glue now. He’s been with us for three years now.”

What do you think are the main differences The last album, Holy Armour In The Jaws Of God, looked like it was going to be a huge success for the band, but then you were unable to tour…what happened?

Steve: “John came in, we did the record and we got some great press and everything was happening, but then I got that ear infection and couldn’t tour. I got really bad tinnitus and my hearing specialist just said that I had to lay off it, get used to it and then calm it down, get some earplugs and wait until my ears were strong enough. By the time we got back into things after taking a hiatus, we figured there was no point in touring Holy Armour now. We’d missed the boat on it and there wasn’t any point in going out and playing loads of gigs after taking a year and a half off. We might as well use the time to make a new record. The pressure was off. No one was expecting us to play a gig and no one had heard from us in a year and a half, so we just started rehearsing again and then started writing again. It’s the first time I’ve ever been in a band that’s had the opportunity to write 30 songs and finish with ten! We threw away so much material and so many ideas and riffs. To his credit, Ben wanted to take total control over writing the lyrics for the first time. We didn’t have to say to him ‘I’ve got something written, what do you think of this?’ because he already had it covered. John was going home and working out drum patterns and stuff, and we all felt like we were working on something as a unit for the first time, and it was really enjoyable!”

Do you all see eye-to-eye on everything when you write songs?

Steve: “Well, we still had the arguments you’d expect. It wasn’t like Some Kind Of Monster because we’re not a bunch of  muppets like Metallica managed to make of themselves in that movie, but we had some of those moments, like ‘Just play the fucking riff!’ and all that. But it was an enjoyable experience. When we went in to record it I thought it would turn out really good. We were very hopeful. When it was finished, I went into the studio and John Mitchell had done his work on it and I couldn’t believe that it was us. Regardless of how it sounds, we’re all really proud of what we’ve done. We’ve never been into it for the money or the fame. We can all sit back and say that we’ve done something we’re really proud of and that’s good enough for us.”

Our Souls To You is a very focused record, but it’s diverse too…was that intentional?

Steve: “Because we’d written it over a long period of time there were all these influences coming in.  For instance I was really getting back into anarchist punk, back when we were writing Public Display. Ben and I  had been talking about the old ‘80s days when there seemed to be a whole youth movement that wanted to change the world. He said it was a real shame that he was too young to have been a part of that because that would have been an amazing thing and that you don’t even get kids wanting to vote these days! We were discussing this and he seemed like he just wanted to go and have a fucking riot on his own, so let’s just write a song about it then! So we talked about doing a song called Riot, but that sounds a bit too ‘80s and we wanted something a bit more stuck-up, so it became a public display of anger. I said to Ben that it would be so good to just vent your disagreement with everything. So that’s one example of the combination of generations and influences that are going on on this record.”

It must be satisfying to fill a gap, lyrically and conceptually, that few young bands seem eager to fill at the moment…

Steve: “Not only is that a horrible state of affairs, but it’s also what turns me off of a lot of stuff now. All the bands I grew up with, I connected with that music because it connected not only to my ears but my soul and my mind. We just can’t write a record about girls. It’s not that we’re a bunch of depressives, it’s that there’s a real anger coming from all four of us and we need to debate and inspire ideas and discussion. I don’t want people to turn around and go ‘Here’s another ten songs about ripping up corpses’. I’m 42, John is 24 and he feels the same way! I would really like to think, in a totally non-pretentious way, that we might inspire someone to think about some things. We’re not trying to change anyone’s life, but we’ve got something to say so we’re saying it. It doesn’t need to be any more than that, and we’re certainly not apologising for saying it. If you don’t want to listen, then don’t!”

Do you think that standing out from the crowd like that has been a hindrance as much as a benefit for you?

Steve: “Of course it has. Our motivation isn’t on the basis of being on the front cover of magazines. As far as we’re concerned, we’re doing exactly what we want to do. That’s our mission statement and we’re not interested in doing anything else.”

What made you decide to ask both John Mitchell and Justin Broadrick to produce different versions of the album?

Steve: “Well, we realised on the first two albums where we’d gone wrong on production values.  Matt’s a unique guitarist because he’s really into classic rock stuff and he’s a massive Led Zeppelin fan, but then he’s really into all of Josh Homme’s stuff and then he really likes Big Black, early Stranglers, Killing Joke and all that, which makes for a great combination of styles and he’s a very good guitarist. Then you’ve got Johnny who’s a really serious metal drummer, a technical drummer. We’ve got two camps, basically. John and Ben are younger and more into contemporary metal stuff and they want a big production to bring that out, while me and Matt were thinking that we wanted to strip it down, lay it bare and have it as raw as possible, like a 1982 production or something. As far as me and Matt are concerned, we’d like it to be more like a live band in a room. Anyway, I knew Justin Broadrick and Matt and I really like Godflesh, so we said ‘Why don’t we ask him?’ We sent him the songs to see what he thought of the material and that was it, so he did his version of the album. So that satisfied both camps in the band. From a listener’s point of view, if you’re a metal fan getting into us, you’ve got this big rock record to get into. But we also appeal to a lot of people to the left hand side of that, fans of Killing Joke, Fear Factory, Big Black, the indie crowd. I’ve got mates that are into metal that think we’re brilliant, and I’ve got mates that aren’t into metal at all that think we’re brilliant. So we wanted to satisfy both camps in the band and both camps that like us. You get the double-disc for the price of one album. We didn’t raise the price to compensate.”

Is this something you will repeat in the future?

Steve: “On the next record, you’ll probably see more of a combination of both sides of our sound. Ben and John aren’t really that keen on the Broadrick mixes, but they’re warming to them. I think we all like both sides to some degree. Maybe it’s part of our evolution to find some agreement beforehand and settle on a mixture. Maybe it’s helping to define where we’re going. Bands need to find new ideas all the time. I listen to the Broadrick mixes and I think ‘That’s pretty  mental!’ There’s a hell of a lot of clanking going on there! But as far as we’re concerned, it’s one record and we don’t want to see the Broadrick version as a secondary disc or a side issue, because we actually think it’s better to say that the album stands as it is. The album is those songs repeated. Some people won’t see that, but then some people are stupid. As a band you put yourself out there and some people will love you and some will hate you.  We’re just throwing the record out there and you can rest assured that whatever people say about it, we won’t be that bothered! I’m not there to pander to idiots. I’m there to satisfy myself.”

Now that you’re ready to hit the road and tour properly this time round, what kind of bands do you see yourself playing with? Do you care?

Steve: “We played a show with Nashville Pussy recently, and you couldn’t get more of a contrast, but people really liked it. It’s a funny thing, being a musician and walking on stage and expecting people to hate you, but they didn’t! If we are a band that juxtaposes itself into many things, then that’s great. I don’t say I’m a metalhead, I’m a fan of music. I’ll listen to Discharge or Public Image or Bigelf or Fear Factory. I just like really good music. I think Bryan Adams’ Run To You is a great record. I like Born To Run by Bruce Springsteen, but I don’t want to buy all of his other records. We can play with anyone and that’s a good thing. For the first time we’ve been getting lots of offers for things, which is great. More will happen when the record’s out because we’ve either been written off or forgotten and the new record has been received fantastically well and that’s hugely positive. We just did the tour with Fear Factory, so it’s just beginning. I see this as the real beginning of October File. We’ve defined ourselves with this record and we’re going to get a broader appeal than before. We can move on from here. And if we don’t, we don’t!  I can’t think of any better reason to be in a band than to be with my friends and make good music. I don’t give a damn about being famous and I don’t give a damn about a different career or anything. I just really like being in October File. I love what we do and we’re good at it. As long as we all enjoy doing it, I’ll be happy.”

Victor Safonkin has created another stunning album cover for Our Souls To You…did you ever consider using anyone else?

Steve: “It would be hard not to use Victor. How do you follow on from the Holy Armour cover without him? A picture of a Ford Fiesta? Ha ha! The thing is, he sums us up really well and it’s great. Victor floats between worlds and they must be really fantastic worlds because his imagination is just incredible. We found that the image suited the religious theme of the title, although it still amazes me that people don’t understand what Our Souls To You means…”

Yes…arseholes to you!

