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From Hard 'n' Heavy

1. With another 75 minutes album with " just " five songs, did you felt the need to prove all those doom bands that appeared lately that MB can still be considered as both epic and extreme ?

We never feel the need to prove anything, we just do what we do. From day one all we have done is stick our heads in a cloud and when the song is written take it out of the cloud. It is only when a song is finished do we time it and there is no stopwatch on the song saying it must be over a certain time, the song is over when it is over. Between the last album and this one we recorded a split 7 " and had to write a 7 minute song, it was probably the most difficult thing we have done as we had to cut the original song from 12 minutes to 7. For this album we also re-recorded Part 1 and another song which will appear on the limited edition double digipack along with a live show recorded last year in Gronigen, our aim was to fill two cds with as much music as possible and we have done that without compromising in quality.

2. Only three years, you were just a very underground band with just a self-produced album out. Nowadays, you've toured both Europe and the US and you're heralded as one of the future " big " doom band. How do you explain this swift of feedback ?

I think it is probably brute force and ignorance (hahah), nah really we have been doing this for a long time now and for many years sent fliers, promos of the demos and first cd around to as many people as possible. For the Dust album we sent around 10,000 colour fliers and sent out 500 promos, this all came out of our pockets-along with the first European and we also travelled europe to gigs and festivals talking to people and spreading the name of Mourning Beloveth. I like to think this is the main reason we now have such good feedback. But certainly touring Europe twice and America really put us to the fore of doom peoples minds.

3. Any " good stories " worth to be shared from those tours ?

Ah so many, so little space. The fact that we got to see Europe and America while playing with the band is probably the best story ever but for example we played Paris in 2003 and arrived at the venue, tired from driving all night only to discover we were playing in a very small wine cellar, everybody was a bit down until the place packed out, the atmosphere electric and 70 French people shout for encores…great night. We then played Doom to Grind festival in America and the name of the venue was The Junkyard,when we arrived it was an actual junkyard with engines all around us as stage props. The mix of a doom band then a grind band made us shit ourselves cause we were headlining the Friday night and the packed Junkyard was going crazy so we shit bricks but got up and played and there was guys coming up to the drums and sticking their heads in just to feel the rumble…great stuff. Just last year we played Germany for the first time at Doom Shall Rise, in a church to 500 doom heads and to share the stage with Count Raven, well another dream come true.

4. Do you think that the fact that the doom genre has gained a lot of popularity over the last two years helped MB in a way or another reaching this level ?

Definitely, who ever heard of doom bands touring so much and when we did it in 2003 there wasn't alot happening but now it seems with so many doom festivals on the map it is second nature to tour in April and September and now people seem to choose the shows they want to see. I think bands have realised they can do it themselves and it is possible without losing money and if you time your tour between doom festival appearences then it can be done. It is like the old punk and hardcore scenes in that way, very DIY.

5. Why such long tracks ? Are you not afraid of loosing people's attention ?

We write music for ourselves first and foremost and if people like it thats great and if theyare put off by the length of a song well then fuck them-long tracks help the mind wander and help us fuck up some live haha.

6. Did you decided to record in Germany and not at The Academy as usual in order to make sure that there'll be no reason left for people to compare you to My Dying Bride ?

The main reason we decided to record in Studio E was in fact price firstly, our initial thoughts were to record in Ireland but seeing as how everything here is so expensive we then started to look for another studio. Duncan of Antimatter gave me the contact for the studio of Martin/Prophecy and the producer Markus. Adrian picked up some of the stuff recorded there like the The Vision Bleak album and we were impressed. We booked the studio and a month later we signed to Grau, coincidence really, the MDB thing did cross our minds after all that too.

7. One could have expected A Murderous Circus to be more melodic than Sullen Sulcus. But it's actually harsher ! Were you striving to find back a bit of your former musical extremity ?

Yeah we were thinking the same but as the songs developed we realised they were alot harsher. I think there is alot more diversification in this album than previous, from soft acoustic to faster heavier parts to the melodic parts. Musically and lyrically we are dealing with topics very close to our hearts that have almost destroyed us in the past couple of years, from doing everything to excess just to try to find some balance in our lives and we think this is reflected in the music and lyrics. Markus (producer) also brought the guitars to the front more than on previous albums and combine that with the vitriolic and caustic vocal approach certainly brings that harsh feeling you speak of, it wasn't so much trying to touch our past but more looking in to the future. I remember with two months to go for this album we didn't have one song finished-all the thoughts were there and each week things were changed around to suit the mood that we were capturing, this added alot to the tension in the album as we worked on the songs up until the last day.

