(In this new interview our Comrade Aleks talked with Michel Regueiro from the Spanish thrashing death metal band Emissary, whose debut album was released last March by Fetzner Death.)
Michel Regueiro (guitars, vocals) and Hlib Overchuk (drums) from Barcelona got together in 2023 in the name of old-school thrash/death metal, and believe me, they wasted no time recruiting Philip Graves (guitars) and Cosmil Martin (bass) and soon had eight tracks for their debut album Eldritch, which came out earlier this year.
The telling cover-art and track titles “The Shadows Lengthen in Carcosa”, “Hobb’s End,” and “At the Throne of Chaos” promised Lovecraftian horror in slightly atypical form. Indeed, I’ve gotten used to hearing Lovecraftian mythology in black, death, or at least, doom bands, but Emissary play their variations on themes in a completely traditional thrash vein with a bit of death overload.
They are straightforward, intense, and aggressive to some degree, but at the same time they stick to the genre’s rules rather than seek to plunge into the maddening depths of nightmares beyond the wall of sleep. Emissary‘s musical code is intuitive and accessible; the guys are not trying to drive the listener crazy or make them puke their dinner. They just retell the horror stories we know in a fascinating, inspired way.
Michel Regueiro is our guest today, an envoy of Emissary and Cosmic Horror incarnated.
Hi Michel! How are you? What’s new on your side?
Hi there! Everything alright there, not much at the moment just wishing for the summer to finally go away. Right now we are rehearsing for some upcoming shows and writing the new album.
Really? Do you plan to move in the same direction regarding music and lyrics?
Yeah the only way is forward so we will press on. The music is a bit more aggressive and perhaps slightly more challenging this time around but the lyrical content will not focus so much on the cosmic thing this time around but it will still be dark as fuck.
Emissary is a new name in the underground, so how did it start for you? How were you involved in the metal scene?
I’ve been playing in bands pretty much all my life going all the way back to the year 2000 in Argentina where I started, so by October 2023 (now in Spain) I figured I wanted to start up a new project. I had been writing some songs and had the overall concept for Emissary pretty much cooked up, so then I contacted Hlib Overchuk (drums), we jammed and decided we were going to develop this band fully.
What drove you to change Argentina for Spain? How much time did it take to solve all issues because of relocation and to start writing music again?
It was the economic situation and I needed a change. It took some years to settle well, finding jobs, moving several times, and I thought I had given up on music completely and hadn’t played guitar in years. Slowly but surely that old itch came back and by the time I got my hands on a guitar again and regained my reflexes the songs came out really quick. But it did take years at first.
I found only that Philip Graves has a background in the metal-underground. Did the others play in any metal bands before? And how do you share the obligations in the band due to that?
I played in many bands before and recorded two albums with The Evil Dead (of which I’m very proud of) before moving to Spain but somebody messed up at metal archives and made a new profile for me instead of using and updating the old one. Hlib played in some bands too; as far as I know this is Cosme‘s first professional band and Phil has a lot of bands.
Regarding obligations and duties, everybody is expected to learn, practice, and perform the material to the best of their abilities and be available for live gigging and promo duties, but I guess I get the sharp end of the stick as songwriting and band management fall under me.
What did you aim to create when you gathered under this name for the first time?
Pretty much a band that would make me feel like I felt when listening to the bands I grew up with. Besides the dark feeling related to the lyrics and overall theme I wanted it to be powerful and exciting, full of twists and turns and thrills. Each song should be its own journey with both its ups and downs. Same goes for the live show. It should be electric and energetic with tons of headbanging — not a vampiric frowning contest.
Okay, what about some basic influences?
It’s mostly movie soundtracks; you really learn how to set a mood and tell a story with these. But if we are talking general bands that might have shaped a bit of our sound then for my part stuff like Dissection, early Metallica, early Megadeth, Bathory, classic Maiden, and a lot of ’70s rock.
Your first album Eldritch was released earlier this year. How do things go since then? Do you feel that people noticed it?
