AN NCS INTERVIEW: ÄRA KRÂ

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May 282011
 

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 »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: MICHAEL KEENE (THE FACELESS)

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May 262011
 

(NCS writer Andy Synn packed a lot into a May 17 show in Leicester, England — a review of the show, an interview of Gorod, and today an interview of Michael Keene, guitarist and song-writer par excellence of The Faceless. I’m biased, but I really enjoyed reading this, and there’s a lot of revealing info in it, too. But mainly I wonder how Andy got this interview after he explained he was from a site called NO CLEAN SINGING.)

On the same Leicester stop where I was lucky enough to interview Gorod, I also had the opportunity to grab The Faceless’ guitar shredding master-mind Michael Keene for an interview of his own.

Reading the transcript you’ll get some insight into the man himself, his goals and influences, see how we bonded over a shared love of Extol, and get his thoughts on how it feels to be the only death metal band on a non-death metal label. All this plus some of the conceptual and lyrical influences which will be present on the next record!

Ok, so how’s the tour been for you and the band so far?

MK: Well this is the fifth date of the tour and it’s been amazing. I think 3 of the 5 shows so far have sold out. It’s been awesome. Every show.

How about things with the other bands?

MK: It’s been super-fun. I’ve know Born Of Osiris and Veil Of Maya for a long time now, and spent a lot of time with both of them. I’ve recorded both of them at different times. Two albums with Veil Of Maya in fact. And we’ve toured with both of them several times. So it’s just really fun being with both of them together and, like… it’s been such a long time coming for the three of us to be together on the same tour, just because we’re all friends and it’s been overdue, both personally and musically.  (more after the jump . . . ) Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: GOROD

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May 242011
 

(Our intrepid correspondent Andy Synn caught up with French metal wizards Gorod at their May 17 show in Leicester, England, and files this interview with vocalist Julien “Nutz” Deyres, bassist Benoit Claus, and drummer Samuel Santiago. Gorod is currently distributing a brand new EP — Transcendence — to those fortunate souls in attendance at their current tour, and the rest of us poor bastards will have access to it in June. Get stoked.)

At the recent Leicester stop of The Faceless’ UK/Euro headline tour, I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to interview members of French Jazz/Tech metallers Gorod.

Read on to see what the band thinks about their current touring situation, their upcoming EP and future album plans, who’s to blame for their big 80’s metal hooks, and even some (potentially) exclusive information regarding the lyrical and conceptual direction for the band’s next full-length album!

Hey guys, nice to meet you. Thanks for agreeing to speak to me. So, first thing’s first, how’s the tour going so far? This is the 4th or 5th date right?

Benoit (bass): 5th date. 5th date so far. No problems so far, everything is really good. It’s sort of a more professional tour with a driver, a good manager, things seem to be working all the time. The atmosphere is good. Nothing special, just good times. (continued after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: NACHTMYSTIUM

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May 012011
 

(NCS contributor BadWolf caught up with Nachtmystium’s Blake Judd, Will Lindsay, and Sanford Parker before the band’s live performance at Harpo’s in Detroit on February 25, 2011, and conducted this very interesting and revealing interview, which includes candid comments about doing business with record labels, some news about Nachtmystium’s next album, including a working title that appears to have been conceived during the interview, and some eye-opening comments by Blake Judd about the rape charges now pending against Jef Whitehead (aka Wrest), the frontman of Leviathan and a Nachtmystium collaborator. BadWolf proves again that he knows how to do this interview shit . . .)

BW- So how’s the tour going?

Blake Judd- Tour’s going really well so far. The Cradle of Filth guys have been super cool to us, which was our biggest concern. Not that we had any reason to worry but they’re a big band and we’re not and we’re playing direct support to them.  We thought we would be treated like we’ve been treated before which hasn’t been the case. Kids are coming out. The crowd reaction has been sort of eh; some people seem kind of confused by it.

BW- But that’s your career though, isn’t it?

BJ- There’s truth in that, too. The tour is good though. We’ve had more problems with our internal, like, with our bus company than anyone else as far as the people we deal with on a day-to-day basis.

