METAL-ZEN

My interview with Aydan, guitarist for and co-founder of the Italian power/folk-metal band Elvenking, got off to a rocky start. Our Skype connection didn’t work. He could hear me. But I couldn’t hear him. Aydan futzed with a few wires and twirled a few knobs, but the situation didn’t improve. So we decided to try again in 15 minutes in case it was a Skype connection problem. No dice. Same thing happened. At that point, Aydan suggested we wait an hour until vocalist Damna, who’s reportedly a bit of a tech wizard, arrived for a band meeting. Maybe he could figure out the situation. He could. And, apparently, did. Later, when I called Aydan again, things worked fine. Thanks, Damna!

This was a lot of fun. Even though I was interviewing Aydan, Damna was in the background occasionally chiming in with laughs, comments, jokes, or alternate takes on the Elvenking story.

The following was conducted on April 18th of this year. Band photos courtesy of Aydan.

Enjoy!

A: Hello?

BM: Hey Aydan, I can hear you great.

A: Really? Great. [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

A: You know, our singer, Damna, was here and we fixed some way the thing, so hope you hear me now.

BM: Yeah, no problem. Is it getting kind of late, now, for you to talk?

A: No, no. No problem at all. We just have to have a meeting later, but it’s no problem at all. We have plenty of time, really.

BM: [laughs] Very good.

A: Also Damna is here to say hello to you.

D: Hi, man.

BM: Hey, Damna, how are you?

D: I’m fine, thank you. And you?

BM: Doing well, very well.

D: That’s great. [laughs]

BM: Cool.

A: All right, so now everything seems to work. So I’m glad. Sorry for the problems, really.

BM: Oh, no problem at all. So, how’s the weather there today?

A: Well, it was a bit cloudy and windy and a bit rainy also. Not a great day, talking on weather, for sure.

BM: You said you live next to Claudio [Coassin], right? You live in the same area? When I interviewed him last year he said it’s always raining there.

A: Claudio, you mean, of Raintime?

BM: Yeah. He said that’s why they named the band Raintime, because where he lived, it’s always raining.

A: [laughs] Yeah, we live maybe 20 minutes from where he lives, and yeah, I can confirm here is often rainy.

BM: [laughs]

A: But in the summertime we have also pretty good weather, so we cannot complain.

BM: Good. Well, it’s a pleasure chatting with you. Thank you so much for your time. Everybody’s looking forward to your appearance at ProgPower, as you know. I don’t know if you look at the ProgPower forum or not, but everybody’s very excited. What can fans expect from an Elvenking performance?

A: For sure a lot of heavy metal on stage, that’s for sure. [laughs] We’re looking forward and we’re very excited to play the US for the first time. And it will be a really, really great time, and we cannot wait to go up on stage and taste the reaction of the American people.

BM: Yeah.

A: About the performance, we will surely do our normal performance because we always try to give one of the first times we are on stage, and that’s what we are going to try to do also there.

BM: Well, how did you get the gig with ProgPower? Did Glenn Harveston call you or email you? How did you find out that you got the gig? And were you pretty excited about it? Or is this just another gig for you?

A: Well, it’s the first time for us in the US, so it is surely something special and not the normal gig for us. But about how we are getting in contact with ProgPower, it was through our manager, who passed the video from the song “The Divided Heart” to Glenn, from what we know, it went out that way. And Glenn saw the video and was very, very impressed about it. And from what we know, he told, “Yeah, if the rest of the album is nearly as good as the video, you guys must be here.

BM: [laughs]

A: And that happened. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] That’s great. Well, since this is your first time in the States, will you have some time to sort of look around Atlanta, eat a bunch of food or anything? Or are you just coming in with enough time for the gig and then leaving?

A: [laughs] Unfortunately, we will be there only five days, I think. Or four days.

BM: Yeah, well, that’s a lot of time.

A: Yeah, I think we will be there on Thursday I think, and we will like to have a look at the Helloween concert.

BM: Yeah.

A: Yeah, on Thursday night, and then we will stay for the two days of the festival, and then we will come back on Sunday. So, unfortunately, not too much time to look around. But we will have enough time to eat a lot of junk food.

BM: [laughs] You can have some pizza over here and then you can tell us if we’re doing it right or not.

