Ereshkigal
Ereshkigal are here to
remind us of the old and true virtues, of how good and old fashioned black
metal should really sound. They are also here to awaken us from the sloth
and make us realize a few things about our beloved music and humans in
general. I really have to say here that Ereshkigal not only is a great
band, but they are extremely clever and interesting people. I really enjoyed
this interview. It made me think and reflect on what we do...
1. HELLO! “THE RAPING OF THE DIVINE” IS AN
ALBUM THAT CONTINUES THE GOOD TRADITION OF GREEK BLACK METAL. HOW DO YOU
FEEL ABOUT IT? WHICH ARE THE THINGS THAT SATISFIED YOU AND WHICH
NOT IN YOUR DEBUT WORK?
Hello to you too my friend. Yes, our debut
album is finally out! I am really very happy about it. It has been such
a pain to reach to this point. I am generally satisfied with the result,
considering the situation we had to overcome. The only thing that could
have been better is the production, but still we did everything that was
possible with just a simple tape left in our hands from the original recording.
2. BETWEEN THE DEMO AND THE RELEASE OF YOUR LP
SOME-TIME HAS PASSED. WHY DID THIS HAPPEN? WHICH WAS THE BIGGEST PROBLEM
YOU HAD TO CONFRONT THESE YEARS? HAVE YOU CONSIDERED QUITTING?
When we decided to circulate the promo CD
with 4 songs taken from the LP we had not actually completed 100% the work
on the album. Also, at that time we had no confirmed deal for the release
of the LP. The first communication for a possible release took place in
summer 2005 and the deal was secured a bit later, in September 2005. By
that time we had also done a final remix and mini-mastering for the album,
which managed to boost the sound a bit further. So, everything was ready,
the deal with Temple of Darkness was finalised and the LP was scheduled
for release around Christmas 2005, though it was actually available a couple
of weeks later due to a delay in the pressing factory. Well, it has been
a constant struggle all these years, and the real problem was of course
the loss of the original master tapes. This presented a real challenge,
and we opted to try and salvage what we could from the cassettes we had
left in our hands, since re-recording everything from scratch was just
out of question. All the hard work was to try to balance the sound, add
all the vocals and achieve a production and mix that would be presentable
and powerful, some-thing extremely tedious when you do not have proper
tracks to work with. The end result might not be the best in the world,
still I think it is powerful enough and satisfactory. Quit? What is this
word? Heh! Well, ERESHKIGAL is not something we do for a living, it is
our hobby, we do it for own satisfaction first of all. Since we do not
have any timetables to follow and will never accept any kind of pressure
from anyone, we follow our own path and we face the difficulties as they
come. If we feel we need to rest and take time off, that is what we do.
We really do not care if we will have a recording ready on a regular basis.
We only record when we have the will to do this and we have the right ideas
and resources to achieve it. We have been running this project, with one
form or another since late 1988, we have a great understanding between
us, so I can’t see any reason to stop. I can’t see into the future, but
our intention is to keep going for as long as we are physically and mentally
fit to do it!
3. IN THE LETTER YOU’VE SENT ME YOU TOLD ME THAT
YOU ARE NOT SO INTERESTED IN RELEASING YOUR WORKS ON CD. WHY? DO YOU KNOW
THAT THERE MIGHT BE PEOPLE THAT LIKE YOUR MUSIC BUT HAVEN’T GOT A RECORD
PLAYER? WHAT WILL YOU DO ABOUT THEM?
Yes, this is also true. We are really vinyl
fanatics, we think nothing matches the glory of a quality vinyl record.
We want all our works to be pressed on glorious vinyl first. I come from
a time when CDs were just a curiosity in research labs, vinyl was the standard
medium for releases, along with cassette tapes. For many decades vinyl
records have carried immortal recordings and everyone had been happy with
them. Then came along the rich multinationals and forced upon us the “new”
technologies. Fine, I am not against technological improvements but I do
oppose the way they are enforced in the modern world. If you ask me, the
CD sound will never match the warmth and intensity of a high quality vinyl
pressing. The CD sound is a cold digital reproduction, the possible elimination
of small faults leads to a sterile result that has no per-sonality of its
own. Sure, the CD is much easier to use and store. I am also 100% against
the pricing of CDs. Why do we regularly have to pay €15-20 for a new
CD when it only costs about €1, €2 at the most, to produce it?
