1. Hey guys, how have you been doing there in Scotland at the moment? Everything is well?
Yeah, everything is going great. Thanks. A lot of good things are happening with Feannag since we released the album.
2. You seem pretty mature and experienced musicians, What can you say about your metal background as musicians and how you came to work with each other?
Haha, yeah we are pretty old. You know, we have known each other for a long time. Me and Albin are from the same place in Poland and we met Pawel already in Edinburgh about 10 years ago.
Things were pretty standard I think. I got the guitar and started recorded some riffs, make arrangements etc. Albin was messing up with his bass. At one party I presented to Albin some stuff I made and he liked it. We started to jam together. That is really begging of Feannag. Pawel, who was a vocalist in Mizm from Preston decided to join us when we had practically all instrumental songs recorded. All went pretty smoothly.
3. Your newest album “Throne” is just out now. What can you tell us about it and how was the response from the underground media and the fans to the three tracks you already released?
We are absolutely proud of our creation. The feedback from Scottish underground death metal scene is fantastic. We had many reviews and interviews for the zines. Especially we would like to thank to Ricky from Moshville Radio. He played us so often in his death/black metal audition. He made a great promotion for the band. Also YouTube channel - Deathmetal Promotion made a great job for us. Definitely the feedback overwhelmed our expectations….
The promo was realised when we already had full album recorded. We wanted to check the feedback and make a small promotion before to release the full album.
4. One of the distinguishing qualities of the new album is the pitch-black atmosphere of pure hatred. Did you have some kind of a vision to nail a specific sound when you got to write and record the music?
Absolutely! We all are full of hate to christian religion. You can feel it from listening the album. We wanted to make a brutal and dark album. Death metal punch in the face with black metal melodies and atmosphere.
5. When you write music, is it a group thing or is there someone who writes all the music and someone writing the lyrics individually?
Practically all arrangements are mine. I prepared riffs and drums to Albin and I gave him freedom to record bass line. In few places Albin brought his bass tracks and I arranged the rest.
When it comes to the lyrics me and Pawel wrote all lyrics. I basically told Pawel the main theme of songs and he wrote his vision of the songs. I think his totally own creation is lyric to Desire of the Wisdom of the God.
Pawel has his special flavour of writing lyrics and I have mine. The collaboration of both of us went greatly in my opinion.
6. How do you created the new songs? Is it predetermined process, or do you leave substantial space for improvisations?
Mostly it comes from riffs and drum tracks. It is hard to say to be honest. Sometimes I had vision of the song but during the recording it has changed in something different than I expected. There is a lot improvisation I think but behind it there is always some idea.
7. And what about inspiration outside of black metal and music in general? What else fuels your inspiration?
We definitely are inspired by Polish Extreme Metal scene. We have been listening bands like: Behemoth, Vader, Hate, Trauma, Infernal War, Mgla, Azarath and many others. Also Scandinavian scene was always fantastic, American scene with mighty Nile, South American with Krisiun. Basically we do listen a lot of extreme music and inspiration comes from many bands.
8. What is music for you? Does it bring you some new emotions or it helps you to get ride of some negative emotions?
Music was always a company in my life. Music means emotions to me and anger is one of them. It is like therapy to me. You just hold a lot of anger inside you and heavy riffs and songs help you to release them.
9. Does black metal need the aggressive imagery to get their points of view across? And is black metal of way of life or just a very energetic outlet for stress and such?
It does need aggressive imagery. Otherwise it would be fake. The image should represent the music expression. It is necessary to create this dark image, especially on the stage.
Black metal is a way of life, full of rebellion, questioning so called religion authorities, negation of dogmas, connection to the nature., etc.
Feannag will have dark image on the stage for sure. Soon we will release our
album on CD and definitely the artwork we made is dark.
10. What is your opinion about the UK´s black metal scene in general? Do you think the scene is more active than it was before?
I don’t think the black metal scene is big in UK, contrary to Death Metal, Death Core. In my opinion black metal comes from rebellion against religion dogmas,. In UK church is far away from politics and it doesn’t dictate the rules and influence politicians. It is a secular country, so yeah, black metal scene is not big here. However maybe because of our black metal content the extreme metal scene recognised us so well since we released “Throne”.
11. Promotion has become vital in these times. With hundreds of bands releasing albums in the same time period, it’s become a struggle to get noticed. How do you see the future of promotion and recording?
The well recorded and good music will defend themselves. Of course all need to be promoted. We spent a lot of time to send our album everywhere we could. Bandcamp, Youtube and other social media helps to be recognised. Future, hmmm? I think it will be pretty much the same what is happening now. Most of the promotion will happen through music platforms and social media bu also through live acts. The recording will be shared between digital and analog hardware. Feannag use the both “worlds” to record our songs. I think it all is about to keep raw, brutal character and bring the punch to songs without sounding “plastic”. But definitely recording good sounding music is much easier nowadays.
12. We have reached the end of our conversation, is there something that you want to say still?
We would like to thank Rotten Pages for the interview and Feannag promotion in Peru and South America. We are huge fans of South American extreme metal scene. Keep Fucking Rocking and Stay Antichrist!!!!
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