8. Frank's voice is almost absent from this album. How come ?

We had done so much touring for The Sullen Sulcus and could only play certain songs live in which Frank could sing and play and so we missed out on some of the best songs as he couldn't do it so we said when recording this time Frank should only sing on parts where he could sing and play live and this narrowed down his parts. Also the fact that my vocals are now alot more diverse than previous albums, lending the songs a different atmosphere and the songs are alot colder and harsher we didn't feel the need to utilise Franks voice as much.

10. Is there any connection in between the young girl pictured on the cover and the title ?

Yeah they are both on the album sleeve, haha….nah really A Murderous Circus deals with our debauchery and excessive lifestyles for the past years and how we have so much fun to try to get away from the mundane reality of life and yet in creating this world of debauched enlightenment it is also killing us. The girl on the front is just a normal girl but she is so melancholic as she sees the life ahead of her, the grey vastness and wonders why she must go through all of this, the circus can be taken literally for her or as life itself. When Lukasz the artist sent us this picture we just knew immediately it was the cover of the album, she is filled with such despair at such a young age….what is left for her….what is left for us ?

11. The album is solely dedicated to Mary Delaney. Who is it ?

Brians mother.

12. Do you agree if I say that your " celtic heritage " doesn't come across as strong as it did on your previous albums ?

People have told us before that we have a certain irish sound but to tell you the truth noone in the band can here this so I cannot agree or disagree with this statement. Perhaps the fact that the upfront production and the fact that we recorded in germany may have something to do with it………..we are the same five guys and we never had any Celtic riffs or lyrics so perhaps it was just the atmosphere which we feel is still the same…that oppressive, dark atmosphere.

13. So what is up next ? A sixty minute long track ?!

We thought it would be but we got on with Markus from day one, he is a really cool guy and we admire his music from the Empyrium days. We had a lot of fun recording and drinking at night and it was probably the most relaxed we have ever been in the studio and it probably brought the best out of us. We were all a little anxious about the move to a new studio and producer as all we knew was Magz and Academy but it was learning experience again for all of us I think. We clicked with Markus straight …

13. Your lyrics always strike as being really elaborate pieces. Indeed, you are one of the few bands which still has lyrics in the very sense of the word: you are trying to express something, have the power and will to express it. How would you describe the relation between lyrics and music? Would you say that your admiration for the mighty Keats (La belle Dame sans Merci and This living Hand are presumably among the darkest poems ever written…) has sharpened your senses for words?

For us anyway the music, lyrics and artwork all come together under the title a Murderous Circus, you cannot have one without the other. This time round for the lyrics I had all of the ideas and images I wanted written but they were mostly not put together until all of the music had been recorded, that is when I finished everything. I finished three songs over there but all of the lyrics were on scraps of paper or just notes that all became clear when the music was complete and so they were written under the atmosphere for this album lyrically and vocally I tried to capture the mood of the music for each piece.
Keats has been a major influence on my work since the beginning but there has been so much. I just finished Irvine Welsh's (Trainspotting) novels and a psychological analysis of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. I pick up words, phrases every day and over weeks and months these form into pieces. It could simply be something that happened to me or, a phrase that sticks in my head that morphs into something else. As I said with this album I had written and re-written most of the lyrics many times before we entered the studio, each time trying to capture the mood of the music.

13. 'The Apocalypse Machine' is actually a very impressive piece in that regard … Could you say that the line "Today I feel defeated…alone, the stench of all that is dead but still walks" is one of the most central ones on "A Murderous Circus"?

The Apocalypse Machine is a summation of the whole album and you picked out one of the central themes there. Again I wrote personally and universally, personally about the hell we go through after a time of excess and the depression that follows, how I feel that everything around me is dead or perhaps it is the fact that I am dead to the world. It is also a statement on the world in general and how so many people live such vacuous lives forced upon us by this uncaring, unfeeling world of mass commercialism and globalisation. The two topics are intertwined as we question is it because the world is like this that I follow the path of excess to block out the mundane existence around and by creating my own world through excess does it eventually lead to an existence parallel with what we are trying to escape from?" Most of us in the band over a number of years have been leading lives that are not exactly healthy, pushing ourselves to the limit on many occasions and the past two years has seen this very focused. This album musically and lyrically is dealing with this and it is a very diverse album as two things pull against each other creating a grey vastness between, musically we have written some of the softest pieces yet and also some of the most brutal and cold. It is a reflection of our own world and the world we live in that we have to try to create our own chaos to escape from banality and by trying to escape we are slowly killing ourselves.

14. Which other favourites do you have and why?

" the trouble is I though we would live forever, the truth is we were dead before we were born" from the song "..yet everything" again a line along the same themes as the previous question and I love it's openness and still it has a personal meaning
also " The seductive wasteland, marrow of the world, I've been here before but now it seems there is no way out" this line personally is my favourite as it describes perfectly what I have been thinking and doing for some time now.

