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شاهد مصاحبه ای خواهید بود که حدود 6 سال پیش آن را ترتیب دادم؛ گپ و گفتی با یکی
از بهترین کیبوردیست های حال حاضر سبک Doom Metal و
علی الخصوص زیرشاخه Funeral که نوآوری هایی را در این سبک
به وجود آورد. هدف از قرار دادن این مصاحبه و معرفی این شخصیت به پست و مطلب قبلی
در مورد Stijn van
Cauter مربوط می شود. حضور
بی بدیل و ارزشمند این هنرمند بلژیکی در این بند نیز گویای همه چیز می باشد. اما
تقابل این دو موسیقیدان در کنار هم باعث شد تا مطالبی جداگانه در موردشان به نگارش
در آورم. امیدوارم برخی از
طرفداران این بند به جواب سوالاتشان برسند.
First of all thank you a lot for giving me the chance to do
an interview with you. For the first question; How Pantheist came to this
world? What were your reasons to form a band and why in Funeral Doom Metal?
Pantheist didn’t start as a metal band; I’m a keyboard player and I started experimenting with the creation of dark ambient tracks at first. My sole intention was to express some dark thoughts and feelings I had and couldn’t find an outlet for in the social world I found myself in. However, it was my desire to add guitar at some stage, and I stayed in contact with Nicolas, a guitar player I had met at the University. I slowly converted him into doom metal by feeding him cds of the likes of Esoteric, Evoken, Skepticism, Morgion etc. Then I bought an electric guitar (Nicolas only owned an acoustic guitar at the time) and so we started recording demos on an 8-track recorder I had got recently. Around the same time I got through the now defunct doom-metal mailing list in touch with Stijn from Until Death Overtakes Me, who has a home studio. There we recorded our first demo ‘1000 years’ which was greatly inspired by bands such as Skepticism and Thergothon, as the ‘funeral doom’ genre was something fresh and upcoming at that time.
What’s the message of Pantheist? I mean what is the ideology of the band?
There is no ideology behind the band and we don’t have any political or religious affiliations. Our only goal from the beginning was to stay open-minded and not to put any limitations to our freedom of expression. So we are ‘pantheists’ in an allegorical sense.
What bands have influenced you most?
Throughout the years, the range of bands and composers that have influenced our music has grown really wide. It goes from baroque and romantic classical composers to doom metal bands like the two aforementioned, My Dying Bride and Anathema, to progressive rock bands like Pink Floyd, King Crimson and Amon Duul II, to Celtic Frost and Winter, to traditional Eastern music etc. Any minor key music we’ve heard that sounds powerful and emotive has been a direct or indirect influence.
Any other influences or inspirations rather than music?
As I said in the answer to your first question, my need to create music has always been the result of a quest for finding means for a way of self-expression. Any strong feelings, emotions and events in my life have influenced my songwriting.
How do you feel about today Doom Metal scene, and especially Funeral Doom Metal?
I don’t think there is such a thing as a ‘funeral doom’ scene, as the bands usually don’t play live and are not always in touch with each other. Also a lot of the so-called funeral doom bands are actually one-man projects! We are only in touch with Skepticism and Esoteric, bands that in my opinion are in a league of their own and don’t belong to any scene.
Any new bands that you are interested in?
I don’t follow the doom metal scene much, so I can’t recommend any ‘new’ bands. I would be interested to check out the album of Dictator from Cyprus though, I really liked his demo.
Have you ever had any personal experience of misery, solitude or…? I mean any personal experience that makes you view life as a painful process or death as a kind of redemption
Yes, like everyone I’ve had my fair share of negative experiences; around the time of the recording of our ‘1000 years’ demo and the ‘O Solitude’ album, I was experiencing strong feelings of isolation and solitude, which led to the creation of these very negative works. In the course of the years I’ve learned to channel these emotions better, although some people still say that our music sounds ‘miserable’, with which I don’t agree.
What represent your albums for you? A comment for each one of your albums:
1000 Years:
Very personal and expressive demo, which captured the essence of the band pretty well in its 33 minutes. The sound quality is not that great, but the captured ambience is quite unique, even for our standards.
O’ Solitude:
The glorification of solitude and pain as a result of isolation and disappointment. It is wallowing in self-pity, but at least it’s a very honest album.
Amartia:
Much more philosophical that anything we had done previously, this album explores the question of how far one can go to provide evidence for a doubtful belief system. Also the first album in which we started to incorporate Eastern elements to our music (with the exception of the middle part of ‘Don’t mourn’ in our first album).
