Anael Interview is up 12/04/2008

1. Anael is the darker side of Dark/ Doom metal to my ears. I see you released 2 limited CD's on smaller labels how to you come to Paragon Records here in US.

Heya, well, after releasing “On Wings Of Mercury” Jim contacted us and showed his interest in our work. So we sent him a promo of the new album “From Arcane Fires” when we had it recorded, he liked it and then we inked a deal for the release of the album.

2. Your sound on the new CD From Arcane Fires has a very Bethlehem/ Deinonychus feeling is this different form the earlier releases?

Yes, I think all our albums are quite different, we’re not a band that works with a set formula, and we like to find a new approach for every album. Stability through change.

“On wings …” was certainly more epic and riff-based and less dark, while “Necromantic Rituals” is compared with old Samael quite often.

For the new album we just wanted a darker, more epic and personal approach.

3. Is Germany still a good place for extreme metal music in the 80's and 90's it seem to have all the great Thrash, Death and Dark metal music coming from it?

Why shouldn’t it be? The so-called “underground” is alive and kicking as it always was, a bit stagnating on the live sector maybe. But there are a couple of great bands coming from Germany like Desaster, Trimonium, Secrets of the moon, Katharsis, Kathaaria, Ungod, Hellish Crossfire, Orlog, Thornesbreed, Nocturnal, Stigmatized, Atlantean Kodex, Doomshine, Drowned, Ketzer, Zarathustra and some more.

4. I like the way the vocals sound so tormented with the slower / icy sounding guitars did it take you awhile to come with the sound or was it the just the sound from day one?

As I said we changed the sound a bit from album to album. When we were working out the songs for “From Arcane Fires” we recognized that we would need that kind of sound to bring across the spirit of the songs. The last changes of the sound were worked out in the studio. And things might be different again for the next album.

5. Are you fans of the modern age of Digital releases, internet and viral promotion? Do you miss the days were tapes, Vinyl and Cds where king and radio and print mags ruled the world?

Well, while the new technologies may have huge advantages, they certainly have their faults. The fact that music is easy to obtain, makes people forget the value of it more and more. So music is degraded into some product for quick consumption. People don’t want to pay (not even their respect) for anything be it concerts or albums. Fortunately there are still and hopefully will always be people who are looking beyond this surface and hold music as a form of art in high regards. And for me, as maybe for them, vinyl, CDs, fanzines and things like that will always be king.

6. Is there a running theme for From Arcane Fires CD?

Fire would be kind of a running theme. The album evolves, revolves and revolts around the different aspects of fire. Check the lyrics for a more detailed view of it!

7. Will Anael be performing live in Europe or USA any time in the near future?

Yeah, we will do a couple of shows for sure. We play a show in March here in Jena with Nunslaughter and Sathanas. And a couple of other dates will be negotiated.

Of course we would like to come to the US to play some shows but I don’t know if we could get enough people coming for that. But you never know!

8. Do you record the material in a more live fashion or track by track, layer by layer?

Usually a mixture of both, we try to record live as much as possible to capture the spirit of the music and keep it breathing and spontaneous. But as we’re just 4 people playing there has to be done some layering as well.

9.Your music and sounds play well for a film or video format will there be a video for this release or is that something you’re not interested in?

Maybe we should do a video, but there would have to be someone who wants to do that as some sort of art project. We certainly don’t have the time or money to work on a professional video on our own. And there are already enough really ridiculous videos out there …

10. Are the members of Anael fans of Social networking like Myspace, Virb, Facebook or do you feel it hurts the music in the end?

That’s just a matter of each person’s outlook on privacy I think. I don’t see where it should hurt the music?! It maybe can destroy something of the mystery surrounding an individual or band, but this is not necessarily a bad thing.

While we have a Myspace page for the band, I don’t think we’re fans of these networks, they’re useful for a purpose and useless for more.

11. Do the members of Anael play or work with any other projects?

Chris plays with his band Hellish Crossfire, they’ll record a new album in early 2009. And our bassplayer Stephan plays in Thornesbreed and some other projects.

The rest of us focus on Anael exclusively at the moment.

12. If there was one band you could tour or collab with who would it be any why?

We’ve played with many great bands, like Melechesh, Zemial, D666, Negura Bunget, Zarathustra, Orlog, Denial of God, and any of them would be fine. We haven’t thought about collaborations yet, but it might be a great experience to actually work with other bands or people.

13. Thank you for your time any closing thoughts place here.

Thanks for this interview, Clint! You raised some interesting questions.

Feel free to ask more or deeper if anything remained unclear!

Keep the arcane fires burning!