Summoning pour l'album "Oath Bound"

1. Hello! "Oath Bound" is your sixth album. What does its title mean?

Silenius: In contrary to "Let Mortal Heroes ... " we wanted a short title again that simply sounds good like "Stronghold", but of course you can interpretate in many different ways. as the album is dealing with topics of the silmarillion again it on the one side refers to morgoth who has sworn to conquer the whole of middle earth, on the other side it refers to his counterpart Feanor who swor revenge to morgoth after he has stolen the silmaril, but it also refers to us the band who have sworn never to change our concept and musical style.



2. Why so many years between "Let Mortal Heroes..." and "Oath Bound"? How has the band evolved during these last years?

Protector: The main reason was the work for my other music project "Die Verbannten Kinder Evas". I already finished he songs of the forthcoming album 2 years ago but had problems with the female singer, first the old one did was simply not good enough anymore, so that i searched for another one. She was good, but due to some huge psychological problems she did not record for 18 months so i could not release the new album. During all this time i could not release Summoning, cause it was much more reasonable for me first to release "Die Verbannten Kinder Evas" and after that Summoning, but finally i gave up waiting for the singer and changed my decision and stated to finish Summoning. Meanwhile i found a new singer, and she recorded all songs only in 2 days.

Silenius: the realization of this CD was the most difficult one in our history because of many different reasons. it nearly lasted 5 years since LMHSYF, normally in this time a band is out of sight within the scene but of course i hope we can continue our path. The main reasons of this long delay can be found in personal subject: First i had a very stressy girlfriend for 1,5 years who never supported me in my musical work and nearly and nearly made sabotage whenever it comes to music. second i did not have any good ideas for this band over a long time until i finally got new inspirations, third my father dies on cancer last year which caused a lot of personal troubles. next i lost my job and i had to find a new one and beside all these dramas we had some big equipment problems.


3. How would you define your music?

Protector: Summoning makes slow and epic music based on orchestral muliylayered tunes and slow solemn rythms done with keyboard drums. we are not a band that is made for stages or made for people baning their heads on metal parties, our music is mainly made for people to listen at home, or maybe with headphones etc.


4. How did you apprehend the composition of this new album?

Protector: it is always the same "ritual". First silenius has new ideas for a complete new summoning song, then he comes to my studio and records the midi notes of his ideas. then on the same days while he is still there i play additional tunes to it (like the horn tunes etc), and if i am fit enought after all, i add the drums to it. Once this instrumental version is finished we work on a next song. As soon as all songs are finished that way i start to find good guitar riffs for it. Once all instruments are ready we start to deal about the lyrics. We never made a secret about the fact taht we never wrote own lyrics but always took them directly from tolkien. So when all songs are ready silenius searches for the most suitable lyrics from tolkien and together we choose them and decide for which song we use which lyrics. then we adapt them to the rhythm of the songs and record the vocals. At the end we mix the songs and produce the finished master CD which we send to napalm records.


5. Can you tell us more about the concept and the lyrics of "Oath Bound"?

Silenius: this time we concentrated on tolkiens silmarillion again. we have topics about feanor and the noldor, who left valinor to fight morgoth in the north, to get back the silmarils. we have topics about morgoth and his reparation for war against middle earth. other topics are dealing with beleriand, that land of the dead, thingol of menegroth. we have an unknown war poetry included which fits perfecty to the mood of the marching noldor and we have one song in the black language which was written by a friend of us who made a complete lyric sheet out of this limited language andi think he has done a good job for us and some lyrics especially the choirs have been done by ourselvs and so we have some new lyrical arrangements and rearrangements like ever.

Protector: Anyway you can see all of our lyrics on the new summoning page (it was brokien for many mothns, but since a few days it is finally online again www.summoning.info)


6. You have always been inspired by the work of Tolkien. Are you still passionate by this universe? Do you think that this source of inspiration is inexhaustible?

Silenius: Tolkien of course it the god father and initiator of the whole modern fantasy genre. i think he was copied over a thousand of times but noone can reach his creation, not even almost. the richness of his creation of a complete detailed mindworld with all its history, languages, population and detailed landscapes is complete unique and far above the average fantasy mainstream and i think that is the point what makes his work so timeless and admirable.


7. I personally find that "Oath Bound" sound a bit more melancholic and bleak than your previous albums. What do you think about that?

Protector: I guess the guitars are the reason for that. I changed the style of them quite much and did not follow the guitars style i created with stronhold anymore , which was more in the klassical staccator metal way, whereas on the new album the guiars are played much more "relaxed" in an arpeggio style, focusing more on harmonies than on rhythmsn. Actually this is just one element of many in our music , but chaning this one had a much greater effect on the athmosphere of the complete songs, due to the less rythmic orientation of the guitars the complete songs seem more more slow and therefore more epic. i also understand the term "melancholic" in this connection.
But it is intereissting, in another interview the interviewer said that with each album we get more and mroe happy;-)


8. Was it hard to lead this album to an end?

Protector: It was not harder than ever. like always we did our best to get the best possible sound. we checked the mixes on various sound stystem to make sure that the sound is good on expensive as well as on cheap systems. we spent again 3 onths only with the mix i guess. the main complication was the new dominance of the guitars. i was very unsure about the greater loudness of the guitars, and was afraid that peopel who don't know the tunes as well as we do will hear the keyboard tunes, but then i got used to it and now i am very happy about our decision to make the guitars louder. it brings a new aspect to the songs.



9. Can you tell us more about the artwork and its meaning? Who designed it?

Protector: the name of the painter of the land scape picture is albert bierstadt, we was born in germany about 150 years ago and then moved to USA. silenius found his art while searchign in lokal bookstores for new pictures for cover and booklet layout. as we already used all suitable pictures of caspar david friedrich, we were happy that we discovered this painter, as he spread a similar feeling. like always it is silenius who searches for the most suitalbe pictures and me who puts all those elements together (like combining the frame with the painting, adapting the colors to make them suit better etc).


10. 12 years after your first album "Lugburz", you're still in deal with Napalm Records. Why this choice?

Protector: Allthough the style of the label changed very much since its beginning; from a pure true black metal label to a rather commercial gothic metal label, we are still very satisfied with napalm records. Surely the actualy style of this label does not suit to our music at all we enjoy that we have all freedom in making music that we want. Well after each recording napalm has always something to complain about the music and sound, but as long as we are free to listen to this and decide by orself if we agree with those critics or ignore them we don't care about the style and reputation of the label. Actually we have th great advantage that we are a band that only need a very low buget as we record everything on our own, don't have some expensive things like a real orchestra etc and therefore surely cost 10 times less than all other bands, so napalm records i taking less risk in releasing us.


11. Now a difficult question: except the new one, is there an album of your discography of whom you're particularly proud?

Protector: Well if you would have asked the question different i would have said "The new one";-) But expect from the new one it is definitely "Minas Morgul". With this album the real Summoning was born. On this album we used the mighy keyboard drums for the first time and did not compose the tunes on guitkars but only in the keyboards. We recudced the tempo and started to create real epic song for the first time.

12. What are you listening to these days?

Silenius: the latest releases i bought have been seelenthron which i found totaly cool although it is totally kitschy. next releases i baught is the new CD of golgatha and inade and nortaunt.


13. Thanks you for the interview and I wish you the best for the future. The last words are yours!

Silenius: Thanks for the interview and Up the hammers to our fans in France