Not all Polish people that are working in West Europe can be found on a construction site or hammering away in your bathroom. You can also find them on stage. We already know of course bands like Darzamat, Behemoth and Vader, but the next band that can’t wait to become famous on stage is Devilish Impressions. On the eve of their European tour with the earlier mentioned Behemoth I had a little chat with vocalist Quazarre about the term ‘Avant Garde Black Metal Orchestra’, their pseudonyms, Eastern Europe and the history of this band.
First off all: Can you explain the term ‘Avant Garde Black Metal Orchestra’, for it seems everybody has his or her own ideas about such a description of the band… The term that’s sometimes used to describe our creation was meant to give a bit wider idea of what Devilish Impressions’ music is all about. I mean; it doesn’t really matter to me, but I think it wouldn’t be fair to say we play typical black or death metal since there are lot of other elements in our music characteristic for different metal sub-genres such as thrash or even heavy metal. Moreover, I’ve always considered D.I. as a tool to express my internal feelings regarding different emotional issues. Therefore our music will always be influenced by many other things than those said to be associated with Black Metal only…
I think it suits us somehow because it clearly says the stuff we play is multi-layered; inspired by something more than Dark Throne or Emperor. I guess it’s pretty much different with the new album which has been given slightly different description; extreme modern black / death metal. That also proves we developed on this level, but again it still could be classified by using the word ‘avant-garde’… In the end of a day all such terms mostly serves the journalists not fans themselves. It’s actually very funny to see how many difficulties some of the journalists have when defining the stuff Devilish Impressions play… I’m always taking the piss on some dickheads who instead of giving possibly the most objective opinion regarding the album they divagates on its provenance…..Name it as you like to do, as long as it’s connected with the most extreme form of music known as metalJ
Now that this has been cleared, perhaps it would be a cool idea to tell the readers something about the history of the band. Who are you exactly, what do you all do in the band and why have you chosen to play this particular kind of metal? Well, the idea of forming the band was basically mine, Turquoissa’s and Starash’es. All of us played in different bands before and once we just sat down and came up with totally new project. In 1998 none of us thought of it as something that could go that far as it goes today. We just wanted to play some music and write lyrics to express our internal need of throwing out of ourselves all of the feelings we have been trying to lock up into ours compositions. Devilish Impressions was the very first thought that came up to my mind after making the first sounds. I knew I would like to have a name which could fully represent the band’s complex identity; a name that could be not only an explicit form of band’s appurtenance to black / death metal genre, but at the same time something which leaves the room for listener’s independent point of view.
When we formed the band and we slowly started giving a shape to the first songs we said to ourselves that our creation couldn’t be limited by any artificial rule. We would like to compose something that could go far beyond everyone’s and even our expectations. At the same time we wanted our name to be kind of a straight forward manifesto and Devilish Impressions just seemed to be a perfect definition for what we decided to do. Knowing that we’re not going to play an easy-classifiable music we thought that such name perfectly pictures everything we’re trying to expose. Two years later, when we officially established Devilish Impressions we gave it a rough direction of where its creation shall go to or – I would rather say – where it definitely shouldn’t go to. That is how we wrote our first self-released material enigmatically entitled “Eritis sicut Deus; Verbum Diaboli Manet in Aeternum; Vox Vespertilio Act I – Moon Var Dies Irae”. It was all about having it out of our minds, about giving ourselves kind of a pleasure of that time self-fulfillment. It was a few years later only when we have asked guys of Luna Ad Noctum (Dragor and Adrian) to join us for the recording process of “Eritis sicut Deus…” successor. That’s how the “Plurima Mortis Imago” album was made.
Soon the band’s line-up was drastically changed as we needed people who could truly sacrifice themselves to the aims we had and have in D.I. That’s how Armers (guit), Icanraz (drums) and Cultus (bass) got on-board later on and this is the line-up we play with till the date. As for the “Diabolicanos” album studio session’s it wasn’t Cultus but Starash who recorded all the bass parts but he’s not in a band anymore since he wasn’t able to tour with us as often as we all wanted to. Uff, I hate all those biography’s questions and I’m glad I’m done with this one hahaha.
All band members have strange names that, as far as I know, are not Polish. Could you tell us what it exactly means and why you felt it was necessary to use these names? The names we picked simply reflect each personality in the band. Each of us came up with the stage name suitable to what the particular person internally identifies him / herself with. We obviously could have used our real names as we are not ashamed of them but we believe black metal has always been about symbolism and mysticism.
