AN NCS INTERVIEW: ULTAR

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Apr 282022
 

 

(Comrade Aleks has completed a long-gestating interview with Denis Susarev from the excellent Russian post-black metal band Ultar, who will have a new album coming in 2022, and the results of this very interesting are set forth below.)

Post-black metal band Ultar from Krasnoyarsk was re-formed from Deafknife in 2016 and soon gained a reputation as a creative band with with good taste and vision. Speaking about Ultar’s creative side, I need to mention abother outfit featuring four of Ultar’s members – it’s Grima. Both bands perform black metal in a similar vein and yet both follow their own paths. While Ultar’s last album Pantheon MMXIX saw the light of day in 2019, Grima’s fourth album Rotten Garden was released in 2021, as well as the live album The Mighty Spirit.

I had my own interest in interviewing Ultar but the process dragged on for months, and you know what happened in February. However we’ve made the decision to complete and publish the interview now right after Grima‘s return from their short tour abroad. Naturmacht Productions brought Grima’s Siberian sorrows in Tallinn. Here are the words of Denis Susarev (guitars, keyboards):

“We recently returned from Estonia, where most of Ultar played a show in Tallinn as members of the Grima project, which may have been a bit of a precedent given what’s been going on in the world over the last few months. In spite of everything, the concert went just fine, Tallinn met us with a full hall of wonderful, kind and open people who received us wonderfully. It’s nice to see that our listeners understand that art in general and music in particular can and should be perceived outside the context of any political events, no matter what people around say about it. This is extremely valuable and we are grateful to everyone who shares this.”

And here we have Denis’ answers regarding Ultar and its perspectives. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: CHURCH OF DISGUST

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Apr 262022
 

(On May 27 Hells Headbangers will release the new third album by the Texas death metal band Church of Disgust, and in this extensive new interview Comrade Aleks talked with Church vocalist/guitarist Dustin James.)

You see the band’s name, their albums’ or song titles, and you already know what’s it all about. Church of Disgust has twelve years of savage sonic mayhem behind it – Unworldly Summoning (2014), Dread Ritual EP (2015), Veneration of Filth (2016), Consumed by Slow Putrefaction EP (2020), and now Weakest Is the Flesh (2022)… For sure you can expect distilled macabre death metal built on influences of some classic bands and inspired by horror literature and sometimes movies.

Church of Disgust’s four priests run this mass knowing not doubt or mercy, and they are Dustin James (guitars, vocals), Joshua Bokemeyer (guitars), Travis Andrews (bass), and Dwane Allen (drums). And today is the day when we’ll learn more about the good old death metal ways of Texas. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: SYNTELEIA

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Apr 222022
 

 

(On May 14th Floga Records will release the second album of the Greek black metal band Synteleia, and in anticipation of that Comrade Aleks got in touch with the band’s vocalist and lyricist Nyctelios, and we present their conversation today.)

According to the official press release, Synteleia’s new album The Secret Last Syllable is the natural successor to their debut album Ending of the Unknown Path. You maybe heard it back in 2019 – an honest example of mysterious Hellenic black metal. Now the band return with “nine mystical songs thematically based on the Cthulhu Mythos by H.P. Lovecraft and The Necronomicon”, and that’s enough for me. Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn, brothers and sistres! Cthulhu fhtagn!

So we have these new nine hymns in the name of macabre gods and we have their author Nyctelios (vocals, lyrics) here, to spread Synteleia’s blasphemous knowledge. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: ET MORIEMUR

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Apr 142022
 

 

(In this new interview Comrade Aleks re-connected with Zdeněk Nevělík from the unpredictable Czech metal band Et Moriemur, whose compelling new album was just released a few days ago by Transcending Obscurity Records.)

Seven years ago or so we sat with Et Moriemur’s frontman Zdeněk Nevělík in a pub somewhere in Prague and talked about doom and other stuff, knowing nothing about how the world would change in the next few years. I wonder if there’ll be a chance to do it again…

However, music helps to keep the connection as I found the promo pack from Transcending Obscurity with Et Moriemur’s fourth album Tamashii no Yama in my mail box about two months ago, but it took time to clear my mind and find the energy to absorb these grim and exciting vibes. The band went aside from the death-doom path to a more experimental blackened sound and – as the album’s concept demands – even further.

This material is full of nontraditional and quite fresh ideas; it looks like the band revealed a new source of creativity inside their own inner resources. So I made my best effort to find out how it happened. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: WARDENCLYFFE

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Apr 082022
 

 

(In this new interview Comrade Aleks participated in an exchange with Jacob Nordangård, the principal creative force behind the Swedish doom band Wardenclyffe, whose new album Temple of Solomon was released this past February.)

As you may remember, Wardenclyffe Tower was an early experimental wireless transmission station designed and built by Nikola Tesla on Long Island in 1901–1902.  Such a bold endeavour! And yet it was too bold for its age.