Quite simply because the labels want their fat profits of 1000%! Well,
you know? There is something we can do… Say to them “Fuck off, I am not
buying your product”. No one buys, see how fast they are going to drop
their prices. It is a bloody conspiracy to make huge profits out of people
who love music, and personally I am not going to participate in this. To
me CD releases is a purely commercial act, and as persons and band we DO
NOT CARE about commercial results. I am not saying that our work will never
be available on CD, if someone wants to release a CD version with high
quality and exactly as we would like it to be, then it can happen. One
more reason that we have not decided to release a CD version first or together
with the vinyl version is rather simple. It is a fact that pirate copies
are made the very moment after the release of a CD and very quickly they
circulate everywhere. Although I do not care about profits from CD sales,
I am not an idiot to accept that some bastard will be profiting from my
efforts and the efforts of the label! Even with the release on vinyl, you
can easily search on the internet and see that all sorts of people and
sites have our LP and songs available for downloading, some even bloody
SELL them, without any agreement and license from us of course. This pisses
me off because I have never ripped off someone on this way. In the old
times there was tape trading and that was acceptable by everyone, because
it was very hard to find original tapes and even the bands themselves were
very happy to know that at least their music had reached new fans. I have
a large record collection (over 3800 vinyls) and I have paid for every
single one of them, so theoretically the band and label have gotten their
share too. I want to be honest and not do to others what I don’t want others
to do to me, this is the principle. As for the unfortunate people that
do not even have a record player, what can I say… My first impression would
be that they are newcomers in the scene and that I shouldn’t care too much
about them, but I also can’t be certain. If they really want to listen
to ERESHKIGAL, I am prepared to send those people copies of our promo CD
with 4 songs, so they can have at least a sample. The LP might (MIGHT!)
be pressed on CD some time in the future. Otherwise, as I said earlier,
there is always the internet, I said how much I am against it, but I know
that people will search there and download all our songs, so in the end
no problem really…
4. THIS IS JUST A CURIOSITY OF MINE... WHICH WAS
THE OLD-EST SONG AND WHICH THE MOST RECENT THAT YOU’VE IN-CLUDED ON YOUR
ALBUM? WHICH COMPOSITION HAS TROU-BLED YOU THE MOST AND WHY?
The very first song we composed was “Burning
Hatred”, the last was “The Final Victory”. “The Final Victory” also proved
to be the most troublesome, probably because of its complexity and incorporation
of female vocals. It took us a little bit longer to achieve the proper
balance, but don’t think that we actually spent ages just on that song
alone!
5. NIGEL FOXXE PARTICIPATES ON YOUR ALBUM. HE
IS A MUSI-CIAN THAT IS A HUGE CHAPTER FOR THE GREEK METAL SCENE. HOW DID
YOU COOPERATE WITH HIM? WILL HE BE A PERMANENT MEMBER OF THE BAND?
Indeed. Nigel is an extremely gifted musician
and a great person as well. He has contributed so much in ERESHKIGAL, obviously
without him our sound would have been rather different and I am not sure
if anyone else would have the ideas and the skill to produce songs with
structure and real content. Nigel has a principle in writing music: you
should be able to hear every instrument in the recording, and I agree 100%
with him. No matter how simple or complex is the music, if you can’t really
hear the bass, or can’t make out what is going on with the drums, the result
is weakened. Typical examples are all those ultra-blast fools, both in
Death and Black Metal bands that we so often hear these days. Add to that
the pathetic production and you have a sound that is even worse than low
quality rehearsals the ancient Grind/Noisecore bands were producing in
the mid 80s! I knew Nigel since many years ago, Jimmy knew him also and
he was even closer to him than me. So he proposed to Nigel to participate
in ERESHKIGAL all these years ago, Nigel accepted and the rest is history.
We are again working together with Nigel, so you could say that he is a
member of the band now.
6. YOUR LYRICS ARE FULL OF BLASPHEMY. WHY DO YOU
CHOOSE TO WRITE SUCH LYRICS?
