OCTBER FALLS (Eng.)
– Hi, thanks for your time. What are you currently up to? How is everything doing right now with OCTOBER FALLS?
Hey, thanks to you! As we’re not playing live at all, right now it’s just promoting the new album and a bit later this year the work with new material will slowly start.
– You will soon release your new album, «The Plague of a Coming Age», which will come out next May. What are your expectations on it? And how are the first reviews being?
Actually it already came out few weeks ago, the US-release is a bit later, so that confuses the things a bit. I hope people enjoy the new album, the certain sound of October Falls is still there, but there’s also some new ideas added, so I’m curious to see what people think. First reviews have been very good, of course few reviewers have not liked it that much, but the overall feedback has been very nice and I think it’s always better when some people enjoy the material and some don’t, as nothing is worse than when everyone’s just saying it’s an ok album. That usually means people gets no emotions from it, be them bad or good.
– Have been three years since your previous «A Collapse of Faith» and this new opus so, how could you say you have evolved as musician throughout this period? Do you think your culmination as musician is nearer or is there always room to improve?
Maybe not that much as musician, but more as a composer as the music has evolved a bit since ”A Collapse of Faith”. I think that as long as you have an urge towards music, there’s always a room for improvement and I think that making ”The Plague of a Coming Age” made me realize new options and ideas that I can try in the future when making the next album, so that gives a new motivation and a way to improve the material and take the music further.
– «The Plague of a Coming Age» is a pretty eloquent yet straight-forward album’s title, so I would like to know what’s the main concept behind this new release.
The title «The Plague of a Coming Age» reflects what we are now and how our past and current actions will create the legacy for tomorrows world. Too rarely anyone stops to think that the time we’re living now is the heritage for some others later. Every mistake done now is part of the plague of a coming age. It’s about how nations fall apart, how brothers betray each other and how the false believes tear families apart and how in the end, there’s no redemption, no savior and only the strongest are still roaming ahead. It’s a melancholic theme, but it also have certain hope on it.
– Getting deeper into this new effort; what could you say are the main differences between this new record and the previous ones?
Music-wise the main difference is the structure of the album and how it’s more song-oriented than any of the earlier releases, where the whole albums were tied into certain concept and not so much into single songs. The album is also a much more band-sounding than the previous albums and the lyrics are more focused within a single song this time. Overall I think the lyrics took a step further from the earlier works.
– I personally think there are some differences on «The Plague of a Coming Age» compared to your previous effort, for instance songs are shorther in length and we could somehow say they have a more straight-forward and/or «accessible» approach. Was this how you envisioned the album since the beginning or do you just let things floew?
Indeed and the lenght-issue was something I really wanted to do differently this time, as for example on ”A Collapse of Faith”, with the exception of outro-track, the songs were very long and this time I wanted to try something completely different. The point was not to make them more accessible, but surely they’re also that, as overall it’s much easier to check a song from an album when a single song is only about 5 minutes long instead of 20. I really wanted to keep it shorter this time, but of course if there would’ve been longer songs, I wouldn’t have cut them shorter just for the sake of it, so every songs is a s long as they naturally were, not because I cutted them into certain lenght.
– I think that, next to the focus on dynamics, has helped creating a more enjoyable effort. And still with shorter songs, you’ve managed to capture an impressive atmosphere, maybe even condensing it. Culd you say this has been somehow a challenge? As the whole atmosphere next to the Folk/Ambient elements have always played an important role on your music.
It surely was a lot harder to write shorter songs, what would go more directly to the point and still have the atmospheric feeling, than to write longer tracks with a lot more space to move around. When you’re used to work with much longer songs and then change into shorter tracks, you easily get a feeling if the songs are too simple or too easy to listen, when the music just flows through your head and leaves nothing behind, no feelings or an urge to listen them again. But based on what you wrote and how I feel the album myself, I guess that in the end the songs worked quite well and I feel that together they form a solid atmospheric album.
– On the other hand, I’ve also noticed a slightly different sound in production terms, maybe a bit more raw and less clean. Due to this could you please tell us how did you work on the production process and if you got the result you were looking for?
The soundscape of the album is surely a bit different than before, some say it’s more polished and clean and some say it’s rawer. Personally I’d say it’s not as processed as on ”A Collapse of Faith”, but lies more into band-sound, where’s a bit more dynamics and not every sound plays perfect everytime. I didn’t mix the album by myself, but I had a certain vision and guided the mixer towards that. Of course, we could’ve played it more safely and really polish everything and fix the small mistakes here and there, but the band-sound would’ve been lost in the process and I wanted to avoid that and keep it that way more raw. Overall, I’m happy with the final result, certain imperfections makes it a bit more earthly and not just a sterile studio-processed album that flows smoothly from start to finish, yet I still wanted it to be a good sounding album and I think it is.
– All in all «The Plague of a Coming Age» is an opus full of contrasts, with more clean vocals but non less Metal than some of your previous release, it just seems both your smooth and aggressive sides are strongly marked here. Is it easy to get a keep a good balance between both aspects in your music? In fact you also get a perfect equilibrium between Black Metal, Folk and some Doomy moments.
It comes really natural, as I don’t care to keep the dynamics on full whole the time, but instead want the songs to live and breath more during the duration. Also the fact that the early materiall was all acoustic makes it more easier to add that into harsher material without it being forced. I did make some changes to that on the new album, as I wanted to avoid always using the same acoustic interludes and instead used them a bit differently this time. Overall, balance is easy to keep, when you’re not really thinking about the differance between the parts.
– In fact, if previous albums reminded in certain moments to bands as AGALLOCH or or early ULVER, this one reminds me to OPETH on an imaginary Folk slope. Have they been an influence for you? What have been the most influential bands for the OCTOBER FALLS’ sound?
Early Opeth and Ulver have always been a big inspiration for me, no question about it, but although October Falls is often compared to Agalloch music-wise, I’ve only heard few songs by them and only release I have is their split 10” with Nest. In addition to early Ulver and Opeth, Primordial has been a big influence for me, along with bands like Drudkh, Empyrium, Tenhi and many others. For some reason, the new album have gotten a lot of comparison to Opeth and as much as I like earlier Opeth, with the exception of here and there, they’ve never really been a band with short songs or traditional arrangements, so that way it’s surprised me a bit, but I’m not complaining.
– All this about «The Plague of a Coming Age»; how could you describe it in just 3 words?
Dark atmospheric metal.
– And finally; what are your near-future plans?
Currently making all the earlier and a bit harder to find acoustic material available in Bandcamp, so people can stream them for free and see the early steps of the
band. All of that material will also be re-released late 2013, but more news about that later. Other than that, I’ll slowly start to compose new material, but as usually, things will evolve slowly.
– That’s all, thank you once more for answering our questions. If you want to add some final words; feel free to do it.
The new album ”The Plague of a Coming Age” can be fully streamed from the labels Bandcamp-page http://dmp666.bandcamp.com/ so the ones who doesn’t know the band yet can easily check the new album. Thanks a lot to you and the readers!
