SUMMONING (Eng.)
– Hi, thanks for your time. What are you currently up to? How is everything doing right now with SUMMONING?
silenius: in the moment everything is running pretty fine for us. we already got good response for our new release and the trailer that napalm made caused us a lot of attention again, after having been away from everything since nearly 7 years. the only bad thing was that our new album was leaked nearly one month before its release, but meanwhile not even this bad thing can spoil our mood.
– You will soon release your first album in 7 years. What have you been up to during these last years? Were you completely apart from the music world or did you have something going on?
silenius: after oathbound was released i was completely away from musical work. somehow i was totally exhausted and i not even knew if summoning ever would be continued. some years later i concentrated on my third kreuzweg ost release. this cost me nearly another two years, and then i got a heart attack which again dropped me for nearly one year. but since then i got a heavy motivation again to compose new material and so everything what is done for «old mornings dawn» was composed and recorded pretty fast during the last two years.
protector: i was already very busy with summoning only a short time after the release of «oathbound» and composed 7 songs or songfragments, waiting for silenius to complete them and work on them to turn them to complete songs. as described above silenius was quite inactive for a longer time so i could not do much with 
those ideas for some years. anyway this time was not lost and later we worked on those fragements and some of them (including the title track) are now complete songs on the new album.
– And how did the inspiration come back?
silenius: in my case the heart infarct definitely was the turning point. before this point i somehow thought, that everything was said with summoning and i had absolutely no new inspirations. i even thought of ending summoning, but after this heart infarct i all at one realised how important this band still was for me, and with the realisation, first slowely but then very quickly all my inspiration came back.
– Throughout these 7 years a lot has happened and things into the music world have changed a lot, specially into technology, both for production and promotion duties. Has this time been easier to capture the sound you wanted to obtain? And do you think this time it will be easier to reach more people?
protector: for me a lot changed. i was finally able to work with pure software solutions, such as the software sampler. i was able to integrate own recorded sound to my sound library. i also have more variety with different percussion sounds and could add more details to the rhythms this time. but apart from the techical changes we also changed our view on creating the perfect sound. this time we reduced a bit the massive use of reverb and other more atmospheric effects and let the album sound more direct.
– This new album is entitled «Old Mornings Dawn» so, first of all, what are your expectations on it? And how are the first reactions being?
silenius: in the beginning we had no expectations at all. after seven years of silence it was completely unsure how many of the older fans still remember us and are interessted in the new record. but meanwhile we are total excited about the big response and the great wellcome of our fans. the one minute teaser that napalm did helped a lot to get our name back in the counscious of the fans. like always it is of course not possible to please everyone but as far as we can overlook the situation the new album is really accepted a lot, not only to the fans but this time also to a lot of critics.
– After giving the album some spins I could say guitars sound even more varied, in fact it seems you always go a step further in that sense. Was this something you were aiming for?
protector: yes the guitars sound definitely more varied, due to the more clear sound and the deeper mixing that interferes less with the high keyboard melodies. like always the final result was not long planned but organic growing during the months of mixing. the original sound of the gutiars was more close to the oathbound guitars, but then silenius noticed tha in his car radio that guitars sound to penetrating and shrilly so we completely rearranged the sound and put everything much more into the deep frequency spectrum. first we where not sure about it but then we realised that this was a great step forward and gave the songs more power and a better balance to the keyboards.
– If I’m not mistaken this time spoken words aren’t samples. Would you mind to elaborate a bit on this?
silenius: yes and no. we again have spoken word samples but also real speakers. for example the «i am the blood» phrase is sampled from a movie and we have some other samples in our two bonus tracks. but the spoken voice on «old mornings dawn» and «earthshine» is done by a brittish speaker called «david says» who was hired by napalm records exclusively for summoning. the female elven vocals in the beginning of the intro and at the end of «the white tower» are spoken by a hungarian woman called «erika szu»cs»
– Overall I think «Old Mornings Dawn» has a pretty clear and straight-forward sound, is really easy to distinguish all the different elements hidden on your compositions. Due to this I would like to know how did you approach the songwriting process.
protector: i think the sound of the new albums is a result of a different mixing process. as described we made the different instruments more direct and more clear so that they can now be more easy to be distinguished. this time that mixing process did not only happen during the end but way more simultaneous happening with the song writing. i also took more care that the different melodie insturments dont play to much on the same pitchm spectrum.
– You have always used soundsamples that enhance the whole atmosphere, is this the main purpose? And how big is the role atmospheres play on your music?
silenius: sound samples and field recordings play a high role within the sound of summoning. this is very common in the industrial scene and as we both have projects in these fields it was natural to take over these ideas within the summoning universe. this time for example we did a lot of scream samples which are carefully woven together with the real screams and we have a lot of sound samples which are added to the drum sound to bring more variety to it. this time we have less spoken word samples but as i said before this time we have real speakers.
– In fact you are always adding new ideas, sounding fresh with each new album still without losing your identity. Is this something easy to get?
protector: i think we can always add lots of different things to our music (that normal band in most cases would not even dare) because we have a clear concept of our music which we created during all those years. because our main style is based on a strong musical «backbone» its easy for us to variate with all the detailis but still dont betray the style we created with summoning. we neither want to create another copy of the previous album when we release a new album, nor do we want to change so much that people wonder why the name summoning is written on the album.
– All this about «Old Mornings Dawn» being said; how could you describe it in just 3 words?
silenius: epic melancholic wanderlust
– And finally, what are your near-future plans?
silenius: shortly we will announce on our homepage what releases our fans canexpect during this and next year. there will be an ear book release of old mornings dawn, there will be some vinyl releases of older records, and next year there will be a vinyl release with 6 unreleased songs from the old mornings dawn session.
– That has been everything from my side, thanks once more for taking part of your time. If you now want to add some final words; last lines are all yours.
silenius: a big hail to all our fans who have not forgotten us, you are the praetorians of our times.
