| Ecrit par demonark,
le 26-07-2006 23:13
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à l'occasion de la sortie de Oath Bound les
seigneurs de l'anneau nous ont gratifié de cet interview afin de nous
dire plus sur cet album et sur le groupe
Summoning is a pretty unknown band in Tunisia. Hence, would you please be so kind and introduce our readers to your band and list the most important events in your career?
Protector: Summoning makes slow, epic, fantasy stled music, with some black metal elements in it. Our instrument are the orchestral sounds from our synthesiser, and even the drum sounds and all rythms are done with it. We are surely no band that can be considered as rocky, or special heavy, but anyway he still use our black metal vocals and also much higher and sharper guitars, which are not used in any other metal cathegory than the black metal one.
The history of Summoning can be devided into 3 epochs. The first one was our pure black metal one. It contains the old demos and the first release "Lugburz". Those times we rather copied the bands of the second wave of black metal from norway. We had a real drummer, hardly any keyboards, and the music was rather chaotic and not very original
The second part is the epoch that started with the release of our second album "Minas Morgul". Before this album we kicked out our drummer who was always just the distrubing elements in the music with all his pseudo prgressive drums inside the music, which made it impossible for us to create monumental ecpic athmospheres. On this album the typical summonig style was born, but still everythign was done in a quite fast way. But already on this album we had our typical hymns done by keyboard horns and string. and those mighty bass- drums playing a slow rythm. We also already focused very much on poliphic structures and often you could hear 3 tunes playing at the same time
Our 3rd epoch started with Stronghold. With this album we finally started to record our music in our own stuiod and too much more time for each album as ever before, not evenn for the mix, for all instruments. The sound got more clear, and the songs less chaotic. Unlike in the past we really thought about the vocal tracks and dd not sing them almost spointanious in the studio.
Some say that with our new release we started a 4th epoch, but i am not sure about it. Anyway with the new release the guitars became much louder and also now are not playing in this ryhmic damped heavy metal way anymore. I use arpeggiso guitars, what makes the new album sound again more old school black metal styled than the albums before. The effect is that many ot the fans that liked our old CDs most now start to like summoning again, although the new album (seein it from the tunes and keybords) follows rather the way of our last album "Let mortal heroes sing your fame".
Could you please Define Summoning´s music by using only three terms?
Protector: Epic, melodic, poliphonic
Tell us a little bit about your first steps in the realm of metal music. Do you remember the first album you bought?
Protector : Well this is many years ago by now. The first time i got in contact with metal music was due to my cousin that presented me an iron maiden album at Christmas. Later i got to hear motorhead, but the first CD i really liked was the live album from black sabbath called "Heaven And Hell". Only some
years later i bought my own guitar and started playing on it.
Do you remember about the first time you were confronted with Tolkien´s fantasy world? What did it feel like?
Silenius : Already when i was very young i was a fan of fantasy literature, although i must honestly say that i got to know tolkien quite late; with about 16 years. From this time on i almost geored everything i could get in a book store from and about tolkien. The idea to translate his mind words into music was not existing from the very start of summoning, but only came after the kick out of our drummer trifixion.
What pushed you to focus on the world of Lord of the Rings instead of the numerous other fantasy realms?
Silenius: I read a lot of other fantasy literature but to be honest i am not to impressed of most of them. for example the last book i read was eragon, written by a 16 year old boy, this book became bestseller in america and i have heard that a movie will be made out of it, but to be honest i was not very impressed about this book. and same goes for many other works in this genre. most of the writters simply have no new ideas.
The atmosphere of your albums leans strongly against the darker and evil side of Middle-Earth. Is this a personal choice or do you feel that Black Metal forces you to that?
Protector: Well with the time summoning also took many heroic aspect from tolkiens word, and not only on the dark sides anymore, but anyway to the way we sing (the old black metal way) dark and evil moods suit better to our sound than happy ones, that is clear. Anyway we never did what any black metal scene wanted from us, otherwhise we would have replaced our keyboard drums by a real drummers for example, but we always did what we think is best, not what we thought other people want from us.
Despite your decision to not perform live with Summoning: aren’t you tempted by it sometimes? Don’t you think you’d miss something that way?
Protector: No actually we never ever felt such a temptation. we are generally not that
live fans and never really got total crazy about any live concert. for us a live concert of a band we like is in most cases rather dissapointing cause the sound is never so good as on the CD and also just looking at a couple of musicians banging their head also does not really bring us any new visuals for the music the band creates.
We simply are the composer types that prefer to create tunes instead of playing already existing ones. We only take an instrument in our hands when we are "forced" to in order to finish an album. After that we never play the tune again and create new tunes instead. On a loive stage we would only have to deal with this annoying aspect of our music, and this would definitely not bring us any satisfaction; we only would be bored and all fans would soon notice that, and in the end all would only be dissapointed.
Apart from that our music should create mind words of wide fantasy landscapes, but seeing 2 normal sweating mortal human on stage would total destroy all those images we created in the head of the listener with our albums.