BW- At first I was really puzzled by the bill and then it started to make sense to me. Cradle of Filth is a band where you can ask ‘is it Black Metal?’ Well, what is Black Metal, anyway? It is Black Metal but it’s reaching out of that sound in a way, which is what you guys do as well, so it ended up making sense to me. Did it make sense to you?

BJ-I don’t give a shit, personally. We come from a world where most members of bands I know would take joy in beating the shit out of someone from Cradle of Filth. That’s the world I come from. I don’t care about that anymore, I’ve been over that for a long time and do my own thing. We haven’t really found our crowd. We don’t have beards or a mountain of Sunn amps, so we don’t appeal as much to the hipsters. The people we work with deal more with bands like Cradle of Filth than bands we might listen to in our free time. It’s strange but we’ve got a good thing going, a good crew of dudes. The crowd certainly doesn’t seem to dislike us. We’re further proving ourselves to be a flexible band, which is important. I don’t know, what do you think? Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: MICHIEL DEKKER (THE MONOLITH DEATHCULT)

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Mar 152011
 

On the last day of February, we included a brand new song from The Monolith Deathcult in one of our MISCELANNY posts. For us, it was a better-late-than-never introduction to the music of this Dutch band — and that new song continues to be obliteratingly good. You can read the post and hear the song at this location.

That post led to the chance for us to conduct an e-mail interview with Michiel Dekker, the band’s mastermind (and its vocalist/lyricist/guitarist). To prepare for the interview, we browsed TMDC’s Facebook page to get better educated about the band’s latest news, and discovered that it’s one of the more entertaining band pages we’ve yet come across, due to Michiel’s literate, sometimes cryptic, usually quite funny musings.

For example, we saw a poll he was conducting about whether the band’s next album should include any lyrics in Volapük (go here if you want to know what that language is). Other poll candidates included Esperanto and West Country English. There was also a comment about learning to play the saz.

TMDC is painstakingly preparing a new album, to be called Tetragrammaton (unless Michiel and his comrades change their minds). To get a few insights into that work and when it will be ready, and see Michiel deftly and amusingly handle my feeble attempts to ask some off-the-wall questions, follow along after the jump. (and we’ve got an eerily topical song for you, too . . .) Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: TRENDKILL’S VIRGIL PALAZZOLO

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Jan 032011
 

Trendkill Recordings is an up-and-coming French record label that we discovered through its signing of Pristina — a U.S. band whose 2010 album The Drought (Ov Salt and Sorrow) we thought was awesome. (Read our review here.) Since then, we’ve discovered more of the bands in the Trendkill stable, and it’s a remarkably varied and remarkably good group of artists.

Recently, we got the chance to conduct an e-mail interview of Virgil Palazzolo, the founder and impresario of Trendkill Recordings and Trendkill Entertainment, and a musician in his own right. If you want a bit of insight into the mind of a dude responsible for signing a wide range of bands to recording contracts, distributing a diverse catalogue of albums, and organizing tours and shows in Europe — and who’s on the verge of opening a U.S. office in 2011 — then you ought to read what follows.

Our interview covered topics such as his perspectives on the music business in the Age of Download, what he looks for in potential Trendkill signings, his label’s plans for the new year, and new Trendkill releases on the horizon, among others. We thought it was a damned interesting conversation, and hope you will, too. So read on . . . after the jump. Continue reading »

NCS INTERVIEW: SKELETONWITCH

 Interviews  7 Responses »
Dec 132010
 

[EDITOR’S NOTE: In addition to our latest Finland Tribute Week post (below this one), today we also have another contribution from our Midwestern correspondent BadWolf — this time, a most entertaining interview with guitarist Scott Hedrick from a most awesome band, Skeletonwitch.]

The following interview with Ohio thrashers Skeletonwitch was conducted on November 20, 2010 at Frankie’s Inner City in Toledo, Ohio by BadWolf.

S-My name is Scott Hedrick; I play guitar in Skeletonwitch.

BW-Rhythm or lead?

S-Both. We trade off and on.

BW-I love twin lead guitars.