Writing lyrics of that kind was a natural
effort from my part at the time when the songs were created. ERESHKIGAL
is a continuation of FLEGETHON, and from the very beginning FLEGETHON leaned
towards Black Metal and lyrics had a content of that kind. Yes, “The Raping
of the Divine” is pure blasphemy. Sometimes it even seems simplistic, but
there is always something deeper lying beneath. In a few words, my target
was the offence on certain aspects of organised poser religions and you
can not really create a stir unless you use elements that are direct. I
really don’t know what people will understand and to what they are going
to associate my writings with, but I am not going to go into long conversations
about the matter, unless I really need to.
7. IS BLACK METAL FOR YOU A MUSIC CONNECTED TO
SATAN-ISM OR A MUSIC THAT TURNS AGAINST ORGANIZED RELIGION AND WHY DO YOU
BELIEVE THAT?
To me, Black Metal by definition is an extreme
form of Metal that opposes organised religion, the Christian religion to
be specific. This is what the first bands of the genre presented anyway,
and this stance attracted furious reactions even by other Metal supporters.
These were the ancient days of course, not today that Black Metal has become
a commercial commodity. I avoid wasting my time and energy on the questions
concerning Satan and his influence on Black Metal. I personally view “Satan”
as a fabrication of the Christian religion. Obviously they needed someone
to serve as the black sheep and transfer anything wrong and negative on
him, while god appears totally mighty, benevolent and positive. To me if
you accept “Satan” and even worship him, you are playing the game of Christian
church, you have no individual thought, you are just another slave of the
system. Poor fools, they even believe they are rebellious against Christianity,
they can’t see they are volunteers to be slaves, just like all the “regular”
Christian believers they so much love to hate. I pity them…
8. I DON’T KNOW WHY, BUT THE OLD SCHOOL METAL
REMINDS ME IDEOLOGICALLY A LOT OF THE PUNK ROCK MOVEMENT. I MEAN THAT THEY
USE THEIR MUSIC IN ORDER TO SPREAD A MESSAGE TO THE PEOPLE… WHAT ARE YOUR
THOUGHTS ABOUT IT?
This is an interesting point and I would like
to comment further on it. I agree with you that early, underground Metal
had the same freshness and spontaneity like the first Punk rockers had.
They had all those characteristics that are associated with genres in their
first steps, when they are still pure, innocent, and they come straight
from the heart. Sadly, sooner or later they are contaminated by the very
system they were born to oppose, they are commercialised, become pretentious
and increasingly interested in profit and inflation of egos. We have seen
it happening with the first Punk wave (circa 1976-77), second Hardcore
Punk wave (1980-84) in Britain, we know what happened after the first years
of early classic Metal, early Thrash, Death, Black Metal, and so on. I
have always been extremely interested in Hardcore Punk, I am especially
keen on the great British, Scandinavian and Japanese stuff released in
the early to mid-late 80s (Discharge, Chaos U.K., Disorder, Anti Cimex,
Crude S.S., Rattus, Kaaos, Terveet Kädet, Riistetyt, Lip Cream, Outo,
Death Side, and so many more - you name it!), I still listen to it a lot,
I still buy records and I can say that even today there is more honesty
in this area, despite the obvious clichés and repetitive use of
old recipies. Certainly, I can see far less egoism and pretentiousness
in the Hardcore Punk scene than in the modern Metal scene. Things in Metal
seem to have gone terribly wrong, every little kid with a crappy instrument,
an offensive T-shirt and brash attitude wants to be in a band, and be on
top of the world, all these with very little effort indeed. This is not
Metal, this is bloody fame story material, nobody's coming from nowhere,
thinking that they DESERVE to be top, just because they have a nice face
or they shake their arse well. I am not saying that EVERYTHING is shit,
fortunately there are still great people around, old bands that have stayed
true, keep their word and produce fine stuff, and some new blood that are
modest and intelligent and a joy to deal with. But overall, I am afraid
I am dissatisfied with the situation, perhaps I am getting too old and
cynical…
9. WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE COVER OF THE ALBUM?
HOW IS IT CONNECTED WITH YOUR MUSIC? DID THE PAINTER LIS-TEN TO YOUR MUSIC
IN ORDER TO CREATE IT?