15. What makes darkness and despair so fascinating for you as an issue for your lyrics and your music? Would you describe yourself as an extreme band in that sense as you search for and evoke utter darkness?

I don't know if they are fascinating, I am trying to vent what I have inside and by laying lyrics on a page, by screaming them out it seems to help me; it is the same for the rest of the lads in the band when they write music it is pure catharsis to clear all of the negative crap inside. I suppose we are all attracted to the darker side, be it music, books, film it is much more interesting than flowers…

16. Which idea or concept lies behind "A Murderous Circus"? The title seems to be quite a nice metaphor for the society of today …

The title deals with two things, firstly the fact that our lives have followed the path of excess for many years with over indulgence in the various forms that can be explored and how this circus we create only leads us to death and also the fact that the world we live in is so vacuous, so interested just in the façade and not what lies beneath that this is what has made us try to escape from it. So while the topics dealt with in the lyrics are very personal they are also universal and while I do speak from personal experience it is wrapped up with everything that is happening in the world today and perhaps this is the reason why we choose the path we lead, it is just to block out this mundane existence we are forced to live
The album is based loosely on a concept, a journey through our subconscious.
The first song I spoke of before. The second song, Elemental Nausea is a journey to the bowels of our creation through excess, it is questioning why we do this to ourselves, whether it is to attain a certain debauched enlightenment or to try to escape this mundane existence. The Crashing Wave deals with this excessive behaviour and how there is always a down side, mirrored in society perhaps with how we are left with but the scum of the earth to rule the world, how most people today live for the moment. Nothing (The March of death) is about everything in our lives, how it is slowly eroded with the passage of time and …"yet everything" deals loosely with death, the death of an era or the death of a part of ourselves. The album musically is also very extreme, cold and harsh and sometimes so soft and soothing but always a tension builds through each song that never seems to be resolved, just lost in the eternal greyness, the stagnant pit of our torment inner self but also the filth of the earth we must wade through each day just to survive. Everything is implicit and there are no outright or political influences..lyrically I am trying to get across an atmosphere of utter decay, of hopelessness and the grey vastness that wallows between our walls of destruction.

17. Would you describe yourself as a political person, in that sense that you try to be up-to-date with all the things that happen around you and take them as an influence - explicit or implicit - for Mourning Beloveth? Do you think that an artist should seek to mark (social) problems? How many of your words actually reflect what you perceive around?

I do keep up with world happenings and have my views on the world and I think they are shared by most thinking people.Everyone can see behind the lies of Governments and how, no matter what they say, keep us down with tax upon tax etc. An example in Ireland at the moment is that there is so much US investment that our government is afraid to say no to the US government over any issue and this is just another form of control the US has over Ireland without even invading. How the fact that the wars the US wage every day be it on there own people with tighter controls of everything you say or do or waging war on other countries for supposed weapons of mass destruction which I am sure existed ( just look at the receipt haha) to control their oil supply or to get rid of them as a force in the future, how there are so many drug companies now making products that nobody needs or wants…… I am sure you know where I am going with this but these are just my personal views, which I do not really bring in to MB. Implicitly I deal with how our society controls what you think with propaganda and commercialism, how the feeling is gone in society and how something you read today can be changed tomorrow, how these affect us personally and how we try to escape from this uncaring world. Everything I perceive around has an influence on me and I intertwine this with our personal hell, which we force upon ourselves sometimes to escape from this grey world.

18. There is a strange coherence between your new album and Primordial's last effort: You are both sort of lamenting about the fact the world has turned into an utterly dark place and that it is us, the people, who made it like this … I will ask you the same question I asked Alan some weeks ago: Do you sometimes feel like you are thrown into a time you cannot relate to, maybe even feel alien to?

myself and Alan do share some of the same views, his are probably a bit more extreme than mine, as we did grow up in the same times. It is no longer a world of the people, but then again it probably never was, it just seems governments are trying to control us more and more and our own government is even trying to get rid of its history by tearing up ancient burial sites in the name of progress.This is not the Ireland I grew up in where we were proud of our heritage and our struggle for freedom. It seems these are now dirty words , we grew up learning about our history and how our forefathers fought and died for us, this seems to be forgotten about today
Musically and lyrically both bands are dealing with this but it is wrapped up in personal themes, which are generally caused by this society, and being Irish you just cannot escape from it. Both bands play with passion and feeling and there is an honesty to the music which comes through in the atmosphere.

19. What about your future plans?

We are doing a few gigs soon, in Paris then hopefully Germany and in October we play Dutch Doom Day hopefully followed by a tour and after that back to writing some new material.