domingo, 8 de noviembre de 2020

FORDOMTH - INTERVIEW



1. Fordomth was born in 2013, how did the possibility of creating the band arise? Why did you choose the name Fordomth and what does it refer to?

Back in 2013 the band first lineup was carefully chosen by B.G., who is the mastermind behind the establishment of Fordomth: he chose between musicians already active in the sicilian extreme metal scene, people of trust for him. Everyone answered the call quickly and rehearsing/composing begun immediately and spontaneously: in fact I.N.D.N.S.L.E. was composed without many struggle, it arises just from the need of some creative people to venture into the abyss of something new and obscure.

The name Fordomth is our personal take on the Norwegian word “fordømm”, which means “condemn”. A Norwegian word was chosen to pay tribute to some of our favorite black metal acts. The very meaning of the band revolves around the concept of Damnation and condemnation, which is one of the few elements that we want to keep through every release of ours, together with the impenetrable obscurity and the mixed feelings of oppression and liberation that pervades our existences.


2. Although the band had been active since 2013, the edition of your first album “I.N.D.N.S.L.E.” it does not arrive until 2018; What is this delay due to when having your first job ready?

As you may know Fordomth was subject to many line-up changes over time, so we wanted at least some stability as band before releasing our first album (even though it was already recorded and mixed), so we could give a kind of continuity to our discography. We thought about this because we all are always full of musical ideas and it would have been pitiful for us to just gather ideas and not being able to play and put them on a record due to a band on standby. These line-up changes and settlements were a spontaneous process, as if the Fordomth idea came to its own will. What the band underwent were very much needed, inevitable, still we look at our past with respect and we’ll always take into account what happened back in 2013.


3. "I.N.D.N.S.L.E." It was an album where there was a style more dominated by the funeral doom, however in your most recent “Is, Qui Mortem Audit”, you have taken a step to blacker and post terrain, are you aware of this evolution in your music? How was the writing and recording process for your new album? And what have you changed regarding the recording of “I.N.D.N.S.L.E.”?

As previously said Fordomth lineup was subject to many changes: to be exact the first lineup involved six members, then at the time of Is, Qui Mortem Audit there was four, now we’re officially three (even though we’re working on a fourth member as vocalist). By now only one of the former members is involved on the band, B.G. again, who also switched from bass to guitar (in a pretty spontaneous way also). According to such lineup changes it’s obvious that also the musical expression changed, and we didn’t wanted at all to force our expression between certain boundaries -just for the sake of making comfortable who previously listened to our music-, we wanted and always want to express ourselves authentically. 

What stays the same is the concept of Damnation, which is the foundation of the band: we could express this from black metal to, for instance, noise/drone music as long as it is what we really feel to do. We are in 2020, music has gone far and gives us many means of communication, so we’ll use whatever musical language comes to our minds to precisely express what we want to communicate.

The process of creation for ‘Is, Qui Mortem Audit’ was rather immediate in terms of time spent on it, but also in terms of approach. Basically B.G. had a lot of ideas about this album, he came with the riffs, then we all dealt together with the arrangement and the songwriting. We band members shared our time together and our love for certain music on a daily basis even years before becoming an actual band, so chemistry was not a problem. We also practice a lot together so the five tracks on the album got to their final form sooner than expected, it was a truly overwhelming creative process.


4. Putting out an album with a style like funeral doom, sludge, death and black, it shouldn't be easy, on the one hand, what are your main musical influences when defining your proposal? And on the other hand, how do the different points of view of the members of Fordomth reach a consensus when composing?

We share the interest in the very same kind of music even though we listen to lot of different genres, but the core inspiration for IQMA came mainly from such bands as Mgla, Bölzer, Malthusian, Mizmor and Wiegedood, to name the most influent ones. We felt to play this mix of black/death doom metal to really express the themes of the album and for such a bastardized genre, the personal influences of all of us were crucial: even though the core inspiration for IQMA was shared by all the band members, each of us contributed in a very personal way, so one was putting more death metal in the mix, one (a modern take of ) black metal, one doom or ambient, so in the end we conveyed a diverse way to express the same concept into one solid core.


