Hi Chrigel, welcome to Heavyworlds. How are you
doing?
Well, we’re actually
really happy to come here again. We really like to play in Italy, in Milan, and
I’m not just saying that of course; it’s really cool to be here. Uhm, yeah,
that’s good.
I would like to start our interview talking
about this new amazing tour (Neckbreakerball 2011, ndr), that sees you next
to a very big band like Dark Tranquillity. How do you feel about sharing the
stage with the guys?
Well, it’s cool,
they’re very nice people, I know the guitarplayer actually for many years.
Well, it’s really nice to be with them. I think that fans can see well
together, so it’s kinda cool. I have some of their album, I really like their
album “Character” and I think it’s a really, really good album, with good
songwriting.
Considering that you are on tour and that you’re
also working on a new album, how do you reconcile all that?
We sleep, not that
much unfortunately (he laughs, ndr). As I told you before, actually right now
we’re quite tired, because we came directly from the studio, on tour. It’s
working fine, we do our soundcheck, we play shows and we’re just working on the
album. There’s not much time to sleep, we sleep less than three hours, we’ve
got few days ago the first recordings, they’re working fine so we’re happy.
Is there some location/venue where do you like
to play the most?
There are quite some
nice ones. Personally, I really love – I think all of us really love – to play
in Gasometer, it is in Wien, in Austria. It’s just like..well, everything about
this venue is just amazing: backstage is…wow… everything is so comfortable,
there are so many showers, everything is very clean, magnificent, it’s enough
space, it’s a cool venue.
Ok. Let’s talk about the forthcoming album,
“Helvetios”, which will be released in the early 2012. And from what we’ve
heard, you’ve already composed a few songs. What are the main themes of the
album?
It’s the first time
that it will be a concept album, in the sense there’ll be a storyline. Yeah,
the whole album is actually like one story and it basically tells a story of
the Gaulish War, from the point of view of the Helvetian people. That’s why
it’s called “Helvetios”. We can think a bit like this: if you look at the
Gaulish War, from the Helvetian perspective, this album would be the soundtrack.
How the recordings have been so far? How long
did they take?
The recordings were
busy; they’re quite exhausting, we were working a lot, usually we had like
something between 15-20 hours shift everyday, so that’s quite a lot. But yeah,
it’s been good, because we have a quite different studio situation right now,
again we’re recording with Tommi Vetterli, like we did for the last album, but
some instruments are recorded in Lucerne (Soundfarm Studio). Anna is working in
that studio as a sound engineer. In the end, this time we’ve really, really
invested lot of time on the sound: for example, the guitars took three days.
The result is really good, the sound is very natural in this album. Finally,
everything will be very natural.
Is there any particular song to which you seem
to be more connected to?
No, not really.
As it happened for your previous albums, are you
going to record a videoclip?
Yes, well actually
it will be more. I mean, at least for the first two songs we arranged a
videoshooting. We will head to Poland and we’ll shoot two videoclips again with
a Polish company, that did our last videoclip. So, yeah, it’s a good start.
A question about Anna: will there be something
more concentrated on songs sang in Gaulish by her?
Yes and no: I mean,
it’s pretty much like the usual Eluveitie death metal vocals in some parts that
Anna is singing, but on this album, it will be more. She did quite some vocal
recordings and, again, like on “Slania”, there will be “softer” songs, that
it’s basically female vocals like Slania’s song on that album back then, so
yeah she actually sings quite a lot, on the next album.
Recently, EluTV has been created on your Youtube
channel. Where does it come from? Why have you decided to create it?
I’m not sure, I
think originally it was our drummer’s idea. Why did we do this? I mean: today
it’s quite common to write blogs, stuff like that, you can find maybe
interesting.
Who’s in charge of recording the footage that will later appear on youtube?
Most actually Kay.
He’s the magic cameraman.
How do you think it will develop in the future?
I hope it will be
better, ‘cause it’s quite crappy at the moment actually, so funny but it’s
nothing professional, of course. I mean, that’s actually more like fun.
Talking about Eluveitie, we can say that, in
these last years, your fame has increased. How did you face (and how do
you still face) this great success?
It’s pretty hard to
say, I don’t know. To be honest, we actually don’t think about that too much.
You’re just happy to play your music, I mean: life is kinda easier today, since
we’re making some little money with the band, we had to invest a lot of time
and money, we were like, how can I say? “poor”. The drummer and the bass player
were actually homeless for a while, they lived in the rehearsal room, simply
because they couldn’t afford, so it’s a little bit easier today, that’s something
we’re extremely thankful to our fans; but besides that, we don’t think about
this too much.
