I’m afraid that I was so damned emotionally affected by Ferne Tage, the new genre-bending album from Germany’s Ära Krâ, that I got perhaps too emotional in my review (published here). Thing is, even a month later, the album is still an intense listening experience — something like a blackened form of metalcore with progressive elements, a mix of harrowing catharsis and melancholy beauty. It’s standing up extremely well to repeat listening.
I confess I’ve also been intrigued about who these guys are, what other bands they’re in (or have been in), what prompted the creation of this album, and a bunch of other subjects, many of which are none of my damned business. But “shy” and “retiring” aren’t in my vocabulary, so I pestered the band for an interview, and they foolishly agreed.
I think if I’d been able to confront them in person, gotten them really liquored up, and then subjected them to the irresistible power of my personal charisma, I might have had more success worming personal details out of them. But alas, the famous Seattle tech-geek community still hasn’t perfected the human teleporter, and so I had to do this by e-mail.
Still, I do believe I succeeded in multiplying the quantity of publicly available Ära Krâ information by a few orders of magnitude, given how secretive they are. Read their interesting answers to my intrusive questions after the jump. And if you haven’t yet downloaded Ferne Tage from their Bandcamp page, you really should. Continue reading »