Steve: “Some people  still don’t get that! Ha! Victor just fits really well. The artwork looks all serious yet it’s bananas, but it works. If people don’t get that we’re saying ‘arseholes to you!’ then they’re definitely not going to understand the cover or why there’s some guy carrying a massive fish! Ha ha ha! It’s just incredible. We thought about doing something else this time, but what could we do? His imagination is unquestionably fantastic, but he also has this amazing ability to paint! He’s up there with any classic artist. It’s skilful. It’s not just a picture of a Campbell’s soup can, this is real. It’s the difference between someone playing three chords in a punk band and some kind of Beethoven-type guy. He’s incredible. He’s the same as what we’re trying to do as a band. We’re trying to be unique and to be the best we can be all the time. Who wants to sound like every other generic heard-it-all-before band?  And there are plenty of them about…”

Ihsahn

Interview by Dom Lawson (Metal Hammer)

After is a big departure from your previous solo albums, and even further away from Emperor in certain ways. Was this a deliberate attempt to redefine what you do?

“I don’t know. I didn’t really think of it in the sense that I wanted it to be that different musically. It wasn’t really intended, but I guess it’s quite far from my previous two albums, now that it’s finished. But apart from the concept being quite different and writing it for an eight-string guitar which, of course, gives me an opportunity to change my way of doing things...but I kind of agree with you that the whole atmosphere is very different. But the way that I wrote it was exactly the same as before.”

What do you think are the main differences between these songs and those on AngL and The Adversary?

“I’m not sure. The reason that this one is different, and also the concept, the mental preparation for it and the atmosphere…well, the main difference is that the first two were very direct and aggressive lyrically, and the interpretation was very literal, but the lyrics and concept for this album is not about life, it’s the landscape, the barren lands, and there’s a lot of symbolism in there, and epic scenery and half-Nietzschean quotes.”

People associate black metal with vast landscapes and imposing scenery, but in fact very few black metal bands have ever touched upon those subjects in a meaningful way…

“Yes, it’s a preconception people have. All the early covers and the pictures of the bands with corpse-painted kids out in the woods and all that, yeah. It is the barren lands in a metaphorical sense anyway. It’s imaginary stuff really, but based on things around where I live too, I guess. There are a lot of references to Mars, the red sand storms and on on, and I’m not talking about Australia! Maybe I should pretend that it is. But there are some vague Mars references in there, but it’s very much about solitary spaces.”

You have stated that After represents the end of a trilogy, but it seems almost separate from the previous two records and a much more focused album that stands alone…

“When I heard it through when mixing it, I hadn’t realised that it was such a slow album. I didn’t really realise until I heard it all the way through that the material was so heavy, in that sense. It’s hard to explain how these things happen. Apart from me being very conscious about a different kind of concept and having different inspirations, my approach to writing it has been very similar to how I approached the two previous albums. I’m just happy to see that apparently there’s more to what I do as an artist than just the practical methodology. I was kind of afraid that by using an eight-string guitar for the first time I would end up writing stuff that sounded like Meshuggah or whatever, but I don’t think the songs sound particularly down-tuned. I just played in a similar way that I always play guitar. I’m glad that the album can be observed in a new way, because I didn’t want to do something obvious. Getting that kind of guitar and doing something similar to what other people do would be pointless, I think.”

Is this a further expression of the liberation you feel as a solo artist, freed from the shackles of black metal and the Emperor phenomenon?

“I suppose that in one sense I was probably more conscious about how I approached things and the specific musical things I wanted to do, especially on the first solo album but also on the second one, but it’s just a very subjective feeling. My impression, having made this album, is that I’m very at ease with it. I wasn’t trying too hard to go in one direction. It’s just a very honest album. There’s not a lot of technicalities. It’s very honest and very natural, and some of the best parts are some of the least technical. The last riff on the album only has two chords and it goes on for a long time, but it just felt good like that. I can really relate to it myself in a peaceful way. Then again, even though it’s this solo thing and I can do whatever I want, doing these three albums I’ve reached out and opened up a bit more, taking in influences from other people that I’ve brought along. Mixing this album with Jens [Bogren] and giving Jurgen [Mønkeby] such a big part on saxophone, those things have made a difference. Subconsciously I was a bit afraid when I started the solo stuff, because everything would be compared to what I did before, but I think I’ve found my new form. The first album is the most experimental because I had to try out lots of different approaches. AngL was more cohesive, but After is definitely the most cohesive solo album that I’ve done. Everything that is on the album is there for a natural reason.”

You seem happier with the idea of collaborating and allowing other people to contribute…

“I guess I’m just more comfortable in my solo role now and that makes me loosen up more and let it flow, like I did on the first Emperor albums. You do it from pure instinct, but after a while you become more conscious of what people expect. The need for change is very obvious on the last two Emperor albums, compared to the first two. So this record is coming full circle. On an atmospheric level, this album is probably closer to the atmosphere on the first two Emperor albums than the albums I made in between. It’s flowing and epic.”

What made you decide to add saxophone to your music for the first time?

“I started using brass instruments even though they were just samples, on the Anthems album. I always thought the brass instruments were the distorted guitars of the orchestra. After In The Nightside Eclipse I was bored with the typical choirs and strings, and that’s why I used the brass because it adds harshness to it. The reason for the saxophone is that I had this image, this sonic memory and impression of the saxophone as this very, very solitary instrument. Of course it’s not always used like that, but the sound of it is this very lonely thing for me and I wanted to get that element into my music. I was very surprised, because I’d never really heard a saxophone in the same room, just by listening to it on an album or from afar, and I realised that the sound in my head was actually the mixture of a horn, a trumpet and a saxophone, but in the context of this album the saxophone was exactly what I wanted.”

Has it been liberating to write as a solo artist, and to be able to write slower songs with less blastbeats and more space between the instruments?

“I think so. The overall impression or the way of doing it is very extreme, but I’ve always been into having beautiful elements in there, and that’s where the more epic, symphonic parts of Emperor came from, I think. It’s all extreme, but the underlying melodies and the feel of it aren’t that extreme, and I think with this material I can put a bit more emphasis on that element without everything going at 150 beats per minute the whole time.”

What does the saxophone bring to After?

“Jurgen really emphasised the atmosphere that I wanted to achieve on this record. He comes from a totally different background and he improvised in a totally different way and picked notes and melodies that I would never have thought of. All the improvisation happened in two or three takes. At some point he played something really cool but I didn’t think it fitted with the atmosphere I was going for, so I explained some of these scenarios and landscapes that I had in my head and where I wanted to go, and he totally turned the music around and did something completely different that was spot on. I am very satisfied with the whole record. It’s probably the best thing I’ve ever done, I think.”

Insomnium

Rapidly becoming one of the biggest players in the European metal world, Finland’s Insomnium invoked huge waves of approval for their 2006 album Above The Weeping World. Since then, they’ve played countless shows on both sides of the Atlantic and now, finally, they’re back with their fourth studio album, the incredible Across The Dark. We spoke to guitarist and founder member Ville Friman about the new record and the past, present and future of Insomnium…

So, what’s been happening since the release of Above The Weeping World?

“I think we toured a lot this time. A lot more than previously. We did the Satyricon tour first. It was six weeks long and our first European tour and it was really excellent. Then we did a lot of touring in Finland. After that, in 2007, we did an American tour with Katatonia, Scar Symmetry and Swallow The Sun and after that we went around Europe again with Amorphis and Swallow The Sun. So basically we were pretty busy from the release of the album in 2006, in the autumn, and then in 2008 we decided to have a pause from playing shows and we decided then to concentrate on working on songs for a new album. That’s basically what we did last year. We also have other projects and our professions and personal lives, so we dedicated all our spare time to rehearsing and writing songs so that we could make the new album and release it in 2009. It was quite hectic in other ways, but we didn’t tour a lot last year. I think it was a wise decision to concentrate on new songs.”

Were you surprised or inspired by the incredibly positive reaction that you received for Above The Weeping World?

