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You’ve recently released a new single called ‘Through Closed Eyelids’ from the new album ‘Instinct Of the Doomed’, and as I’ve just learned, it is the first song on the new album. The interesting thing about this single is that it is the first studio recording of you performing with your new vocalist [SLAVA]. What sort of feedback did you expect and what did you actually get?
[DENVER]: I can never predict what people are going to say, but I always listen to my inner voice. I had no doubts at all about this song. I was on a trip when I posted the song online so I was not able to read all the comments. But when I got the chance to go online my profile was full of reviews about the single. It felt very nice that they were mostly positive. But I do realise that you can’t make everyone happy. Some people think that our new single sounds more like our previous albums ‘Book of Death’ and ‘Inevitability’. Some people say that it’s something new. Everyone understands it in it’s own way, it’s a pointless thing to argue about. And another thing is that it should not matter, we’ve never been ‘music-prostitutes’. We did not start working on our new album with intentions to make it sound like our previous works.
Speaking about your ex-vocalist [IGOR], it was announced that he had left the band due to his religious views. I have to admit that to quite a few people it sounded like a complete fabrication just to cover the truth.The official announcement didn’t explain much. Could you please do it now?
[DENVER]: Igor was always into something different and his attitude was normally quite strong. He was doing many different things in a short period of time. There was a period when he was interested in eastern religions and later he was interested in flowers and bees. He wanted to leave the band a number of times when we had creative difficulties. The fact he decided to leave the band this summer did not surprise anyone. But I never thought that he would actually leave to go to the Church. (throws up his hands) . Not long ago [IGOR] became very interested in Orthdox Christianity. I think that people make decisions like that when they have difficulties or misunderstandings about themselves. If it works for him then I’m more than happy that he found his destiny.
How did he tell you about his decision?
[DENVER]: He called me the morning after we played the Tuska Open Air in Finland. He told me that he had decided to leave the band, I asked him to have a talk with me and we did. He told me that it was his final decision. And after that we said goodbye to each other. We’ve know each other for years and I knew that it was pointless trying to persuade him to change his mind. He had complained earlier that he had a creative crisis(I’m not a person to judge that). But if it’s true then I guess he made a good decision, becuase it’s pontless to pretend to be full of energy when you are not. I did not expect that and it was hard to believe.
[STEWART] (speaks loud): It was extremely hard to believe! The truth is [IGOR] refuses to comment on this and that’s his choice.
Where is Igor right now and do you keep in touch?
[DENVER]: After the last time I met him we had a few quick chats on the phone but he later switched it off and did not call again. He had promised us that he would stay with us on the summer gigs but later he said that he could not. That’s when it finally became clear that it was serious. He hasn’t contacted us since then and that’s why I’ve got no idea where is he and what hes doing. I don’t want to annoy him and it would be nice if people would not disturb him right now. I assume, that he will let us know when he’s ready.
Lets speak about your new vocalist Slava. You invited him in without having any rehersals or interviews with other candidates. Should it be seen that you just accepted a random person into the group? Or is it more complicated than it seems?
[STEWART]: Fortunately, the first person is not always a random one.(laughs) [SLAVA] was very good in the bands he played before, [DENVER] and I have noticed that. Additionaly he has very good music preferences, which are similar to ours and I think that is quite important. He’s able to sing with clean vocals and that has affected our new album by making the choruses more varied. And finally he is a very nice guy! He has helped us a lot during the summer gigs. He learned by heart the entire set list for three festival performances in a few days and we played the gigs after having just a few rehersals. I’m sure that he will show us his true potential soon!
Looking through the reviews about the vocals that you can hear in the new single I was very surprised by the fact that many people thought that his growl sounds extremely similar to [IGOR]’s. When it’s clear that in this particular song the biggest part of growling is done by [DENVER], who has also done the singing and growling since the start of [AMATORY]. Am I right?
[STEWART]: You are absolutely right bro. After listening to ‘Through Closed Eyelids’ some people are giving extremely shocking reviews. The whole thing about people being weird is not new. Some people have said that after [IGOR] left, the band has lost an ‘extremely good singer’, even though [IGOR] was not good enough at ‘singing’ to be able to record it for an album. [DENVER] was the guy doing that. Some people used to tell me that [IGOR] had done all the vocals for ‘Inevitability’ when the truth is that about 90% was done by [DENVER].
So it sounds like that it’s hard for certain people to differentiate between the vocalists and the latest single has made them even more confused?
[STEWART] (nods): Exactly. It’s quite amusing when you realise that after all these years the real vocalist who done most of the work was left behind while everyone was in love with the frontman. But don’t get me wrong! (throws up his hands). I still love [IGOR] very much as a friend and as a vocalist! But you shouldn’t forget about the rest of the band which has 4 other members who play music and tell [IGOR]what to sing from time to time. He was very good while doing ‘Book of Death’ where there is loads of his lyrics. Yes, he is a very good frontman when it comes to playing gigs. But anyhow I’m quite sure that many people won’t be able to see the entire forest behind the trees.
