| INTERVIEWS |
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From Cmar For starters, introduce us to the Mourning Beloveth. The current line-up is Darren on vocals,Frank on guitar and vocals,Brian on guitar,Tim on drums and myself on bass. How did Mourning Beloveth got together and started playing? Mourning Beloveth began in winter 1992 but it wasn't until 1996 that our first,untitled, demo was recorded. This was done overnight over 10 hours at a recording college that I went to and ended up being the engineer on this demo. Soon after I joined on bass with Brian switching back to his first instrument guitar. This lineup then recorded and released our send demo ' Autumnal Fires' in 1998. This release had 3 tracks with piano interludes. The first demo had 2 tracks and a piano also blending both tracks together. The second demo again raised more awareness throughout the underground with 1200 copies sold.A lot of people were getting more appreciative of our sound and compared it to the big doom bands of the early 90's which is also a tag we have managed to break away from now and hold our own. We recorded our first album 'Dust' in 2000 and self released it. This was recorded in the famous Academy Studios in the UK and was produced by Mags. We pressed 1000 copies of this which is now sold out. We sent 300 full promo packs out to help get it sold and increase out audience which resulted in getting super reviews in magazines and nearly always in the top quarter of the scale of markings.Sentinel(my label) rereleased this again in 2003 with a few more thousand sales. We got to support Cradle of Filth for 2 gigs in Ireland on the strength of this which was a huge boost for us. We had already supported Cathedral in Dublin 2 years before and that was cool to play with a band from the doom scene as big as them.We decided then to go back to Academy in 2002 and record our second album. This was sent around to various labels in the hope of getting a deal which resulted in Aftermath in Norway to send us a contract that we gladly signed. We toured with Morgion(Usa) and The Prophecy(Uk) in Europe with 11 gigs in 7 countries and 2 weeks ago we returned from the Doomination of America Tour where we played right across the country from Los Angeles to New York and back with 16 gigs in all. We spent a month there in total and was one of the best experiences ever. Has there been a lot of line-up changes in the band over the years? Except for the original bassplayer leaving soon after the band was formed. Tim is the only remaining member of that line-up. Brian left twice for personal reasons but we have been totally stable for the last few 4 years or so. Which are your biggest rolemodels and by that I don't mean only in music but all that goes with it? If I were to pick some from the metal scene it would be Chuck Schuldiner,
. What is your opinion about the Sullen Sulcus album, especially if you compare it to your previous work? Compared to our previous work we haven't been this strong as a unit and it shows in our work. The Sullen Sulcus is an immence step even from our first cd. It contains a lot more refined parts of the original elements of melancholy and darkness we had pursued over the last few years combined together with our own sound. We are really happy with how its turned out. The artwork on Sullen Sulcus is one of the best I've seen in a long time. I mean, it completly follows the atmosphere of the album. Who takes the credit for that? The guy behind that is Paul McCarroll from Bangor in the North of Ireland. He has odne covers for Waylander,Abaddon Incarnate,his own band Scald and many more. He is also does the layout for the Metalworks Magazine.Darren spent a lot of time discussing the imagery of the lyrics and Paul deciphedered these descriptions and gave us what we've finally ended up with. He is a very talented artist and you can get his link from our website. The production on you rerelease of Dust and on the Sullen Sulcus is excellent! Are you completly satisfied with it or is there, in your opinion, room for something to improve? Of course there is always for improvement as nothing can be perfect in this world but we are happy with it for the time and money we spent on it. Are you satisfied with your label and their efforts concering your marketing and distribution? Yes indeed. Haavard keeps in contact with us regularly and he helped us out immensely with the Usa tour. We've got glowing reviews back from the bigger magazines out there and it seems our name has been bouncing around a lot. I think next year is going to be very important for us with some big european festivals on the cards. Ireland has a great history, tradition and legends...is all of that influencing your work? We have bands like Primordial,Cruachan and Mael Morda who between them use celtic instruments and base lyrics around our history and tradition but not us. What's the metal "climate" in the Ireland and what's the metal scene like there? The metal scene is small enough here but very strong and closely knit. There are many great bands here for the size of Ireland and people like to help each other out for the sake of the scene. The scene did die away a bit in the middle 90's but in the last 3 or 4 years its been getting stronger and a bit more professional I suppose you could say. Is Mourning Beloveth only thing that you do in life or do you have some other occupation(s) (music like and other as well)? I have a normal day job working on air-conditioning which is shit. I