“Actually, I felt some pressure this time because the last album got such great reviews and people were really excited about it. So the new album had to be really good, a better album than Above The Weeping World. I got a bit stressed about it, worrying whether we could come up with better songs this time round. That’s the main reason we wanted to have time to work on the songs and rehearse. It was inspiring. We had two songs kind of ready at the beginning of 2008 and one of those songs was finally ready at the end of that year, so it was worthwhile spending time to get the feel right and to reflect on what would make the songs better. It was an inspiring time for us. Now it will be really nice to get out there and play shows again, because we’ve had this break from touring.”

Was there anything that you wanted to do differently on the new album?

“Yeah, it’s hard to compare one album to another. It’s a natural continuation from Above The Weeping World, but we did want to try more clean vocals. It really divides people, doesn’t it? When we didn’t have any clean vocals people were nagging us about it, saying that we should have some. I’m pretty sure that now that we have some clean vocals that people will be complaining that it doesn’t work! But that was one thing that we wanted to try out. I think this album is a bit more epic and atmospheric. The songs turned out to be pretty long and we put toned down the aggression and focused more on heaviness and the doom vibe. It came pretty naturally, so it wasn’t like we really tried to change the sound. Every time we wrote a song, it inspired the next one, if you know what I mean.”

Touring must have influenced your writing to some degree…

“I think it had an influence in the sense that on Above The Weeping World we were really focused on making an album where all the songs could be played live, so we didn’t have any synths or any of that stuff. We could play it with just the four of us. This was also important on the new album. We don’t need any extra stuff to play these songs live. The songs work well, so I think that’s what you realise when you see which songs hit the audience well when you play live. If the songs work in a more simplified way, that’s better for us. It makes it easier when we’re in the studio too. We don’t have to rely on adding extra instruments when we make an album.”

The last album had some very strong lyrical themes. Is there an overall concept behind the new record?

“I think the lyrical theme is a bit more diverse on this album. I don’t think there is a straight theme, it’s more about the realities of life. As you get older, it’s not black and white anymore and it’s all about a combination of good and bad times. I made more lyrics this time. I wanted to write lyrics for my own songs. There’s some similarity with the old lyrics, but it’s not just about love gone bad. It’s hard to describe, but I suppose it’s about life in general. There’s no one story that covers the whole album, or maybe there is and I haven’t discovered it yet!”

Which song do you think defines the new album best?

“This album is its own entity, from the way it feels to how long it is to the way the songs connect. Maybe the second and third songs? I don’t know. There’s some great atmospheric stuff. Some of the songs are melodic death metal but we’ve also gone into this atmospheric area too. I guess the first four songs capture everything that’s happening on the album. They show the diversity. I can’t just pick one of them! ‘Against The Stream’, the fifth song, has that Gothenburg vibe. I had that riff ready when we did the last album. It’s really good to play live. I just thought it needed to be faster and to have that Gothenburg beat in it. We’re mixing the old with the new on this album.”

Now that everybody has a Facebook page and a MySpace site, have you been taking the opportunity to communicate with the band’s growing fan base?

“I used to communicate more previously, to be honest! Now we’re getting more and more emails and comments on MySpace and sometimes it’s too much when you’re working and you don’t have the time and energy to answer everything. We do try to be an interactive band and reply to messages online. It’s always been good after shows, because we put all our gear away and then go out and talk with the audience. It was particularly good in America because everybody bought us drinks! That was pretty useful! We could get drunk for free and it was really nice to meet people. We were really surprised by the audiences in the US, because they were really enthusiastic and many of them had been waiting to see us for a long time. It was great to go and have chat with people. People were so friendly. You have this view that America is full of rednecks, but that wasn’t what we experienced. People were cool.”

With such a strong album in the can, are you excited about the future?

“I don’t really think about that so much. I’ll be really pleased if we can tour like we did after releasing the last album. What I’d like to do is more European summer festivals, because we haven’t done many of those in the past, but now we have a European booking agent so we’ll get some festivals in the future. We’re playing at Bloodstock in the UK this autumn, so it’s looking good so far. I hope we can keep up the same amount of touring and if we get more popular then that’s a bonus for us. You never can tell what’s going to happen.”

Metal is so huge in Finland…is it becoming even more popular at the moment?

“I think it has reached this high level of popularity and it wasn’t that popular when I was young. When I was a kid, if you had long hair people would be spitting at you in the street and shit like that! Ha ha ha! Now it’s a good thing that people like it so much. They’ll say ‘Oh, you’re in a rock band! That’s great!’ It’s kind of fashionable to be into rock, I guess. Metal has laid its foundation in Finland. There’s a lot of bands playing and a lot of bands are really good. It’s a good time.”

But you haven’t stopped drinking, surely?

“Oh, no. We drink all the time! Right now, we’re about to rehearse but we didn’t bother setting up the equipment, we just went and got beer instead. Ha ha ha! That’s really important. This can’t be like work. We work all the time so playing in the band is our free time and our holidays! We have to work hard, but we should be having a good time at the same time. It’s natural to get drunk with your friends and then play some metal too!”

Anaal Nathrakh

Fuck me…this album takes off like a rocket-propelled rat from a drainpipe. Obviously past albums haven’t exactly been quiet and slow, but is there a specific reason for this renewed level of intensity and violence?

Thank you. Yes there is - Mick. The ideology and atmosphere I try to build around the music will always be extreme to the point of being maniacal because I’m not quite right, but the basis is always going to be the music, and aside from the odd chat or idea I might suggest, that’s entirely down to Mick. After he’d recorded the songs, a mutual friend had the chance to listen to some of it before I went to the studio, and when I asked him how it sounded he just said ‘fucking heavy!’ The thing I think we both had in mind for this album was for it to be darker, more sinister. It’s still typically varied, but there’s a darker and more intense seam running through everything from the music and the subject matter to the tone and style of the artwork. The opening part of the album is just pungently evil, then all hell breaks loose and it blasts off into the stratosphere. It’s all about impact. The silly thing is, there will still be people who say we’ve ‘continued’ down the path to becoming a tame melodic death band. People are free to think what they like, it’s their loss.

Has the new material been at all influenced by your more regular ventures into the realm of live performance?

No, not really. For example some of the album is a good bit faster than previously, so no consideration is shown for the poor bastard who has to play the drums for one song after another after another! When you’re listening to a CD, it’s the experience of listening to the CD that’s important, not whether or not you think someone could stand in front of you and play it. I love Obscura by Gorguts, but the reason I love it is because it sounds so chaotic and driven, not because I know the guitar parts are hard. We will pull it all off live, I know that, but the focus of what you do in the studio has to be the feeling you’re conveying, that’s paramount. And Anaal Nathrakh in full flight should sound like having your eyeballs pulled out through your arsehole by someone staring at the sky and screaming ‘NO!’ while they deep throat a gun. Hmm, there’s a catchy summation.

No one can fail to have noticed that the world has become an even more fucked up place recently…does the current state of the world play into your hands as harbingers of doom and despair, or would you rather everything turned out okay in the end?

As an individual and in terms of my family and so on, I hope it all works out – I just want to live and be happy as far as is possible. The problem is that I’m convinced that it won’t all work out. Not necessarily tomorrow, but eventually it’ll all go catastrophically wrong. And that’s as much inevitable as it is a terrible, terrible shame. I don’t think that most people, me included, have even the start of an understanding of how fucked up things really are – do you know who John Major went to work for after he was PM? Have you seen Zeitgeist or heard Rob Newman lately? Have you been asked to prove your identity to buy a copy of certain books yet? Why has the global economy slumped? Are you sure? Still, no need to worry – if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear. Pah!

Could you elaborate on the lyrical specifics of this album…and the significance of ‘…the constellation of the black widow’?