A: [laughs] Oh, no way. Why do we have to eat pizza in the U.S.? [laughs]

BM: [laughs] Well, I had a lot of fans ask about your set. You guys have four albums, you’re thinking about a fifth one, an acoustic one, already. You’ve got a huge bunch of fans here and only 45 minutes to play. What kind of mix of songs are you going to have? Mostly from The Scythe? Or are you going to go back to Wyrd? or Heathenreel?

A: Yeah, that’s the problem when you have a good bunch of songs and so few time to play. So I think that we are still promoting The Scythe, so for sure there will be a good number of songs from The Scythe album, but we will always play songs from all our albums, and that’s what we’re gonna do also there.

BM: Oh, cool. Cool. Do you guys like to play cover songs? If so, which one’s your favorite cover to play?

A: Well, usually we play cover songs when we know we have one hour and a half, something like this, and so to not play all our stuff, we used to add some cover songs. And we have played a lot of different cover songs, from In Flames to…some not in the metal scene, because it’s even more interesting to cover not metal songs. But usually we play some metal anthems. [laughs] But we won’t do it for sure at the ProgPower. That’s for sure.

BM: The announcement of your acoustic album was met by a lot of excitement. People are excited to see you guys get back to what they think is more your folksy side, because as you’ve mentioned on your forum, and fans have said, The Scythe is more power metal than folk metal. Is your sound on The Scythe something that was a natural progression for you, [away from folk music]? Or did The Scythe just happen to sound more power metalish because of the theme of death and, therefore, you wanted it to be heavier?

A: First of all, we always do the thing as we feel. As we always used to say, we cannot write anything just for please the fans, because they are asking something about. So what we came out with instead was totally naturally, and that’s what we wanted to do in that period. And that is always the same in the Elvenking camp. We do what we feel, we cannot do different way. The Scythe was a particular album because it was based on this concept. We wanted to have the lyrics around this concept, and we feel it was something interesting to do for ourselves. And that’s also why the album can be so heavy and maybe there is less acoustic stuff. I don’t see how some happy acoustic folky stuff can be in an album like The Scythe.

BM: [laughs]

A: [laughs] Talking about death and things like that. I think it’s absolutely natural, the fact that we do now an acoustic album. We knew about this acoustic album before we had this idea. That’s also why maybe The Scythe there is less acoustic stuff. But also this thing doesn’t mean the next album will be the next studio album will be folky or not. We don’t know yet. We just do what we feel, and there’s no way to do different.

BM: Well, let me ask you about it. I’ll talk about your history a second, I’ll ask you questions about each of your albums. But let’s talk about the genre of music that you seem to be associated with. Elvenking is known as a folk-metal band. What exactly is folk metal? What does a band have to have in it to be folk metal?

A: Well, we started in this band in 1997, so back at the time there was no folk metal scene at all. There were one only band and that was Skyclad. And we had everything, that is the most important band for us, and they were our heroes. And we have all the inspiration from them. In the years, a lot of folk metal bands are born, and now maybe this folk metal scene is something a little bit bigger. But we don’t see ourselves as 100% folk metal band, because we try to do what we feel and what is necessary to create the atmosphere we love in the music. If it’s folk, we love folk, we love acoustic stuff, and this is important to create atmosphere we’re searching for on specific songs. We’ll do otherwise, we’ll try also different ways. But it’s in a way great to see how many bands in this kind of genre have been born, since 1997 when we started.

BM: I’ve read other interviews you’ve done, your bio information, even your entry on Wikipedia. I discovered that you started the band because of your long-standing interest in folklore and metal music. And Skyclad, obviously. But which came first for you? Did you really have an interest in folklore and all that Lord of the Rings-type stuff? Did that come first, or did your interest in Skyclad come first?

A: First of all, folk music is part of our success. I don’t want to say that we, you can think that Italy is not so close to folk music, but in a way, we are living not far from the mountainside from Austria. So it’s part of our culture. Back then, Skyclad was the first band that we heard that mixed in a great way the thrash metal of the early ’90s with the violin, acoustic stuff, things like that. And we thought it was something really interesting because you can create a mix of the aggressive, heavy side, with a lot of romanticism from the acoustic side. And that’s what really interested us, because we wanted to have with our music something aggressive, but also very romantic and atmospheric. So that’s what we wanted to do.

BM: Well, you know, Skyclad’s album The Wayward Sons of Mother Earth is considered the very first folk-metal album.

A: Yes.

BM: So they kind of helped start this whole genre of music that you are now part of.

