Interviews
www.metal-norge.com
Mai 2004
Intervjuer
Knowhere -
Spennende black metal
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Knowhere er vel for de fleste leserne av Metal Norge et
realtivt ukjent band. Bandet har faktisk holdt på en stund nå,
og spiller black metal. De slapp siste skiva si i en ganske så
lekker DVD-boks, med en feit booklet og lekker artwork. Slikt
fortjener jo noe omtale her, når musikken ikke er å forakte i
tillegg,ja – da har vi det gående.
Hi, thanks for the cd, it’s currently in my player, and a
review is soon to be written. Knowhere isn’t exactly the
most known band in the world, why don’t you make a brief
summary of the history so far?
Well, Chemical Death (later to become Knowhere) was founded back
in 1992 by four chemical assistant students. They could not play
any of the typical “band” instruments yet, but when
they had discovered Napalm Death’s “Scum”, they
decided, they could play like that, too. Zappi played guitar, Kov
took care of the vocals and the drums, Philippe also played
guitar and Dany the bass. The result was grind core.
The musical style soon developed into atmospheric black metal and
the name was changed to “Knowhere”. After the
“Demo 1994”, they all had to go to military service, so
the next release was scheduled three years later
(“Knowhere” in 1997). They played a couple of concerts,
but Dany lost interest in the metal music and quit the band.
Knowhere continued with session bass players, until Arlette
Eiselfe H.D. decided to join the band in 1999 and play the bass
(instead of the instruments (violin, keyboards) she had played
before in other bands). In 2000, Philippe’s interests also
changed, so Knowhere started looking for a new guitar player and
continued as a 3-member band in the meantime. Finally, Fuhli (who
had played in a band with Arlette Eiselfe H.D. before) joined
Knowhere. Since then, more technical stuff and concerts could be
realized and the line-up hopefully stays like this for a long
time...
Please take some time to
write a bit about each of your releases, I find that kind of
notes interesting.
Well, we’ve released three works so far.
Demo 1994: The demo 1994 was released in music cassette (tape)
format. When we noticed that we could actually record our music
due to the crappy mix device (like separating the guitars on a
left and a right channel and that kind of stuff), we decided to
record our repertoire. The whole thing was pretty basic. We
played it all live, except the drums, they were created with a
drum computer since we did not own enough microphones and
channels to get the drum sound recorded in a decent way. We
recorded it directly on tape, so Kov (Vocals / Drums) had to sing
and take care of the mixing at the same time. Since we recorded
it directly on tape, we had to start anew every time someone had
made a mistake or the mixing sound wasn’t right. Then the
whole songs had to be played and recorded again from the
beginning. On this first demo, we also included two cover songs:
“I am the black wizards” (Emperor) and “Countess
Bathory” (Venom).
Knowhere (1997): Three years later, we released our first
self-produced CD. Again, we had to use a drum computer due to
lack of equipment, but this time, we sampled the drum sounds of
Kov’s actual drum kit. We used hard-disk recording this
time, which was still pretty basic, though.
Knowhere: The Mascot (2004): After the line-up had changed
(Arlette Eiselfe H.D. on bass, Fuhli on guitar) quite a bit, we
recorded "The Mascot". We again relied on hard disk
recording, however, the drum equipment was more sophisticated.
Over the years, we invested in quite some home-recording stuff,
and in the meantime Zappi has quite a lot of know-how in this
field. The recording took up a lot of time, but the result was
definitely better than we ever imagined it to be. Due to the good
sound, we decided to get an end-mix and a mastering at a
professional studio. We also didn’t want to risk screwing
the whole thing up at this stage...
Your cd’s are self released, why is that, no interest from
the record labels?
We’re not exactly obsessed with getting a record label, so
we haven’t like sent our CDs to 100 labels. Actually,
we’re quite happy with the situation right now. We can do
what we want and if we need 3 years to compose new songs, no one
hurries us and sets us deadlines. However, if a label is
interested in us and just wants to distribute our CDs without
wanting to change our work ethics, that’s surely fine. We
would definitely like that.
We primarily play music because we like doing it, and not because
it is our job. We all have good jobs which we can’t just
give up easily. Of course this doesn’t mean that we treat
our music lightly and wouldn’t put any effort into
it—the opposite is the case. We also work better if there is
no pressure put on us.
In 1999 Knowhere and three others band founded the organization
“E.L.K.S-Syndicate”. What is this kind of thing, and
what are you doing at the time being?
Back in 1999, E.L.K.S. was founded by four local extreme metal
bands (namely eyes see red, Lost chapter, Knowhere and
Slaine—these initials make up the name E.L.K.S.). The reason
for founding E.L.K.S. was that it was quite hard to get a chance
at playing concerts. The whole “scene” was rather dead,
and we wanted to take part in changing the situation. E.L.K.S. is
a non-profit organization, we all work during the evening. When 3
bands play, usually one is part of E.L.K.S. syndicate and the
other 2 are underground bands from the death or black metal
sector.
In the meantime, some other local small concert organizations
were founded, and the “scene” is quite lively again.