The title is based on a metaphor used in the book ‘Moment of Freedom’ by Jens Bjørneboe. It’s an amazing, exhausting book, an apparently semi-autobiographical first person account of a character living through the era of the Second World War. But believe me, it is nothing like what you would expect from that description. It’s incredibly rich, yet strangely detached – the author quotes Dante in the vernacular, there’s extensive, detailed analysis of art (I had a print of ‘The Hangman’s Tree’ by Jacques Callot bought as a present for me after I was blown away by the description of it in the book), withering observations on anthropology and the human capacity for generating misery, stunningly vivid depictions of phases of mental illness, it’s a travelogue, and so on. At one point the protagonist claims that within the next ten years, he will have accumulated so much knowledge of the cruelty and inhumanity of the world that life will become untenable. Then ten years after the book’s publication, the author killed himself. And there’s one bizarre yet chilling passage where he’s recounting key events in history in a voice detached to the point of insanity, interspersed with a discussion of the art museums he’s visited. One line will mention the ‘experiments in vivisection’ being conducted in ‘Teutonia’ (by which he means Mengele etc.) and the next will be about a particular painting he’s seen at such and such a gallery. The effect is intense, the depth of feeling involved is intentionally glaringly conspicuous by its absence – the author brings it horrifyingly home by not even saying it. And towards the end of the passage, he says that Uranus and Pluto have come together in the sign of the Black Widow, meaning that the atomic bombs have been detonated over Japan. It’s easy to bandy around concepts like nuclear war, a lot of bands do it. But by using something so involved and poetic, I was trying to underline the fact that thousands of people screaming to their deaths in the most cataclysmic event in human history isn’t just a piece of historical trivia. Of course I understand that a lot of people neither know nor care about the references etc and that’s fine – this is an album of music, not a post graduate exam. You don’t need to know about all this stuff to get your fill out of the album. And the title just sounds fucking cool in its own right. But these things are important to me, so that’s what goes into the mix. I could be here forever explaining what the Lucifer Effect means, the book of Isaiah, how I decided to interpret Nostradamus for ‘More of Fire…’ and everything else, but that’d need a whole other interview!

With bands as sonically extreme as your selves, there is sometimes a fine line between pushing the boundaries further and becoming totally unlistenable…how do you consistently walk that tightrope with such great balance?

You have to listen to what you’re doing with the ear of a fan. For all the misanthropy, we’re still trying to ensure that people will get something out of listening to what we produce. Then again, different people’s definition of ‘unlistenable’ will vary. I love listening to the most extreme noise music and even sometimes the sounds of industrial machinery, but most people would hardly consider those listenable or musical. It’s a good thing that I don’t make the music because it’d probably have tumbled off that tightrope a long time ago. Mick has a good instinct for knowing what’s musically worthwhile. Another thing is to think organically – it wouldn’t be hard to make a song at 1000 bpm, but that would be pointless because we wouldn’t enjoy listening to it. You have to be not only your own sternest critic but also your own primary consumer. And the biggest thing is imagination - one reason our music is so varied and even catchy despite its extremity is that we strive to remain imaginative the whole time.

Clearly your worldview is not a particularly joyful or optimistic one, so what motivates you as an artist these days? Is there a goal to be achieved here or is this just an exercise in venting and catharsis for you?

It’s not so much venting, although is it cathartic. But simply venting would imply ‘get it all out and have done with it’. Anaal Nathrakh is more snapshots of an ongoing thing, so a better word could be articulation. The goal is expression of the barely expressible. It’s the same as art – just because we don’t have a political or material goal doesn’t mean that expression of something that others can appreciate and identify with can’t be a goal in itself. The two of us have different reasons – for the most part Mick simply enjoys making music that has the right ‘aaargh!’ feeling. Since he was a kid he’s been enraptured by that feeling in music (as well as many other things, of course) and he loves creating sounds that pile on the aaaargh. For me the weltanschauung is just as important – it’s about making a cool/satisfying noise, and of course giving the listener an appropriate experience both in terms of the sound itself and the basic joy of hearing something exhilarating/interesting/steeped in the occult and hatred. But it’s also about having that noise be a direct translation of the sense of the world that I have.

The Emperor and King Diamond influences are ever more in evidence on the new album…does the more epic, bombastic and melodic elements in your sound point at a desire to reach a bigger audience, or are they simply necessary pieces in the jigsaw?

Strange, people have been mentioning an Emperor influence for a while now, and there literally isn’t one, never really has been. Similarity, perhaps, but you’d have to ask someone who spends a lot of time listening to Emperor – we wouldn’t know. Still, it’s hardly an insult. We’re not the kind of people who would want to make sure that noone can buy one of our albums unless they’re wearing a t-shirt selected from a list of five approved bands and get their bullet belts from the right manufacturer. But neither are we Fear Factory or whatever your pet hate commercially orientated band is. We simply make music that we think sounds good, and the audience will either come or it won’t. We have a vested interest in people buying our albums of course – if plenty of people do so, we can get enough money for some new guitars or recording equipment and that sort of thing. But that’s all, and the only factor that dictates what we play is what we want to hear ourselves. The parts you’re talking about are there because we like them, same as the parts that are like a jackhammer up your nose. We like soaring and we like skin peelingly brutal, so we do them. And yes, all the shades are important to getting across the atmosphere we’re aiming for. We’re easily capable of doing other things if we wanted to be more commercially viable, but we’re not Paradise Lost circa 1996 – to be honest I find the suggestion laughable.

Did you ever anticipate that Anaal Nathrakh would be releasing its fifth full-length album? Does it surprise you that you’re still doing this?

The most intense flame burns out fastest? No and no. To begin with, we never thought about the future at all, our only concern was for what we were doing at the time. And that’s still largely the case, although now we’re aware that we’ve got a three album deal with Candlelight, so we are to an extent forced to think about releasing our sixth album at some point. But we keep our heads down and focus on the present – which is precisely why it doesn’t surprise me we’re still doing it – it’s unfulfilled expectations that kill appreciation. We don’t really have expectations, so there’s no hopes to be dashed and every good thing is a bonus. For the same reason, it wouldn’t have surprised me if we’d split up by now. We started from nothing and have continued pretty much that way ever since simply by concentrating only on the things that make up our internal world, and then we end up standing on a stage in Norway, Maryland, at Hellfest in front of, I don’t know, several thousand people. You would be hard pushed to find anyone who was less of a rock star, so it’s continually astonishing to me and I can’t see any reason not to carry on for the time being.

Why & how did you end up signing with Candlelight? What sealed the deal for you?

We actually got a lawyer to look over the contracts for the first time! Usually I’ve been the one to go through our contracts – I can decipher the legal language, but I’m hardly an expert. But Mick had ended up peripherally getting in touch with a chap who worked as a music industry lawyer for some time, and so when labels came along, Mick asked him to take a look at what they were saying. We knew we wanted a label that was a bit bigger than we’d had in the past – when you’ve worked so hard on an album, you want to be able to make the most of it. We’re not interested in being the new Dimmu Borgir, but having a label with a decent distribution and promotion network working for you means you’re that much better off in terms of getting your stuff out there and into the hands of people who want to hear it. So we ended up speaking to a few notable labels, and Candlelight was the one that made most sense. They know who and what we are, and we know they’ve got the infrastructure and ability to handle a decent sized band. It’s not a meeting of soul mates and we’re not signed to them for life, it’s just a competent label who showed a belief in the band. Hopefully things will go well and everyone will be satisfied – because then with that out of the way, we can get on with the aspects of being in a band that really matter to us.

What are your plans after the release of the new album? Will there be more shows and even a “proper” tour this year?

It’s early days at the moment – as of now there’s still over two months before the album’s released, and we’ve been working towards that more than thinking about what happens next. We’ve got a few shows lined up, and there will be more added to the list as we re-surface in the collective consciousness of promoters. There are a couple of festivals in mainland Europe, a domestic show or two, and a “proper”-ish tour of America has been discussed. Society’s got around three and a half years left, so we may as well try to achieve something with what little time we have!

1349

It’s been four years since ‘Hellfire’…what’s been happening during that time?