Recently your new album was released. Why did you record the successor ‘Diabolicanos’ so fast after the release of ‘Plurima Mortis Imago? It wasn’t as fast as it seems to be; the ‘Plurima Mortis Imago’ album was recorded during the summer of 2005. We’ve started recording the first tracks of “Diabolicanos” in May 2007, so it’s been almost two years since the previous recording session. Then it seems we’ve had a shorter break between those two albums. I would say the break was long enough to gather some new ideas and put them up together in order to record the new opus later on…
What are the most important changes (what can be heard on ‘Diabolicanos’) in relation to former release? I think I shall start with the new album’s production; without false modesty I can say we’ve finally achieved what we really wanted to. This time we've spent more than a month and a half in the studio working on every detail of each particular instrument. Comparing to the previous sessions there where a lot of basic things that have been completely fucked up; this one was just a blast! Obviously, it was also bit stressful; because we've put a big pressure on ourselves with the recording quality, but I guess it was worth it. Never before we were so satisfied with the final result of this production. Luckily this time we had no problems at any stage of the session. This allowed us to be more relaxed and we could concentrate more on exposing details of the structure of each song. As you know, the stuff that Devilish Impressions plays is very complex and various with a lot of things going on at the same time. I believe this sort of music deserves really good, quite selective and a heavy, massive production to have all those details audible. I guess we succeeded on that as well as on other aims we had in mind before having this album recorded.
Devilish Impressions also evolved on a musical level, which is very different from what we previously did. I mean; it’s a mix of black and death metal, there are still extremely fast tempos followed by some massive slow-downs and unique, remarkable melodies. This time we were more concentrated on creating powerful, rhythmic riffing construction and giving all songs more dynamics and destructive aggression. It's really massive and powerful now. I've also used different sorts of vocal expressions, more suitable to what our music has eventually become. I guess I wouldn’t be far from the truth by saying we also became much better songwriters who possessed bigger ability of putting particular song fragments together.
Your first recording, entitled ‘Eritis Sicut Deus’ was put out in 2002. What have been the most important developments of Devilish Impressions in the six years that followed? Well, that’s a really long time; we developed a lot on in a musical way but also on personal level. Six years is long enough to redefine everything you’re involved into. No matter if it’s the band you play in or ordinary things you’re facing every single day.
Almost every song on ‘Diabolicanos’ is five minutes or longer. That’s typical for the doom metal scene and not common for black metal don’t you think so? How do you manage to keep your songs interesting? Hehe, I wonder what you would say if you listened to our first material ‘Eritis sicut Deus…’? Just imagine there were three songs that only last 45 minutes altogether! I think that was one of the reasons to call our creation an ‘Avant Garde’ hehe. I don’t really know. We just try to keep the listener at the edge of a seat for as long as it’s possible by changing the structure of the songs depending on its atmosphere. We use many breakdowns or slowdowns, different sorts of melodies as well as many other things that just make people hooked to the particular tracks’ fragments. But I have to point there are three or four songs on “Diabolicanos” that are 4 minutes-long only. It all depends whether we see the track sounds good enough in its present, no matter longer or shorter form. If it’s good it stays as it is. If not, let’s make it fucking 20-minutes-long monsterJ
You’ve made a promotional video for ‘Plurima Morits Imago’, for whom did you make this video? I mean, it is not something that commercial TV stations would broadcast so easily. The ‘SataniChaoSymphony’ video, as most of the other metal tracks, were not meant to be played in commercial TV stations. We did it mostly for the CD’s bonus purpose, so people could have a bit more than music only. We just wanted to present our vision on this particular song, tried to work out its scenario the way which would force potential listeners to explore yet another form of the song’s interpretation. ‘SataniChaoSymphony’ with its apocalyptic atmosphere has been chosen for the closing act of the previous album to leave the room for people’s imaginations on the theme of its successor. The ‘Diabolicanos’ first verse says “We are thorns which killed the fucking god…” I guess it’s not something the public media would like, is it?