(Smaller) international bands also get booked, and the different
organizers take care that the different dates do not interfere
with each other. So there’s team work between the different
organizations as well and people support each other.
Who makes the music in Knowhere, and how is it made?
We all participate in writing the songs. It’s usually that
way that someone has like 2 or 3 riffs, and then we all sit
together and try to figure out which ones would go together well.
If no one has THE inspiration, we all go home again and think
about it some more. We don’t sit around and try to force
ourselves to write a song, we wait for the inspiration, the idea
that works.
The basic arrangement is recorded as a demo version and then we
start practicing the new song during our rehearsals. We also play
the new songs at concerts, but “the last” details are
sometimes added about 2 years after the original principle of the
song was composed. One example for such a detail is the
Ska-guitar part in “The Mascot”. 2 years after the song
was completed, Fuhli started to play a Ska guitar-part during the
bass solo all of a sudden. At first, it was just meant as a joke,
but then we liked the idea and decided to record it as well. We
always play the song this way now.
I must say, the cover of “The Mascot” is one exquisite
piece of art, who made it / any comments on the cover?
The cover was painted (acryl paint) by a friend of ours, JSP. It
has always been his wish to paint a cover for a black metal
album, so there it is. So the painting on the front cover and
back cover as well as part of the booklet and the CD label were
all painted by him. The calligraphic writing and the logo are by
Arlette Eiselfe H.D. The size of the front cover painting was
also the reason to choose a DVD-case for the CD. We didn’t
want to squeeze the picture to a square form.
Furthermore, our guitar player Fuhli is a professional graphics
designer, so he took care of scanning all the hand-painted stuff
and arranging it in the right way. The whole thing took quite a
lot of time, and when it was finished, we noticed—the
evening before it was going to be pressed—that the track
listing was incorrect. So another night shift was on...But it all
worked out okay, as you can see.
Any comments on the lyrical theme of Knowhere? Any concept? I
haven’t had time to read through the lyrics that thoroughly
yet…
Well, it probably takes quite a bit of time to read through all
the lyrics, due to the fact that they’re written in the
calligraphic handwriting of our bass player Arlette Eiselfe H.D.
Six of the songs mainly revolve around Kov’s thoughts about
life and all its components. They’re quite personal. Maybe
this is not considered to be typical of black metal lyrics, but
we’re not really into singing about clichés and rather
address things that have a meaning for us personally. The lyrics
also don’t address political or religious issues. The lyrics
of “Snowball” are by Arlette Eiselfe H.D. and their
theme can roughly be described as the nature of
avalanches—huge snowballs, so to speak.
Is the drummer actually singing while drumming – live I
mean?
Yes, Kov (Drums / Vocals) does all the singing while drumming
(live, too). When Kov started drumming, he could neither sing nor
play the drums. Due to the fact that all the other band members
thought it was rather embarrassing to sing while they were
playing, Kov “sacrificed” himself and took over the
singing parts. Since he started singing and playing the drums
simultaneously, he’s pretty used to it and will continue
doing both. The audience is sometimes quite surprised, as they
expect a “normal” front guy to do the singing, but
it’s not really a problem...
Any black metal bands that inspire you? Any bands you like today,
or are you into the old school stuff only?
We all like both old and new black metal stuff. The old works
from the 80s and early 90s, as well as new innovative bands like
Satyricon, Mayhem and 1349. However, we also listen to a lot of
other types of music. Kov likes technical thrash, too (Bay area
sounds from the 80s), for example. Old death metal like Autopsy
and rather progressive stuff like Atheist is also on our
“music list”. We also listen to non-metal music, such
as classical techno (1990-1994), even RnB (we’re picky here,
though), Funk and gothic stuff. However, we definitely see
ourselves as a black metal band and express our musical
inspiration in this music style.
All time favorite records! Write them down:
Well, that’s quite a lot. We all come from different musical
backgrounds, so there is a small “sample” of our all
time favorite records:
Darkthrone-A Blaze in the Northern Sky,
Mayhem-De Misteriis dom Sathanas, Chimera
Iron Maiden-Iron Maiden,
Coroner-the first three albums,
Voivod- the first 5 albums
Satyricon-all of them
Intruder-Psycho Savant,
Exodus-Bonded by Blood,
Death-Human, The Sound of Perserverence
Atheist-the first two albums
My dying bride-Turn loose the swans
Enslaved-Vikingligr Veldi
Arcturus-Aspera hiems symfonia
Waltari-everything
Emperor-In the nightside eclipse
Dissection-All of them
Opeth-All of them
Jean-Michel Jarre-Oxygéne, Equinoxe
Dark Funeral-All of them
Thank you
very much for the interview, it was a pleasure. Write whatever
you like below!
It would be an honor for us to play in Norway!!!
Takk til Knowhere!
Sjekk ut deres siste album, “The Mascot”. En
blackmetal-godbit!.
Hjemmeside: www.knowhere.ch
Omtale: Knowhere ”The Mascot”
Relatert info: Omtaler av Knowhere:
Knowhere - The Mascot
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