| INTERVIEWS |
From Vampire Mag Before talking about the new album; I do have some questions left about the Dust re-release..
Why did you choose particularly those two bonus tracks for the re-release, instead of, for instance, an entire demo?
I think it was for a few reasons, we knew the re-release of Dust was coming through Sentinel records and because of this we knew we would have better distribution so for all intents and purposes this would be the first introduction to the bands for a lot of people. We wanted them to know we had a past and we have a future by putting Autumnal Fires (from our second demo) and It Almost Looked Human (from our new cd). Basically we only had about 18 minutes left on the original Dust cd so an entire demo would be out of the question as they are well over that mark…so really it was just a logical thing. There were some good-natured arguments over putting a new song on the re-release but in the end we decided it would be a good idea. The song ‘It almost looked human’, also present on this release sounds pretty different to me from the other songs on ‘The sullen sulcus’, and the duration of the song as well is much shorter..
Is this perhaps because this is already an elder song?
No, I think the fist song written for TSS was the first song on the cd, The Words that crawled. It Almost Looked Human came in the middle somewhere, I don’t know about it sounding very different to the rest of the cd, everyone has there opinions I guess. It is definitely shorter, clocking in at just over 7 minutes… I think this is the main reason why you may think it is different…it seems when we write shorter songs that we try to cram as many elements of the Mourning beloveth sound into that particular song, and not sounding rushed or anything just maybe more concise. With the longer songs we may meander a bit and this lets the listeners mind trail off also. With the shorter songs it is almost like a short,sharp impact and then it is gone-no time to think. I find the production of the album no less then stunning; full, majestic, heavy yet very clear, and it definitely shows the bands’ own style, where Dust could more easily be compared to Mdb’s ‘Turn loose the swans’ …
But, besides the production, the quality of the songs as well has obviously improved very much! It’s clearly still the same band, but on the other hand, the level to where you have evolved is amazing. Agree?
Of course I would agree with such a statement (haha). There were many factors contributing to our sound as well as our songs. With Dust we had experienced a professional studio and engineer (Magz) for the first time and we were a little apprehensive, this didn’t take away from the sound or songs in any way as Magz is a very experienced engineer and he knew how to make us relax and got the best out of us. As for the Dust songs, we were very comfortable with as they were songs that we had been playing live and in rehearsals for many years so this helped us also. The songs for the new album the Sullen Sulcus are all new compositions and we basically shut ourselves away for a year in rehearsals, didn’t even play any gigs, and just concentrated on writing new material. We wrote 8 songs for the album and then broke them all down in to their component parts, dropped some stuff and added some new stuff. We paid particular attention to a lot of small details this time round but the most important thing about our songs is that they must flow, without that they are nothing and although it sounds a rather mechanical process we never lost the feeling for a song while writing it. We also had in our minds what could be achieved in the studio and we learned a lot form our first experience there. We knew how to get a certain sound on the guitar, a certain heaviness in all the right places etc. This helped no end and TSS is the end result. What we aim for is to write songs that we want to listen to and with each release, while at the time is perfect, as time slips by we hear certain parts that could have been done better and so with each release we are striving to better the previous release. We grew up on doom and doom/death music and what that has in abundance is heaviness and emotion. That is what we love, that is what we strive for, a heavy ,majestic and full yet clear production. The vocals this time round, the clear spoken parts are very annunciated and not tinged with gothic trapping at all..they have a very Irish feel. The clear and growl vocals compliment each other very well also and with each release we are learning on what sounds good to us and what doesn’t. Playing live also helps in the process as we can see what works for us and what doesn’t. But, having matured (god, I hate that word) so much at once, what can we expect in the future?
Fuck knows!!? We have just recorded a song for a split 7” with fellow dark metallers Lunar Gate and it should be released on Sentinel Records soon. This song again is another 7 minute song and was recorded in Cosmic recording here in Ireland, it is a very strange song for Mourning Beloveth but contains all the usual MB traits so don’t be put off. The new stuff is slowly taking shape at the moment and we can’ t really say too much about it but I think it will be a very diverse album , with a lot of different emotions. We never decide on how we should sound or what direction we should go, it just happens, probably subconsciously, but we never plan. We just write what we want to write and that is the way it has been since day one. We never chose to be doom its just that our songs turned out slow and miserable and we went from there. We write and record what we want to hear ourselves. The lyrics and artwork are both very abstract, and will be explained different by everybody reading them, and they’re probably very personal as well.