A: Yeah, for sure, for sure. The first albums especially. I think we are very close with the conception of their first albums, like [A Burnt Offering for the] Bone Idol [1992] and Jonah’s Ark [1993], where there was a very heavy side next to more acoustic and folky side. That’s what we want to do also with our band.

BM: Tell me about, then, what is the misconception people have about you guys? Well, let me see if I can describe this correctly. Some people think folk metal musicians sit around reading Lord of the Rings and playing RPG games, and you know, are nerds. [laughs]

A: [laughs]

BM: But I don’t get that impression from your music or talking to you, you know what I mean?

A: Sure. Exactly. [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

A: Exactly. That’s why sometimes we don’t want to be associated to this kind of things. Unfortunately, we’re basically ordinarily all in our thirties, so you can understand how it may sound strange to us, because we don’t play that much on the computers. Yes, we have read Lord of the Rings, but ten years before there was this movie, so everything is interested in Lord of the Rings after the movie came out, but we knew it since we were kids. And that’s not the point. [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

A: It makes me laugh sometimes to reading strange comments about these maybe 13-year-old guys maybe, talking about your music like it was something they know perfectly or whatever, they know us personally. And well, we are getting older and we, the things that we care more, different things that we care right now.

BM: Yeah, I know what you mean. Tell me about the themes of your albums. And that fan, those kinds of fans you refer to, I think they really identify with your lyrics, they love the artwork, and I do too. I think the artwork for your albums is phenomenal, exceptional stuff. So I think they look for hidden meanings and the spiritual side of things.

A: Yeah. I notice that often they look out for different meanings, but they don’t get any that are there.

BM: [laughs]

A: In our albums, there are a lot of lyrics that are really on the ironic side, but maybe the guys doesn’t realize it and think that we are talking only about, I don’t know, nature or about fantasy stuff, when we are talking about totally something else. Using this format, these images and this stuff, but we are talking about maybe something totally different than what they are thinking.

BM: So you’re being more metaphorical and philosophical and they’re taking it literally.

A: Yeah, definitely. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] Let’s go back and talk about each of your albums. One of the things I like to ask all the bands at ProgPower about is, if I mention the name of an album, tell me what you remember most about it. Such as, for example, your demo, To Oak Woods Bestowed [2000]. What do you remember?

A: Oh damn. [laughs] It was so many years ago. We were young and we were inexperienced, that’s for sure. [laughs]

BM: Yeah, but you know, that demo sounds really polished. I’ve heard it. It sounds really good.

A: Yeah. If you think that before that demo we had never played live as a band.

BM: Really?

A: Yeah, really. [laughs]

BM: Wow.

A: We were a little bit strange, because we, at the time we were thinking, just concentrate on making a demo, don’t play live. We just need to create some great music and try to record it. And that’s what we were thinking about at the time. We were rehearsing, trying to find the right songs. And from what I remember, there was a lot of enthusiasm, because we were so young, and at the time there was no scene at all in Italy. There was no chances for anyone to come out. It was I think 1998, 1999, and we were working on it. And it was really other times, but we had a lot of enthusiasm. That’s great, really. And thinking about that times right now, and especially thinking about how many, where are we now. [laughs] It’s really incredible. And the songs and also listening to the demo today, still sounds good to us.

BM: Yeah it does.

A: It’s great. It’s pretty unbelievable, because it was our really first time in the studio, we didn’t know anything about it. And in the end, we did it, in a way or not, but we did it.

BM: Well, three of those five songs ended up on your first full-length album, Heathenreel [2001]. Two of them didn’t, and I don’t see that they’ve ever shown up anywhere. One of the questions some of your fans had for you is will “Banquet of Bairds” or “Under the Tree [of U’sdum]” appear on an Elvenking album?

A: Well, no, no, I don’t think so. [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

A: Because we feel like we are a totally different band from that time. We don’t regret anything about the times, but musically and lyrically we are really different right now. So we are still close to that songs, and maybe if there will be some kind of compilation stuff or something like this, we will like to present those songs officially. But it’s something that right now is pretty distant from what is the band these days.

BM: Yeah, that’s a good answer, by the way. [laughs] Makes a lot of sense. Your first album, then, Heathenreel. Great, great artwork. Great logo. Really professional stuff. What did you guys feel like when you had that album in your hands finally.