The Pains of Sleep:
More like a stopgap EP, this contained just two new tracks, a cover and our ‘1000 years’ demo remastered. We saw it like a present to our loyal fans that have supported us from the beginning, perhaps some sort of ‘calm before the storm’ as we were moving towards something different…
Journey Through Lands Unknown:
That ‘something different’ became this album; by far our best and most diverse album yet, it explores in depth several facets of the sound of this band that have only been hinted at thus far.
The song “O’ Solitude” is my favorite of Pantheist, Its lyrics is amazing. Would you please tell me more about this song?
Its title betrays its essence: it explores different themes of solitude and abandonment. I think it’s a very powerful track full of emotion and intensity, and it’s one of our most popular live tracks as well. We often finish our gigs with this track.
“We, the dead cannot understand why these mortals don’t envy us”. What is (are) the reason(s) that we shall envy the dead?
The rest of the lyric betrays why: the living think that those dead are not in an enviable position, but the dead argue that although their lives are over, the difference with the living is not as big as one would think, because life is not meaningful in the big scheme of things, looked at from the eyes of eternity.
And about the album “Amartia”, why a concept album about Seven Deadly Sins?
I think it is a common mistake of people to think that this is an album about the 7 deadly sins; the sins are only used as a tool to tell the story. In its essence, it’s a story about someone trying to prove god’s existence by committing the deadly sins. He hopes that god’s punishment and intervention will prove His existence, but this punishment never comes and the protagonist succumbs to guilt.
Pantheist moved from Belgium to UK, what was the reason?
This had to do with personal reasons, as I moved to the UK when I met my girlfriend who lived there. My contract at work had also expired, which made my move easier.
And what represent these words for you?
Life: unexpected, but generally very welcome gift, so we’d better make the most out of it.
Death: the natural consequence of life.
Suicide: I would never choose this option myself, but I understand why for some people there are things worse than death.
Solitude: a natural condition, in which all humans are subjected. This causes a lot of fear and stress, but at the same time pretty much all creative human activities stem from this fear of solitude and isolation.
Love: a mystery in the quite mechanical world we live in; something to be cherished
Religion: that which connects people for all the wrong reasons.
God: was invented by man to counter his fear of solitude I spoke about earlier.
Future: something to look forward to, but the only thing we truly have is the present.
Iran: a country with a great history going back to thousands of years, unfortunately currently veiled in intolerant fundamentalism just like many other countries.
What are your future plans with Pantheist?
We are currently planning some gigs in the UK and Finland. We hope to start working on our new album by the second half of 2009.
And any final words do you want to say to your Iranian fans?
I know how much you metal heads suffer in a country that doesn’t allow freedom of expression and has been particularly hostile to metal music. My thoughts are with all of you and we deeply appreciate the fact that you take the risk to hunt down and find your favourite music, despite the risks involved. Stay true to yourselves, that’s the only way forward. Lamentus, thank you so much for taking the time to compile the questions for this interview, and for your love and dedication to underground music. See you around, it is a small world…
Thank you very much.
Pantheist didn’t start as a metal band; I’m a keyboard player and I started experimenting with the creation of dark ambient tracks at first. My sole intention was to express some dark thoughts and feelings I had and couldn’t find an outlet for in the social world I found myself in. However, it was my desire to add guitar at some stage, and I stayed in contact with Nicolas, a guitar player I had met at the University. I slowly converted him into doom metal by feeding him cds of the likes of Esoteric, Evoken, Skepticism, Morgion etc. Then I bought an electric guitar (Nicolas only owned an acoustic guitar at the time) and so we started recording demos on an 8-track recorder I had got recently. Around the same time I got through the now defunct doom-metal mailing list in touch with Stijn from Until Death Overtakes Me, who has a home studio. There we recorded our first demo ‘1000 years’ which was greatly inspired by bands such as Skepticism and Thergothon, as the ‘funeral doom’ genre was something fresh and upcoming at that time.
What’s the message of Pantheist? I mean what is the ideology of the band?
There is no ideology behind the band and we don’t have any political or religious affiliations. Our only goal from the beginning was to stay open-minded and not to put any limitations to our freedom of expression. So we are ‘pantheists’ in an allegorical sense.
What bands have influenced you most?
Throughout the years, the range of bands and composers that have influenced our music has grown really wide. It goes from baroque and romantic classical composers to doom metal bands like the two aforementioned, My Dying Bride and Anathema, to progressive rock bands like Pink Floyd, King Crimson and Amon Duul II, to Celtic Frost and Winter, to traditional Eastern music etc. Any minor key music we’ve heard that sounds powerful and emotive has been a direct or indirect influence.
Any other influences or inspirations rather than music?
As I said in the answer to your first question, my need to create music has always been the result of a quest for finding means for a way of self-expression. Any strong feelings, emotions and events in my life have influenced my songwriting.
