1. Greetings gentlemen. “Ghost Chants“ is an extraordinary and fascinating piece of sonic art. Has it fulfilled all your initial plans and visions? Now with the benefit of hindsight, do you feel content with all parts of the album?

Yes, we are pretty satisfied with the final result and how “Ghost Chants” sounds. Of course our initial vision was bunch of ideas that have been transferred to particular riff and arrangements during the time we've been working on it, so it was not even so clear for us at th beginning. But the basic vision has been realised.

2. Before “Ghost Chants” there were two shorter releases which are significantly different from the full-length. Does this mean that you have naturally progressed and matured so much or did you re-evaluated your initial musical visions in order to achieve the current state of things?

I think it was a natural evolution that is still taking place. We did not sit down and said to ourselves that from now on our songs will look like this or this way. We were just picking the riffs that sound to us best during working on the album.

3. Can you tell us what was the reason behind the departure (or sacking) of the former vocalist Andrzej Nowak? I know that you are looking for a new long-term vocalist but haven´t you considered making Stawrogin a regular member? His performance on “Ghost Chants” is impeccable and it would be a loss to let him go, in my opinion. However, what about an idea that you would employ a different vocalist on each future album?

There were many reasons of Andrzej's departure from the band and the performance of his vocals parts during recording session was the main one. He did not follow the progress that took place in our music and we came to the conclusion the splitting ways would be the best solution. When it comes to Stawrogin, we will cooperate for some time but his personal situation does not allow him to be a regular member of the band.

4. “Ghost Chants” is being released on three different formats by three different labels and the album was almost immediately fully available for streaming on the bandcamp. Aren´t the labels afraid that this might harm the sales or do you all expect that this will be beneficial in the long run? Where do you see the greatest advantage of having the album released by three different labels?

OK, so answering the first part of the question - it's XXI first century and digital distribution is so obvious that I can't imagine it could not have taken place. It would leak to the web anyway so I prefer to give people a good quality digital version instead of forcing them to listen to crappy files downloaded from Russian servers. Besides, the culture of listening digital music evolved a lot during past years and people are even willing to pay for digital files, what can be best proven by checking our bandcamp page and it didn´t harm the physical sale at all.
About the labels - it allows to enhance the range of distribution and optimise the costs of album production and promotion therefore I see this collaboration in a pretty good way. The album is present in the media and across the Europe in physical distribution it was a good choice.

5. The band title OUTRE is of French origin. Did you want to pay some tribute to French music, philosophy, literature or France in general? Or maybe you just like Portal? Personally, I’m not even sure if the title truly characterises the band’s music because honestly you are not that extravagant or bizarre i.e. outré.

Our band's name has neither anything to do with French scene or Portal band. It's rather our philosophy and way of life, the way we behave and what we believe in. It think that the best explanation of our name can be found in our lyrics.

6. Well, the French black metal in the vein of Deathspell Omega/Blut Aus Nord is pretty popular nowadays. I don´t mean to accuse you of following the trends since our staff agrees that your music is pretty distinct and faithful to the roots. But what in your opinion makes OUTRE different from all the other bands that follow the heritage of the aforementioned bands and try to push the envelope further? If there are any bands that succeed in this…

I have nothing against comparison to the aforementioned bands and more of them that often appears in the reviews like Mayhem or other classic bands. But our inspirations are much wider than can be seen in the reviews and I do not see any reason to hide it. I believe people can here much Dso in our music because of disharmonic riffs and arrangements, but our songs has lot more melodies and are way less complicated than Dso songs.
I do not think we push the boundaries in any way, we always wanted to play black metal and it was not our intention to invent the wheel again. This is what the purpose of this band is and we are going to keep it for a while.

7. “Ghost Chants” has a great, powerful production. Modern yet organic. M. of Mgla certainly did a great job. I know that didn´t record the whole album in his studio so I am wondering how great was his input in the overall job? What I really like is the fact that all the albums he helped to record sound unique, including yours. What is the reason for that in your opinion? Btw, how long did it take you to record the whole thing?

We managed to record the album pretty quickly, the recordings and mixing took like 2 month overall. I think the reason behind the quality of M's production is that he is the fan of extreme metal and he just feels this music. Also he works with bands having their own style, often pretty different from each other. He can produce the grave sounding Cultes des Ghouls and a razor sharp and brutal kick in the face like the latest Infenal War. He has very rare skill of effective communication - he simply understand what people say and I must admit that working with him was the most effective and smooth I've ever had in my “musical” career.

8. In the beginning, OUTRE were just a duo that eventually grew into a fully-fledged band. Is there any deeper reason behind that or it simply happened? Anyway, if I am not mistaken, the majority of music is composed and arranged by Damien. How big is the input of other members? Are they allowed to bring their own riffs and ideas to the table or rework the original ideas drastically?

