Friday, April 7, 2017

Enragement Interview

1.Can you give us an update on what has been going on with the band since the recording of the new album?

Practice, more practice, beer, more beer, practice, practice, a couple of gigs and more beer... We actually recorded the album already last summer, meaning that loads of stuff have been going on since. After we were finished at the studio, we indeed played some intense gigs while waiting for Viktor Gullichsen to finish what was to become a marvellous work of mixing and mastering on the album.

This far, we have created all of Enragement’s artwork by ourselves and we started working on the album cover in the autumn. We also started planning the future release of the album and considering possible labels for co-operation, while keeping on the practice routine and writing some prototypes for new songs.

Around the turn of the year we moved on to planning the music video for the song ‘Blood for the Sun God’ together with Joel Korhonen. Before starting to shoot the video, we entered into negotiations concerning the album release with Inverse Records and after a while struck a deal that both parties could happily agree to. Our hands were filled with work because of the upcoming release, not to mention all the effort on the music video. Joel did an amazing job directing and editing the video in a rather tight schedule, and the end-product was released last month.
Now we finally have time to start looking for more gigs and focusing on the music itself, which feels great, even though we’ve had tons of good time working on the less-musical aspects of the upcoming release. Still, music is what most bands are all about, right?

2.You have a new album coming out in June, how would you describe the musical sound that is presented on the recording and also how does it differ from the stuff you have released in the past?

Our previous album, Omnimalevolence of Man, is characterized by what you could call a rough, home-made or garage kind of sound, which of course works well when it comes to death metal. Yet, we still yearned for a more professionally produced sound for the second album and hit the Suomenlinnan Studio getting exactly what we came looking for.
The new sound works perfectly for our style of mixing various extreme metal genres with a body of all the brutal sub-genres of death metal; Burned, Barren, Bloodstained lacks the fuzziness of the previous album letting all the brutal and technical riffs reach their full potential, the insanely fast drums blast through the brain and the bass support the heaviness of each song without losing any ground to the other instruments. This allowed us to develop our experimental approach to death metal to a whole new level.
Most of the songs on the new album are much shorter than on the previous one. This was a conscious decision as we wanted to increase the intensity of the songs by avoiding stretching them. Furthermore, the songs are clearly more technical, more brutal and more versatile than on the previous album. The new album also features a couple of songs written by the band’s bass player whereas the previous album was completely composed by the guitarists.

3.What are some of the lyrical topics and subjects the band explores with the music?

Just like we enjoy experimenting with multiple musical genres, we explore various lyrical themes. The list of topics is pretty much just as long as the list of our songs, but basically nearly all of our songs explore the darkness and cruelty of human nature. This manifests in both historic and modern topics, social and religious themes and psychological contemplation that our songs have presented. The principle behind most of our lyrics is that no matter how evil things you try to come up with, the real world always seems to find a way to be even more insane and twisted.

4.What is the meaning and inspiration behind the name 'Enragement'?

Rage is a force that pulses through both our music and lyrics. By this we mean the silent anger that grows inside a person’s mind as well as the exploding fury when the accumulated hatred breaks free. Well, ‘Enragement’ is a very fitting name for the band as it describes both the sound of our music and our philosophy.

5.What are some of the best shows that the band has played over the years and also how would you describe your stage performance?

The word that best describes our performance is probably ‘enraged’ (pun intended). We like to offer our fans a raw, natural sound without futile backtracks, effects and clicks etc. and let them enjoy the music. This lets the songs breathe and come alive in a new way each time they're played. Having three lead vocalists is also as much an advantage as it’s every mixer’s nightmare. It allows us to produce an unbreakable wall of guttural growls, but gives the guy behind the desk a real head-ache.