How do you feel about today Doom Metal scene, and especially Funeral Doom Metal?
I don’t think there is such a thing as a ‘funeral doom’ scene, as the bands usually don’t play live and are not always in touch with each other. Also a lot of the so-called funeral doom bands are actually one-man projects! We are only in touch with Skepticism and Esoteric, bands that in my opinion are in a league of their own and don’t belong to any scene.
Any new bands that you are interested in?
I don’t follow the doom metal scene much, so I can’t recommend any ‘new’ bands. I would be interested to check out the album of Dictator from Cyprus though, I really liked his demo.
Have you ever had any personal experience of misery, solitude or…? I mean any personal experience that makes you view life as a painful process or death as a kind of redemption
Yes, like everyone I’ve had my fair share of negative experiences; around the time of the recording of our ‘1000 years’ demo and the ‘O Solitude’ album, I was experiencing strong feelings of isolation and solitude, which led to the creation of these very negative works. In the course of the years I’ve learned to channel these emotions better, although some people still say that our music sounds ‘miserable’, with which I don’t agree.
What represent your albums for you? A comment for each one of your albums:
1000 Years:
Very personal and expressive demo, which captured the essence of the band pretty well in its 33 minutes. The sound quality is not that great, but the captured ambience is quite unique, even for our standards.
O’ Solitude:
The glorification of solitude and pain as a result of isolation and disappointment. It is wallowing in self-pity, but at least it’s a very honest album.
Amartia:
Much more philosophical that anything we had done previously, this album explores the question of how far one can go to provide evidence for a doubtful belief system. Also the first album in which we started to incorporate Eastern elements to our music (with the exception of the middle part of ‘Don’t mourn’ in our first album).
The Pains of Sleep:
More like a stopgap EP, this contained just two new tracks, a cover and our ‘1000 years’ demo remastered. We saw it like a present to our loyal fans that have supported us from the beginning, perhaps some sort of ‘calm before the storm’ as we were moving towards something different…
Journey Through Lands Unknown:
That ‘something different’ became this album; by far our best and most diverse album yet, it explores in depth several facets of the sound of this band that have only been hinted at thus far.
The song “O’ Solitude” is my favorite of Pantheist, Its lyrics is amazing. Would you please tell me more about this song?
Its title betrays its essence: it explores different themes of solitude and abandonment. I think it’s a very powerful track full of emotion and intensity, and it’s one of our most popular live tracks as well. We often finish our gigs with this track.
“We, the dead cannot understand why these mortals don’t envy us”. What is (are) the reason(s) that we shall envy the dead?
The rest of the lyric betrays why: the living think that those dead are not in an enviable position, but the dead argue that although their lives are over, the difference with the living is not as big as one would think, because life is not meaningful in the big scheme of things, looked at from the eyes of eternity.
And about the album “Amartia”, why a concept album about Seven Deadly Sins?
I think it is a common mistake of people to think that this is an album about the 7 deadly sins; the sins are only used as a tool to tell the story. In its essence, it’s a story about someone trying to prove god’s existence by committing the deadly sins. He hopes that god’s punishment and intervention will prove His existence, but this punishment never comes and the protagonist succumbs to guilt.
Pantheist moved from Belgium to UK, what was the reason?
This had to do with personal reasons, as I moved to the UK when I met my girlfriend who lived there. My contract at work had also expired, which made my move easier.
And what represent these words for you?
Life: unexpected, but generally very welcome gift, so we’d better make the most out of it.
Death: the natural consequence of life.
Suicide: I would never choose this option myself, but I understand why for some people there are things worse than death.
Solitude: a natural condition, in which all humans are subjected. This causes a lot of fear and stress, but at the same time pretty much all creative human activities stem from this fear of solitude and isolation.
Love: a mystery in the quite mechanical world we live in; something to be cherished
Religion: that which connects people for all the wrong reasons.
God: was invented by man to counter his fear of solitude I spoke about earlier.
Future: something to look forward to, but the only thing we truly have is the present.
Iran: a country with a great history going back to thousands of years, unfortunately currently veiled in intolerant fundamentalism just like many other countries.
What are your future plans with Pantheist?
We are currently planning some gigs in the UK and Finland. We hope to start working on our new album by the second half of 2009.
And any final words do you want to say to your Iranian fans?
I know how much you metal heads suffer in a country that doesn’t allow freedom of expression and has been particularly hostile to metal music. My thoughts are with all of you and we deeply appreciate the fact that you take the risk to hunt down and find your favourite music, despite the risks involved. Stay true to yourselves, that’s the only way forward. Lamentus, thank you so much for taking the time to compile the questions for this interview, and for your love and dedication to underground music. See you around, it is a small world…
Thank you very much.
December 2008
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