Therefore I shall not ask you to explain them, but maybe you could give us a quick overview of topics the songs deal with…?
Being a doom band it is all the usual topics, loneliness, sorrow and even anger all dressed up in bizarre imagery, which swims around my head. The demos dealt with a lot of loneliness and loss of loved ones. The lyrical approach was one of prose dealing with these emotions wrapped in a lot of imagery dealing with nature and the changing seasons, how we are at one with nature but how over time we seem to have lost our way a bit…I saw a lot of parallels between nature and the human animal and dealt with this in the lyrics. For example on our first demo The Fruit and the Sorrow is based on the premise of the story of Adam and Eve and how one longs for something for so long and when they finally get it the only thing to look forward to is death. The lyrics for Dust, while still containing some nature influences sees the beginning of a change in direction, while still dealing with human negative emotions and heavy imagery the lyrics begin to deal with what is going on inside the head instead of what is going on around it. The lyrics of Dust deal a lot with our complete lack of hope for ours, and everyone else’s life. The world is basically shit and each breath we take is a breath closer to our graves. So Dust deals a lot with our sense of a lack of hope with the world we live in I think on the Sullen Sulcus the lyrics deal again with the human emotions but this time they are coming directly from inside, with a few short passages on nature imagery. The songs revolve around complete psychological warfare that one wages with themselves from time to time, sometimes due to external reasons, andsometimes for their own torture. There is a lot more anger in the music and lyrics of TSS than any other recording of MB so far, not anger as in lets play really fast, more a slow grinding feeling that all life is coming to a halt. The lyrics deal with a very turbulent time in my life when I felt it was better to be silent but which in turn sent my head on a spiral downwards to the depths of torture and pain. The shear weight of lyrics on TSS is probably more than I have come up with in my whole time with MB, while Dust has some very long passages with music only, on TSS I think there are very few passages just with music and this also helped me develop my writing style as I was very free to describe particular things without constraints. The lyrics for each release are always very broad even though they deal with specific instances in our lives they remain open to interpretation for each listener, we all have our own message we get from the music and lyrics or we each see something differently in certain words or music. And, all the lyrics have more or less the same subject..but it’s not a concept album..?
Particular reason for that?
Well I don’t know where this idea of a concept album came from, perhaps the question on the doom-metal.com site where Heiko asked is it a concept album and I said no, but quickly changed my mind and added that it was, of sorts. Then again isn’t every album a concept album, it is a particular section in the musicians, bands life and is recorded on to a silver disc-how could any meaningful album not be a concept album? The Sullen Sulcus actually sums up the lyrical and musical context of all the songs on the album very loosely. Each song deals with a certain element in our lives that cause depression, hate, loneliness and how these emotions cause imprints on the brain and affect how each of us live. The Sulcus from the Oxford dictionary is a small indent on the brain, like a furrow. Each particular song deals with a topic that causes these emotional indents on the brain, for example The Words that Crawled deals with a person spending too much time thinking and looking in to meaningless things and how words can eat away the mind as they swim around it, the song My Sullen Sulcus deals with a bad drug experience(s) and again how this shaped how one might look at the world and look at themselves…….so, very loosely, the songs are all tied together by the title and the cover art. Uhm..I do have one tiny little question about the coverart in relation to the title.
‘The sullen sulcus’ stands for ‘(negative) emotions eating your brain out’, Darren said earlier.
But the second character in the drawing..what’s her role? Is she the ‘sullen’, or does she represents that there’s always to stand by you when one’s in need of that?
Or is she taking advantage of you, by taking your ‘sulcus’, since hers is floating away as well..?
Again each individual will have their own interpretation of the front cover and the pictures on the booklet. My own interpretation of the front cover, when I look at the picture I see a lot of vulnerability and betrayal. It is almost an apocalyptic representation of our emotions and the rich and vacuous reds really bring home the feeling of isolation, of being torn away from the world into a world of silence and thought and both your points are valid above, in the one hand it seems like the second figure is saving the persons mind but at the same instant it is coming apart from the first person so they are no longer themselves. Hope this is of help to you….as I said it is up to each person to glean from it what they wish. How did you end up getting signed by Aftermath music?
