Interview с Bal-Sagoth : DARKSIDE.ru

Byron, five years passed since your previous album (“Atlantis Ascendant” (2001) had been released. What have you been doing all these years?

Basically, since the last album we did a couple of European tours, we played a couple of festivals – one of them in England, one of them in Germany. We played a few of shows here and there in England. We changed our drummer and of course we were recording our sixth album. Basically the album took a long this time. We wanted to change over all we’d recorded from the analog way technology tapes to the new digital way of technology, most of all done on computers. This is basically why this album took such a long time – we had to take over the technology together and learn how to use it. We started to write music officially in about 2003, so this one took about maybe two years or so to write.

Why did Dave Mackintosh (ex-drummer) make up his mind to leave the band?

Well, Dave was a kind of a guy who always wanted to play more shows, and he always got very frustrated because we’re not the band who plays live too often. Also he never was a big fan of extreme metal, he was always more into melodic stuff like melodic rock and all kinds of power metal and so on. So, when DragonForce asked him to join them, it was about time he realized that he enjoyed being in DragonForce more than he enjoyed being in Bal-Sagoth. He’s got to do more shows with them, he’s got paid more money with them, eventually he’s just decided to join DragonForce full-time. Now we’ve got a new drummer Dan Mullins.

Could you tell me a bit about Dan? I mean, where he is from, where he played before joining Bal-Sagoth…

Oh, we’ve known Dan for many, many years. When he was just a young kiddy he came up to the studio while we were recording the albums like “A Black Moon Broods Over Lemuria” (1994) and “Starfire Burning…” (1996), and saw in the studio what a recording was. It was a kind of learning while he was watching the whole recording process. He’s really into extreme metal, he likes blast beats, he likes all aggressive kinds of metal. He’s from West Yorkshire. He drummed for the band called Thine, they got some stuff relea

sed on Peaceville Records. He also was in a band called Sermon of Hypocrisy (also Axis of Perdition – ed.). Basically he’s just a kid we’ve known for a long time. When we asked him to join the band he just accepted this immediately.

Turning back to the new album, did you have any problems while recording it?

No, not really. I mean, the only real problem was the fact that Johnny and Chris (the keyboarder and guitar player respectively) who write the music had really difficult deadlines. It’s a very, very slow process for them when it comes to composing the music. We got a few problems with the computer software, sometimes the software crashed. Sometimes we had some difficulties with the instrumentation of the new technology. But generally, they were not the big problems with the recording.

Were you recording in the same studio as the previous times?

Well, we recorded the vocals in the same studio, which was the Academy Studio. But the music was recorded in a new studio called Waylands Forge, which is an all digital studio. It’s more like a home studio where we had all the equipment. We just recorded our music that way, there was a lot kind of video, less expensive.

What do you expect from “The Chthonic Chronicles”?

You know, we’re already getting a lot of feedback from the fans, they really like the album. We really expect die-hard Bal-Sagoth fans to enjoy it. That’s it, we got no other expectations from that.

By the way, what does the word ‘chthonic’ mean?

Actually, that word refers to the underworld. Something like ‘the underworld dead’ or that kind of thing. That’s more or less the definition of the word, that’s just something which refers to inhabitants of the general realm of underworld in mythology.

Now that the hexalogy is finished, do you have any ideas for the next records? What will they be?

Well, theoretically I’ve got all the stories and everything planned out for the next six albums, no matter when we get around for recording those albums, it doesn’t matter entirely. You know we’ve been going f

or quite a long time now, we might take a kind of break and leave another few years before the next album. But then again, we might surprise everyone and release the new album within about a year. So I have all the ideas planned out for the next albums.

Do you consider yourself superstitious?

Err… Not as much. In many ways I am. I do have a lot of esoteric beliefs, that sort of things. But the things like walking underneath a ladder, a black cat crossing your path and things like that – that doesn’t bother me. (everybody laughs) So, in some ways I guess I am a superstitious man, but in an accepted sense of that term no, I am not really.

And what do you believe in?

My beliefs is a sort of mixture of the Northern European heathenism, a mixture of Britannic pagan tradition, a mixture of magical traditions of the ancient British tribes mixed with a lot of the Anglo-Saxon heathen beliefs which were very close to Vikings’ traditions. Essentially that was my sort of religious beliefs.

What is your usual day like?

Well, basically nothing too exciting really. I do a lot of band stuff, I write a lot of stories in the band and that kind of thing, I’ve been doing a lot of interviews Nuclear Blast arranged and so on. I am also working with an artist at the moment, the cover artist named Martin Hanford, on an upcoming Bal-Sagoth books. So really, that’s pretty much what my day looks like.

A kind of a philosophical question - could you name some things that are the most important for you in life now?

Yes. I guess one of the most important things at the moment is just having the inspiration and maintaining a kind of very inspirational outlook to be able to create this kind of strange dark art. Not only to cover all the stories and the coming book ideas and such things. I guess one of the most important things is maintaining that sort of inspiration and being able to channel the inspiration into the creation of something very… very memorable and artistic.

You used to say you wanted to publish a book with illustrations and that kind of

stuff, and you were mentioning the coming book in our talk. How do you get on with it now?

Well, yes, it’s still in the process of being created and that’s very close to being finished now. Cover artist Martin Hanford is providing some very good illustration for that, the stories themselves are shaping up quite nicely. So, hopefully within the next maybe six or twelve months people should see the publication of that. And there will be something like previews of that on our official web site. That is very close to the completion, yeah.

Will the book be available outside England?

Well, hopefully. I think none of the companies that have been publishing it have spoken about translating it into another languages apart from English yet. Certainly it should be available to order in the Internet and certainly the preview portions of it will be available for download. It would be cool if it was available in other countries. But at the moment any other language versions apart from the English aren’t planned.

Do you collect anything?

Yes, I collect stuff like comic books, and all paperback books, fantasy stories and stuff like that. I collect also war toys like Star War toys and Superhero toys. Mainly the things I collect are comics and paperback magazines and stuff like that.

Could it become a reality that one day Bal-Sagoth will visit Russia?

It’s certainly one of the countries we want to play in. We’ve never actually got over there yet, but certainly we’ll finally get some dates over there, maybe at some time in the future. You know, we haven’t rehearsed for a long time. It probably won’t be for a while. We are hoping to get some European shows arranged later this year. Then would probably the time come, later this year.

Well, thank you for your time and the interesting talk. Byron, would you like to add something or let us know some news?

Yeah, generally I just want to say a big thank you to all of fans over there for supporting us over the years, and also to say thank you to all the people who had the patience to wait five years for the new album. Thanks to all the people for the loyalty and dedication that are getting stronger to Bal-Sagoth, we appreciate it. Hopefully you’ll enjoy the journey with “The Chthonic Chronicles”. Thank you for the interview, I’ve really enjoyed it.

Special thanks to Markus Wosgien (Nuclear Blast Records) for arranging this interview

Anna Babicheva
March 3, 2006
16 май 2006 the End

Bal-Sagoth

Journey Never Ends