One of the most memorable shows took place last autumn as a good friend of the band asked if we could perform at his 30th birthday. We said hell yeah, and he booked a venue and invited the audience. Only what was special about this gig, was that we had to build the whole gig set-up at the venue, as there was nothing intended for playing musical shows at the site beforehand. This meant a one-and-a-half-day project of carrying equipment and sound-checking and so on. Just as we got everything set up perfectly and the gig was about to start in 10 minutes, one of our guitar amplifiers blew a fuse making it useless. You can only imagine the frustration…
Luckily, Robert Pylkkänen, another good friend of the band members, who mixed the gig, had by chance installed a kick-ass guitar amp modelling software on his laptop just a couple of hours ago, and we managed to start the gig with only a minor delay. The whole adventure added an extra dose of enragement to our performance, of which you can get a taste on our YouTube channel, as we filmed the show. So, we came pretty close to documenting a gig that never happened.

6.Do you have any touring or show plans once the new album is released?

As an underground band, our plans live and change all the time. We’ll play at every opportunity that we get, but the future is still shrouded in the mists of mystery. Some of the gigs usually come with a short notice, but we’re trying to get some gigs planned with a longer time for preparation.

7.On a worldwide level how has the feedback been to your music by fans of brutal death metal?

We actually set out to release the debut album without really having decided which genre would best describe our music as we already experimented with different styles quite a lot. We settled for calling ourselves a death metal band, but it turned out that our listeners considered us a brutal death metal band instead. This turned into a pretty interesting debate after the release of our first music video ‘Black Widow’, which gained an overwhelming amount of attention on the Metal Monks YouTube channel.
A long list of different genres was suggested for the song as everyone seemed to focus on different parts it consists of. These included brutal death metal, old school death metal, death core, melodic death metal among others. Even the black metal and slam death metal influences didn’t go unnoticed. We followed the debate with intrigue, as we considered all of the commenters to be right in a way, because the song was intended to represent various styles. We we’re glad that it achieved what we aimed for and encouraged to carry on developing our style.

As for the new album, we decided to start describing our music as Extreme Death Metal. We consider the term to balance all the instrumental, vocal and lyrical extreme metal and death metal influences expressed in our songs.

8.What is going on with some of the other bands or musical projects these days that some of the band member are a part of?

Our bass player, Jarkko Niemi, will soon head to Japan for a tour with Brymir. Last year, they released a superior symphonic death metal album, Slayer of Gods, which gained marvellous acclaim from both critics and metal heads.

Lasse Sannikka, our drummer, throws gigs with his death core project, Reflection Dies. They will play at the Helsinki-based Heavy Metal Heart festival for the fourth time next autumn.

Like all metal drummers, Lasse seems to participate in about a hundred projects and so he also plays in a black metal band called Pillars of Crucifixion. Our guitarist Atte Ojanne also recently joined the project, which is working on its first full-length album after its debut EP named Parrhesia.

9.Where do you see the band heading into musically during the future?

We aim at developing our musical style into a more unique direction by gathering influences from an ever-growing number of musical genres. Of course, we’ll keep on honing our technical and composing skills which will surely allow us to produce an even more brutal sound than now.

10.What are some of the bands or musical styles that have had an influence on your music and also what are you listening to nowadays?

It’s pretty hard to name specific bands that have influenced our music the most. We draw influences from pretty much every extreme metal genre there is with a strong focus on death metal’s subgenres. However, we also keep our eyes and ears open for musical genres outside of the world of metal, because you never know what will give you the most thrilling combination of genres when you keep on experimenting with different styles. Who knows, maybe we’ll implement some pretty brutal gangsta rap beats to our music. Just kidding, there’s a limit to everything...

11.What are some of your non musical interests?

Sacrificing virgins to pagan gods, worshipping everything that’s malevolent and secretly peeking over our neighbours’ fences. So, let’s say that we do pretty much everything that’s dark and twisted.

12.Before we wrap up this interview, do you have any final words or thoughts?

Thanks for the interview and keep supporting underground metal! Hopefully we’ll get to play in your town and maybe have beer after moshing the brains out of our heads.

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