Well, some bands know how to surprise you, especially when you just finished a review of the ‘best Hungarian metal release’ which didn’t impress me at all. Darkened Days, the legendary worst doom-death metal band from the Zaan area where I live was even more impressive than the album by the Hungarian band Insane. So if Insane was the best that Hungary had to offer, then you raise your eyebrows when you get your hands on the cd of a band like Damned Spirits Dance and you are requested to write a review about them. Where do they come from? Oh god, Hungary… And then their debut ‘Weird Constellations’ is an amicable surprise. So then you know that the Hungarian music press might have gotten a large bag with coins for choosing the other band… Or the label has some imaginative people running around who made this up themselves. So will the real best metal band from Hungary rise? I will let guitarist Corun do some talking….
Your new album ‘Weird Constellations’ is out right now. How do you look back on the process of making the record, and how does it feel to have the final product in your hands? In short: tell us something more about the creative processes that lead to this album. Mm... smooooth. Well, lots of time, lots of money, and lots of caring. We nurtured it and let it grow.
Frankly, the songs on WC (ha-ha) sum up approximately four years of our lives. We couldn't record everything at times we actually wanted to, so it turned out kinda like a best of album. From our point of view at least. It was hard, because we had to record the drums twice and went back several times with different singers for 'Angel And The Dark River' for example. Other projects were constantly coming up in the studio, so we had to wait in line. Retrospective, we don't mind any of that.
The band was founded in 2002 by Sinox (vocals) and Corun (guitars) but it’s not stated specifically in your biography what happened next. How did you find the other members, how many demo’s did you record, how easy or hard was it to get gigs and all that kind of stuff: we are curious, we want to know! Koege. He's sitting next to me, so he insisted he'd be in the answer. One of our bass players (for one year) with whom I play in dEScADOS right now. All that stuff would take too much time to explain accurately. We were basically kids at the time of setting off. Vyrn and Sacrun joined in a month, but we always had troubles finding the right bass player and drummer for some reason. The four of us went to the same schools with several cross-fades. We had a couple instrumental tracks on some tapes, but our first 'real demo' recording was 'Hide from Daylight'. We actually planned a full-length demo, but we had only a week we could afford. The only aim was to shape Scandinavian black metal so it fits our own image. The sound quality was terrible, but it satisfied us that time in according to foretell our plans. The first gigs were easy to get through with. We simply drank a lot and had fun. Small places, late at night. Shitty, but honest performances filled with life : ). Embarrassing corpse paints and all that stuff...
In 2005 you recorded an EP with Victor Scheer entitled ‘The Growing Spirit’. The response from the Hungarian press was good, but did you get also response from international magazines and e-zines? Responses got ashamed on the way regarding the mini album. Or maybe they never arrived. We sent it to over 40 labels and some of them took the time to write us personally. (No robot spam.) They usually liked it, especially VicRecords and Code666. Apart from that I have no knowledge of any reviews whatsoever. An e-zine from Argentina was asking for the CD, but the project kind of went up in smoke because we were too busy getting drunk, and forgot about it for a long time which we regret now. They were really nice!
Was your music always this weird? You blend in different styles in your sound like black metal, progressive rock, jazz, world music… Or did it gradually grow this way, starting out with extreme death metal and finally finding your niche in this kind of music? Let's not get personal! At the very beginning (of time) we didn't know much of death metal. We had an idea – a wrong one, as we explored it later – of the style which we tried to recreate. But the concept always came first, so this eclectic touch was always in the air. I know we're not rewriting history, but this post-modern feeling of the urge to mix things with a global sense does not seem to pass. Music for us is always a way of expressing ourselves and in that sense: it's a tool.
After two years of experimenting you decided it was time to record an album. So you started in 2007 with the recordings of ‘Weird Constellations’? It's not funny. Even if we had a couple home-made crap recordings for the album – some of which we never used – all of it came together finally in the studio. There were quite huge gaps between the progress of each song. The bottom line is: yes. We started in 2007. The first riffs came up years earlier.
The first thing that came to my mind was ‘these guys are weird’. In the first track I was already confronted with a strange vibe, but in ‘Black Savage’ and ‘The Angel And The Dark River’ you guys totally go over the top. Aren’t you scared that extreme metalfans might not like what you do? We fear no evil. Seriously, this is typical. (No offense!) That might be the reason we came up with the expression: fake-metal. All genres can find an audience for the world is too vast. Our hope is that in this digital age of shuffle-players, facebook, and last.fm people can relate to this - I think minimal – diversity we are trying to put together.
One of the beginning riffs in ‘TSS’ sounds remarkably like the opening riff of ‘Mother North’ by Satyricon, also a band that pushes the boundaries of the genre they started out in. Was Satyricon a band that influenced you, or do we have to look for your influences in a totally other direction? Look no further. We are everything. Joking. The mind is limitless, so must be the music. We are not familiar with all the styles we should know, (not even remotely), but we're still young and it takes time. There should be no boundaries. Answering to the question regarding influences: the music video of ‘Mother North’ must be one of our favourites. The way it starts out in complete silence with the guy crashing the cross with an axe is so powerful and honest. That might be the influence. We try to be honest and very much personal, but still respectful and understandable.
Your style of music is called avant-garde metal. Did you coin that term yourselves? Because avant-garde is another word for vanguard, or ‘those who come first’. Not to be disrespectful, but I don’t see Damned Spirits' Dance as a band that does something entirely new: it all has a familiar ring to it, but it is daring nonetheless. Yeah... I don't think we'd be avant-garde either. We simply want to do something we never heard before, but we're not going into extremes such as the artists of the 20s and 60s. We take what we know and make it a whole. All that world changing stuff comes later if we arrange the circumstances a way which gives us a chance.
What’s up next? With an album out on the market I guess it’s touring, but you might have a different idea for that? Yeah! Getting insanely famous and rich. And chicks... Loads of 'em. Much. Uncountable! To be honest, touring is the most difficult part of our job since Code666 is not arranging gigs. But we're on it. It will happen. Somehow. You will know. We definitely want to play a lot!
Final question: who is your bassplayer? I haven't the slightest idea. Had several bass players over the years. 'T', the newest one seems the best choice so far : ). As we always say, but this time we really have the trust in him!
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