have been running Sentinel Records with Brian Taube since 2000 and we've
released 3 cd's so far. Can you support yourself only by playing music and touring? I also work as I have said above-You have to work in Ireland as things are expensive and the unemployment benefit is crap-Its a hard country to live in actually despite the tourism imagery everybody gets battered with. There are not many people who can do that here except for the commercial boy/girl/pop bands which I suppose exhist in every country. Since a lot of doom metal orientated bands are from The United Kingdom, and now as we see Ireland too, can you tell us why is that area so fertile for that genre of metal? There was a band called Thy Sinister Bloom in the 90's who released 1 demo but never got to release any more-( some unreleased ep's will surface soon though) They were the only band though. Mael Morda play Celtic/Doom and they have released a couple of demos which are cool. Ireland is mainly a death metal country and its bands like cannibal corpse,Morbid Angel,Nile and the like that get the crowds. Doom Metal is a small enough genre anyway so for the size of Ireland 2 doom bands is good enough I'd say. What would you say is the main reason for the quality of your music? We work exceptionally hard at our music and are very critical of ourselves. I great that all of us are perfectionists in the band. Its could be something really small in a piece that one of us find hard to work with and we know each others style and personalities so well that all of us know when something is just right. Doom metal is very personal too and the emotions it portrays can take some time to create so as to never tire of them. Thats not to say you should stay miserable all the time but its helps ha ha . Which aspects of your life are responsible for the lyrics and the music in Mourning Beloveth? Mourning Beloveth use the feelings endless misery and lonliness that exhist within many Irish people due to the many years of persecution and terrible happenings throughout our history. This combined with direct personal experiances are reflected in the lyrics and together push out to the listeners ears the pain and anguish that we try to accompany along with the heaviness and melancholy of the music. What are your thoughts about death and about the occult in general? I would be pissed off to die soon as I want to live to 100 and piss everyone off by hanging around for so long he eh . Death doesn't really scare me though. Fuck it ,when your time is up you've got to go. I am not a religious person so the idea of going into the ground and staying there for the worms to digest sits with me fine. ''The worms go in...the worms go out...., they go in thin.... and come out stout''. The world is killing itself anyway so you've gotto live everyday as your last and do as much as you can in your lifetime as best you can-thats my philosophy. I don't believe in the occult really. Of course there is some strange shit out there but there are a lot of very good magicians too. Since you have been tourning...in which country (city) did you make your best show till this day? For the European tour it was Evora in Portugal. There were 350 people there and 4 other support bands on the bill. It was organised by the local council and the venue was the courtyard of a really old college so with the weather and architecture,it was the best of the tour. In America I would say the last show at the Stoner Hands of Doom fest was great or else the gig at the Junkyard in Colorado at the Doom to Grind Fest where the actual gig was in a real junkyard with old cars and sparparts, oil drums etc lying around-strange but one of the best. Have you started working on your next release? We haven't been to rehearsal yet as we are taking a short break from each other after the tour-5 weeks in a van with 5 other people messes with your head a bit. Cabin fever got to an all-time high in the 3rd week,say no more he he .We had been writing stuff before the tour for a while though and we have 1 song almost complete so another few more and we will be well on the way to our 3rd cd. Can you share with us some details from your next release? We recorded a song for a split seven inch which was recently released by Sentinel. This track is a lot stranger than our previous work. It might have been the fact that we were limited in what we could put on it time-wise. The original song was 14 minutes and we had to cut it down to 7 . We don't really know where our next release will really take us. We are toying with the idea of using a different studio next time to see what would happen also but thats not until early summer next year. I think it will be more claustrophobic and heavier than the last 2 cd's but still retaining our own swing on doom as we have come to culture and nurture. Thanks for the time to do this interview and if you have some sort of a message for Croatian fans now would be the best time to do it:-) Thanks for the interesting questions and I hope many of ye Croats will
manage to get a hold of our cd's and check us out. We would like to play
there sometime too. Please check out these websites too to get more info
on Mourning Beloveth and the Irish Metal scene.
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