"And All Will Be Desolation" by Allfather

And All Will Be Desolation

When a band you love goes underground for awhile, it can be a little bit sad. Long goodbyes are awkward, but they can lead to spectacular reunions.

That's what this is like, man.

Allfather, well, how have you been? It's been so long since we've seen you. No tour dates in the States huh? That's unfortunate, because you know Cousin Hagrid in Columbia, MO was really hoping to see you.

Look at how you have grown!

Still Metal, Beards, Fuck You! I see. That's fine, those beards, like those big ol'riffs suit you, but you seem different, a bit more mature?

It would be nice to hear from you more often, but this phone call is lovely. It's much better to get a phone call than the postcard you sent us a couple Christmases ago.

If you're looking for some big thickness, this is one to pick up.

Glacially Musical: Thanks for taking sometime for us yet again.

Allfather: Hey no worries. In fact, I think this is the first normal interview we have done with you. First time I interviewed you and second time we pretended to be Metallica. 

GM: I probably should've asked before, but, what's the name mean?

AF: Allfather as in Odin, Viking God of amongst other things wisdom and knowledge. We're not a Viking metal band by any stretch of the imagination but we thought it sounded pretty metal. 

Allfather

Can't remember which band member it was, maybe Al (lead Guitar) but they joined thinking we were called All Fathers because we all had kids. Andrew (bass) and I do, loads of them.

GM: From the outside, it feels like this record is different from its predecessor. You've lived these songs for some time now. Is it different to you?

AF: Most of BTEWF had been written before Al had joined the band and Joe had no part in writing it whereas AAWBD was written by all of us together. Also, BTEWF was mostly a very angry album with a sprinkle of despair. 

This time round, although still pretty fucking angry, we wanted to explore a few other emotions both musically and lyrically. Songs like Lord Betrayer and Lampedusa try to do that by being about loss and desperation. Other songs such as Citadels and Jackal's Night, are more of a call to arms, about changing that anger into something positive.

We also really thought about the type of songs we wanted on the album and how, similar to BTEWF, we wanted each song to stand out on its own, try not to follow too similar structures, how we wanted the pace of the album to go. 

We managed that with Bless more by luck that judgement where this time we had more time to plan that out.

Finally, we were all better musicians this time round, better song writers and knew how we wanted the album to sound, with Bless we were still finding our way.

GM: It's easy to make a great debut record, because you have all the time in the world to write it, but the follow up, not so much. How did you go about writing this one?

AF: To be honest, being in a room, writing songs is probably the easiest bit of being in this band. Getting us in that room, what with jobs, families, dogs and general real life issues getting in the way is the hard bit. 

Finding the actual time to create what we wanted was the struggle. 

Our approach to writing has remained pretty consistent since we started. Andrew, or sometimes Al, will come up with some riffs in a rough structure, put together a rough recording and send it round to the rest of the band. We'll give some feedback, it gets refined, we then bring it into the studio and add some drums, keep adding an refining until it's a song then I will take it away and add vocals. 

We're pretty strict with our editing, we try and cut out anything that doesn't positively add to the song. We then do what we call the awesome test. Every member of the band has to find at least one bit of each song awesome to play, they must really look forward to playing that bit, if it doesn't pass, it gets binned. I think we fucked off two songs we wrote for this album because they didn't pass that test.

GM: You know, it's not really topical right now, but I should've asked someone, what did you think of Gene Simmons trying to patent the "metal" horns? (And yes, I know he tried to patent I love you in sign language.)

AF: He's a yeasty old fuck trumpet and can fuck off

GM: OK, lightning round! Vinyl Release? Tour of the States? Machiavellian coup? Stir fried chicken? Chicken Vindaloo? Silly walks?

AF: If a label would like to pay for it then yes, otherwise, probably not. 

Unlikely due to the aforementioned families, jobs and dogs. Again, who has the time? Love a stir fry although Al and Andrew are both vegan so we'd have to account for that. 

Same from the vegan point of view but we all like a bit of spice. 

I blame the piles

GM: How long do beards grow?

AF: Feels like mine doesn't want to get past nipple length.

GM: If someone likes Allfather, do they still get the fuck you, or nah?

AF: They get a fuck you with a smile