1. Hello my friend, 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.
Hello, I am also pleased to be here.
How do I feel today?... Well, it's the beginning of the weekend, which sometimes I have to treat it as a special, longer moment to regenerate my body - due to the fact that I sometimes don't care about the safe way of performing various activities at work, and we know what this results in later... And today is also the case in which I am still in the gradual disappearance of all pain, hahaha...
Where to find me?... If you are asking about my current place of residence, I am currently in the family home on my mother's side, in Strzebiń village, where I recently moved in for a certain period, after I had to leave my previous place in Bytom city, because of a problem with my flatmate there, and I am currently working to obtain sufficient funds to obtain a new, own apartment to leave this place as soon as possible.
2. Let’s start with the boring basics. Care to explain to the unknowing precisely where in the world you emanate such an aura of darkness from?
When it comes to showing it in my music, this aura is - to put it simply - the externalazing of a specific mood in which anyone can find themselves, by being medicated with the worst kind of psychopharmacology - neuroleptics, for which psychiatry and pharmacy officially use the name antipsychotic drugs and which are a simple method to deprive a person of life. However, my songs also discuss specific cases where I refer to other sources of the mentioned aura, which are the use of advanced anti-psychology towards very sensitive and emotional people, making them feel lost and rejected in the world by toxic relationships - both in relation to friendship and love.
3. Is it still essentially a solo project, Karol?
Yes, when it comes to the very matter of creation in terms of composition, lyrics, singing and arrangement - just like in the case of Burzum. However, unlike Varg, who is a multi-instrumentalist, able to play his own instrumental parts and record them himself in the studio, I use the services of a music producer to record the instrumentals, based on my song designs saved in Guitar Pro 7. Using this program initially involved using a bass guitar, which I play to find specific notes and transcribe them into the program in the form of tablature. Currently, due to the experience acquired over time, I do not need an instrument when writing anything in the program, where by looking at the arranged tablature lines I guess where I need to insert what number.
''Pharmachrists'' album was made in cooperation with producer Andriy Yanyuk.
Working on the second album "Descendant of the fallen angel", my new producer became Piotr Opatowicz.
4. What prompted you to explore “gothic metal” musical direction, and how do you feel it enhances the overall listening experience?
Well, I wasn't actually heading towards gothic metal in terms of my intended vision. When I first seriously started composing something in my life as a teenager, I aimed to create music in a style comparable to the albums Det Som Engang Var, Hvis Lyset Tar Oss and Filosofem from Burzum, which were a certain combination of black metal and ambient. The result of my playing was not the glorified Norwegian black metal, but a grotesque that partly combines sounds belonging to many different musical genres - also the gothic metal you mentioned, but honestly no performer of them was someone who influenced me and was my inspiration. I can say that when building the songs, I instinctively supplemented specific parts with something that I felt would fit and it just turned out that it was something that brought the music into the sound of gothic metal and at the same time it was not my conscious, intentional action. However, I can say that I am also a fan of the gothic metal genre, which was the first genre that accompanied me when I was introduced to the entire world of heavy metal - especially through Type o Negative, Mortal Love, Svenia, Poisonblack, Tears of Passion and many others, and also I had fantasies about performing this type of music, but they were lost in high school in favor of the world of black metal.
How does this enhance the overall listening experience? Well, this is a difficult question to understand, because in my opinion, listening experience is related to a certain ''space'' created as a result of listening to a given music, as a separate internal world that we assign to a specific musical sound through our senses and imagination. What was in my head, what did I want to achieve as what was supposed to appear in my head and what, for me, is achieved as what should be and what do I have in my head when listening to my songs? - The Abyss, in the mystical sense as a place of lost souls, forever wandering aimlessly, where all hope is lost and everyone becomes consumed by endless despair.
5. Your music has been described as dark soul metal with elements of black, death, and doom metal. How do you balance these different influences to create a cohesive sound?