Besides Eluveitie, everyone in the band has some side project of his/her
own (for example, Anna plays in many bands). Most of those belong to
the folk and traditional scene. How were these projects born and how
important are they to you?’
You should ask Anna
about that. I don’t know. I think they’re quite important to them. The first
priority is Eluveitie of course. How did they born? I don’t know, some were
born during drunken nights, some were born just because… I don’t know! They
just wanted to create something like that. I think it’s quite different to each
side project.
How did you approach traditional music? Do you feel like you’re metal musicians or folk musicians?
Uhm, it was quite
long time ago. I don’t even exactly remember, to be honest. I always loved it,
especially Celtic music. I think it’s because of my wife, she was like a
violinist and she played traditional music, she lived in Ireland for some time
before we met. She was an important factor. I would say I feel myself both, but
I feel myself more as a traditional musician.
Writing songs for so many instruments must be a
great responsability. Does everyone compose his/her track or is there
someone who writes the single parts for everybody?
Yeah, I think if
you’re in a band, it probably become quite chaotic if everyone would write,
especially because everybody has such a different musical background, so it’s
basically myself the one to write the songs and more; I mean: when a song is
almost completed, we actually try to work together. Everybody, of course, works
on his/her part and adds the parts that he/she has to play.
Talking about the lyrics, what have been the
books and the readings that have influenced you the most? (DO)Minion, if I
don’t get wrong, talks about a story taken from “De Bello Gallico”,
by Caesar.
Well, most of our
lyrics aren’t taken from “De Bello Gallico”, but most of the things we sing
about are, somehow, described in “De Bello Gallico”. The books? Well, I don’t
know. It’s basically history itself, we took many inspiration sources for the
lyrics in that sense, like historical writings.
Some of your lyrics, mainly from
“Evocation”, are directly taken from some archeological findings of the
Celtic world (like Dessumiis Luge and Brictom). Was it difficult to cope with the missing parts? And how about the pronounciation?
Those lyrics are
taken by archeological finds and often there aren’t missing parts.
Pronunciation was a little tricky, but we worked with a scientist from
University, we’re kinda learning how to pronounce those lyrics together with
that scientist, so we’ve got help from him, so it’s good.
About the Gaulish language: how does it feel when you hear crowds of
fans all over the world singing along in a dead language that your music
has helped bringing to life again?
It’s totally crazy,
it’s amazing of course: I mean, if you’re playing shows in Switzerland or
France, or something, it’s cool and kinda crazy, but at least it can make
sense, because Gaulish is spoken in France, for example, back then, but it
happened that we’ve played in India or in Brazil, it’s extremely cool, of
course, but on the other hand, I remember we were playing “Slania’s song”, in
both countries, in India and Brazil. You see those people singing these early
Celtic lyrics and you say “Jesus, what the hell?”. It’s extremely cool, you
know, it’s cool, but crazy!
Are you going to record “Evocation part
II”?
Yeah, of course, but
we don’t know when it will happen.
Your last album, “Everything remains (As it
never was)”, has a strictly similar artwork to the Slania’s one. Is there any connection between the two blonde girls?
No, well, I mean:
they’ve never seen each other, ahahah, but no, it was more a spontaneous idea,
actually. I mean: of course, there are similarities, back then, when I’ve
thought to the Slania artwork, I just put it like that. That’s like this little
girl and she takes the listener by the hand and she leads him through her life
and time, and she tells something. It’s pretty much what you could say.
Is there an excerpt from this album (Everything)
to which you are particularly fond of? Do you have a favourite song to perform on stage?
From this last
album, no, not really. In this tour, we’re playing “Everything remains”, for
the first time ever, so it’s actually pretty nice to play. It was a big
challenge, ‘cause at the first show of this tour it was actually the first time
ever we played that song together and we haven’t played it since last year, back
than in the studio, when we’ve recorded it. We need practice, but we can still
play it.
Last question: any future project, after the
release of the new album?
Sleep a lot, ahaha.
No, not actually, I mean, we will release “Helvetios” and then we’ll be on tour
a lot, really a lot. That’s basically and we’ll just say what will happen.
I’d say that’s all for now. Thank you so much,
Chrigel, for giving us this interview. Would you like to say something to your
Italian fans and readers of HW??
Thank you, the same
thing as usual: I always thank you and thanks to everybody who’s interested in
our band