ARCHAON (guitars): Oh, a whole lot of things has happened since back then. To start off from there (2005), we undertook the longest European tour we’ve been on so far, together with Gorgoroth. 5 weeks that was, visiting 5 places in Spain (where we had never been before), as well as Portugal. We also performed in France, Germany, UK, Ireland, Scotland, Czech rep, Slovenia, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden + more. 2006 brought a bunch of festivals, followed by a short UK tour together with Enslaved, Zyklon & Insomnium. After that, we visited the US/Canada/Mexico for the first time, as we had the privilege of joining none others than Celtic Frost on their 2006 tour. 2007 saw us being able to headline a 4- week tour in US/Canada together with support acts Goatwhore, Nachtmystium and Averse Sefira, as well as touring the UK for another week. We also played another bunch of festivals, amongst them Wacken Open Air for the 1st time, which of course was an experience. Last year, South by Southwest invited us to perform in the US again, and towards the end of 2008 we had the great honour of joining the legends Carcass on their US/Canada tour. On the bill was also Suffocation, Aborted, Rotten Sound, Necrophagist, Dying Fetus, Pig Destroyer and some other local supports. A great experience for us! This year, we toured the US/Canada again with a couple of songs in the repertoire from our new album, Revelations Of The Black Flame. And, can you believe it, in between here, we’ve also been in the studio recording! So there hasn’t been years of rest, so to speak.

It’s immediately obvious that the new album is very, very different from past 1349 records. What made you change the band’s sound so radically?

ARCHAON: We wanted to show another side of 1349. I mean, there’s only so much of the same one can take before it loses the effect, even if the energy’s still there. So we decided to approach this album with a whole different angle than before, wanting to create a soundtrack for the apocalypse. I believe we succeeded.

Is this a logical progression for you? Do you think the essence of the 1349 sound remains the same??

ARCHAON: One can definitely still hear that it’s 1349, but there’s more variation in the material than ever before. I personally think that this is an illogical step, as logic doesn’t come into priority as such when writing music. Of course, you have the logic sense of what is a well written song, but apart from that, what makes the creative side interesting is that there’s no boundaries to what one can do or can’t do. Revelations… is a very dark album, possibly the darkest one we’ve created so far.

How did Tom G. Warrior become involved in the project? Was that a dream come true for you guys?

ARCHAON: Well, we got in touch with the Celtic Frost guys in 2004, when we first toured Europe with Gorgoroth. We weren’t aware that they were present, and played the song “The Usurper” on the show in Switzerland that night. After the show, the guys came backstage with us and we talked/introduced ourselves. Being a long time- major fan of the band, Ravn kept in touch with Tom which eventually led to them inviting us on the 2006 tour, and to further collaboration. He is a very knowledgeable smart gent Tom, and he definitely had an impact on the album. As a matter of fact, he also guests on bass guitar on the cover of Pink Floyd’s “Set the controls for the heart of the sun”.

What kind of reactions have you received so far regarding the new album?

ARCHAON: People are surprised, no doubt about that. But in a positive way. We’ve only gotten good feedback so far… Maybe people do not dare to say otherwise, ha ha! So far, I’ve seen one review (and that was quick, as the album was available for the press this week!). That was Imhotep `zine from Norway, which was a 5/6. Not bad, huh? Seems the listeners shouldn’t be underrated, as they can listen carefully and capture the magic there after all…

Do you think you will lose some fans and gain new ones too?

ARCHAON: There’s a great chance for that, yes. But to be honest with you, whether it’ll be an album of success or not was not the motivation for us making it. It simply had to turn out that way, as it was how the album created itself. There are some more classical 1349 bits there as well, all mixed in with slower, doomy parts.

Will this material be performed live? If so, will that change the nature of a 1349 gig?

ARCHAON: Of course! We’re not disgraced in any way, nor do we think it lacks standard- it’s just a bit different than blast beats all the way and back, you know what I mean? We’ve already played two songs from it on the US/Canada tour this year, and on the show we’ve done in Norway. That’s all shows so far this year, but there’s more shows coming up where the material will be blended in perfectly with the old catalogue. As a matter of fact, it seems to work miracles in terms of energy onstage.

Could you explain the concept behind the album’s title?

ARCHAON: I’d rather not, as anything that is set before you listen to it yourself might have an effect on your experience. As previously, it’s best if you approach it with your own perception, and read into it what you will. Frost came up with the title, and I instantly liked it- because for me, it rang the bells of 1349 coming back from this four year hiatus, keeping the black flame burning bright. In addition to that, it can symbolize a wide spectre of different things/subjects.

Why does fire have such a massive symbolic and conceptual importance for 1349 and for black metal in general?

ARCHAON: The word is powerful in itself and demands a natural respect. For a great part pf mankind’s time, it has been a vital part of our existence, a source of existence. Fire being one of the four elements, is one that both gives and takes. It can nurture in terms of heat, enlightenment, in terms of life. It divides light/dark. But it can also devour it all in matter of short time.

What are your plans for the rest of 2009? And where do you think the band will go next musically?

ARCHAON: We’ve got a pretty full schedule out the rest of this year. On the live front, we’ve gotten offers for a bunch of festivals, and so far we’ve confirmed one in Czech, three in Germany and one in Norway. We’re also thinking about doing a UK tour again towards the end of the year, and more festivals might be added. So, there’s some live activity throughout the rest of the year. With regards to where we’ll go next musically, I’d say we have to extend all that we’ve done so far. That is, in terms of darkness, aggression, melancholy, spirit- all that makes up a good Black Metal album. I think I may promise you that we won’t disappoint… We don’t usually, do we?

Absu

It’s been eight years since the last Absu studio album…can you explain what’s been happening during this prolonged hiatus?

Proscriptor: “There were many innuendoes pointing in my direction that ABSU was beginning to crumble and it all originated in late 2001. As a matter of fact, my relationship was getting so deficient that I quit the band for four months and during that period, I auditioned for Slayer. When I returned, Equitant left in April 2002, but we decided to carry on as trio because before his departure. Equitant converted to bass as we had another guitarist in the band: Kashshapxu. As we were beginning the compositions and arrangements for the self-titled album, a minor tragedy struck. In June 2002, I was in an accident and shattered the bones in my left wrist. A couple of orthopedic surgeons were not optimistic about my ability to ever play drums again, so this had me a bit concerned. Once this occurred, the songwriting completely stopped and the motivation to continue amongst both guitarists had vanished. Luckily with a few custom made casts and rehabilitation, I was back to playing drums and ironically speaking, playing better than I did before I snapped my wrist. After the healing process, I immediately flew to The Netherlands then Sweden to rehearse/record with Melechesh for two months for the recording of their third album Sphynx. Upon my return to Dallas in early January 2003, I was informed by Shaftiel he no longer wanted to continue working with ABSU, so it was all down to me. I had decided it was a decent time to go on hiatus as we all had been working diligently for over 12 years. So, I took a four year pause from ABSU and pursued parenthood, two Equimanthorn albums, a Starchaser Network album, (both projects with Equitant) I was in a short-lived band called The Turning (which was an immense mistake), performed one festival with Melechesh and exalted my label Tarot Productions with nine releases to date. I also started my own mastering/post production studio to assist other bands with their releases before their final product went off to manufacturing. Now, the tale of the reformation: in the Spring of 2007, I contacted guitarist/songwriter Aethyris McKay about possibly resurrecting ABSU since both Shaftiel and Equitant had no interest in continuing the band. He mentioned he knew of a lead guitarist that would be an ideal replacement for Shaftiel named Vastator. Vastator only lasted six months (May-November 2007) in the band and left due to musical differences. He contributed four songs for the new album, as I was gratified for his services. The day after his departure, Aethyris and I recruited long time comrade Zawicizuz of Infernal Oak/Rape Pillage & Burn fame to replace Vastator and let me tell you, it’s been a prosperous working environment ever since. A few months ago, we also hired bassist/co-vocalist Ezezu from the Texas-based band Panzram to fulfill, yet complete the line-up of ABSU once and for all. So, here we are with a new line-up, new album and new vision for future times to come. The songs on the new album consist of, more or less, “leftovers” from the prior and current guitarists of ABSU. Half of the tracks were composed by current guitarists Aethyris and Zawicizuz, while the other half were written by Shaftiel and Vastator, which I thought created a good blend of diversity throughout the entire album.”