The cover of the album is actually a patchwork
of elements. Most of it has its origin in an original painting. The artist
is not someone well known, in fact he is a very private person, talented
but reclusive in a way. He has that awesome painting, which is not easy
to explain, but roughly can be interpreted as a visualisation of heaven
and hell. We wanted to use this painting for our cover, but we could only
make him agree on the use of certain elements and not the whole work. So,
we chose the elements we felt had a connection to our material and what
we wanted to visually present. The rest was just hard work using Photoshop
to add all the other finishing touches, so the result would look like a
whole, a complete entity, and I think we also succeeded in that. The artist
has absolutely no relation to our music or to Metal at all!
10. HOW MANY COPIES HAVE YOU SOLD SO FAR? DO YOU
PLAN TO REPRINT MORE?
I don’t have exact numbers, but I think the
LP is doing OK, several distributors have included it in their lists and
I know that some of them have already sold out of their stock. I believe
it will not be too long before it completely sells out, especially now
that there are more reviews appearing everywhere. We still have a number
of copies ourselves, so people can also get it from us directly if for
any reason they can’t find the album elsewhere. We charge €12 (Greece
only) or €15 (anywhere else) per copy, this includes a very solid
and safe packet and first class airmail. If you need a copy or more from
us, just contact me by email for details. I argue anyone who has an interest
to grab a copy soon, you wouldn’t like to spend a fortune on Ebay later
and cry, would you?
11. WHICH WAS THE WORST REVIEW THAT YOU READ ABOUT
YOUR MUSIC AND PISSED YOU OFF? WHICH WERE THE REA-SONS FOR THIS BAD
REVIEW?
The truth is that I have yet to see a bad
review written about our material. All the reviews I am aware of are honest
and positive, the lowest grade I have seen so far is 6.5/10, which is not
bad, is it? Some people have mentioned that the production could have been
better and I think this might be the only reason that the album has not
scored better, but I have hardly read a negative comment on the compositions
themselves. I don’t know, either we have been very lucky so far or perhaps
we are doing a decent job and people have recognized this?
12. DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT THE WEIRDEST QUESTION
YOU’VE BEEN ASKED IN AN INTERVIEW IS? CAN YOU SHARE IT WITH US?
The question that sort of surprises me is
about our “live performances”, “future shows” or even “tours we plan”,
this one pops up from time to time. It surprises me a bit because I have
been clearly stating for a long time that ERESHKIGAL is a studio project
band, STRICTLY. This means that we do NOT play live, right? It is also
clearly written in our biography. I wouldn’t say it is annoying to be asked
this kind of question, and I do answer and make myself clear again and
again, but I feel it is kind of strange to be asked about this…
13. THANKS FOR YOUR TIME! GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR
NEW AL-BUM! THE LAST LINES BELONG TO YOU…
First of all, I would like to sincerely thank
you for your continuing interest and support in ERESHKIGAL. I really appreciate
it! I would like to say a few words about our future plans, since I didn’t
have the chance to talk about this in detail. We are currently working
on new material for our second album. We have now decided it will be a
full album and will be titled “The Erevos Arisen”. We have completed about
half of the album and we are working on it every day, so this time it will
NOT take another decade to release! It will be probably ready in a couple
of months, I can not give a release date because we have not finalised
these details, but if everything goes OK it could be out by the end of
the year. We also have almost completed the artwork, again we want to have
a full colour gatefold cover, so we are working on something that will
make an impact. Of course this time there is going to be no bullshit with
lost or damaged master tapes, we are working in Nigel’s personal studio,
and believe me he DOES have the right stuff for HUGE recordings. I guarantee
that the sound is going to be awesome, amazing production, everything crystal
clear and mighty powerful. We have decided to re-record a fresh version
of “The Raping of the Divine” song, and we would like to release this,
along with one more song, as a 7" EP, something like a 10th anniversary
release, and if this happens the EP will be an appetiser for the forthcoming
album! So stay tuned, you will not be disappointed! You can always contact
ERESHKIGAL at [email protected]
for any comments and questions. Salutations to you all!
Nick “William_Kidd”
Parastatidis
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