S-I don’t think there’s any reason to have one lead or one rhythm player. We [Nate Garnette and I] have different styles of rhythm and of soloing, so I think it makes it more diverse—and we can do harmonized leads too.

BW-The old-school thing, the Iron Maiden thing.

S-I love it. Some of my favorite guitarists are Tipton and Downing from Judas Priest, the Iron Maiden players, Sharmann and Denner from Mercyful Fate. My favorite players are teams of players, so it makes sense that we would do the same thing.

Continue reading »

NCS INTERVIEW: LANDMINE MARATHON

 Interviews  4 Responses »
Nov 292010
 

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Today we have another contribution from our Midwestern correspondent BadWolf — this time, an awesome interview with Grace Perry and Matt Martinez following a recent live performance . . .]

The following interview with Arizona Death Metal masterminds Landmine Marathon was conducted on November 20, 2010 at Frankie’s Inner City in Toledo, Ohio by BadWolf.

Landmine Marathon killed it that evening, by the way.

–

G– My name is Grace Perry and I’m the singer for Landmine Marathon.

M– My name is Matt Martinez and I play bass.

BW– You guys, the whole tour [Skeletonwitch, Landmine Marathon, Withered (who did not play on this date)] is on Prosthetic Records. What is your relationship with Prosthetic Records?

G– A really great relationship. We’ve only been with them for a year now I think. We released Sovereign Descent with them, and they re-released Rusted Eyes Awake as well as Wounded. It’s a very easygoing relationship—not very demanding. I’m happy.

M– The really cool thing is that their roster isn’t huge. It isn’t ten releases a month; they really focus on their bands. That’s been the awesome thing.  (more after the jump .. including a video) Continue reading »

ARKHUM: AN NCS INTERVIEW

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Aug 202010
 

Arkhum promo

ARKHUM (photo by Jessica Stover)

We were so excited about the just-released debut album by Oregon’s Arkhum — which we reviewed here — that after we got the chance for an advance listen, we asked if the band would subject itself to an e-mail interview.

Proving themselves to be kind-hearted as well as talented artists, guitarist Stephen Parker and his brother, vocalist and lyricist Kenneth Parker, agreed. They didn’t even try to back out after they saw our questions, which included such penetrating inquiries as what it’s like being in a band with your brother and whether they ever try to beat the hell out of each other.

In addition to getting the answer to that question, we also learned details about how Arkhum’s label-signing came about (which is breaking news all by itself), the science-fictional topics addressed in the album’s lyrics, Kenneth Parker’s recommendations about other bands, Arkhum’s future plans (including the next album), and more.

We thought the answers to our questions were interesting, and might be interesting to you, too. So, what follows after the jump is our interview of the brothers Parker from Arkhum. Continue reading »

PRISTINA: AN INTERVIEW

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Aug 182010
 

The music comes first. The people who make the music come second. That’s just the way it is. But when the music strikes a chord, you want to know more about the people who make it, and how they make it, because sometimes, it opens a wider window into what you hear. And sometimes it doesn’t. Like we’ve said before, musical talent doesn’t necessarily go hand in hand with being able to express yourself in other ways.

We got an advance listen to Connecticut-based Pristina‘s forthcoming album on Trendkill Recordings, The Drought (Ov Salt and Sorrow), and were blown away. We posted our review of the album yesterday. In connection with our review, we asked vocalist/bassist “Evil” Brendan Duff if he would answer a few questions, and he foolishly agreed.

What started as a small handful of e-mailed questions to fill in a few blanks in our review turned into a mini-interview, and as more questions occurred to us, Brendan continued to answer (instead of telling us, “fuck off already!”), and it became something more full-fledged.

More than that, it was one of those genuinely window-opening conversations. We learned, among other things, about how this stunning album came to be, about some unusual aspects of how it was recorded, about how Today Is The Day‘s Steve Austin can come to resemble the demented shark-hunter in Jaws, about how the lyrics emerged from Brendan’s struggle to get clean from heroin, and about where this band is headed in their future music. In other words, we had a few of those days that make creating this blog truly worthwhile.

Our interview with Brendan Duff follows the jump, along with a few more tidbits of information about the band and the music. Continue reading »

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