The Swedish doom metal band Wardenclyffe doesn’t offer you something as innovative or technological as you might imagine from their name. Their doom(-death) is appealing yet absolutely traditional in some way. Though I can’t say the same about lyrics written by the band’s spiritual leader Jacob Nordangård. That’s hard to explain, and anyway we did this interview with him due the release of the band’s second album Temple of Solomon one month ago. We touched on a few contradictory themes here, and I believe everyone should do that from time to time… Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: CARDINALS FOLLY

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Apr 062022
 

 

(In this new interview Comrade Aleks re-connected with Count Karnstein, frontman of the Finnish doom metal band Cardinals Folly, whose latest release is a split album that came out last month.)

I was sure that we did an interview with Cardinals Folly not that long ago, but I’ve checked and found – it was in 2015! So, in case you forgot, let me introduce them.

These blasphemous fidgets of doom from Helsinki have done their dirty black magic since 2007 (or 2004 if we take into account The Coven period) and truly succeed! Their first album Such Power Is Dangerous! (2011) and the following Our Cult Continues! (2014) were good examples of honest and traditional doom metal. There were a few hooks and a bunch of nice songs but I think that Cardinals Folly finally reached their own identity with Holocaust of Ecstasy & Freedom (2016).

The hard and boiling stuff of Deranged Pagan Sons (2017) was a natural development towards more savage and faster music, and Defying the Righteous Way (2020) was my album of the year if you prefer such categories. The band keep to their mark as an active and battleworthy outfit, and this time they’ve returnedd with a split-album with the American band Purification.

Count Karnstein (also known as Mikko Kääriäinen) found some time to tell us a few past and future secrets of Cardinals Folly! Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: CHAMBER OF TORTURE

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Mar 222022
 

 

(This new interview by Comrade Aleks with vocalist/lyricist Pavel Vakhlakov from the Russian death metal band Chamber of Torture took place at a difficult time, with the invasion of Ukraine under way, but nonetheless becomes an extensive and engaging discussion about the band’s history and progress, including their 2022 album released by Svanrenne Music.)

Politics divide us, metal unites us. This death metal band from Saint Petersburg collaborated with both Russian and Ukrainian labels through its 12-year long career, and who could predict in which times their fifth album would be released? Svanrenne Music did it in late January, so here we have Phantasms of the Bedlamite, quite savage and technical death metal from members of Bodybag and Cenobite.

Honestly, it’s hard to focus just on musical themes today, so I prefer to give the floor to Chamber of Torture’s vocalist Pavel Vakhlakov. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: SÖNMA

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Mar 162022
 

(These days when most of us think of Russia we have negative thoughts (to put it mildly) based on the vicious invasion of Ukraine. But the participants in this interview — our friend Comrade Aleks and Vlad Tatarsky from the Russian bands Sönma and Crust — have no love for what is being done by a dictator in the name of the Russian people. Their words and the music are still worth our time.)

Sönma is the drone/doom project of Roman Romanov (drums, vocals, effects) and Vlad Tatarsky (guitars, effects). You know them better as members of the death-doom/sludge band Crust, also from Veliky Novgorod.

We started this interview with Vlad in late January and things went slow, but everything changed after the 24th of February and we were in shock knowing nothing about what to do with this interview. Vlad asked me to find some right words for this forword, but I don’t have any right words now, just a feeling that Sönma’s albums Terra and Ether channel this sense of catastrophe precisely. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: SAATTUE

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Mar 152022
 

(What we have here is Comrade Aleks‘ extensive interview with two members of the Finnish band Saatue, whose first release under that name came in 2004 and whose latest album (their fourth) was released last October.)

I got in touch with Tero Kalliomäki because of his involvement in Yearning, a Finnish melodic doom band which was active from 1994 until the premature death of its founder Juhani Palomäki in 2010. We spoke about Yearning as part of a short interviews’ series for Doom Metal Lexicanum II, but I kept in mind that Tero also performed guitars and keyboards in the authentic death-doom outfit Saattue since 2004. “Authentic death-doom”! They call it “Saattoo Metal” and the fourth album in this style, Vain Toinen Heistä, was released DIY in October 2021.

It’s strange to do interviews in times like this, but it makes sense and helps to keep at least an illusion of “normality”. The answers were provided by Tero Kalliomäki himself with some help from the band’s bass-player Samu Lahtinen. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: GRAND HARVEST

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Mar 092022
 

 

(In a couple of weeks from now Sweden’s Grand Harvest will release their debut album, and in a timely move Comrade Aleks caught up with them for the following interview.)

Armageddon, the End of Mankind, Luciferian Gnosis, Death – that’s how Metal-Archives sum up the lyrical themes of Grand Harvest. This band was formed in Sweden in 2017 by five men who gained experience playing in different local bands. This time they gathered under the death metal genre but a few years passed and Grand Harvest’s sound mutated in something different, bringing in certain doom metal influences and some less obvious blackened echoes.

Their debut album Consummatum Est is to be released on March 25th, and we hurried to organize the interview with this band right in time. Continue reading »

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