I will give a short answer to this question - In this case, it wasn't that when I started creating anything I was guided by the thought of putting something of this, this and that into my music. I was just playing around with creating something whose sound would suit me in my desire to externalize my inner world. When I finished and listened to my work with my friends, we concluded purely by hearing, what elements are noticeable there.
6. In a world where metal can often be dismissed as mere aesthetics, your music carries a deeper meaning. What messages or themes do you hope to convey through your artistic expression?
The main message is to make people aware of how the drugs recognized by psychiatry really work and how most of us are lied to by attributing the effects of these drugs to mental illness as negative symptoms, in order to ensure an uncritical approach to psychopharmacotherapy, at the expense of the suffering of many innocent people. In addition, I am putting there the manifestation to introduce, both in Poland and wherever possible, the Open Dialogue, a system of treatment of schizophrenics with the first episode of psychosis, created in Finland, based on replacing pharmacotherapy with psychotherapy. In addition, I also want to raise awareness that it is possible to recover from diseases such as schizophrenia without the need to take neuroleptics, even if you have been sick for a long time and after going through many psychoses, as was the case with me, when I am now 2 years after stopping the drugs, in a suitable, stable condition - however, I am not going to explain how I got myself in order, because apart from the fact that it is too complicated to explain, each case is individual.
7. What kind of reasons that might inspire/influence Polish artist who are into metal music? Coming from such a strong scene, you may give clues about the sources of this endless creativity that can be seen in Polish bands?
I think there is no such thing as good or best sources from which we extract creativity. Each of us simply discovers ourselves as capable of extracting something from a given source or more sources that might seem to have already been exhausted, when in fact there was a lack of people predisposed to use them at that moment, and those who used them well, they simply burned out, leaving them to the next newcomers who may yet surprise the others with something they didn't expect in this case. Therefore, I advise everyone not to bother searching for this ''decent source'', but to calmly familiarize themselves with each of them - when there are really many of them - to be able to see which one turned out to be the right one for them, as those who were born into 'this' or 'this'. From my earliest years of access to the Internet, I was browsing YouTube and music websites in order to discover something new, both among well-known and unknown artists, from every possible country and in literally every musical genre - not only metal. Also, in the youngest period of growing up I developed my own world from which I began to pour out musical creations - and if I remember correctly, I walked around for a long time, enchanted by the sound of the band My Dying Bride, listening to which fueled my imagination the most... and yet, despite this, my music not completely resembles the music of this band.
8. Can you tell us about the inspiration behind the album “Pharmachrists” and how it felt to release your music to the world?
Apart from the known fact of my own sense of anger and hatred towards psychiatry, I owe the push in this direction to Daniel Mackler - an American psychotherapist who has his own YouTube channel, publishing various materials spreading anti-psychiatric content, including his own songs that have a mocking and comedic sound. I decided to replicate this concept, but in a more serious approach, showing my own feelings related to taking certain medications, while Daniel, in turn, had never been treated himself, and was based on the experiences of other people, of which he was aware and which was outrageous to him as a fact worth mentioning. How does it feel?... Some relief - because throughout the preparation of the album I was not sure whether I would even be able to finish it in order to release it, as I had to stop taking medication to be able to record vocal parts for the songs and it was associated with the risk that I would get psychosis again... but this did not happen, and I finished this work, and at the same time I stayed off the drugs, wanting to see if I could continue to function without them and well... It turns out I can. That's why I'm happy, thinking about making my other productions, which was my dream.
9. Were there any elements of the recording that proved particularly troublesome?
As for vocal recordings - no. In terms of vocal parts, each song was designed by me so that I could sing everything. The only problem was the fact that it was my first time in a vocal studio, where I also took into account that I had to record everything as quickly as possible, for fear that I might go psychotic before I finished it, and therefore I abused cigarettes in the breaks between songs, which somewhere towards the end of the recordings it caused me to have a severe throat inflammation, which forced me to take a longer break.
10. Although you are a solo performer you hooked up with a friend on this release – producer Andriy Yanyuk. Just outline your friendship with him.
