BLACK MESSIAH (Eng.)
– Hello, thanks for taking your time. What’s currently the band up to?
Hi there this is Brööh from Black Messiah, we´ve actually played a fantastic concert in Switzerland this weekend and we took a week timeout, next week we´ll have the next rehearsal 😉
– First off, could you please share some history of BLACK MESSIAH?
Black Messiah was founded in 1992 by Zagan, who is the last founding member in the band. It all started with Black Metal, Zagan paid tribute to bands like Venom, Celtic Frost….etc. but as you can hear transformed at least with “Oath of a warrior” into more pagan style
– Your latest “The Final Journey” was released just a few weeks ago; how’s its feedback being so far? Are you satisfied with it?
Yes I think we can be very pleased with the feedback which was overall a positive one national and international, it´s great!
– This album I could say is your most complete effort in terms of sound, as well as more mature when it comes to songwriting but, what are your thoughts on the final output?
I think you´re right! We get older and so it comes that this fact also reflects on the songwriting, in terms of the sound this time we´ve chosen the “Sinustal Studios” with our producer Chai Devereaux (maybe some of you might know him as guitarist and band leader of “Jesus on Extasy” ) and we all think it was the best thing for us to do. We have a good personal relationship with him and he put more metal into our sound and that´s how we wanted the new material to be.
– “The Final Journey” as an albums name gives the feeling is the end/start of an era for the band or even an end; is this your case or is just an album’s title?
It´s just the album title, we´ve chosen it because of the Naglfar Saga which describes a viking who dies and tries to transcend to the golden halls, but bad decisions and behaviour in life leave him to serve on the nailship “Naglfar”.
– Your style is a mix between different genres as Folk Metal or Black Metal among others, so I guess your musical influences may be quite diverse; which are they?
Another point in which you´re right! 😉 We all have different influences when it comes to music, for example In my case I´ve started of with Kiss, later Iron Maiden, bay area thrash and US power metal, progressive metal …etc. Other band members listen to hard rock, classic music, film soundtracks or on the other hand Death Metal, Black Metal. The music we play gives us freedom to choose which direction the next song will go, but don´t be afraid it will allways be metal !! 🙂
– Due to this it may be hard to tag your sound but; how could you describe this new record in just 3 words?
Hmmm…I´d take heavy, melodic and a bit folky.
– And how was the songwriting process? Is it something spontaneous? A team effort maybe?
Yes a team effort. We always write our songs together in the rehearsal room, some of the guys come up with ideas or parts and we put them together and everyone is involved in the songwriting process.
– 4 songs off 10 are different parts for the “The Naglfar Saga”; what does this saga deal with?
Ups so I answered this question before, a viking dies but he wasn´t noble enough to transcend to Vallhalla, so Hel sends him to serve on the “Naglfar”
– Your lyrics are in both German and English; singing in with language do you feel more comfortable? And which one do you think fits your music better?
Most of the lyrics are written by Zagan, he decides it on how the text should sound. Some are better in german others are made for the english speech. In my opinion it´s just history, Black Messiah always did that and so we should continue.
– On this album you have featured a cover of CANDLEMASS’ “Into the Unfathomed Tower”. Why did you pick this concrete tune? And talking about you personally; what other songs would you like to cover?
We picked it because it was Zagan´s wish to do it. He loves Candlemass and always loved this song, so we decided to do it “Black Messiah style” and replaced the lead guitar with his violin, which gives the song our “personal note”.
– We can also find a bonus DVD with additional content as a videoclip, the making off, backstage videos, interviews and plenty different stuff. How did you come up with this idea? Could you say this kind of releases are a good way to make people buy original albums?
It may be a good way but I think people who are downloading an album don´t want a DVD at all. For us we wanted this to be a “Thank you” for the fans. We wanted them to see what´s going on when we´re on the road, how the different musicians are and share it with them.
– You have filmed a video for “Windloni”, could you please elaborate a bit? How was the process like?
My first near death experience because we on the way to the top of a 2400 meters high mountain I drove a sleigh which got out of control and I drove over an edge, I just thought: “How deep will it be ?” fortunately it was just about 4 Meters and I feel into deep snow. Also our guitarist Frangus did that, but he flew nearly 30 meters wide and 20-30 meters deep, he also “landed” in deep snow…..the gods were with him 😉 Besides that we had a cold fun there 😉
– And finally, what are the near-future plans for BLACK MESSIAH?
We´re looking forward to play as many gigs as we can get, hopefully Spain will be on tour list soon, maybe we begin the writing process for the next album. Some members allready have some new ideas….so let the river flow.
– That has been everything from my side, thank you once more for your time. Now feel free to add some final words.
As I said before we hope to play some events near you, in the past it wasn´t possible for us, but we´ll see what the future brings. All of the Black Messiah horde want to thank every single fan for the support, keep metal alive !! Horns up !!
