| 1. The Belonging. How/when everything started and why? |
| The Belonging was conceived in 1998, when Richard Lester (Guitar/Vocals) and Paul Zaborowski (Guitar/Vocals) met through a mutual friend and found they both had the same dreams of forming a unique sounding black/death metal band. |
| After a year of experimentation and song writing, they decided to go ahead with the band and find themselves a complete line-up. Within the next 6 months they had a drummer (Col Butler) and a bassist (Levi Tubman). |
| 2. I can hear some vein of old Beherit (Fin) and Absu (USA) in your music but there are no masks and satan.. or is there? Your music is sounds fresh in 2003�s enviroment but in the same time it sounds like 1990�s black metal.. So is there some roots into the 90�s and is it the purpose to make good old black metal? Do you consider The Belonging as a black metal band or is it something else? |
| We aren't satanic people, so there's no point in us singing about it or dressing in the satanic style, just because that's what people expect black metal to be about. |
| Paul and Richard are both mainly into the old school black metal, circa '91-'94 but are still into the new style of black metal such as Satyricon, Emperor etc. We're not trying to recreate any of their styles, we're just trying to create our own sound. There's no conscious thought of or referal to what other bands would do when we write our own music, we just play what we feel sounds good. |
| Since we are into all sorts of different musical styles (Metal, Grunge, Punk, Trip Hop, to name a few) there's a whole bunch of different styles and ideas that come together to create The Belonging sound, whilst still being a metal band. So, we're avoiding using all the black metal cliches and using ideas that people would not expect to hear in a black metal band, although we do consider ourselves to be a predominantly Black Metal band. |
| 3. Do you do live shows and if so..what was the latest and how was it? |
| We've done five gigs overall, which have all received positive feedback. The latest gig was in a small pub/club in Bradford, supported by a local band called Diavolo. It was definitely our best gig to date. We've got more confident playing live the more gigs we've done. |
| 4. I think The Belonging sounds bit Finnish..Do you agree and what do you like about Finnish metal? |
| Only Paul knows any Finnish bands so it's not likely that there'll be much Finnish influence in our style but yeah, we do have a pretty Scandinavian sound, so maybe that's where you heard it. |
| 5. Your demo has a very raw sound.. Could you tell me about recording and are you going to do the next record with the same methods? |
| By today's standards it is a very raw sound, but we like that as it has an atmosphere that can be lost by very high production. Look at Emperor's last album compared to In The Nightside Eclipse... the atmosphere had totally gone due to overproduction. |
| We recorded our first demo using Cubase on the PC in Colin's living room (very necro!). We used whatever equiptment we could find and Levi did all the mixing and production work, so that one was very D.I.Y. |
| For our second demo Dreaming Darkness, we moved up a step; into a friend's basement studio. He actually has some proper recording equiptment and a mixing desk so the overall sound is a lot clearer. We're really happy with the sound, as it is reflective of the style we play and retains the atmosphere we create when we're practicing. So, yeah. We might do something similar next time. |
| 6. What kind of music do you like listen at home? |
| Between us we listen to a whole load of different bands ranging from Emperor, Marduk, Slayer, to the likes of Massive Attack, The Sex Pistols and Nirvana. |
| 7. Is it easy to have gigs in UK? |
| Yeah, it's pretty easy really.. there's always venues that are willing to let you play, whatever style of music you are playing. |
| 8. What kind of feedback you have received with your music? |
| We've received lots of good feedback for both the demos from people all over the world. People tend to say we have a fresh take on black metal and don't repeat the same old formulas, which is good, because that's what we're trying to achieve. There aren't any local bands that play a similar style to us, so everyone comes to our gigs for something a bit different, which is nice. |
| 9. Something to say...? |
| Thanks for the interview. Glad you liked the demo. Keep your eyes and ears open for more The Belonging tunes! Cheers. |
| The Belonging |
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