Winter Arrives, Elvenking Are Back
For the third time it happens, the Italian elves known as Elvenking are back with a new album. The band which began in 97', released in 2001 a great debut album that combined traditional Folk with strong Power Metal music and vocals that change from clean melodic ones to Death metal growls. Following the release of their first album, the band parted ways with their vocalist and one of their founding members and on 2004 released a second album, which wasn't such a success as the first one.
As result of that, the band invited back Damnagoras, the original vocalist, while the band's guitarist and other founding member, Jarpen, decided to leave it. Now, one year and a half since that album, the band tries to go back to the its former ways while trying to sound more mature and developed. To understand some of the changes in the band and on the new album, vocalist Damnagoras shared with us some interesting details about him and Elvenking.
Hello, you're about to unleash Elvenking's 3rd release upon the world, how do you feel the responses are so far?
At the moment there aren't many responses on the new Elvenking, because it hasn't been released yet. It's a little surprising on our behalf because we have changed some features in our music, or actually developed, so some of the people who liked the first album will find it kind of different. We hope for good reviews…
Are you still excited is if it was your first release?
Yeah, when you release an album it's exciting and very cool because it's a result of doing an album, recording songs, it's stressing, so of course we're waiting for this release. The album was ready in June, we were waiting about 6 month for this release so we're really excited about it and the impression it will have on the press and especially on the fans.
Is there any concept behind "The Winter Wake", if so, what is it? Or what are the songs mainly about?
There is no real concept behind this album, the lyrics are not linked to each-other, but in every song you try to do as best as you can, and get inspired by some themes, by our deep emotions to write. Some of them would seem like simple stories because they don't tell about real images, but on the album's booklet you can visualize and read the stories behind them. On every song we used that kind of image to tell something more, something deeper, so actually there is a main idea behind every lyric.
I understand you left the band back in 2002 because of 'Health Reasons'. Why didn't you come back to the band as soon as you got better instead of putting together a new band?
Well, that is what we told at the time, because it was difficult to understand at that moment what the real reasons are. Of course it was not only "Health Problems", it was a decision of mine but not the only thing because things were not going so good. I had an opinion about how Elvenking should go on, and Jarpen, our second guitar player, wanted to push the band in another direction, and the others just followed him. That made a problem because I didn't agree with it, and I didn't want to carry on in that way.
Then, a couple of years later, Ayden, the other guitar player, just met me one night and he said that he really wanted to have a different way for Elvenking, that's why he wanted me to join back the band and we both agreed that Elvenking should go in one specific direction. That is also why Jarpen left the band, because he wasn't into metal or music in general anymore, besides that me and Ayden wanted to continue Elvenking in the right direction that should have been.
That's why you made Leprechaun, after leaving Elvenking?
Of course, a little bit after I left Elvenking I had time to think of job and shit like that. Still I was composing music and there where some good songs and ideas that I came up with that some of them were good for the second album of Elvenking, but since I left I took them with me so together with a friend of mine, Francesco Bucci of Stormlord, we decided to take these ideas and make a band
You still haven't found a Label for your band?
No, on the first year we have recorded an album and started to search for a label but only last year we had some contact with some labels that have been interested, but we didn't get anything good. Now I'm concentrated with Elvenking but of course I will try again to get a good deal for Leprechaun at least for the album we recorded because it's ready and the material is very good so we want to release it in one way or another. I think you will hear some day again about Leprechaun.
Through your 2 latest releases, 'Wyrd' and 'The Winter Wake', it seems as if the band goes towards heavier influences and a bit less folkish tunes as you had in 'Heathenreel'… What made this progression?
First it was a natural progress, we never had this kind of production sound, and we never had it so hard and pure as we wanted it to be. This time we got it at last, but it didn't affect the song writing. We still progress with material and develop and this time we concentrated on guitars, we made them a bit stronger. In some way we have harder songs but at the same time, as you can hear on the album, we had something really different.
Speaking of heavy influences, what was the idea behind the title song "The Winter Wake" and your collaboration with Schmier from Destruction?
Initially we were speaking of the voice for the verse in that song and Ayden wanted to have harsh vocals, not really death vocals, but more like Thrash metal so we said why shouldn't we ask a guest to come and sing. The first person we had on our minds was Schmier of Destruction since we're fans of Thrash Metal and I'm personally a huge fan of Destruction so this was good. It was pretty nice talking with him and its fucking cool for the new album. I think the song vibe is pretty strong.
With your previous albums you had many vocal variations, some female voices or growling made by 'Jarpen'. Now there is less of that, other than the song with Schmier and a few other vocal lines, did you feel there is no need for so many variations?
We did use some vocal variation but maybe we did it a bit less then before. In the past we used to put a lot of things in the songs, but this time, we were concentrating on making a very good and strong song, maybe without exaggerating. On the first release, we didn't think of ourselves as experienced songwriters and when you first start a band you use a lot of things, like female vocals or death vocals, but I we passed that. We didn't feel the need to have more voices, this time we concentrate more of the economy of the song, of having good parts and strong song with rhythm and right vocals.