5. “Is, Qui Mortem Audit”, I don't know if it could be classified as a concept album, but it does revolve around the nature of existence, the universe and death. Why did you decide to create an album whose lyrics deal with these Can you explain a little better all these concepts collected in "Is, Qui Mortem Audit"?

We are very much into the occult and the esoteric, as many other black metal bands do, but we wanted to make something original, that could mix many occult themes and mythology into one singular concept storytelling. The result was the self identification on a meditating monk who takes his spiritual efforts at such deep level to find physical death, but achieving this way the forbidden knowledge of Death, understanding the very meaning of it, unveiling the secrets of the universe. We took inspiration for those themes both from western and eastern cultures/myths, in an attempt to unify what we all human beings are subject to.


6. The album cover has been designed and created by Stefan Todorovic of the Khaos Diktator Design, a cover that reflects a bit the theme of the album, a person (monk), looking into the abyss, the reflection of death, etc. How did the possibility of working with Stefan to make the artwork come about? And what do you intend to represent with it?

The cover artwork actually reflects exactly what is into the album. The number of figures and their roles, the position, etc. have been told to Stefan Todorovic so he got our main idea, then we explained to him the conceptual foundation of the album and we also let him listen to the raw tracks to get inspired. We couldn’t be more satisfied than this since Stefan really got what we wanted to say, we let him to express freely his vision, and it was 100% on point. We consider IQMA cover artwork one of the most beautiful masterpiece from him and we are very proud to associate our music to this piece of art. This was possible also thanks to Auric Records, who believed in our music and vision. You also may know Stefan as Atteringer, vocals for Gorgoroth since 2012, so we were sure that he was the right one when it comes to occult themes and black metal. He’s a paragon of digital painting in the style of the classical art ancient masters, and we wanted from the beginning a cover artwork that mixes ancient and new styles, as further parallelism with our music. As soon as we followed Stefan on his social media art accounts, we noticed he made many cover artworks for some bands we knew and liked, so we just got in touch with him and everything was set up in the most efficient way. He was a real trustworthy collaborator.


7. You come from Sicily, specifically Catania, how is the extreme metal scene on the island? Is it very difficult to promote the band, for example when it comes to offering concerts, due to the island situation?

Sicily has always been a land of contradictions, and extreme music too: we think living in (or even just visiting) such a wild and singular place inspires your art. Every sicilian person is an island by him/herself. Think about us people from Catania, we live under the fire spitting mouth of the Etna volcano - Mother Etna as we like to call it, which is capable of creating and destroying at will (even if it’s not dangerous right now, but you never know 100%), and we really considers ourselves in particular sons of Typhoeus, the titan who - according to greek mythology - was imprisoned underneath our island - he breaths fire through the Etna itself. Living here is hell and paradise at same time, but it’s slowly turning into mainly hell to be honest.

We have some great metal bands names here to be mentioned as pioneers of metal in Sicily (and Italy, even Europe we could say), like Schizo, Bunker 66, or Inchiuvatu (also Assumption among the recent ones). Then there are a lot of underground bands like us that testify how prominent is the extreme metal scene in Sicily. 

As Fordomth we did our first gigs outside Sicily on February 2020, right before the covid outbreak. Surely it is challenging to tour from (and to) Sicily since you have a lot of travel expenses and as underground band you barely cover these costs on a good day, which is fine for us as long as we can take our creature on stage.

Together with some close friends we managed to revive Catania’s extreme/counter-tendency live music scene (that also reverberated through the whole Sicily) by founding Tifone Crew, which is a DIY collective for live shows end events where all the three of us are involved. 

We can proudly state that we achieved some nice objectives by organizing festivals and monthly gigs in our city: Catania is a place for extreme underground music, the audience feedback was always overwhelming. There is a lot of anger and frustration here, such music free many people here from the heaviness of their daily life. We really feel incomplete without shows now (both as band and gigs promoters), but we’ll stay determined and get back to the live music as soon as possible.



