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epetitive heavy mid-tempo songs, goes on<br />
to soft acoustic and orchestral tunes and<br />
ends with high speed, furious staccato hymns.<br />
So the flow of this album starts with water<br />
and ends with fire - WaterHells...<br />
I also think that WaterHells<br />
has been your least experimental<br />
album, but only if<br />
you <strong>com</strong>pare it to your own<br />
discography, because once<br />
you start observing the<br />
whole metal scene back in<br />
2001, experimentation<br />
wasn’t at its speak to say<br />
the least. Is experimentation<br />
something you would<br />
like to rediscover and push<br />
further next time?<br />
You never can say what will<br />
<strong>com</strong>e out. It just happens. For<br />
example with Echowelt we tried<br />
very hard to make a very<br />
catchy, <strong>com</strong>mercial album.<br />
When we had finished the<br />
songwriting we thought that it<br />
was much more simple and direct than A Kiss<br />
in the Charnel Fields. And I still think so.<br />
Actually, everyone else thinks that Echowelt<br />
is by far our most experimental and innovative<br />
album. No record <strong>com</strong>pany dared to release<br />
it. The listeners decide what’s experimentation,<br />
not the songwriter. So maybe we<br />
should try to write a very experimental album<br />
now. Then people will probably find it very<br />
<strong>com</strong>mercial and buy it...<br />
In your listening case, and I know<br />
you’ve been concerned with the question<br />
of avant-gardism in metal lately (smile),<br />
what defines the experimental, avantgarde<br />
and furthering nature of metal? If<br />
only listeners decide what experimentation<br />
is, does it mean that the whole<br />
avant-garde culture only is a biosocial<br />
phenomenon that could be reduced to an<br />
always-changing herd fashion?<br />
It depends. On an individual level there are<br />
thousands of musicians trying to create<br />
something innovative. And there are thousands<br />
of listeners perceiving it as experimental<br />
or conventional due to their personal listening<br />
experiences. If you sum up all these<br />
activities you get the construct of a collective<br />
level. Just take all the different bands featured<br />
on www.avantgarde-metal.<strong>com</strong>. A few<br />
of these bands may be perceived as avantgarde<br />
by 90 or more percent of the readers.<br />
And there are many bands where maybe just<br />
20 or 30 percent of the readers think: "Wow,<br />
this band really surprises me with their innovative<br />
sound!” It’s very relative.<br />
39<br />
The more experimental bands you have listened<br />
to, the fewer albums really are able to<br />
surprise you.<br />
Personally I never tried consciously to be<br />
progressive or experimental. Songs <strong>com</strong>e out<br />
of the feelings, not of the brain. You can do<br />
what you want, but you cannot<br />
want what you want.<br />
I always had a feeling that<br />
within Korova’s earlier releases,<br />
from A Kiss in the<br />
Charnel Field’s more uncertain,<br />
nervous approach to<br />
Echowelt’s total blasting<br />
force, you certainly had a flirt<br />
or two with <strong>com</strong>plete mental<br />
confusion and pure musical<br />
strangeness, while some sort<br />
of a rebellious bizarre malaise<br />
was carried on the whole<br />
time with your uniquely troubled,<br />
if not broken vocals. As<br />
a performer and <strong>com</strong>poser,<br />
did it have any link with your<br />
own personality back then,<br />
whereas with WaterHells, a<br />
certain peace of mind had been found,<br />
thus the more relaxed, laid-back atmospheres?<br />
Like I already said in earlier statements: the<br />
songwriting is just an act of self-defense. So<br />
of course it’s connected to our personality in<br />
some way. Although I don’t think that there<br />
is such a thing as personality – we have<br />
countless and none. It’s not personality. I<br />
would call it "decision” – decision to act in a<br />
special way, to wear a certain mask, to<br />
choose a certain shape, to let a certain spirit<br />
flow through you for a period of time. That’s<br />
all.<br />
After Charnel Fields and Echowelt more extreme,<br />
more bizarre, more dissonant and<br />
eccentric would have been very boring. It<br />
wouldn’t have added something new to our<br />
sound anymore. So already with Dead like an<br />
Angel we headed towards the opposite direction.<br />
There are some mysterious ballads and<br />
even pop-like songs and parts. Maybe it’s not<br />
so obvious on that album, because the production<br />
is pretty bad and hence doesn’t<br />
sound <strong>com</strong>mercial. And also WaterHells partly<br />
went into this calm, relaxed direction. Here<br />
it’s more obvious due to the excellent sound.<br />
So most of all the reason for this changed<br />
performance was the wish to explore further<br />
terrains of expression yet undiscovered by<br />
our former songs.<br />
Self-defense, alright – but what is the<br />
self defending itself against here? More<br />
specifically: how is musical creation taking<br />
shape in your case?
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