Tell us about the experience of auditioning for Slayer…

“Sometimes, I don’t know how to honestly answer this question due to the fact I have heard various stories from various sources after the audition. To protect certain individuals, some say I was very close, yet some say I was not. In most cases, I heard I was the 3rd selection, as Derek Roddy (Hate Eternal) and Kevin Talley (Misery Index) were ahead of me. (Both being good drummers) I still believe, to this day, this was a tactical ploy to lure Dave Lombardo back into Slayer. Miraculously speaking, if I was chosen to be Slayer’s drummer, I would have only stayed for one studio album and quit the band. I just know Kerry and I would have clashed in one way or the other and would have been treated like a puppet or drum machine. My mentality is that “I am a leader and not a follower,” so this would have been difficult for me to deal with. On the other hand, it would have been beyond astounding to say that “I use to be the drummer for Absu and Melechesh; now, I am the drummer for Slayer.” The audition was held on February 2, 2002 in Dallas, Texas and it actually went very well, as it solely was Kerry and me. He let me select four songs, which were “Disciple,” “Post Mortem,” “Raining Blood” and “Hell Awaits.” As a matter of fact, the auditions were only held in three cities in the US: Peoria, San Francisco and Dallas. During the Dallas audition, there were only three drummers who tried out for the position; one of them being me. A good friend of mine, Vince Rossi, drove me to the audition and I was forced to sit in the car while the other two drummers tried out. In other words, I was not allowed to hear the other candidates audition. One more note of interest: the drum set I used belonged to Vinnie Paul of Pantera fame. Without even realizing it after the audition, I completely cracked two of the cymbals, as my stamina and endurance did not impress Kerry King.”

What made you decide to reconvene Absu?

”At first, I was a bit devastated because I never thought of ABSU being without Equitant nor Shaftiel. It was a difficult acceptance at first because I personally felt I had not fully accomplished all of my goals with this band. So, I accepted ABSU’s hiatus status and went on to pursue other projects of interest. I waited four years to see if I would receive a call from either Shaftiel or Equitant to possibly pick up where we left off; however, this never occurred, so that’s when I realized it was time to contact Aethyris and proclaim ABSU’s continuity with a new and unpolluted start. I have to say that during the 90’s period, ABSU was a confusing band, yet a band that deserved a lot more than what was given to us. One of the chief reasons we never toured frequently was due to our incomplete live line-up. Of course, we were a trio, but it was mandatory to have a fourth member to execute a proper live performance. We tried countless times to find this fourth member in the Dallas area, but it was extremely difficult due to indefinite, yet tainted influences amongst musicians around here. We could not find any musicians with vast knowledge in the occult let along their ancestral background, so finding a member for ABSU back then was an utter struggle. As time progressed, I think it became rather discouraging for Shaftiel and Equitant and that’s why they left me in the dark, but like I said, I cannot blame them for making that choice. During those times, there was never really any turmoil amongst us and never any kind of personal problems; the band simply fell apart due to mundane activities of simply being in ABSU. Now, I am more optimistic than I have ever been being in ABSU with the new line-up. This may sound ironic, but both Shaftiel and Equitant are overly supportive of what I am doing now, as we have remained solid comrades since the split.”

How had your aims and creative impulses regarding Absu changed over the last few years?

”One thing I can say is I have officially taken a lyrical vacation from Celtic lore and my ancestral attributions to pay homage to the Ancient Ones – that is something that has definitely changed.”

How have the new band members contributed to Absu…has the sound or feel of the music changed as a result of their arrival?

”When I enlisted Aethyris and Vastator into the band, I knew that I was not going to obtain the same songwriting formula that Shaftiel and Equitant brought to the music of ABSU. Knowing Aethyris as long as I have before he joined, I knew him first as a drummer and secondly as a guitarist. Once he showed me his guitar-playing skills, I was thoroughly impressed and was astounded by his techniques. When Vastator left the band, we were still in writing mode and had a few songs to complete before entering the studio. Luckily when Zawicizuz stepped in, he saved us a great amount of time by fully supplying two of the songs on the album, which are quite incredible.”

Does the band work as a democracy or are you a ruthless tyrant?

“Of course, I am a ruthless tyrant when it comes to my perception and lyrical ideologies for the band. When it comes to composing and arranging the music, the entire band has 25% equal input and partaking towards the final results. I may be the official spokesperson for ABSU, but as a group, we are all an equivalent force.” What made you decide to make this an eponymous album? Is ‘Absu’ the definitive Absu record, as such a title implies? ”My idea for a self-titled album was an objective of mine for many years, even before Tara was ideologically drafted. Absu is primarily based upon the meaning of the band moniker: Abyss, a limitless space/bottomless chasm, the fresh underground water of Ea and the Seven Sage’s home or a mythical place producing “secrets.” The songs on Absu discuss Sumerian mythology, Mesopotamian cosmology, Goetia, Thelemic magic(k), numerology and antiquated necromancy narrated in various tenses. For example, the song Magic(k) Square Cipher is a numerological song representing the Seal of Saturn and its ruling Sephirah. Amy (no, not a ballad about my wife – her name is Tiamatsu) is a story concerning a prevailing demon to have been an imperative part of the underworld alongside Nergal. Those of the Void Will Re-Enter, lyrically written by Ashmedi of Melechesh, refers to servants of the arcane order, as the “void” represents the Annunaki (Seven Sages) in Sumerian mythology.”

There are a few guest contributors on the record…how did they all get involved and what do they bring to the album?

”For all the guest vocalists on the album, I personally assigned their parts because I needed different voices excluding my own to portray different narrators and characters within the songs – those vocalists being Mindwalker (The Firstborn), Nornagest (Enthroned) and Vorskaath. (Zemial) My fellow ex-band mate Ashmedi from Melechesh contributed lyrical content to three of the songs on the album. Blasphemer (ex-Mayhem/Ava Inferi) performed guitar solos on two of the songs called Girra’s Temple & Night Fire Canonization, which I must say are outstanding. Equitant (ex-Absu/Equimanthorn) programmed and composed the end instrumental piece on the album titled Twix Yesterday, The Day & The Morrow. David Harbour (ex-King Diamond) performed a synthesizer solo on Our Earth Of Black and Michael Harris performed some excellent guitar solos on the tracks In The Name Of Auebothiabathabaithobeuee & Those Of The Void Will Re-Enter. All musicians, excluding the vocalists, had the freedom to write and record their parts, as I simply assigned the areas where to be recorded. Of course, there were a few takes deleted and the most appropriate takes successfully landed on the album. Everybody who contributed did far and beyond my expectations, so yes, I was pleased with all of the performances. Yes, all the guests that appeared on the new album share camaraderie with us.”

How would you describe what you do in Absu today? Does the term ‘black metal’ have any meaning for you anymore?

”Yes, ‘black metal’ still holds great significance to our style, but ABSU is an amalgamation of black metal, death metal, thrash metal, heavy metal and progressive rock. ABSU is a “mythological occult metal” band and by making such a statement, we lyrically concoct mythology and paranormal/metaphysical related topics inside of the music. The cadences and accentuations when writing ABSU’s music express my esoteric lyrical content and ideologies. This is the way I perceive it: ABSU’s music is like a form of chaos magic(k) because I believe it can change both subjective experiences and objective realities, though some forms of chaos magic(k) disputes that magic(k) occurs through clairvoyant means. Subconsciously speaking, I am not one with today’s world when writing the lyrics for ABSU.”

What do you hope to achieve with this album? Is the beginning of a new chapter for Absu?

”This is a new chapter for ABSU, as it truly feels like a re-embodiment of the band. Not only with a new line-up (Aethyris, Ezezu & Zawicizuz) on board, but now there is more enthusiasm and more mystic supremacy than ever. When the album’s conceived self-title was formulated several years ago, it was not intended to be a new beginning for ABSU because I assumed Shaftiel and Equitant were to remain in the band. Now that I have resumed the band with pioneering musicians assisting me, the self-title for the new album could not be more ideal.”

Could you explain the meaning behind each of the album’s tracks?

