| INTERVIEWS |
It's another new year and another new page in the Mourning Beloveth Saga. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you Darren to the Irish Annals of Doom. How is the mood in your bustling camp? We are flying at the moment, with the tour just over, the new album out, a soon to be released 7" and plans afoot for the Doomination of America in August. The Sullen Sulcus CD landed on my doormat last Thursday morning so that has given me a few days to stew over the new album. It arguably contains some of your strongest and most confident material to date. To what extent have you achieved your goals as a musician with this record? Yeah the new album definitely contains some of our strongest material, like all good press releases would say. We took a year off from gigging (not that hard in Ireland) and just concentrated on writing for the album. The preparation for this album was a lot more meticulous than it was for Dust, a lot had to do with that we knew what to expect when we entered (new) Academy studios. Also the familiar face of Magz behind the desk helped us relax a lot more. We cannot say we have ever achieved our goals when we record an album, at the time it is perfect but as time passes we begin to listen to the album objectively and think, well this or that could have been better, or we could have done this a different way, and this is what we focus on when writing new material. It is not that we don't like what we recorded cause each album captures a certain moment in time that can never be repeated. It is all a learning process and when we are completely happy with any one recording we would probably give up, but I don't think that will happen. Stagnation is death. What I find rather striking is the depth of emotion throughout the songs. Did you push yourself harder than on the Dust sessions? Or were you simply more relaxed returning to the familiar surroundings of the Academy Studios? It wasn't that we pushed ourselves harder this time round, more that we were relaxed going to a professional studio. For Dust a lot of the songs had been lying around for a long time and we recorded them. For TSS it is all new songs and new riffs and during the writing process we homed in on certain parts knowing how they would sound when recorded properly. For example the heavy parts were something that we felt a bit lacking in Dust and this time we knew just how to get that certain "crunch", also the guitar melodies have a lot of echo and reverb this time giving it a very haunting feeling at times. During rehearsals for TSS we set a goal of writing 9 songs ( something unheard of in the MB camp before) and so for 9 months we just wrote music. We picked the best six and this is what appears on TSS. The recording process in Academy is very intense at any time and I think this comes across in the album also. We had felt a bit of pressure going in this time, seeing the reaction to Dust but we just did what comes naturally and never really forced anything. We studied Dust intensely to find parts where we cold have done better or different but we never sat down and said that "this is how we want to sound." For me there are only three prerequisites for an MB song, that is emotion,heaviness and the song must flow. This leaves us with a very wide range of things to choose from. Mourning Beloveth is at its best when at its most diverse. Any comments? That's a nice statement. Over the years we have developed our own sound ( I hope) and it comes from the range of emotions that each of us feel in our lives, to the haunting and epic melodies, combined with franks voice and then slow, painful riffing with deep growls to drag you through the depths of loneliness and depression. This doesn't really answer your question though…. Bold album opener The Words That Crawled remains my personal favourite with its beautiful guitar melodies and array of vocal approaches to compliment them. Do these ideas come together naturally? You will be the first to hear this story outside the band, but fuck it.
Originally the vocal melodies by Frank in that song were actually him
singing the lyrics with me talking over it. Frank had mentioned that he
would like to try just doing a vocal melody instead but forgot about the
idea and when we were recording the song there is a line that ends "blinking
moment", Mags turned to me and laughed, not at the lyric but that
it sounded funny sang the way Frank was doing it…all came flooding
back and a few hours later we had what now adorns that part of the song,
Franks vocal melody. This sums up the Mourning Beloveth way I think perfectly.
We never plan on how we should sound. We just play riffs and things seem
to gel from there. When the song is finished we sit back and look at it
and see how to improve certain parts but we never set out to sound like
XYZ, it just comes naturally. How important is the Death Metal element to your sound? Would it be fair to say it was more prevalent in your beginnings? I don't think it is fair to say that death metal was more prevalent in the beginning, in fact I think with the release of TSS we have stepped back in the sound stakes. TSS is definitely more death metal than Dust. With Dust it is almost the lack of riffing and vocals that creates the atmospheres whereas TSS has riffs and vocals attacking from all sides and it almost suffocates the listener with an aural assault. It definitely gives the album a more METAL feel and with the heaviness and growling parts just brings out the death more. While most bands of our ilk are taking steps forward while looking back, we are stepping back and looking in to the air. The death metal element will always be important to the sound of MB as long as I am in the band, cause I am the one who growls. But I don't think it is just the growls that give our albums the death metal feel; it is also the fact that we are riff heavy just like the old death metal bands and the early doom/death bands like serenades or Pentecost 3 by Anathema, the sheer intensity and weight of the riffs alone create their own atmosphere. The appearance of The Sullen Sulcus is stunning. Paul McCarroll has excelled himself once again with his unique approach to the art and design of the album sleeve. Did you provide him with any ideas or was his a free hand? Is there any concept running throughout the whole package? Paul is an amzing undiscovered talent and we were proud to have him design
the inlay for TSS. I had seen his work on the Scald albums and really
liked it and so I contacted Paul. We spent about two months mailing each
other every night with ideas. I sent Paul the lyrics and an advance of
the music and I had written a few pages on what the lyrics dealt with
and sent them to him and he worked from there and we kept in constant
contact. It was easy enough for me to describe what I saw was to be the
other pictures as this is how I work sometimes, I start with a picture
in my head of a scene that describes what is going on in our lives at
that time and I try to paint the picture with words and so I forwarded
on all my ideas to him. It is difficult to describe a picture in words
to somebody but Paul knew where I was coming from and it was a strange,
but exciting, experience to see somebody else's interpretations of my
lyrics and thoughts |