Oath Bound will be released very soon: in which ways does it differ from your previous works? In other words: which arguments would you use if you tried to convince someone to buy the record.
Protector : For all people that did not like our last release so much cause they are guitar fetishists and blame this release that the guitars can not be heard loud enough, i would tell them that on thenew album the guitars are much louder than before, and have a better sound than ever. Also some people who prefered our older works might get convinced by the newer album because the guitarstyle now also changed and is not playing in the classical rhythmical heavy metal way anymore, but more in a floating athmospheric arpeggio style, what gives the songs a bit more old school styled black metal feeling again.
But apart from the guitars i think that the music rathe follows the style of "Let Mortal Heroes SIng Your Fame". The orchestral tunes are as epic and poliphonic as before, and the drums still play this combination of tom toms, kettle drums and march drums.
The lyrics Mirdautas vras were completely written in the language of mordor. Could you elaborate on that?
Silenius: in the beginning it was just an idea, but i did not know at all how to realise this because the black language is totaly unfinished and there is just a couple of words around to find in the internet. then i asked of mine (memeber of "lumentis", "greifenstein") if he can write this lyric, he told me that he will try and some weeks later he braught a text that is dealing about morgoth preparation to conquer middle earth and we took 3 verses for the song and maybe we will use the rest for one song in the future. after all in the beginning i was very confused how to sing this language. i tried it with different vocal sounds and even was backward mastering but all of this sounds either unrythmic or like samples and so i did it in the end with normal black metal vocals with had the best result. after all t his song is the only one which has no guitar lines so that a soundtrack and marching character comes our more clearly.
Summoning has a strong medieval touch to its sound. I was surprised to hear oriental percussions in "Bauglir"....
Protector: Ah, you noticed the darabuka which i used there. Well this is not so contradictional as you think. the darabuka is not only a typical oriental percussion instrument, it was a total normal drum in medieval times in austria / germany etc. IN those times the connection to oriental culture was greater (due to crussades etc) and therefore also most meanwhile typical europäen instrument have their roots in oriental culture (such as oboe,violin, lute etc).
This is actually not really new, cause in the past with Pazuzu and also on Minas MOrgul we already used oriental rhythms, but those times all drums came from the keyboard, whereas this time i played it with my own fingers.
But apart from the fact that the darabuka was a standard medieval drum, i generally like oriental music very much (as long as it is to dance or pop styled), and even have contacts to a musician born in tunesia ("Hamza" from the band "Asfar").
What is the standard Summoning procedure to write a song?
Protector: The procedure is always the same. SIlenius composes a new basic song for
summoning and comes to my stuiod where we record it. right fater that i play additional tunes to it to let this tune grow to a real orchestra song, then i add the drums to it. Once all songs are finished that way, i start to find the best suiting guitar riffs for each song and record them. ONce those instrumental versions are finished, silenius searches for the most suitable tolkien lyrics which we adapt tot he rythms of the songs so that we finally
can record the vocals. Then we mix and master it and sendthe fniished master CD to napalm records.
What do you think about the Lord Of The Rings movies?
Silenius: I think peter jackson did a very good job, of translating the books to a movie. of course it was obvious that a 1:1 translation of the book would have been redicolous because then it would have tacken 6 films or more. but it was very wise for peter jackson to include the main tolkien painters john how and allen lee in the production process because most of the audience whoh watched the films had in mind their excellent paintings for the books and so it would have been a total disaster if peter jackson whould have created somethign totaly new may it be character whise or may it come to buildings or landscapes.
If you could choose to jump into a character from Middle-Earth, who would it be?
Silenius: I have no special beloved character because i think this is somehow a bit childish. i think the important thig about tolkien and what makes his work admirable is not this or that wizzard or dark lord but the creation of a whole mind word with its complete history, lnaguages, landscapes and so on. this creation is far above all present and past
fantasy literature and that the point which makes tolkien so unique for so many people.
Off to some generic questions
Which album would you make your worst enemy listen to?
Protector: I don't know really. I guess some kind of MTV boy band music
Which album would you offer to your loved one(s)?
Protector: Well this would depend of the musical taste of the person.
Which album do you regret to have bought?
Protector: Well i don't buy a cd without listening to it first, so i never regeret any CD I bought.
Which song would you like to be played at your funeral?
Protector: A song that the people there like, cause i would not like them to be bored on
my funeral
The artwork that hooked you most?
I think that the work of caspar david friedrich surely is the best painter for this kind of music we make.
Your favorite Summoning album.
Protector: I know this answer is boring but for me always the newest album is the best
one, but that is for me nothing surprising, cause naturall the news album is alway the one most close to my taste, cause there i made all elements exatly as i like them most.
Thank you very much for the interview. The last words are yours!
Silenius: Thanks for the interview and Up The Hammers to all our fans in Tunesia
Traduction par OortiaN
Dernière mise à jour : 06-10-2006 14:15
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