On your second release you've been joined by 'Elyghen', who has been responsible for the violin and keyboard work. Did his addition make it easier for the band to create songs?
Yeah, at the beginning it was more difficult to have the perfect idea how the violin sound should be because we never had a violin or a keyboard player, we had all this melodies in our minds or on the guitar and we worked with other instruments just before entering the studio. Of course now we have more control of this because we have a Violin in the rehearsing room, so we can know how things will sound in our songs.
Does he play the violin on your concerts or are the folk instruments done by the Keyboardist, as with most bands?
He uses both instruments; there are parts where he uses the violin and other where he uses the keyboard. Regarding the previous question I want to add that it's usually me and Ayden that make the melodies, but Elygen now helps us because he is a classical musician and he can do many arrangements with the keyboards so we can play with that.
How do your concerts look like? Do you have any special outfits or equipment that you use on stage?
We usually wear our costumes, the ones that you can see on the album booklet, but we don't have any special instruments or equipment. For the next concert dates that will support "The Winter Wake" album we will use more image, but we don't have any special thing, it's just the 5 of us with our strange costumes. We don't exaggerate like some other folk metal bands that you can imagine, we don't try to have a connection between metal and this costumes.
After 3 releases do you think there could be an Elvenking DVD in the works or do you still want to create more albums with the band before that?
That would be really cool, but at the moment I can't say much. We're doing a concert for the release of "The Winter Wake" and we will record that with special cameras but of course we don't have anything planned for DVD. Maybe if we will have enough good material we can work on that, but at the moment we're not thinking about that.
You recorded 'The Winter Wake' on your own studio in Italy. Were the recording sessions any different than your previous experiences?
Well this time it was quite different because we could spend more time at the studio, we couldn't go and do it in a bigger studio because the budget wasn’t enough, so we had to do this and start record in our own studio. We could just go inside the studio and had a lot of time to concentrate on everything and do it ourselves. It was really cool, we had all the time to finish the album.
In every Elvenking album you chose a different cover artist. What led you this time to pick the current one [Havancsák Gyula]?
We just saw the one-before-last album by Annihilator, "All For You", and Grave Digger's "The Last Supper" and we thought this artist was really cool. We contacted him and he made us not only the cover, but also the entire booklet because this time we wanted something really big. He did a drawing for every song to give something more for the fans. If the album was empty inside, it would be disappointing so we wanted to have something really rich inside, an imagery of the lyrics.
How would you define Elvenking's music? Power / Heavy metal or something more like Pagan / Folk metal?
This is a quite difficult to tell because it's kind of hard to decide. All the time people compare us to some pure folk metal acts like Skyclad, Korpiklaani and stuff like that, and of course we have something in common with them, and of course we are inspired by folk music with bands like Skyclad, but on the other hand we have features from Heavy, Power and Thrash metal so its really difficult to tell you. Maybe we're Power-Folk Metal, or Heavy Metal, or Metal… Anyway, when we compose songs we don't have a specific style we work on, we design the song as fit to us and the result is a collaboration of all this stuff.
You said that Skyclad influenced you, is that why you chose to cover 'Penny Dreadful'? What can you tell us about that?
We've always been Skyclad fans and especially their first albums, such as "Jonah's Ark" and "A Burnt Offering For The Bone Idol" and the others. That song was actually recorded in 2001 for our first album, Heathenreel, by the original line-up. It was supposed to be bonus track for Japan but we never had a release in there for the first album so the song never been released. This time, we're going to release the album in Japan and Korea, so the record company told us why not use the 'Penny Dreadful' song, it's so strong and we like it.
Do you have any relation to other folk-influenced metal acts or are you influenced by other bands other then Skyclad?
We listen to bands like Finntroll, Ensiferum, Cruachan, and Skyclad of course. We follow all the folk metal scene.
What do you think of the growing interest in this type of sub-genre?
I think its good, because a couple of years ago there weren't so many bands like there are now and I think it's very positive. This kind of bands can give a lot and they make music that's really entertaining. Also there are other bands like Wintersun that makes this kind of folk music with technique and speed which is really cool.
Do you know anything about the Israeli Metal Scene?
Well I know a couple of bands, like Salem, I listened to their album called "Strings Attached" or something like that and it's a very cool album. Usually people from Europe think that in other countries which metal is not so big don't have any good bands, but then come bands like Orphaned Land, or Salem too that show to Europe that you could have good bands. Of course you know more then us that you have many good bands. You know that also a lot of countries like Germany or Scandinavia, usually think that about Italian bands, and of course time showed there are great bands like Lacuna Coil or Rhapsody, and they release good albums.
Italy is pretty close to Israel… How do you feel about coming over here?
At the moment we don't have anything planned but the record company and the booking agency are speaking of doing a small tour, I don't really know. Maybe we will come at the summer.
That's it for the interview. Do you have any last words for your Israel fans?
I hope the fans will give a try to our new album and if they like it, they can buy it… [Laughs] I really hope some of them will support Elvenking and our new martial because I think "The Winter Wake" is a strong album. We really hope to come there some day, play a gig and party with all of you.
