1. Hello Nolan, pleasure to have you on Rotten Pages ´zine. How are you doing today?
Let us set the scene first. Where do we find you right now? Please describe your surroundings.
NOLAN: I’m sitting in the living room of an air bnb in Eugene Oregon. I’m traveling around the US filming an energy drink commercial.
2. For those new to Frigore just explain the format of the band. Is it still essentially a duo project, Nolan?
NOLAN: Frigore is a two-man project Ian Crandall and I put together in 2016. Ian writes the lyrics and I write and perform the music. We chose to collaborate with Topias Jokipii of Saasta on vocals. I am hoping to work with Topias on future projects, so maybe it will be a three piece one day!
3. You started the band 8 years ago and to this day, you’ve had only a Release EP “Path Of Logic”, it seems like you are taking your time and not in a hurry to release music. What is the reason for it?
NOLAN: Frigore started as a joke band between me and Ian. Music has been a casual hobby of mine my whole life and we both wanted a creative outlet. We produced a two song EP in 2016 after Ian wrote some poetry while on deployment in the navy. I was inspired and wrote some music to accompany it. We were both really into black metal at the time and I thought that the genre matched the tone of the lyrics. The songs were crude, but a great exercise! We didn’t touch the project until recently when I wanted to experiment with EZ drummer and Neural DSP. I wrote Fangs of the Fiends on a whim and we were stoked at what was possible with virtual instruments. Frigore started for real after fangs and we wrote the rest of the album pretty quickly.
4. As a band from Los Angeles, how has your local music scene influenced your development and growth as musicians?
NOLAN: I’m surrounded by really technically proficient musicians of all kinds of genres and I’m constantly learning new techniques.
5. Black metal, just like any other musical genre, has sub genres of its own that define bands and their own unique styles. Where do you see Frigore within those definitions?
NOLAN: That’s a great question. We are still figuring that out. I really enjoy blackened death metal and I think that’s the best way to categorize Frigore. I’m inspired by bands like Wormwitch, Deafheavan and Hoth. The latter being the band that I’d credit to pushing me to start the band. Black metal is an evocative genre and is where I want the emotion of the music to come from. But I like to write death metal riffs way more.
6. In August, you released your debut EP, Are there any kind of particular points of inspiration for these tracks that you would like to discuss?
IAN: I was listening to a lot of Dissection when I wrote the lyrics for Fangs of the Fiends, the first song made for the EP. Although this is probably what got the project going there was a large variety of inspiration. Nolan and I agree Wormwitch and Hoth influenced the album a lot. A dash of Deafheaven too. There’s also some direct references to Death and Darkthrone in my lyrics.
7. Nolan, as the sole member behind instrumentation, how do you manage the creative process of writing and composing music, lyrics, and playing multiple instruments?
NOLAN: I don’t have a formal music production background, but I’ve been playing guitar basically my whole life. So the instrumentation revolves entirely around the guitar. Once I find a riff or melody I like, I will pair it with a groove in EZ drummer and build the song from there. Most of the time, that first riff influences the entirety of the song. You can clearly hear that process in Forbidden Knowledge. Then I’ll lay down bass. Finally I’ll take Ian’s lyrics and mumble them in the rhythm that works for the song. My vocals are horrible and those demos are pretty funny. Finally I’ll send those scratch vocal tracks to Topias and he’ll use them to record the final vocals.
8. Is both members of Frigore involved in the composition of your music and general artistic choices? Can you tell us a bit more about your own creative process?
NOLAN: While I am doing the entirety of the composition, It’s very collaborative. I write each song and will send the demos to Ian for feedback. His musical taste is honestly second to none. He has his finger on the pulse of what works in the genre and is a key sounding board when I’m composing the music. We have a pretty clear division of labor and don’t step on each other’s toes.
9. What is the spiritual ideology or philosophy that drives you both as individuals and as a band? Do you think it can become a limit to your creativity?
NOLAN: We make music because it is fun and a great experience. I think the sky's the limit.
10. What challenges have you faced as an independent artist, and how have you overcome them while maintaining Frigore's uncompromising vision?
NOLAN: It was a completely painless process to be honest. We set out to make this EP for ourselves. And the support from people like you is unexpected. It’s completely humbling and deeply appreciated. The challenge will be to use what we learned from this process to make our next project even better!
11. As an artist, how do you explore the balance between crafting immersive stories through your lyrics while also delivering impactful, heavy music? What role does storytelling play in your approach to black metal?
IAN: The entirety of Path of Logic was trial and error learning how to strike that balance. It’s easy to overwrite lyrics, making the song a bit of a mess. When you’re dealing with growl vocals you need lines the vocalist can emphasize, writing a bunch of exposition isn’t going to cut it. I also didn’t want to write a bunch of nonsense that only sounds good if you don’t read into it. It helps to have a metalheads vocabulary to use in storytelling. Throw in some colorfully brutal or sinister adjectives when needed. It also helps having a vocalist like Topias that knows how to deliver lines in interesting ways.
Integrating the lyrics into the rest of the instruments was a collaborative process. With the exception of Pestilence the lyrics were written first. I don’t have the ear Nolan does for where they should fit so I left that to him. Sometimes lines got changed around or didn’t make it to the final song. I only wrote an extra line or two when he asked me but the essence of the original lyrics was always kept. It felt like a good process where the two of us created a shared vision of what the song was.
12. Are there any external influences on the music? Anything you were listening to at the time – or reading, or watching – which you feel had an effect on the writing process?
NOLAN: I was listening to Cattle Decapitation and Deafheaven a lot while writing Path of Logic. I really like both bands' approach to melody and emotion. Both bands have an amazing ability to weave beautifully haunting melodies into extremely intense music, and I find that really captivating. More than anything, the end of the song Pacific Grim by Cattle Decapitation had a major impact on my melody writing. I find melodies that are melancholy and epic the most exciting to listen to and write. I love that song. (The main riff for Pestilence may or may not be a total rip off of that song…)
13. How has the reception been for your music so far? Have there been any standout moments or memorable experiences you'd like to share?
This interview is the best experience so far! Thank you for the opportunity.
14. What’s your current stance on the underground music scene with bands wanting to recreate and find their way to become successful in the foreseeable future?
NOLAN: I don’t have a stance on underground music to be honest. But I will say that the biggest influence on this project was an underground outfit called Hoth. They are a black metal band out of Seattle. Their album Oathbreaker completely blew my mind and I started making metal because of them. I think success is inspiring others, and I hope that we could do the same for someone else as they did for me.
15. In your humblest opinion, do you favor streaming music digitally or prefer buying physical copies of cd’s, tapes and vinyls?
NOLAN: Streaming is convenient and I consume most of my music that way. However, when I was in high school I had a massive CD collection and listened to all my music that way. Now I have a humble vinyl collection and enjoy listening to albums I love in that format. Listening to music on a physical medium requires some mindfulness, and I appreciate the music more that way.
16. What kind of bands you are listening to nowadays? Can you give some names? On the other hand, there can be also new bands that you can recommend for our readers?
NOLAN: In no particular order: Cattle Decapitation, Knower, Hoth, Zeal and Ardor, Archspire, and Cynic!
17. Last but not least, what are your biggest hopes for the rest of the year? What do we need more of, and what do we need less of?
NOLAN: I hope we get a bazillion dollars so we can make an amazing follow up album. We need more artists to take a chance on themselves, and we need less shitty politicians.
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