From what I hear now, one could say that even though there is a new vocalist nothing has changed on the new album.
[STEWART]: Not really. It changed for the best. We as musicians love progress. With [SLAVA] we’ve done many new things, even though the music was ready when he came in. He still managed to make the songs colourful with his vocals.
Right now I’m looking at the draft of the booklet. There is a page where you say ‘thanks’ to [IGOR], even though he left you in a wrong time which made everything very hard for you. I assume from this, that there is no hatred towards him.
[STEWART]: There is no hatred at all! He is our friend no matter what. Yeah that’s right he left us at the wrong time, when all the summer gigs were going on and right before the recording of the new album. But it’s his choice and we respect it. There is no hatred. Let everyone do what they are passionate about… All we’ve got is a misunderestanding of how it happened.
The artwork is very colourful and as far as I know the album will be released in a ‘digipack’.
[STEWART]: Yeah that’s right. But we will explain everything in detail later on our web-site amatory.ru .
Than please tell me how you made the artwork.
[DENVER]: We’ve worked on the artwork with the the same old friend and artist of ares ‘A-Ra’. There were no limitations at all. we were not pressured by the management which had previously wanted us to have a ‘neutral’ name and artwork for the album VII. This time we decided to make an art piece which will make the majority of them very excited about it.
Why did you chose the snake?
[STEWART]: Because SNAKES are cool!(Both laugh). It’s a very stong symbol with a powerful energy about it, additionally, the snake is a very important historical symbol for humanity. Furthermore, it’s very ambiguous just like our albums. Speaking about the title…it has got some sort of a ‘catch’ in it. My hint is that it has got some sort of fatalism in it. What kind of fatalism? You will not know that untill after you press the ‘play’ button(or after we make the translation of the lyrics if you don’t speak russian, comment from the translator). Speaking about the music, the new single in particular,people have noticed us getting heavier. It’s not majorly different from our usual style but there is a great difference between our new album and our old ones such as ‘Book of Death’ and ‘Inevitability’. The old albums are still amongst the favourite for some of our fans. Speaking about the quality of sound…well just like our profesionalism it got much better. Would it not be easier for us just to make an album which would sound similar to our previous works without inventing anything new? There are many bands in the world music scene who’ve chosen this way and they feel quite good about it.
[DENVER]: We don’t do anything deliberetly. The songs were written one by one and that was the way the albums ‘Book of Death’ and ‘Inevitability’ were formed. Two completely different CDs which have a time difference of 2 years standing between them. People actually don’t realise that in reality they miss the old times when the albums came out! They miss the times when they used to buy loads of booze, when they used to meet each other 5 hours before gigs and drink it all and have loads of fun….having ear piercings and black hair. Right now these people sit in the chairs at work wearing suites, or working under their dissertations at university and saying that ‘it is not what it used to be’. The truth is that you’ve changed even more than we did. During the last 10 years we’ve been doing something that we genuinly love and we don’t care bout anything else. We are still trying to be a step ahead and do things that no one has ever done before us in the history of russian music. That’s exactly what we’ve done with our new album! We don’t follow the fasion and don’t copy the styles. We’ve chosen our way and we are doing our music. That’s the exact reason why our albums sound so different.
I have to agree. I did expect ‘Instinct Of the Doomed’ to be different but I was shocked after listening to it. I really wanted to listen to this album 3-4 times, just to understand completely what you meant even though it’s 45 minutes long.
[DENVER]: This time we’ve recorded more than a dozen songs and nearly all of them are in this album. The songs that we did not record might be used in the future as some sort of bonus. We did not plan to do a long album. Shorter songs are easier to understand.
The things that may sound weird to you is that there are not any ballads on this album. Nothing that is similar to ‘It’s Too Late’ or ‘Breathe With Me’. There is a very nice song called ‘White Noise’ which is not really too heavy but I’m not sure if it will be taken by any radio stations because of the growling. A thought that comes to mind is that ‘did you deliberetly step away from making soft songs after people accused you of being too pop?
[DENVER]: We don’t accept orders to write songs. For example when we were recording the vocals for ‘White Noise’ we recorded a growl in the ‘bridge’ and it sounded excatly the way we wanted it to sound. we love the song the way it is now, but we might make a radio version of it.
Anyway it’s not really the strangest thing right now. I think if we were to call some mainstream radio station they would refuse to take our song because it has growling in it, when at the same time they have many songs with swear words in it. Why is a bit of shouting worse than a bunch of swear words?
Don’t look at me I dont have the answers! (Everyone laughs). You’ve worked with the famous Danish sound producer Tue Madsen again. How satisfied are you with him?