The reason of adding new members was very simple - band needed to start playing shows. You're right, 100% of music is solely written by Damian, but it is not said that he will be doing that exclusively for the future records. All in all we work together on arrangements and we discuss together on the music that Damian brings to the reh rooms so everyone is trying to participate somehow in creation process

9. I really adore the cover art of the album and the detailed graphics in general. How important is the visual side of the release for you? And what about the visual side of your live performances? Do you employ any special elements when you play live?

I'm kind of a perfectionist so our labels are and we wanted to have all the aspects prepared as best as possible. That's way we asked best people to work on the production of the album, both from visual and musical side. When it comes to life performances we do not use any outstanding ways of expression but we try to keep the shows level as more than satisfactory, starting on how we look like and ending up on the rig we use on stage.

10. The album is divided into seven chapters; it has an epic start and a grand conclusion. There is an evident concept in lyrics but what about the musical one? Have you initially thought about the role of the individual songs in the context of the whole album? Did you want the lyrics to match with the musical content and perhaps even enhance it? Can you imagine a different procedure when the lyrics are written first and the music is then composed as a soundtrack to them?

The order of the songs born naturally and we did not plan to make start and end with any particular songs. We just discussed what would be the best to start with and how to finish the album so it would make the strongest possible impression on the listener. Lyrics tells some story but I wrote them much later that the music had been composed so it's hard to me imagine right now the situation presented by you

11. Your lyrics give a very atheistic or even almost nihilistic impression, pretty much like the lyrics of your country mates Mgla and Kriegsmaschine. Do you agree with these tags or do you think that the lyrics should be summed up by completely different -isms? What things in life are truly worth living for? Where do you seek solace when all goes the hell?

That is pretty interesting interpretation. By default I do not discuss or interprete my own lyrics because I did not write it to write about it later on. My thoughts and vision were all put to my lyrics and I will never took the listeners a pleasure of discovering it on their own.

12. It seems that the “religious black metal” is a fad of the past few years, however, “the worship of the horned one” is present in the genre since the day one. What do you think about these spiritual leanings in black metal? Do you think it is just a pretence or do you share an opinion that there should be always a deeper ideology behind the black metal music?

Black metal was always very ideological music genre and so I see it nowadays. All depends what message is planned to be passed to the audience. I never was deep into such things but occultism or religion, but my observations about life and death together my personal experiences helps to create my own vision of Outre's message to the world.

13. What are you future plans and goals? Given the quality of the album and the way you seem to work I think that you would like to appeal to a larger audience instead of just a couple of underground maniacs.

Yes, we have some plans about the future and we are trying to realise it step by step. We do not plan to conquer the world with our music, all we want is to reach with it to the people that may find as valuable.

14. Not long ago you have announced a split album with Barshasketh where you will present two new songs. Are you going to make use of a shorter format to present something truly “outré”? Or should we expect the new material to follow in the style of “Ghost Chants” and complement the more melodic sound of your split colleagues?

Damian has just started to write the songs for that split so I dont know what way will it go.

15. You will also play at this year´s Brutal Assault. You played some tours but have you played such a big event before? What do you expect from it? Aren´t you afraid that you might be forced to play on Friday´s noon for example?

I did not play with Outre on such big festivals, but I also did not started my adventure with music today and I've already on big festivals like Brutal Assault, Metalmania and many others. There is not much difference to my playing the show on open air or club stages. About Brutal Assault, the time of our show has not been announced yet so I dont know what to expect, all I know is that we play on the tent stage.

16. Why do you think there are so many first-class extreme metal bands in Poland? To be frank, the Central European countries are still miles behind the living standard of Scandinavian countries that arguably produce the biggest number of leading metal bands. However, the polish scene is one of the strongest in the world. Here, in Slovakia and Czech republic we can be glad that we have at least Cult of Fire, Heaving Earth and Inferno - the only bands that could be labelled as world-class. But in Poland there are so many of them…

It's pretty hard to me to answer this question... Maybe we are way more frustrated by catholic terror than we can observe in Poland and this is how we canalise our frustration? I really dont know, good topic for some sociological studies.

17. If you think that something important has been left unsaid then add it now. Like always the last words are yours. Thank you for your time and we look forward to the next steps of OUTRE.

Not much to say - I prefer to express myself through my music that answring interviews :). But anyway, appreciate your time for preparing the questions and your interest in having us in your magazine. Thank you and regards from Outre

Questions: Garmfrost, Dalihrob
Answers: L.th
Band page: Outre @ Facebook
Nationality: Poland