Between The Absu of Eridu & Erech

Erech, also known as the Sumerian Uruk, is an ancient Mesopotamian city located northwest of Ur in today’s southeastern Iraq. According to legend, it was built by Gilgamesh. Within the walls, excavations traced successive cities that date from the prehistoric Ubaid period, perhaps before 5000 BC, down to Parthian times. (126 BC-AD 224) Eredu, one of the oldest cultural seats in ancient Babylonia, is located a few miles south/southwest of Ur and mentioned in ancient records as the city of the deep. In it was a temple of Ea, god of the sea and of wisdom. Comprehensively speaking, the abyss lies directly between these two regions and the story line of the song describes how the Absu hastily turned into a bottomless gulf, yet unfathomable infernal pit underneath the ocean floor. There is an “Absu-Temple,” which is located in Eridu as well as an “Absu-Gate” being in Erech. This too was a meeting place for the gods and goddesses of the netherworld, more or less. Tense: Present

Night Fire Canonization

This song was profoundly inspired by a combination of theorists, such as Empedocles, (Fifth Century BC) Jacob Boehme (16th Century) and Kenneth Grant. (The Merovingian Mythos) The spirit, or Night Fire, reabsorbs all of the light that it has projected as an objective immortal spirit, the Sun at Midnight. The Dragon was separated into two beings, the male, who is the Howler in the Wastes of Nothingness, the Demon Lord of Time, and the female, who presides over all of the created Multiverse. (The prototype of manifestation) The explosive union of these two opens the gates of the Abyss. Then, the serpent fire rises to an explosion of ecstasy in the Abyss, vibrating its word and casting forth its star. The serpent fire interlaces itself with the water of space, and by this process the true Beast, the male aspect of the Dragon, opens the womb of the night, as his infinite light breaks open and causes her to appear as infinite darkness. This process is the means of the return to the supreme state represented by the Cosmos and is the true formula of Illumination. (Night Fire) When the urge to know is turned inwards instead of outwards, as it usually is, then the ego dies and the objective universe is dissolved. In the light of the illumination, the night fire, the Gnosis, is all that remains. Does that make sense? I didn’t think so. Let’s move forward, shall we? Tense: Present

Amy

This song discusses the role of Amy and how he plays a significant part of the underworld. He is the 10th out of 14 demons to have been an imperative part of the underworld alongside Nergal. Tense: Past

Nunbarshegunu

Nunbarshegunu is the mother of Ninlil as well as the old woman of Nippur. She convinces her daughter to marry Enlil to enchant him, so she can have full control of the underworld. Enlil raped Ninlil, gave birth to Sin (the moon god) and was finally banished from the underworld. Once this occurred, balance was finally restored between Kurnugi (underworld) and the cosmos. Tense: Present

13 Globes

13 Globes is a short story narrated by “Zagan” who is the 2nd spirit of Yog-Sothoth from the supplementary material of the Necronomicon: To Conjure Ye Globes. Instead of traditionally discussing each globe (spirit) and the powers each one possesses, I have decided to utilize numerological focus on four out of the 13 globes. (Primarily for astrological reasons) 2 = Zagan 5 = Durson 6 = Vual 7 = Scor I, in 1st person tense, represent the globe “Zagan.” My globe has shifted trajectory (course) and now am stuck between the 6th and 7th globe, which are “Vual” and “Scor.” The only other globe out of the 13 that can guide me back to my original position is the 5th globe: “Durson.” This globe can reveal all paranormal secrets and tell of past/ancient times to help me (Zagan) return to my proper locality. Tense: Present

…Of The Dead Who Never Rest In Their Tombs Are The Attendance Of Familiar Spirits…Including: a.) Diversified Signs Inscribed b.) Our Earth of Black c.) Voor

Written in three movements, this song is a conceptual piece influenced by the supplementary material of the Necronomicon: Of Diverse Signs. The Elder Ones have blackened, yet tarnished the Earth with their curse for the dead to become immortal. The Elder Ones remind the dead of the four signs that can protect them; however, the dead must be extremely cautious because they must exploit them properly to banish menace and antagonism at the same time. NOTE: Voor is the first of the four diverse signs and is the “true” symbol of the Elder Ones. Tense: Present

Magic(k) Square Cipher

This song represents the Seal of Saturn (Loshu) and its ruling Sephirah. (Binah) The magic(k) square of Saturn is a numerological table from one through nine, arranged in such a way that all rows add to 15. (1+5=6) This Kabbalisticly exemplifies the forces of containment, definition, limit, time, death and stagnation in ritual magic(k). Saturn (Binah) takes position of Daath at the apex, being the first Sephirah to manifest in the Macrocosm. Also, in numerological terms, the number 15 (1+5=6) or 6 represents Wands, Cups, Disks and Swords in the tenet of Thoth. The number 6 is the broken down into 4 Sephira’s of all the sixes, which are mentioned above. 3 Binah = Saturn 6 Tiphareth = Sol Tense: Present

In The Name Of Auebothiabathabaithobeuee

This song is my interpretation of the Lord of Spirits and the incantation of Yebsu. Tense: Present

Girra’s Temple

Girra, (also known as Gibil or Gerra) is the Sumerian god of Fire and was the son of Anu and the goddess Shala, Ishkur's wife. He provided humans with the means for making food more edible, by cooking it with fire. He also provided for the building of cities by hardening bricks of clay used for construction until they were hard as stone. Girra’s only known temple was the E-melamhush, 'House of Awful Radiance,' which was at Nippur. In my song, Girra was a fire god who had the ability to ignite himself or any object within sight, as he represented fire in its beneficial respects. I picture Girra sporting circlets of burnished copper around his hair and arms, and dressed in a belted leather kilt and leather sandals. When Girra self ignited, his body started smoking. As the process continued, he gave off increasing amounts of smoke from his shoulders until he flared and burst into flames, like a torch. When returning to normal state, the flames would die down and gradually disappear, leaving Girra’s body hot and smoldering afterwards. Tense: Present

Those of the Void Will Re-Enter

Those of the void Will Re-Enter refers to servants, people of the arcane order, as the void represents the Annunaki in Sumerian mythology. The Annunaki were seven judges of the underworld and children of Anu who also sat before the throne of Ereshkigal. (Wife of Nergal) These “fates” waited at the gates of the underworld to judge newly-arrived souls. So, once the people enter the under worldly realm, they forget where they came from and their overall origins. They are reminded by the Annunaki that they were created from the blood (mixed with clay) of the minor god Geshtu-e. (Sumerian god of intelligence) Legend has it that he was slaughtered by the Annunaki and his mixture of blood and clay was used in the creation of mankind. Tense: Present

Sceptre Command

Tense = 1st person - “I” Nergal, 2nd person - “You” Namtar & Mars (Gugalanna) and 3rd person – narrator Nergal is one of the chief deities in Gudua/Kuta. He loans Namtar (evil god, negative aspect of fact & disease bringer) his scepter to cast a spell to control the First Order in Gudua/Kata. In order to regulate atypical under-worldly chaos, Nergal calls upon Mars’ (Gugalanna) assistance to help with the spell. The incantation cannot be projected properly without the essence, yet illumination of Mars’ light shining directly in the “scepter of command.” With Nergal’s telekinesis into Namtar’s borrowed scepter and the rays shining from Mars, this creates a successful spell of triangular effect. Many occurrences take place during the spell, which include: - “Order within chaos” - Sun & High Summer: “I’m the burner” - Nergal’s affiliation with Mars and why the spell would not work without his assistance - “I’m a raging king, a furious one and a solar deity” - Remember: the triangular light is symmetrical: Nergal’s telekinesis (sun’s rays) and Mars’ illuminating light is directed into Namtar’s scepter - Nergal: “The sword – the lion” - Namtar: “The disease – the pestilence” - Mars: (Gugalanna) “My light reflecting from the sword – my wisdom into the lion’s head = a perfect Hyle and/or Chaos. (Abyss) Conclusion: Nergal, Namtar and Mars successfully contain complete control of the chaos in Gudua/Kuta. The origin of elements (1, 2, & 3 – from the fifty gates of Intelligence) were trying to seep north past the surface of the earth; however, the spell was projected as the First Matter (abyss) was contained. Tense: Present To Past

Ye Uttuku Spells

This song represents a demon’s spells in the beliefs and mythology of the Assyrians and Sumerians. There were two types of Uttuku: the souls of the dead that could not rest until they could be appeased and the truly evil spirits, which were said to emanate from the bile of Ea. Uttuku also manifest in horrifying images of men with animal heads, claws and horns. They dwelled in holes in rocks, caverns, and lonely ruins. These spirits brought disease, criminal thoughts, acts and disaster upon any human with whom they came in contact. Exotic terms used within the lyrics: Ginyaatlie: Flood Tedloonetaa: Shadow Kukhwa: Star Tense: Present

Twix Yesterday, the Day & the Morrow

This instrumental piece is actually the epilogue to In The Name Of Auebothiabathabaithobeuee (Tense: Past, Present & Future)

Sothis

American black metal has had a strange and turbulent gestation over the last decade or so, but finally bands are emerging that have the style and substance to compete with their European counterparts. Right at the top of the list are L.A. symphonic black metallers Sothis, whose debut album ‘De Oppresso Liber’ is a masterpiece of epic bombast and brutal drama, worthy of comparison with the genre’s greats. As a result, it comes as no surprise that Sothis drummer Dross is brimming with pride about his band’s first major studio effort, not to mention extremely positive about the way American black metal is evolving right now…

Tell me about the process of writing ‘De Oppresso Liber’…did you have a specific plan or did it evolve organically?