8. The edition of “Is, Qui Mortem Audit” has been carried out by Auric Records, how did the possibility of working with them come about? Are you satisfied with the work done by Auric Records in terms of promotion, editing, etc. ?

We listened to some Auric Records releases way before getting in touch with the guys, so when it came to release the album they were one of few other labels of choice we wanted to collaborate with. As we expected their support was crucial to properly release IQMA: Eugenio and Mario are very precise and put very much attentions and passion in what they do, so we decided together to make a premium quality six-panel CD digipak, with carefully crafted graphic layout and they even supported us when we proposed to them our will to commission a two-panel artwork to Stefan Todorovic. Mario is the sound engineer of their two-man team and he dealt with the mastering, really enhancing what we recorded. Needless to say we are proud to be part of Auric Records roster and we hope to renew our collaboration with these guys since their support was crucial. We really can’t wait to be back on the road to also go play some shows in Switzerland and Germany and meet them. Our creature is eager to be unleashed on stage and when the time will come it’ll be outstanding, promise. We would like to mention also the DIY Italian labels which released IQMA on a beautiful limited edition tape cassette: Brucia Records, Fresh Outbreak Records, Masked Dead Records. 


9. How has the emergence of Covid-19 affected you as a band, not only with the cancellation of concerts, but also in other facets such as sales, etc?

Most of our sales are directly proportional to live gigs, since no shows means no merch table to directly sell our stuff, as many other bands around there, so it’s an hard hit for us. We were about to plan an IT/EU tour to promote IQMA, but we’ll resume the planning as soon as possible. We obviously don’t make our living out of Fordomth so, as hard as it is now, we were damaged but not as much severely as other peoples who live off their bands and shows. We are working on studio stuff right now and preparing the terrain for when, one day, live shows will be possible again. We feel like having created a raging beast that is chained right now, but those chains are not going to last forever and when they’ll break we’ll be ready to unleash our creature.

Beside that (as we said already, but we want to outline that) there are lots of professionals out there that are feeling the blow way harder than us, especially here in Italy a lot of artists and music professionals are facing hard times and the government isn’t even considering to help them, so the situation really sucks now, still all we can do is doing damage control and wait for better times by keeping doing our stuff in terms of  music creation. Maybe such dark times will give an extra layer of obscurity and absurdity to what we play.


10. How were your beginnings in music, first concerts you attended, first albums you bought, etc ... What did you do in your lives that made you want to be musicians?

B.G.: Music has always been part of my life. I’ve been lucky enough to be born in a music lover family, and soon I was enthralled by music magic. As young guy I bought Raining Blood by Slayer - really one of the first CDs ever for me -, that music was an actual burst of adrenaline and emotions. Then I kept this way by attending the first gigs in the underground clubs of my city, as many other do as first approach to live music. From the very first gig I was so fascinated and enthusiast about the engagement from the audience and from the impact the sound had to me. Since then I decided to play bass guitar (eventually I learnt to play guitar as well), thanks to this I met a lot of great people and among them I developed many friendships, some of those which last even today.

C.V.: Music has always been a life companion to me and when I was adolescent listening to Iron Maiden for the first time blew my mind. Since then I’ve got curious on this new kind of music to me, then I found myself into black metal. Thanks to this genre I’ve had my approach first with guitar and with vocals, then with drums. Since about ten years I’ve been lucky enough to see live many of my favorite bands, even if this meant to travel far and wide to attend those concerts. Talking about gigs I’m very proud to have organized many concerts here in Catania with my friends in Tifone Crew.

R.M.: I wouldn’t know what other to do if I wasn’t into music and I can’t even imagine how hollow would be life without it. It was spontaneous to me to get into playing music, but also into studying as sound technician, writing articles about music and all the rest: it takes 100% of my time and efforts and that’s exactly what I want. 