The reception has been good and we are gaining new ground day by day but it still is word of mouth.
From the beginning you were focused on a topic of cosmic horror, a theme tightly associated with H. P. Lovecraft’s myths. What was your first encounter with his writings?
Honestly I can’t remember very well but I’m pretty sure it must have been The Call of Cthulhu inspired by the Metallica track, so we sought the book, but at the same time I do think I caught In the Mouth of Madness on TV before that sometime in the ’90s. So I guess that’s where the seed was sown.
Do you have songs strictly inspired by his writings? I see a song based on the In the Mouth of Madness movie (“Hobb’s End”), then Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce’s thing (“The Shadows Lengthen in Carcosa”), but in general would you say that Eldritch is about cosmic horror in a wider sense of the word?
You are right that its horror in a wider sense, and for a record publicized so much as Lovecraftian there are only two songs inspired by Lovecraft: “At the Throne of Chaos” and “Ravening for Delight”.
“The Shadows Lengthen in Carcosa” was inspired by The King in Yellow (and even a wee bit of True Detective 1 lore); “Hobb’s End” by the Carpenter movie; “Where the Silent Ones…” was inspired by The Night Land by Hodgson. The two opening songs I came up with the lore myself to serve as a sort of cautionary tale of looking too much into the Abyss and the Abyss answering back, and for the “Witchfinder Rides Again” I thought what if Hopkins were to come back like in the movie The Fog? Carpenter once again …
Can you tell more about “At the Throne of Chaos” and “Ravening for Delight”? Which stories inspired you to write these ones?
“At the Throne of Chaos” was inspired directly by the short novella “The Dreams in the Witch House”; that story drove me crazy and I really tried to portray in the song the sense of dread and urgency and how everything is spiraling fast on the last act.
“Ravening for Delight” is basically a general ode to Cthulhu.
Nowadays a lot of bands tend to the cosmic horror topic, but I think it’s the first time at least for some years when I heard these themes performed in such a way as a mix of thrash and death metal. Were you sure that this approach would work well with such lyrics?
Yeah I thought that these themes needed a bit of energy and musicality to come to life. I always think of the songs as if scoring a movie so every part needs to stand out to hold your attention while moving the story along.
What do you find interesting the most in plots like this?
I guess the vastness of it all. They do not dabble with the mundane, but immense and majestic realms and indescribable beings; the words make you travel far, hence the use of melody to try and project all these emotions the right way.
How difficult was it to record the first album together? Was it a challenge or rather a fun experience?
It wasn’t difficult per se but it was done in a mad rush. We had to scramble and get it done in 3/4 days because of a very tight budget; we used a real studio and recorded it the old school way with real live tracking for all rhythm and basic tracks. I think it came out great and we stretched every penny to get the best possible result. It was fun and it definitely made us a tighter band.
Yes, I noticed the live sound of Eldrich. How fast did you reach it at the studio? Did you work with this sound engineer before, by the way?
Yeah we had worked with Jaume before, we had done 2 tracks to show to labels before we got signed with Fetzner Death for the album, and I had also recorded a mini-EP with Wicked Leather where I also play guitar, so it was all pretty familiar. As I recall it didn’t take too long, one or two takes to warm up and then we were in the zone, but one has to take into account that we did 2 weeks of hectic rehearsing prior to entering the studio.
What’s your plan now? Are you satisfied with the way Emissary took on Eldritch? Do you aim to record another album soon?
Yeah we are definitely very pleased with the end result and quite content that people are digging it. As for now we are in the midst of writing and rehearsing the follow-up album for which we will turn everything up to 11 — the stakes have been raised. Besides that, we got more live dates and we will be doing a European tour in March 2026, it’s being booked as we speak so there’s plenty more Emissary to come!!
Thanks for the interview Michel! Did we forget something important?
Thank you so much for the interview and your support!!! Cheers to everyone who’s into the band!
For any bookings or merch related enquiries you can reach us at emissarybcn@gmail.com
https://emissarybcn.bandcamp.com/album/eldritch
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61565501303870