1. Hi, Achernar. At the beginning I have to note that I’ve never witnessed band promoting its album almost year before release, as you did. Have you known in advance that album is going to rock so much?

Hello Fastred and thanks for the compliment. Well I would say we expected it to be a really good album, indeed… Actually we recorded a 3 songs demo in May last year which was exclusively destined to label promotion; from this time and during the following months, we knew that this next album had some good potential because the songs were really strong, at least to our ears. So I started to spread a few words about it here and there, uploading one of the demo songs called “Dépossédés” on our Myspace page, and so on… You know, being still an underground extreme metal band, our purpose was just to promote the band with our modest means, and anticipate the release, especially because the promotion around our first album hadn’t been really good. But I’d say we really started promoting “Tourments & Perdition” when it took form during the recording sessions, about four months before its release.

2. In the review I pointed out that „Tourments & Perdition“ is one the most progressive BM albums in recent times. Have you spent those 3 years between albums with composing or have you used some ideas from past? Do you think that composing was more difficult than before?

During the year following our debut album “Uni aux cimes” (2005), we really focused on promotion. Our previous label had some trouble due to a criminal arson at their office, so they couldn’t be very active regarding promotion. So I did my best to send copies to reviewers myself and, you know, to do all the “public relations” stuff… We also concentrated a lot on live performances, until we started to compose anew around the spring of 2006 if I remember well. A few weeks later, Amar Ru (guitars) told us he had to leave for Quebec and stay there during almost a complete year, so we knew the second album wouldn’t be recorded before the end of 2007. Being myself more and more involved and passionate about composing and arranging music, I ended up writing most of the guitar parts. Having built my own studio three years ago, I could really dig things, spend all the time needed working on arrangements, more elaborate guitar layers, synths, and so on… And now I feel more at ease doing things in that way, because I can experiment a lot, and work on details that wouldn’t be heard in rehearsal. So in a sense I would say it was more complicated, as we really worked the songs in depth, thinking about each and every detail, but on the other hand it was so exciting and rewarding at the end.

3. Bands are usually finishing their ideas in the studio. Have you gone to studio with finished material? Concerning the recording itself, did you run into some troubles? For example, tracks sounding differently in comparison to your original vision. How much time it all took, alongside with mastering?

Well some songs were completed, for example the three ones we had already recorded for labels promotion a few months earlier (“Les Mots de la Perte”, “Dépossédés” and “Vengeance Esthétique”). I had also sequenced all the songs at home so I would say the structures and most of the musical arrangements were completed prior to entering the studio. But as the music was taking form in the studio, of course we had some new ideas and took time to experiment them, especially regarding some vocal lines and additional keyboards arrangements. Concerning the second part of your question, this recording process was undeniably a good experience… We had a clear idea about how the songs should sound, and we were well prepared and confident about it. In concrete terms, it took more than one month to record the parts, and then mixing and mastering the whole thing. We didn’t run into specific technical troubles, but I must admit it was obviously a difficult and somehow painful experience, both physically and mentally, because we didn’t sleep very much and had to stay productive and concentrated... Especially at the end, when we mixed the songs together with Fernando, our sound engineer, with so many layers of guitars, keyboards, it was really thorny.

4. The first thing which really caught me, was your clean vocal. Personally I compared it to early Borknagar, what is quite obvious connection, but music is somehow quite different. What can you say about this, and about your vocal?

About the comparison with Borknagar, I guess you have their early stuff in mind; I know my clear voice often reminds Garm’s, especially during the most operatic parts, but you know that’s just the way I sing naturally, I can’t do much about that. I just try to be inventive and create things in my own way, as we do regarding music. I think the clear parts on “Tourments & Perdition” are far more interesting compared to our first album; as a singer, my purpose is not just filling the blanks you know, I really try to explore my abilities and create this state of emotion, thus bringing “sense” and expressiveness to the songs.


5. „Tourments & Perdition“ hides some inner idea, for sure. Please share this idea with us as much as you can. Around which theme are songs revolving, and when those themes came up in your mind?

I would say there’s an overall concept in “Tourments & Perdition”: the lucidity of man and its consequence, a confrontation with his own tragedy. Contrary to our previous album “Uni aux cimes” which mainly focused on themes of elevation, Dionysian ways of life, this time we saw things from a darker perspective. For some unknown reasons the very first riffs I created for this new album were truly dark; despite my fine situation in everyday life, and maybe in response against it, I was more than ever eager to express feelings of pessimism, despair, with this kind of romantic, noble pulse which – I think – can well define the album. I was also reading more and more pessimistic or cynic authors like Samuel Beckett, Antonin Artaud, or Louis-Ferdinand Céline at this time. At a few occasions, we spoke with Clevdh about what would be the lyrical content of the album, and he was also very much into this direction… I guess it’s connected to our own minds growing older and lucid (laughs)! So, there’s this overall concept but of course each song has its own theme. Here are a few explanations.