Yeah, I mentioned him... My ex-friend from another part of Poland, who is his fiancée, introduced me to him.
He has his own band, Reysp, which I would classify as power/heavy/thrash metal. Despite the fact that this is probably the only style of music he has performed all his life, he undertook the work of making instrumentals for my album, always wanting to prove himself as a producer for individual clients, and in this case he proved himself not only as a producer, but also partly as the creator himself, giving something of himself in the album - changing my primitive drum lines into very professional, original, diverse, rich in varied passages. He was also responsible for creating half of all the guitar solos among the album's tracks. At that time, when we started everything, I was still on meds and therefore in a stupor, I was not able to handle everything in my work on my own, so I needed help with certain things. After completing the last work on Pharmachrists, Andriy declared that he would withdraw from further cooperation on the next albums that I had prepared, explaining that this type of work was associated with enormous mental pressure for him.
What can I say about him... Not much, honestly. I never met him in person and we only talked via chat. She is certainly a very nice and calm person. How did he perceive me in turn?... I know that he previously perceived me as a funny person, due to the fact that his fiancée and I teased each other, and I also sometimes jokingly showed sexual interest in him, what was also intended to tease his fiancée, what made him laugh... and what is his attitude towards me now, since I lost further contact with him some time after I broke off my friendship with his fiancée and he suddenly stopped receiving messages from me?... - I don't know. For sure I'll still mention him with full respect and consider him a decent person.
11. Can you give us a glimpse into the creative process behind your music? How do you typically approach songwriting and arranging?
When it comes to the approach to writing lyrics, at a given moment - while I am in the process of creating material for my fourth album, as in the case of the two previous and pending projects, I am still writing down all the deeper thoughts and feelings that have accumulated in me a long time ago and which I have already fully gone through, leaving in my memory all the conclusions along with the entire path to drawing them. As for the music itself, I am constantly extracting from my memory various melodies that flowed in my soul through my imagination from my earliest years to this day, and I find appropriate matches among them to combine them in order to obtain appropriate dissonances - also building a different atmosphere, than the one in Pharmachrists. I could say that my current state of the creative world has the status of "inexhaustible yet", because a lot has been accumulated in me throughout the past period of my life, when due to the mental health problem I have a significant delay in realizing everything I have to show and I am still at the stage of catching up on my music releases.
12. How do you manage to incorporate melodic and gothic elements into your music while maintaining the aggression and brutality?
I am aware of the existence of many other bands who before me have already managed to present in their work exactly what you are asking about in my case, and of course I had the opportunity to listen to them before I started creating them myself... and I didn't have to pay attention to anything apart from the fact that it was obvious to me that the structure of their songs was based on the principle of approach to building the appropriate mood, tension for a given stage, part of the story presented by the lyric, what does not seem to me to be a mysterious thing, worth a deeper explanation, when - like writing a script for a play and preparing actors to play it in the theater - we use our imagination and we have to move it in the right direction to get what we want, and in my opinion it is also an organ that needs to be developed in order to maintain our further level of creativity . For an example showing one of the simpler, uncomplicated methods of obtaining the motif we are discussing, I recommend listening to the song FullMoonChild - Dark Gift.
13. What are some techniques you haven’t used on your current album that you would love to experiment with in future releases?
Vocal techniques? What I haven't played with yet, but I plan to, is bringing out different voice colors in different songs or their specific moments, also including moments for reciting a specific, special part of the lyric in some special song with a commercial narrative voice, similar to the motif presented in the song Behemoth - Lucifer featuring Maciej Maleńczuk.
14. The lyrics of are in the Polish language. This makes it difficult for people who do not speak the language to understand what they are about. Was that done deliberately and are you also trying to add some extra mystique?
