Callenish Circle pour l'album "[Pitch.Black.Effects]"

First, could you please introduce Callenish Circle to our readers, your main influences and the style which could best define your music ?

R: Hi there! Ronny here…
We are polluting the metal scene with our music since 1992. In the beginning we played covers of our favorite bands bach then like Death, Paradise Lost, Pestilence, Gorefest etc. We recorded a demo tape, an EP and [Pitch.Black.Effects] is our 5th full-length album and the third one to be released on Metal Blade Records.
We like to describe our music as modern extreme metal with loads of influences. You can find aggressive as well as melodies and atmospheric parts. When you picture a mixture of the above mentioned bands together with some modern and digital influences you have pretty much an idea of how we sound like. Although we certainly think we have created an own identical sound throughout the years. The vocals contain a lot of variation between grunts, screams and whispers.

How would you compare Pitch.Black.Effets to your previous albums?

R: This time we chose for a little different approach.
To start with we explored the digital fields a bit more and we also used some different, for us new kinds of riffs and drum patterns in order to get another dimension, more variation, groove and catchiness in our sound. I think this way we definitely succeeded in creating a new sound without loosing the typical CC sound we found in our last albums.
So in the end music wise [Pitch.Black.Effects] is still in the vein of our 2 former albums Flesh_Power_Dominion and My Passion // Your Pain. Our fans don't need to be afraid to hear a complete new band on [Pitch.Black.Effects]… it's still Callenish Circle, no doubt about that!
We simply didn't want to record the same album twice, that's the main reason why we explored new fields on the new album.

What’s the concept behind this title?

R: Our drummer Gavin came up with the idea for the title so I will have him speak a few words on this matter.

G: A few years ago I was in Berlin visiting the Jewish museum. Besides the whole Jewish history the most impressive part was (regrettably) everything concerning the holocaust. One room in the museum was created to give the visitor an impression of how it would feel to be locked in one of the camps. You must imagine to be in a concrete building ; pitch black, cold, humid, alone, feeling really tiny, desperate and the only light was too far way and unreachable. For some reason this made a huge impression on me and when I read a poem a few months ago it immediately reminded me of my visit at the museum. The poem told a story of someone in a hopeless situation, who got their energy from really simple things, like this beam of light coming into the room every morning. The poem described this experience as coming from a completely dark environment (pitch black) into a light environment. What you get is this overexposed effect. Besides the title ´[PITCH.BLACK.EFFECTS]´, the song ‘Schwarzes Licht’ describes this whole story and the overexposed effect also comes back into the artwork.



Pitch.Black.Effects shows an increase of digital effects, which was not so obvious on your previous albums. Is it a long-time direction towards which Callenish Circle is headed?

R: On our former album ‘My Passion//Your Pain’ we already used a couple of digital soundscapes, but they were more used as intro's between the songs. This time we cooperated very closely with Gail Liebling during the writing process, which resulted in the electronic samples being more integrated in the music itself. The electronic sounds are now part of the songs instead of just being intermezzos between the songs. An important reason we decided to use more of these digital effects is that Gail is not familiar with metal bands using electronics in their music, so he came up with some totally different electronic sounds than the rest of the metal bands are using. We think it’s definitely an added value to the music because of the freshness of it and the way we used it.

Can you give a brief commentary about all of your previous albums, how was the band at this time, your best memories of that time, any good stories about tours / recording sessions..

Drift Of Empathy [1996]
DRIFT OF EMPATHY: our debut album, released by Hammerheart. After our very well received demo, we had high expectations of this one, but in the end we were too inexperienced to handle the business part together with Hammerheart, so we decided to split ways with them again after this release.

Escape [1998]
In fact at first this was a promotion tape in order to get a record deal, but Polar Bear Records liked it so much that they wanted to remix and remaster it and release it as an EP and so they did…

Graceful Yet Forbidding [1999]
GRACEFUL.... YET FORBIDDING: we paid ourselves for everything and searched for a label. Looking back, signing with DSFA was the worst decision in our history and it ended up being released by 3 different labels.

Flesh_Power_Dominion [2002]
FLESH_POWER_DOMINION: our first one for Metal Blade, showing a big step forward regarding aggression, production and song-writing.

My Passion, Your Pain [2003]
MY PASSION // YOUR PAIN: a logical follower of FPD, but more variation and again a step forward.

[PITCH.BLACK.EFFECTS] 2005: our newborn child which we are very very proud of. The album is everything we wanted it to be! Production and music wise.



What do you do for a living apart from the band?

R: I work for a big company in the project management department, where I do a lot of different stuff. Most of the projects have to do with different computer software applications.

What is the best (an the worst) memory you have from your musician’s life?

R: Worst were al the trouble we've been through with Record labels. That was really fucked up. But this also resulted in the best thing... After this black period we decided to record an album on our own finances and send it to some interesting record labels. We turned all our frustrations into music and Flesh_Power_Dominion was born. This album delivered us a 4 record deal with Metal Blade Records.

Do you know the French metal scene? What do you think of it?

R: a few weeks ago I heard about the band Gojira. The description of their music encouraged me to take a listen to a few of their MP3’ on their website. I liked it a lot and I’m going to buy their album. Furthermore I know The Old Dead Tree, which is also a very cool band.

The same question goes for the metal scene as a whole. How do you think it will evolve in the few years, and how would you like it to evolve?

R: I still hate commercial radio stations that are afraid to play metal. Over here in The Netherlands there’s no radio station on the ether playing any metal.
The metal scene always had his ups and downs, different metal styles come and go, and I think that this cycle keeps on repeating itself, but I´m sure metal as a genre will never die.

If you could organise your own metal festival, whose bands would be invited?

R: if I had the choice and Chucky was still alive, Death would be headliner.
Furthermore Slayer, Nevermore and Metallica, playing an old song set exclusively!

What are you listening to these days? Any good metal / non metal albums to recommend?

R: to be honest I’m not that deeply into the metal scene as I used to be, but I’m deeply impressed by Scandinavian bands like Mnemic, Meshuggah, Soilwork and Mercenary, just to name a few.
Furthermore I like Keane very much because they write incredible catchy songs full of atmosphere with minimal ingredients (not even a guitar!). I think it’s a very talented band and listen to their music very much.

If you could change something in this fucked up world, really anything you want, what would you choose?

R: I think most people will come up with the same subject: terrorism. It’s the most scary thing I ever had to deal with. Just imagine those brainwashed idiots will get their hands on mass destruction weapons…

This interview is made for a French webzine (http://www.thrashocore.com). Any good / bad comments to make about this (be careful :p) ?

R: well, my French isn’t that good, but I can see the PBE review is one of the very few ones that are not so positive… in fact I believe it’s the lowest grade of the about 50 reviews I saw up till now. So I can’t judge about the reviewer’s quality of writing good and objective reviews. But at least the site looks good.

Last words are yours!

R: Allright! Thanx to you for your interest in CC and the intie! We appreciate it.
For the readers: check out our new album if you’re into some heavy and modern xtreme metal and let us know what you think!! Don’t let the review on this site prevent you from listening…
Hope to see y’all on the road sometime. Cheerz…