A: You know, I think that it’s the same feeling that every band has when they receive the very first CD and it’s like a dream in your hands, really. [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

A: Because you have dreamed so much about it, and you, because we sent out the demo and after three days we got a call from AFM records. And it was something incredible at the time for us. It was the biggest dream coming true. [laughs] So it was great. And then having your album, your very first album on your hands is something, that emotion is, you cannot describe it. But I think that we work a lot on the first album, as you said, also on the visual side. Like we always did in all our albums on the musical side, and we are very proud of it.

BM: Was there a song during the recording of Heathenreel that gave you a particularly difficult time, a very hard time to record? Or were they all just about equally easy? Wwhat do you remember?

A: Well, there were some, I remember there were some songs that technically were a little bit more difficult than the other. I remember “Conjuring of the 14th” or “To Oak Woods Bestowed.” They were a little bit difficult for us to play and to record it. But if I have to name one specific song, is the final track, “Seasonspeech,” because we were at the very end of the songwriting process, and we didn’t have these songs ready, and we didn’t know how to make it work. And I remember that we were working on the songs, on the very last days, and we had to add some parts the day before entering the studios, and we were working on these songs to make it work, and I think in the end, it really worked out very well.

BM: Oh yeah, it’s a great, a lot of fans still think Heathenreel is your best. They look at that, because it’s a nice combination of folk and metal. And how does that make you feel, when an album from 2001, fans say, “Man, that’s as good as you guys ever got”? [laughs]

A: [laughs] You know, every time we are very pissed off about, because you’re working a lot on the new album and you’re thinking that is the best ever, and then, “Ok, but your first album was the best.” [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

A: It’s a kind of strange situation, but no, I’m just kidding. It’s a great honor to be, I think that when Heathenreel came out, it received a lot of bad reviews around. It was the summer we had bad reviews and not so great reaction, but over the years, like all Elvenking’s album, now it is considered like a cult album.

BM: Oh yeah.

A: It’s great that it received so many great responses after some years, because maybe people have listened to it carefully and has entered inside the feelings in the album, and has understood it, so it’s great.

BM: Did you guys take those reviews personally? Did they really hurt your feelings or piss you off when you read negative reviews?

A: Yeah. When we were young. [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

A: And you are very young, and you wait for these reviews so much, and you open the [laughs], and you see ok, you are getting five out of 10 and everything. [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

A: But nowadays, it’s different. We know that what a journalist can say, it’s a personal opinion and maybe he has not listened to the album at all maybe. [laughs] Because it’s happened.

BM: Yeah, I know.

A: There will be a review of your album like it’s something totally different, so I don’t understand.

BM: Yeah, yeah.

A: So now we are older and we are wiser, and [laughs] we don’t take it so personally. But when we, when it was in that time, it was different.

BM: Is there a song from Heathenreel that you just don’t want to ever hear again? [laughs]

A: [laughs]

BM: You’re so tired of it that you would never want to hear it?

A: Ok, Damna will tell you right now.

[Aydan steps away from his computer and Damna steps up to the microphone.]

D: [laughs] This is a bad one. I think that the songs that didn’t work first, like we played it a lot of times, it didn’t work at all. People wasn’t so excited. [laughs]

BM: Which song is it?

D: “A Dreadful Strain.”

BM: Oh yeah. [laughs]

D: Yeah, a lot of problems live because it really didn’t work, and I think it’s a song that didn’t work at all. But the others are—

BM: So if you guys never hear that song again, it’ll be too soon, huh?

D: No, [laughs] we have played it, and it was a bad experience, we will never play it again.

BM: [laughs]

D: As well as other songs from there we like that are really, really too complex to be played live. Not because of the technical side, but because people were standing during our shows like, “ugh” for seven minutes. [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

D: Too heavy to play live.

[Damna steps into the background and Aydan returns to the microphone.]

BM: Well, let’s talk about your second album, Wyrd [2004]. It’s obviously either based on, or heavily influenced by, The Way of Wyrd by British author Brian Bates.

A: Exactly.

BM: Had you guys read that book and it made a big impact on you, or did you find it after you created the album?

A: No, we had read the book and we had a lot of influence from it. And also there is one specific sentence in the booklet that was written by Brian Bates himself specifically for this album. Maybe it’s not clear to everyone this thing, because maybe it’s not so underline in the booklet, but the sentence there is there was written by Brian Bates himself specifically for us.

BM: In the lyrics, or on the back of the booklet, from the book?

A: Yeah.

BM: Where is it?

A: You know, in the back of the booklet?

BM: Yeah.

A: There is one quote from Brian Bates, author of the Way of the Wyrd. And it’s not a sentence taken from the book, but it was written for the album by him.

