But then there was this time when I decided to go ahead and listen to a black metal band that was both considered industrial and it has a little bit of that dubstep too.
Honestly, I'm not 100% sure what dubstep is, but...it doesn't sound very metal.
What I got was this album that makes Mr. Bungle sound like your standard 4/4 time 12 Bar Blues Record.
To say it's avant garde would be understating it a bit, and just in case you weren't paying attention, they also toss in a little bit of that traditional black metal.
Al Ard is completely ready to throw you for a loop every single chance they get.
What was the inspiration to create Al Ard?
AL ARD: I can explain al ard with two simple as strong words: Brave and Devotion.
The purest and immediate response to this question is the "collective": we have always shared the same musical instincts, the same artistic "needings."
The main inspiration was born at the same moment we decided to work together on this project, bringing along the awareness of making alive something special (at least for us) and new starting from our common creative foundations; the goals were to get out of the compositive ranks and to go far away from the usual lyrics, effects and thousand of copy-pasted structures.
For this reason, the only black metal could not be enough, we would have risked being regressed from the beginning.
We are feeling really satisfied with the path taken till now.
When you write a song, does it start off life as traditional black metal that gets a bit whacked out, or do you start with something whacked out that gets metaled up?
AL ARD: There are no particular schemes also in writing the songs. Generally a song is born starting from a part developed by one of us and consequently structured at draft level; for this reason sometimes it could start from a black metal rhythmic and other times from electronic patterns...other times the music follows mysterious ways.
Basically, we never know how the song will come out and how it will flow a priori...but we are always conscious when it will sound quite "Al Ard."
What interesting, from my point of view, is the big work on arrangements, to whom we dedicate the main part of our effort...the target is the best result in terms of complexity and quality of the ensemble, taking care of no running the risk of a loss of genuineness.
Al Ard has successfully avoided all of the trappings that lead to pigeon holes. How would you describe your songs to someone who's never heard them?AL ARD: What we would like to describe is the approach, came out from several influences and along last decade who led us to reach the violence, no matter what the music is.
Black metal is the main matrix for us, a channel to spread the hate we have to spit, made both dynamically synthetic with drum'n'bass and coldly static with noise. For people who have a background of black metal, drum'n'bass and noise industrial, will be easy to understand our research through those 3 different music styles, because they surely have felt before the same crazy adrenaline.
For those who have never trespassed black metal, we would seriously suggest giving a listen to Al Ard and let us know if they feel betrayed or excited.
The main aspect for us is also to create a unique channel, being able to merge instruments, noise, electronic. We work a lot to meld them, that's the hard part.
We hate when a song plays as parallel dimensions at the same time, it has no meaning. The new songs we're creating now reflect even more this concept.
How will this album translate to live shows?AL ARD: Al Ard is 100% a live band! It has been hard but we put a lot of effort to reflect our digital music to a live stage. We had to face many issues like the virtual instruments, the basis, the drums, levels, effects, positions on stage and the lack of experience itself.
We're indeed conscious we need to improve a lot, regardless of the good level we've already achieved... and that's awesome!
Having said that, our live shows are absolutely impressive. The audience expects to see a black metal band and, once we start, their reaction is surprising, because surprising is what they see. We usually feel their excitement and this reinforces our performance itself, and after a while, we're completely on fire.
The music of Al Ard comes alive on stage, carrying a latent tension, dry air, mind-blowing sounds and disease and noise and provocation and screams and... come to see us!!!
Where do you see metal going in the next five years?AL ARD: Hard to say, we see the overall quality of the releases going up and down, but generally, it's going worse. This is absolutely bad for the inspiration it can give to all of us.
Some bands, like Blut Aus Nord, Deathspell Omega, Schammasch, Iperyt, Ulcerate are able to release fresh material, as well as our "label-mates" Diabolicum, Messa, but it's super rare.
Looking at the coming decade, the keywords will be for sure, radicalism and contamination.
Thanks of the interview and the space you're giving to us.
Hail Al Ard!
No comments:
Post a Comment