.It was intentional - I already had ideas for songs in Polish and English and I saw no problem in putting them together in one album, having already become familiar with the work of the Polish band Hunter, who used the same motif in their album Medeis in 2003. I was supposed to post all the lyrics of the songs, including Polish ones, along with their translations on certain platforms, but in all the unexpected life chaos I couldn't find time for it and honestly, I had already forgotten about it. This motif is also to be used for my second album, while the third one, which exceptionally is to be made exclusively with growl and scream vocals, is to be fully in Polish, while the fourth one is to be only in English. As for this issue - I don't have a vision yet for the albums that follow the ones mentioned above, but I would like to move towards writing only lyrics in English.
15. Reading to your lyrics, I can’t help but hear a connection between theatrical and poetry, how did you develop this unique style of writing?
.It's nice to me that you find my writing style unique and honestly, it's hard for me to answer this question, because for as long as I can remember, I have always written lyrics this way, feeling inspired.
16. In ancient Greece, poetry was considered incomplete without accompanying music which united the significance of the words with the significance of certain tones and musical shapes. Is there any relevance of this idea today?
Yes, I don't know what more I can add here.
17. What kind of art do you enjoy in your spare time? Literature, cinematography, theatre?
Each of them, but in my case, because I lead an unstable life, it depends on the periods I go through in my life, during which my moods change, and with them my taste of something. At the moment, in recognition of visual art, I am trying to devote myself to self-development in drawing, striving to regain the ability to make ''epic'' illustrations in a style similar to those presented in better titles of fantasy novels, through which I would like to externalize the various worlds dormant in my imagination.
18. Your songs discusses the wrongful activities of psychiatry and pharmacy, which involve forcing people with mental disorders to take harmful drugs. What drives you to explore such controversial topics in your music, and what message do you hope to convey to your listeners?
.I didn't explore anything as a topic that something drove me to explore. Against my will, I was introduced to all the drugs whose names you can see in the song titles, through psychiatry, which repeatedly was leading a treatment of me as a mentally ill person, with various diagnoses, and as you can guess after listening to my album, these were very unpleasant experiences, which in my case took 10 years of my life and I know for other people they last even longer, and for others they lasted their entire remaining lives before they passed away.
My only hope is to simply let the listeners know what is really wrong with the burden of life for people with disorders such as schizophrenia, where psychiatry has always recognized the use of neuroleptics. I think this is enough for social awareness to lead to at least a gradual collapse of the psychopharmacological system.
19. You are also the artist behind the album'cover, How did you come with the whole idea and concept, is this a result of your artistic skills?
I made this drawing, which served as the cover for Pharmachrists, with pen and crayons when I was still in high school, after my experience with taking risperidone, perazine and olanzapine. I had a very youthful appearance, which meant I was perceived as a typical brat, and at that time in Poland there were very anti-psychological views, according to which young people declaring they were depressed were pathetic kids who were too spoiled and didn't know life, so I had to hide how I really feel about being medicated and I played the happy person in an exaggerated way. My idea was to present - according to the accepted concept, in which a human being consists of layers, of which the most visible outside does not necessarily show the truth of what we feel - the most hidden inside of me of all possible layers, which shows my true feelings related to the current existence, as a suffering creature who tries to be happy, and at the same time has a large piece of broken glass with blood flowing down it, making us realize that he wants to die.
20. Are there any plans for collaboration with other artists or musicians in the future, and if so, what excites you about the potential of those collaborations?
I certainly don't have any plans, because they must involve mutual consent to collaboration - both mine and other musicians with whom I would like to collaborate... and there are many of them and I would not like to reveal who I'm dreaming to collaborate with in my fear that I cannot afford to make such announcements yet, being still a novice on the music scene who still has to earn recognition among the rest. I would certainly be open to unexpected collaboration proposals from strangers, which I could receive, believing that with the right attitude and the ability to communicate, something good can always come out of cooperation, which will also create a commemoration of new friendship, which will confirm that music connects people and which will bring both sides a lot of fun, which is part of ''those moments'' that are worth experiencing in order to build the story of an interesting life.
What excites me about the potential of these collaborations?... Everything what's possible. First of all, the motive of discovery, through what I would call experimentation in terms of seeing what can come out of combining other forces together.