BM: Oh really? So the quote on the back that says, “Wyrd is the drum of destiny, the deep rhythm of hidden forces…” He wrote that specifically for your CD booklet?

A: Yeah, exactly. You know, the painter of the cover, who is Duncan Stone, famous for a lot of Skyclad works, he worked a lot with Brian on the covers of his books. So he knew him personally and he asked him to write this sentence for us and he did it. Unfortunately, maybe this is not clear.

BM: I thought it was just a quote from the guy’s book.

A: No.

BM: Wow, that’s really cool.

A: Yeah, it is.

BM: Well, tell me about the concept of Wyrd then. What is it about his book that made such a big impact on you? What did you feel or think when you read it that made such an influence on you to create the album?

A: Yeah. The Wyrd lyrics are not a concept about The Way of Wyrd, because there is only one specific song which is taken from the concept of the book. And it is “The Perpetual Knot.” The rest of the lyrics are the normal Elvenking lyrics like any other songs. But we feel that the whole feeling inside the album was kind of close to the feelings that you have when you read The Way of Wyrd. Especially we felt that the lyrics of the songs were concentrating on life and like it is explained on The Way of Wyrd, the roaming through the fibers and stuff like this was really described inside the songs with different approaches and different arguments. So that’s why we think that the Wyrd concept fit very well with the whole lyrics of the album.

BM: What do you remember most about recording it in the studio, and was there one particular song that was more difficult to record?

A: I have terrible, terrible memories about that period. Damna wasn’t with us, because he was out of the band. We had another singer, Kleid, and the feeling inside of this band wasn’t good at all, as you know. And I think that that was the worst period in Elvenking, and we did the worst choice in doing this album without Damna. And Kleid wasn’t really the right person for us. He was a very good guy, but really, he didn’t work out with the rest of ourselves. We were really a bunch of friends more than a band. And with a person like him inside, this was not the same. So the feeling of the recordings was very, very bad, I remember. There was a lot of stress, a lot of things that didn’t work, and it wasn’t a good period at all.

BM: Is this album, then, one that’s difficult to listen to?

A: Yeah. I think you have told the right thing. It’s pretty difficult because it feels like there is something missing, and I think it’s Damna’s presence.

BM: Yeah.

A: And I think that with Damna in the band, with his voice and his songwriting, the album would have been much, much better than what it is right now.

BM: You wrote four songs yourself – words and lyrics – for that album. Did you feel particularly creative during that period of time, or did you get that creative out of necessity because Damna wasn’t there?

A: Yeah, I think that it’s the second choice, because we were already nearly finishing the songwriting with Damna’s songs also, and then he left and we have to write some songs to fill the empty spaces. So that’s what happened.

BM: One of those songs (“A Poem for the Firmament”) you wrote in your liner notes is “Dedicated to myself.” [laughs] Why is that?

A: [laughs] Yeah. I think that is, I have talked not so good about the album maybe, about the period. I think that was one of the best songs we ever have done, and at least from my point of view, I feel very, very close to myself. It’s dedicated to myself because it talks about me and the lyrics are about my person and my philosophy and my way of thinking and it’s divided into four parts of the days, like dawn, night, day, and twilight, and every part of the day represents a part of myself, and about a part of my way of thinking and part of living life. So that was maybe the most personal lyrics I ever write, and I’m very close to them.

BM: Did that make you nervous at all, like being that open and personal, did you worry that you were putting part of your soul out there?

A: No. [laughs] No, really, with Elvenking lyrics, I want to express myself and my ideas. With that specific song, as you said, I opened myself a lot, but in a way it worked, because talking about yourself, it helps you a lot. Maybe I’ve talked to a lot of people, and that’s not good. [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

A: But it’s worked out.

BM: Yeah. Well, tell me about The Winter Wake [2006]. You guys went through another transition during that period of time. Damna came back, but the co-founder and your friend [Jarpen], who was a fellow guitarist, left. What kind of impact did that make on The Winter Wake album?

A: If you have time, I have to explain a little bit of things about it. You know, Jarpen was one of my closest friends, and I have been through everything with him, we have founded the band together, we have been friends for so many years, and we have been best through a lot of things. But in the last period he changed a lot of ideas and he wasn’t the same guy than before. He wasn’t interested in playing anymore, unfortunately, and

- end part one

NOTE: The entire interview can be found in the ProgPower USA IX program given to all attendees at this year’s metal fest.

Tags: Interview //