1. Hello K, you started this solitary project in 2019. How important is ZKARV for you? Do you focus on a introspective side of you?
Hello, Zkarv started as a project to focus on all my personal negative emotions and feelings, a way to vent and be alone with these thoughts. It is an outlet and a creative release. I choose to remain anonymous as I don’t particularly want a face to the sound, just the audio that it is and the emotion that comes with it.
2. Being the sole musician behind the band as well, would it be possible to tell us more about your personal musical background? What are your personal spiritual beliefs?
My musical background starts with my family but also some past projects, some black metal, some drone music, some dark ambience but all of them solitary as I do not enjoy working with others too much when I comes to music or creative outlets. As for spiritual beliefs I am a self-described follower of nature, a pagan if you want to put a label on it, but I like to find my own path rather then follow something someone has mapped out already. Religion is a way of control I believe, and monetized it can be very dangerous, brainwashy. So I choose to be free in my own thoughts and in spirit, why would anyone want to cage their spirit.
3. Overall what has has been the greatest challenge you have faced up as a musician until today?
Honestly it is the gear and learning out to use it. The promotion and getting it out there as that takes money and the challenge to find the right audience, as outsider art isn’t for everyone.
4. What's driving force behind ZKARV and your most important (non musical) influences while creating music?
The driving force is my mind and soul and how they clash, the negative emotions within me and the desire to vent them in a creative way. The biggest non musical inspiration would be that of stories, fantasy, sci fi, anything that is unusual or dark, along with dreams and nightmares I have. But I also have a fascination with death and decay, how the natural world is always changing, how things cycle through death, decay, then rebirth into something new. The way of nature is dark but also beautiful.
5. Let´s talk about composition, What are the places or environment you choose where you like to write music and lyrics?
When I write my lyrics, a lot of the time it is right after something bad has happened. Bad new, a bad day or when I feel a surge of negative energy. But otherwise it is on my many forest walks and about the things I see and encounter there.
6. How do you create the songs? Is it predetermined process, or do you leave substantial space for improvisation?
It can be very improvisational, some songs I write on the spot when I get a burst of ideas in recording sessions. Others can take weeks or months to conceptualize, write and complete. A lot of the time, I start with a name or concept then let it run.
7. “Lament” is your third album to date, while listening to the tracks, I could get the feeling that the whole process was cathartic to you. What feelings do you express through ‘Lament’ that you can’t express with neither of your other projects you are involved with?
Lament to me was the most negative album I have released so far, pure cathartic. Some themes in it’s walls of sound I haven’t incorporated into any other project or release. It took me a long time to finish and get it mixed, some tracks were purely recorded in the time others were mixed, but they all followed the same idea or lamentation or withering in silence. My next release I am starting to write is to be very different in theme, more conceptual and following a story rather then my inner emotions. The more I write about negative ideas within me, the more I feel sicker and broken, yet recording them does release the tension. Zkarv is the negative, the depressive, while other projects like Gorestine are more about fantasy and not so personal themes.
8. How challenging were these songs to record (you mention you used unfinished/unreleased tracks and merged them into a complete theme) compared to those on past releases?
A few riffs and pieces were left over, unwanted or didn’t really fit anywhere, thus I went from there reflecting those emotions and building on it, thus the lamentation of withering and feeling unwanted to the world bled over the songs.
9. According to the ‘The Metal Archives’ your lyrical themes are about Dark stories, Mental illness, Paranormality. Can you explain how we can see those issues being reflected in your music/lyrics?
Lament very much follows the mental illness part of the themes, right through most of the tracks. It was an album more for the music than the concept. And as I’ve touched on, it is almost therapeutic for me, putting my own negative emotions into audio. But A stand out being ‘A Shape In The Dark’ would be one more about dark stories, the track taking inspiration from slasher films or horror films or stories set in the woods.
10. Most of the art accompanying your works is done in black and white. Do you feel a kind of special fascination towards black/white iconography?
I think the visual style of black and white, grey too, captures the feeling of emptiness and negativity the most out of any colour scheme. I do feel a strange comfort in black and white imagery, it is also almost a standard for black metal in a whole, a cliché but not an uninspired one I hope.
11. What kind of music you listen to when you’re not in a creative mood. What can get you started?
My mind is always racing with ideas, whether I be at work or reading or writing. Usually it is hardest for me to sit down and record/write all my ideas out because it all floods at once. But when I need to get the ideas out, I usually listen to some kind of pagan folk music, dark ambience or atmospheric black metal.
12. Because the field of black metal is very wide, there is a lot of differences in the styles, sound, approach, etc… So which band(s)do you personally consider to be the treasure of the black metal genre?
It is a great question and no one answer would be wrong or correct. I listen to a lot of music, I have a huge bandcamp collection as well as CDs and Cassettes too. I love the atmospheric, the weird and the strange. But in recent years the best finds I have gathered for the black metal genre would be: Gloosh, Karg, At The Altar Of The Horned God, Defacement, Primeval Well and his other bands, Olhava, Arde, Staurophagaia, Omega and Saor just to name a few. I also love Midnight Odyssey, Mare Cognitum, Tempestarii, Blut Aus Nord, Portal and Wake.
13. What is music for you? Does it bring you some new emotions or it helps you to get ride of some negative emotions?
Music is a constant soundtrack to the mind, it helps calm, trill and affect us emotionally and spiritually. I think I would go insane without music.
14. Do you think a genre of unpopular “popular music” like black metal can be a form of art?
I definitely think so, there are no rules to art. All is interpreted differently, everyone’s tastes are different. Outsider art is still art, just as a blockbuster is still a movie, and noisegrind is still music. It all comes down to the individual and what their particular taste of art it.
15. What do you do other than the band, for fun/work and do you like being in Australia?
I like to spend most of my time in solitude if I can help it. Writing, recording or listening. I am a film nut as well as a collector of obscure music, a writer of many stories too. But my issue is I don’t like to share a lot of things. As for fun I consider music, fantasy stories and time in the woods to be my favourite things. As for work, I have had a few things here and there to pay rent and bills, mostly odd casual jobs like at bars or warehouses.
16. Many thanks for your valuable time! I wish you only the best! The last words to our readers are of course yours!
Thank you for having me and considering promoting my art. And I’d like to say thank you to anyone who supports or will support my music and art in future, past or present.
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