Will you also shoot a video for the ‘Diabolicanos’ album? And if so, what kind of concept will you use? Yeah, we already shot a video to one of the new tracks called ‘Har-Magedon’. The subject of the whole album is about touches of the biblical Armageddon issues, having our own interpretation of this final war between good and evil so to speak. As I’ve tried to explain on our website - 'diabolicanos' as a word doesn't exist in any language. I've made it up as an expression of opportunity. There were 'Dogs of God' once known better as 'Dominicanos' infamous “holy” yet in fact extremely cruel inquisitors during the black pages of the Catholic Church. 'Dogs of the Devil' symbolize their enemies, someone who stands against domination over the human will. However none of us in Devilish Impressions sees the bible differently than any other book it’s been used as a base to the lyrics because of its international range so I could operate with symbols and phrases world-widely known. The bible's ‘Book of Revelations’ was a perfect background for my ideas regarding the shit we all are being forced to smell nowadays. The ‘Diabolicanos’ album as well as the ‘Har-Magedon’ track itself tells the story of apocalyptical Armageddon. But this is our story, a different one, inverted, developed, materialized. Full of symbolic relations to something that has been known and respected for ages, finally evolving into something utterly blasphemous and probably non-acceptable for many who got used to its original version. As with ‘SataniChaoSymphony’ I don’t think this time there’ll be a lot of commercial TV stations interested in playing this video tooJ
You’ve played seven gigs in Ukraine last December; how was it? You’ve played earlier this year in Ukraine as a support act of Marduk, why did you go back to this country so very fast? The tour with Marduk actually rolled mostly over Russia, with one gig in Kiev (Ukraine’s capitol) only. After the tour we received further proposals of invading those territories, first at Metal Heads Mission festival in Crimea alongside Suffocation, Immolation, Vader and Benediction amongst others, second – as a headliner across the whole Ukraine. I’ve noticed most of the Western Europeans still consider the Middle East European block as one country, even though it hasn’t been like that for years now… Anyway, believe me this is fucking huge market for metal music, for music in general! You can’t imagine how enthusiast Easters European fans may be when listening to something they like! It’s not like in Germany or England for instance, where people have already seen or still are likely to see thousands of the biggest bands in the world. The original spirit of die-hard metal fan in Western Europe is nothing comparing to the one present in our Eastern neighbours. If you want to see what real pure fucking madness is believe me these are the places to pay a visit! If you take a closer look at some particular band’s career you’ll easily notice it’s also not that easy to arrange the gigs, not to mention the regular tours out there. But once you’ve done it and once you’ve conquered hearts of those people it’s more than a pleasure to be back over there again and again. And that’s why there are many bands now that are trying to make it up over there.
Normally bands form the east of Europe want to play in Western Europe very much. Is this also the case with Devilish Impressions? And what is it about playing in the west that seems so attractive for East European bands? Well, for us in Devilish Impressions fans in Eastern Europe aren’t less important than those from Western countries. We just love to play everywhere because each place you visit has something else to offer! Western Europe is definitely way more developed in terms of the clubs’ facilities. You’ve got better conditions, stages, equipment and so one as well as massive media support and publicity while Eastern Europe gives you the feeling of, I’d say, being more appreciated just because you – as a band – are brave enough to come and play over there. Why is it so attractive? I think the key-role here plays the history’s factor, the fact that Eastern European bands some time ago couldn’t play anywhere else just because they weren’t allowed to. I’m sure you remember the times of ‘Iron Curtain’… Vader for instance was the first Polish band ever that managed to cross the boundaries, first one that played abroad. And I guess this explains it all…
Speaking of touring, as far as I know you are going to tour with Behemoth in February. What can you tell us about that? Oh yeah, we just can’t wait to hit the road again especially since we’ll be touring with one of the most important black / death metal acts in the world nowadays! This tour will be definitely the most prestigious for us so far, giving the band lots of opportunities in the upcoming future. We’ve always admired Behemoth not only for the music they play but also for being so fucking determinate in order to achieving their goals. And I guess that’s what we somehow have in common. Obviously during their whole career they’ve done much more than we did yet again I believe Devilish Impressions is at the beginning of its way only. With the ‘Diabolicanos’ album as our second official release only we’ve already played a couple of successful European tours as well as some single, festival appearances. It seems this time we’ll go even further as the promotional plans for the new album include European tour with Behemoth, few dates as part of Wacken Road Show alongside Overkill, Samael, Tristania and Enslaved followed by UK & Ireland Tour as direct support for Dismember in March this year. We’re also being booked for more tours and summer festivals and that makes us think really positive regarding the band’s future.
Alright, this raps it up from my side, thanks a lot for the interview and I leave the final words up to you… Thank you very much Kim for letting us appear on Lords Of Metal pages! Devilish regards to all the Lords Of Metal readers! We’re on a way to conquer and punish. Be aware as the Devil’s Dogs are on a hunt again!
First off all: Can you explain the term ‘Avant Garde Black Metal Orchestra’, for it seems everybody has his or her own ideas about such a description of the band…
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