Simple enough story really. Myself and Adrian have spent along time over the years writing of people so we knew where we stood in the ug and what kind of label would be suitable for us. When we recorded Dust we sent Haavard a copy to see if he was interested in releasing it. At the time he was busy with other projects but I kept in contact with him. We sent him some rehearsals of our newer stuff and he was very interested. We had two other labels wanting TSS also but Haavard was the best out of the 3 and so it was an easy decision to sign with him and we have no regrets In an interview with doom-metal.com’s Heiko Adrain says, and I quote: (internet is) ‘More important than anything’.
I totally agree on that. And your website does indeed look good..but I think it then should be up-to-date as well..right?
At this very moment we are designing a new website with the feature and focus on themes from TSS. Everything will be updated, pics, reviews and some little additions like a flash intro and a hi res download button for zine editors so we don’t have to keep sending them by email. With so much going on we just sort of neglected the webpage, but it does still include monthly updates so we are not that bad. The guy who is doing the webpage design for us is Paul McCArroll, the same person who did the art for The Sullen Sulcus. From what I have seen so far it looks amazing. To Mourning Beloveth the internet is invaluable, we started the usual way with fliers upon thousands of fliers spread throughout the underground. With the internet I think a new underground has begun and in fact the whole Doomination of Europe tour was organized through the internet, forums and email proves my point,everything is a lot faster which has its plus points. Don’t worry we won’t neglect the webpage again. What did you think of the doomination of Europe-tour in common?
Experiences, turn-out, other countries/cultures?
Amazing, words cannot describe how I felt, and still feel about this tour. It was a very scary experience. Meeting two bands we never met before, playing 11 gigs in 14 days was also quiet frightening but what made it all so easy was that the three bands got on so well, and the people we met along the way. We stayed in people’s apartments for days on end when in Belgium, Holland and they fed us and gave us the freedom of their house, it was amazing. No bad experiences at all, we were only really late for the Murcia gig, no sickness and no van breakdowns. A friend of Adrian’s in Madrid put all 4 bands up (including Desire) in her apartment for the night and fed us the next morning. Thank you everyone. The turnouts varied from 80 to 350 people. We played to 80 people in Paris and the place was full, the atmosphere amazing and the people so kind. We played to 80 people in Spain and it felt like a morgue. We then traveled for 3 days non-stop almost and in between played an amazing gig in Portugal in front of 350 people on the grounds of a 16th century college. The Portugese people and the country reminded me so much of Ireland many years ago, so friendly and people who quiet like a drink. Spain, despite the poor turnouts was great to play with Autumnal for the three dates, cool people. Plans for Doomination 2004 already in action due to the immense success of this tour. And how about your own performances?
I saw the Rotterdoom gig, and was heavily impressed. Very emotional, yet tight & aggressive as well..And the clean vocals were still very, very good.
But wasn’t it possible to play at least one more song?
Despite they’re quite long, 4 isn’t very much..
Well our first gig in Dublin we headlined and played for 1.5 hours, a very tiring set. We had rehearsed a lot for this and it all came together. With each gig I think each band grew more and more confident with there own material and by the end of the tour we were all very very tight. We changed round some nights playing 4, some nights playing 5 and in Murcia we only played 3 songs due to exhaustion and us arriving 3 hours late didn’t help. Certain venues have strict time control and some don’t, we had 45-50 minutes and if we had played another song we would have went over this time by a few minutes. You should have shouted for more man, we could have obliged. All in all the experience wasn’t really tiring, although when I came home it took me two weeks to recover but during the tour it was like living in a dream and so we kept pushing ourselves to the limit, all the anger and frustration of driving and driving came out in our live performances. I remember one stage in Madrid I felt like I was going to collapse but just kept going, I even puked on stage, but this was probably the only bad moment for me in the whole tour. And had you ever expected to do an European tour? Or, an american?! Yeah the American tour is a testimony to how well the three bands got on touring Europe, we all became good friends and bonds were forged that will never be broken. The American tour will be amazing with 24 dates across America and it will be another dream come true. Evoken have pulled out of the tour and Unearthly Trance will be playing the opening slot. It should be an amazing month of doom as long as this fucking war stops. We will be playing four dates in Canada also and the shows kick off on August 1st. I think we will be the first irish Metal band to tour America. I think that I’ve given you more then enough answers to type already, so luckily the final question is always an easy/short one. Anything to add to the above? Thanks for the insightful interview Loek, it was a pleasure to answer. We will have a dvd coming out in May through Aftermath and it will contain footage of the domination of Europe MB shows and some backstage footage. It will cost the same as a normal cd. Also we have a split 7” coming out soon with Lunar Gate. It is limited to 300 copies and will be available through Sentinel in Ireland.
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