“The writing process for SOTHIS works pretty simply, really. The guitar players and the keyboardist give me tons of parts, riffs and other ideas which I archive and organize. Then I go through and assemble songs from those ideas and we try them out in rehearsals. Once we are happy with the song structure and the songs themselves we make a live recording of the songs so Drogoth our vocalist can work on the vocals/lyrics for the songs. The parts of the songs themselves evolve very naturally I’d say. We paid attention to the reviews of our demo and took the constructive criticism to heart and tried to offer some original ideas within the new album and just plain distance our selves from other symphonic black metal bands.”

This is your full-length debut album…how long have these ideas been germinating in your heads?

“It honestly just depends on the ideas. Some of the ideas you’ll hear on the album go all the way back to our origin when there were no more than two or three people in the band and we were still seeking other members. Others of the ideas came in so close to the beginning of the recording process that the final lyrics were never rehearsed live with the band.”

How satisfying is it to finally have a complete work of art ready for people to hear?

“I’m cannot wait for people to finally hear this CD and to get some feedback on it. We flew back in from mixing the album back in late January of 2008. Then we had to go through the process of finding a record label and complete the CD jacket so this thing couldn’t hit shelves until September 1st in Europe and the 2nd here in North America.”

How do you feel about what you have achieved?

“I think we are all very proud of what we have achieved but realize that this only reflects a glimpse into the potential that lies within us. We are also eager to begin production of our sophomore CD at this point.

You recorded this album with Andy LaRocque (my favorite guitarist of all-time!) in Los Angeles. How was that experience? Did you enjoy working with such a legendary figure? Are you all huge King Diamond fans?

“Well, these are very good questions because it’ll give me the opportunity to clear up a few misleading ideas out there. The album was produced and engineered by myself in the band’s studio in Los Angeles. I felt that it would be best if we tracked the vocals at another local studio here in Los Angeles since they had top of the line equipment for tracking vocals. In the end that was an expensive mistake because it didn’t sound much different from the vocal demos we had completed just prior. Once the tracks were all completed and organized Drogoth and I flew to Sweden to mix the album with Mr. LaRocque at the helm. It was very cool to work with him as the mixing engineer because he obviously has tons of experience in the studio and I was able to learn a lot from him. All of the band members are fans of King Diamond but our guitar player Nylock is without a doubt the biggest fan of Diamond within the band. I think that Andy is a great guy, has a great facility and I’d highly recommend him to other musicians. We had a killer time in Europe, not only in Sweden but in Norway, England and Ireland as well.

The American black metal seems to be undergoing the same dual personality that its European counterpart underwent over a decade ago…there’s a real split between symphonic, musically ambitious bands like yourselves and the more self-consciously underground and artsy stuff like Xasthur, Leviathan, Wolves In The Throne Room etc…do you feel part of a united scene? Can black metal be all things to all black-hearted people?

“I think you've hit the nail on the head with regard to our scene here. We definitely do not have a completely united scene here in the States but it is fifty times better than it was eight or nine years ago that is for sure. The only ones that are really divisive in our scene are a few Black Metal guys that tend to be very elitist. The rest of the scene is very united and different Metal genres have been sharing the same stages now for years. As far as your last question goes of course Black Metal cannot be all things to all black hearted people. Music is art and it is an old saying that one man’s junk is another man’s treasure. I would just encourage metalheads out there to not be musical bullies and just encourage people to explore their own tastes. So many people are so concerned with what other people are listening to. It’s fuckin’ crazy.”

How would you describe the philosophy behind your music and lyrics?

“I've got to tell you; Drogoth is the lyricist and although I give him ideas for lyrics and I push my thoughts about what I think we should be, he is ultimately the one that has the responsibility to write the lyrics. I personally feel that our role is to tell the Metal youth what really matters but twist it in obscurity and metaphor. For instance, loyalty is something that matters to Sothis but it is dealt through the topic of disloyalty and metaphor in the song ‘The Cold Disconnection’ on our new record.”

What does Satan mean to you on a personal and artistic level?

“You are asking me a question that is so deep I hesitate to answer it because I feel that is needs a lot of defining. There are unfortunately a lot of different ideas out there regarding what Satanism is exactly. If we are talking about Satanism as a synonym for Humanism than that is a label that would suit me fine on both a personal and artistic level at this point in my life. I hesitate to speak for the others in my band but I'd guess that they'd answer the same.”

Candlelight Records seems a very natural home for Sothis. What made you want to sign with them and how has the experience been for you so far?

“I really agree with you that Candlelight is a very good home for us. We’ve talked to a ton of labels between and I’ve got to tell you that we were very impressed by how quickly Candlelight is able to get things done. Some labels really drag their feet and don’t seem to have their shit together at all. I’m really looking forward to our future together.”

How ambitious are you as a band? Do you want to be the next Dimmu Borgir or do you want to maintain strong links with the underground?

“The band is very ambitious and we intend to take things as far as the Metal Gods would have us go. We'd love to be able to stand on the main stage at Wacken one day as long as we don't have to compromise our consciences to make that happen. We'd love to maintain some ties to the underground as well and help to be a part of exposing great unsigned bands to a larger international audience. There are at least three bands here in Los Angeles I could think of right off the top of my head.”

What are your touring plans for 2008 and beyond?

“There are talks of us doing a full US tour in February with two other US Black Metal bands but nothing is confirmed at this stage. The official announcement was supposed to actually be made the first week of September but I know the headliners’ history and I can see those plans being delayed and delayed. We are actually meeting with a great booking agent and we are hoping to be able to work together so that we can get on some bigger, high profile gigs. That is really our heart you know? We'd love to be a part of something like the recent Carcass reunion tour as oppose to some bar/club tour with another band similar in size to us. Right now the only thing we have booked are several local show spread thought the new four months or so.”

What should people expect from a Sothis live performance?

“At this point in our career you can just see a well executed live set containing material from our demo as well as this album. We believe that stage presence is very important so try our best to captivate the audience. We use to use smoke, strobes, blinders, pyros and fire breathing at our shows but that was all done quite illegally! Ha ha ha! We are seeking high profile tours now so we are going to have to go back to the basics and probably just bring the smoke machines. One day I hope to have the money to bring fire back to the stage legally. It is very fuckin’ cool to do at shows but doing it legally here in the states is outrageously expensive. The government makes you jump through a million hoops.

How do you foresee your music evolving in the future? Have you begun to write new material yet?

“We are about half way done with the writing for the next record and are hoping to begin tracking no later than next summer. We don't want any longer than a two year lapse to happen between albums. The evolution of the band is already underway. We were discussing our new material just before we left for Sweden to mix our current record. I'm very excited about the new direction. There will be more of all of our best qualities with one new thing added to the mix that to my knowledge has never really been quite this mixed into Black Metal. How's that for a fuckin tease? Ha ha ha! I promise all of you that Sothis will never go disco metal like some many of my Symphonic Black Metal heroes. SOTHIS is an aggressive, polished Symphonic Black Metal band that is bent on writing good songs that make you want to break shit and punch your buddy in the face! Ha ha ha! Lastly, let me just say stay strong and stay Metal to all my "lifer" brothers and sisters in Metal out there.”