21. As a band, what do you hope listeners take away from your music? What emotions or connections do you aim to evoke through your songs?
Here I will give a really simple answer - In the music, which I based mainly on a gloomy, depressing sound, I think that the listeners may take away a sense of fear of what songs with such a sound refer to, which, according to my hope, will allow them to accept my warning about the consequences of entering into too close relationship with psychiatry.
My songs - which mainly express despair and anger resulting from hatred towards my psychiatrists - should only evoke fear of the possibility of experiencing the same thing that I had the opportunity to experience.
Connections - preferably as an association of people who share my opinion on this psychopharmacology, being treated themselves, but who are unable to express their opinions in the absence of support from those around them.
22. As an independent artist, what challenges have you faced in bringing your unique vision to life and reaching a wider audience? And how have you overcome those challenges?
Honestly? For me, there were no standout challenges compared to all the other new artists today. A friend recommended to me the website of the eMuze music publishing house, which supports everyone in releasing and distributing music through various well-known platforms, such as Spotify, where my album is currently not available, due to the fact that I was deceived by the promoter who showed to be one of the third party members, by cooperating with whom I ucknowingly violated the rules of this platform and my distributor, which is why I am now waiting for a further decision regarding this matter from the distributor with whom I discussed the entire situation some time ago. In any case, everything is fine with all other platforms, some of which I created a streaming page for myself, and wherever I could, I added links to all places to listen to my album as well as my Facebook page and Instagram profile, where in more details I touch issues related to psychiatry discussed in my album by some of the posts, and in another part of the posts I keep a chronicle showing my path towards musical fulfillment since being a high school student, also sharing a current life references in the rest of the posts. Of course, I shared the released music by links in chat with my friends, many of whom were foreigners whom I met during my travels, and who also spread my music by sharing it with their other friends in the chat or by posting it on their Facebook profile. Later, I had the opportunity to notice the appearance of my project in Metal Archives... I'm still not sure which of my actions did the most to reach a wider audience, if it's not that each of them, as significant, together had a strong impact on it.
23. How do you define “underground” and where do you see yourself and your band in it?
For me, undergound has always meant a specific sound, obtained based on the quality of the recordings, where their rawness was significant, as well as the path to conquering the scene, starting from playing, for example, in the basement or garage, further developing career through performances in small clubs dedicated to debutants of these heavier genres of metal, gradually gaining enough popularity for the music world to consider them worthy of being performing before a wider audience. Therefore, I certainly cannot see myself in it, as the creator and my project, as the source of the previously mentioned specific sound. Although I grew up partly in the world of underground music zone, listening to its true representatives, participating in concerts of its artists, meeting people who were starting their debuts as real performers from this zone, it in no way led me to follow the path that would place me within this zone.
24. When not making music, what are some interests you like to do on your spare time when not being in the studio or perform live music that fans of you may not know about?
What I must first point out is that I haven't played live with my project yet and I don't for the time being, probably remaining on an inactive status as a live performer until the release of my third album, in case of which with the subsequent releases there's 100% certain that I will play concerts. However, who knows, maybe something will change and you will be able to see me on stage even earlier, performing current materials... Besides, I plan to join a band as a vocalist in the near future and perform live with them.
Coming back to your question, currently, for quite a long time, I have been interested in exploring areas and discovering hidden places through long hikes or bike rides, most often deep into forests or all types of places that define flora.
25. Before we wrap up this interview I like to thank you for your time into doing this interview. Any final thoughts or words to the people reading this?
And I thank you for wanting to conduct this interview with me.
I would like to say something that many people have said, are saying and will say, inspired by the motivational speeches of other people who have achieved something and to whom I am grateful and want to do the same:
There are probably those among you whose lives are driven by the dream of fulfillment in something relating to an art, and perhaps you feel lost with this in a life that seems to put up impossible barriers for you to get to where you want, seeing yourself as too weak. Therefore, I advise you to hold on to your will, which will eventually become your strength in many different possible ways and will allow you to see what you are capable of achieving.