In the very beginning I discovered the heavy metal through Judas Priest, Motorhead, Dio, Black Sabbath etc (and some of that power metal stuff, I admit, still I listen sometimes to few of those bands that I believe are worthwhile), then I’ve got simultaneously into stoner/doom and black metal, beside some other extreme music. Today I’m also very much into experimental stuff, electronics and their mix with metal. I’ve also got lucky enough to play with some friends into Consumer, which is my sludge death metal band. 

My first big actual concert was the Gods of Metal back in 2009 in Monza (IT), three days festival. I dropped school for one year to go work and save money to go to that concert, and I’d do it again. 


11. What album represents the essence of black metal for you? What was the last album you bought? And What album is it that you can't stop listening to?

B.G.: Black metal essentials for me are In the Nightside Eclipse by Emperor, which in my humble opinion is a masterpiece of pure black metal and, at same level, A Blaze in the Northern Sky by Darkthrone. My last music acquisitions are Empty Space Meditations by Urfaust and MMXIII by Malthusian. Among many other albums I couldn’t stop to listen to there are surely The Divinity of Oceans by Ahab, Exercises in Futility and Mdlości by Mgla, I could worn out the play button on these albums and never get tired of them.

C.V.: Undoubtedly The Mysteriis Dom Sathanas by Mayhem, we could talk for hours about the meaning of black metal but my idea would still be this and this only. Still the last vinyl I’ve bought is Domicile Unkown by the french blackened crust act Ruminant, which I definitely recommend. I couldn’t ever stop listening to Omega by Celestial Bloodshed.

R.M.: There are so many shades of black metal that I cannot choose just one album. Of course if we talk about the first wave of black metal we think about the 90s norwegian stuff like Darkthrone, Emperor, Mayhem etc. Still the black metal that just moves me today is the one into Exercises in Futility by Mgla (and the rest of their discography); Hero, Aura, Soma by Bölzer; Yodh, Cairn, by Mizmor (on the more doomy side), the three De Doden Hebben Het Goed by Wiegedood, just to name few titles that represent the black metal to me today and convinced me to really get into playing black metal. Beside these lately I listen a lot to Gold (mix of blackgaze and post-dark wave sort of stuff from the Netherlands), Convocation (from Finland), Viscera/// (from Italy) and the whole catalogue of the french label Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Productions, which is plenty of nice post-black metal, atmospheric black metal and blackened hardcore that I like very much.


12. What future plans do you have for the band in terms of upcoming releases, editions, etc ...?

We are plenty of new materials, really. By now we have two new releases on the workbench (one shorter, one longer), and we wanna enter the studio again asap. We are also doing a step forward in terms of gear - the next releases will have an unparalleled level of sonic experience. Doing a spoiler (for you only by now) a label got in touch with us proposing a limited repress for our first album I.N.D.N.S.L.E. on tape cassette - it’ll be a nice one, collectors will like it for sure.

About new music expect something different from IQMA on the next releases. Fordomth trademarks will stay, it’ll be black metal and it’ll be doom metal, but in a whole new way for us. As previously said we like to focus mainly on the message and on the authentic expression of a concept. To be honest we don’t care very much about precisely categorizing our music between certain boundaries. We’re talking about music, which is free by definition, strict categorization of it could be helpful, but, in our opinion, not very necessary in 2020. Especially metalheads tend to just listen to what it’s already into their comfort zone, but fuck that, our ideas worth more than just making you feeling safe into what you already know well and listened to hundred times. If you feel disoriented by our music it’s your problem, we care much more to have an open minded, soul self-enlightened audience, and we’re lucky enough to have already reached many of those people with our music.


13. Thank you very much for the time dedicated to Black Metal Spirit, if you want to add something for Fordomth fans this is the place. I hope the questions have been to your liking.

We really appreciated this talk with you and we hope you will get news about our next stuff soon. We would like to tell to every musician, promoter, DIY association, label, venue manager, technician and all the other music/entertainment industry people to hang on out there. We are alone again facing probably the darkest times we lived in till now, but we have to be strong again and we will emerge from all of this with our heads held high. Let’s support each others and, to those who supported us till now (especially now), we want to express our deep gratitude: let’s keep taking this path with determination, it’ll be worthy it, we promise.

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