[DENVER]: Tue is a very cool man. We’ve really became friends with him. He flew here to ST. Petersburg to see our gigs and then we flew to see him in Denmark. We made an agreement with him while we were recording VII that we would make the new album together. There is a saying for that. ‘Man does what he promised to do, if he did not do it, he would have simply forgotten to.’(group laughter’
What was the difference between recording the ‘Instinct Of The Doomed’ which was held in St. Petersburg and the recording session of VII which was held in Krasnoyarsk apart from the fact that it was a different studio? I mean the way Madsen worked. Did he change and how did it affect the new songs?
[DENVER]: We had more time to record the songs and it was not as hot as in Krasnoyarsk, Additionaly, studio ‘Kontakt’ is like a home for us. We’ve recorded many good songs in there and spend loads of good time in there too. Additionaly these guys are buying loads of new equipment and now it’s one of the best studios in ST. Petersburg and that’s exactly why we’ve chosen it. We would recommend it to all musicians.
I could hear some guests on the new album. Who are they?
[STEWART]: Some of the people who were close to us while the recording took place supported us morally and some of them actually took part in the process. For example Evgeny Potehin from the band Korea who was our first vocalist for a long time back in the past. He took part in few songs. The other people who made a contribution to the album are Alexandr Zarakin from Animal Jazz and Heiko Klotze. Heiko had done his job at home in Germany.
How would you comment on the phrase ‘[AMATORY] is not what is used to be’
[STEWART] (with some excitment): Wouldn’t say a word! I have heard it every time we’ve published a new album! The most surprising thing is that some of the complaints are self excluding. i.e. ‘They are not what they used to be any more’….’Hmmm…nothing new’ . Sometimes I really want all these people to gather around me so that I could ask them to make finally make their minds up.Sometimes it feels like some people think that we want to pour some shit into their souls with our new songs. They think that we’ve gathered around in the studio with intentions to get as many hate letters as we can. Dear friends, please use your passion for something different. For exmple doing box or go to protect you motherland. This would be much better! We do’t make our music to make someone feel uncomfortable!
Even though that I’ve only had an opportunity to listen to the album just once, I was very intrigued by the lyrics. I won’t leave any comments about them because everyone will interpret them in their own way. But I still want to ask what was the idea behind them?
[DENVER]: I don’t want to comment on the lyrics either. All I will say is that the lyrics have got a connection with our previous albums.That was the way it happened with VII and that’s what happened with ‘Instinct Of the Doomed’ unfortunately some people are just being superficial and accuse us ‘self-copying’. The truth is way different. I hope that this will help to make the situation clearer when they hear the new album and when they spot the ‘phrases’ that they’ve heared before.
Lets talk about the songs at the end of our discussion. There is a song called F20. What does that mean?
[STEWART]: The name of the song is a ‘code’ for Schizophrenia in the classification of mental illnesses. It’s a slow groove track that we recorded as one of the first things in the studio, I think it has one of the most succesful choruses on the entire album. [SLAVA] came up with it during the first rehersal.
The song ‘I hear the voices of the millions’ sounds to be recorded in a very low guitar tuning
[STEWART]: Yep, that is our first song that we’ve recorded in F tuning. Very low(Smiles). its one of my favourite songs on the album. It really ‘hits’ your ears on any volume level and it really turns your soul with the lyrics. I would advise people who listen to this song for the first time to try to imagine themselves being the person who says those words for the first time in their life and to imagine everything that is going on with him.
We’ve already mentioned a song called ‘White Noise’ and it made me think. I’ve remembered that there was a movie with the same name. Are they connected to each other?
[STEWART]: While [DENVER] is talking on the phone and it seems to be very urgent I will answer the questions which was probably aimed towards him. There is a connection between the song and the film. [DENVER] was inspired by the storyline of the film and wrote the lyrics for this song based on that….have you ever tried to talk with people that are dead?
As far as I understand the tour to support the album is not far away
[STEWART] Our booking agent is activily working on planning it. We are already certain about our gigs in Moscow and St. Petersburg on the 20 and 16 of November respectively. Right now our schedule is being updated often and there are many more gig announcements to come. RIght now there are already quite a few plans to gig in Ukraine. To those people who want to ask ‘when are coming to my city’ please check out the web-site daily.
What would be your final words for the interview?
[STEWART]: I would like to say something that I wanted to say a long time ago. I’m really glad that the new wave of our fans became interested in our work. And i think that some people have to finally realise that we are doing music not to show off or to make big money. We do it because we want to. And we are extremely happy to see new fans in our community. We really appreciate everything that they do for the band. It’s great that you are there with us. And it’s even better that you are everywhere, in Chile, Brazil, Japan and everywhere! We do our best to make you feel as happy as us about what is going on. Thank you for the support!
Translation by ZolDoR
Proof read by MaDzEr, Snake and Jamiason Carrier.
Thanks to you guys (=
Original Version: http://www.darkside.ru/interviews/487/