The first one, “Les Mots de la Perte”, means “Words of Loss”. To a certain extent those lyrics were inspired by Irish author Samuel Beckett, as I was really moved by the “truths” he tried to represent in his writings. Through a cynical portray of the destitute, his aim was to say a lot about the vanity of life. He wanted to demonstrate that a peaceful consciousness is only possible when one focuses on acting in the outside world, protected under the shelters of sociability, logics, morals, materialism; on the contrary, breaking with this outside world’s protections leads to the terrible heart of things: the consciousness of inevitable death and emptiness. So, those lyrics deal with this metaphysical instant when all connections with the world’s effervescence, all projects and memories are thrown into oblivion, leaving man faced with this emptiness and his tragic destiny.

Then you have “Celui qui Erre”, which can be translated by “He who wanders”. Basically for this one I wanted to write lyrics about my own life, about the way I need to express myself, my interest for the darker side of life, and my opposition against all illusions of happiness; it also deals with the sacrifice one has to accept in order to reach his intimate objective. It was deeply connected to my personal situation, because I was spending whole nights working on music and thinking about the album, it was not really good for my health yet I had to make it.

The following song, “Dépossédés” (or “Dispossessed”), deals with the dangerous quest of surrealists, which is still living nowadays. The idea behind this song is the perception of how “reality” is confined to certain utilitarianism, the paradox of constantly seeing this concept of “reality” through masks and falsification. That’s why some authors like Breton or Artaud attempted to create from what they’d call the “very depths” of their minds, imagination, intuition, in order to come across the boundaries men set for themselves with their parody of reality.

Then you have a song called “Vengeance Esthétique” which can be translated by something like “Aesthetic Revenge”, and which is actually the first song we wrote for this album, during the summer of 2006. Clevdh wrote the lyrics for this one; basically it’s about an intimate rebellion against the foundations of life. At the beginning of the song, there’s an essential yet sad understanding: life is deceptive, because its order is so much built on repeated habits and superstitions. From that basic understanding comes a feeling of resentment, of rebellion against whole life… This rebellion has neither sense nor logic in itself – denying life would mean death – but is somehow beautiful, leading to what one would call a “tragic aestheticism” if lived fully.

The lyrics of “La Splendeur de nos Pas” (« The Splendour of our Steps ») were written by Amar Ru, our guitarist. For this one, the basic idea came from French author Albert Camus: what is most rewarding for man lies behind his struggles, not within the satisfaction those struggles can cause. This song has plenty of tension in the words, because effort and the subsequent elevation are unceasingly contrasting with doubt and the subsequent premonition of loss.

Finally, in the last song “L’Imminence du Terrible”, Clevdh focused on this premonition, the tragic intuition of death for what I consider to be one of the most touching and successful lyrics of Orakle. The first sentence tells all of us are “vain sparks on the endless river”, then all the song is built on the impossibility of living a joyful life once you become conscious of death and its weight. Not especially your own death, but this threatening cloud upon your friends, family… The song’s last words are really significant, because they take away all the guilt of the living: we are not responsible for our suffering, as our blood contains all tragedies: “the true torment is existence”. A very pessimistic conclusion, undoubtedly.

6. Because I am not French speaker, it is difficult for me to understand the lyrics and what are they about. Nonetheless they look quite extensive. And what matters most, you stayed loyal to your language which fits the music well. It also adds more avant-garde and obscure feel to it.

With those (few) enlightenments, now I hope you can understand (laughs). I agree with you, I think singing in our native language adds a more intimate angle to our music; this choice was really important, because we wouldn’t be capable of expressing such specific feelings, details in English which is more of a functional language I guess.


7. What are Orakle symbolizing as the musical entity? Do you think that there is something specific, what makes you unique? Ideologically, musically…

Well, I’m not the best person to tell what makes us unique… As stated above, I think our lyrics are really specific, of course because they are in French but also because they are very introspective and go somehow deeper than the average metal lyrics. Musically, I would say Clevdh has a very personal approach when it comes to compose his drum parts, and concerning guitars and melody as a whole, we always try to create very accomplished things, and find a good balance between the fast parts and the more atmospheric ones. Not especially complex, even though I must admit I enjoy creating strange structures and chord progressions, but most of the time very arranged songs: once the fundamental structure is composed, I spend a lot of time adding little details, really digging under the basic surface of drums/bass/guitars. Ideologically, we haven’t a special message. Our motivation is really personal; we just try to express important feelings in a more or less poetic form. It’s aestheticism before proselytism. We just move from a perspective to another one, depending on our feelings…

8. According to Metal-archives, except one member, Orakle is your only band. Does this bring your music somewhere, you haven´t thought about before? Well it’s quite usual that portioning of your ideas into several bands usually sucks for them.

Well, that’s not what I would call a choice, at least for me. Actually I really enjoy composing, arranging and playing music, so that is more a matter of not having enough time to give concrete expression to all ideas, than a real preference… Another reason is that I like to be an active person within a band, I mean being really creative, not just joining an existing band to play songs which I feel are not “mine”. Regarding Metal music, I try to dedicate myself 100% to Orakle, because that’s within my heart, that’s the band I formed with my oldest friend Clevdh as we were 14 years-old teenagers, and most of my dark feelings and love for metal music have to be channeled through this band. I don’t really understand people who play in several clone acts, I mean having exactly the same role and making the same music. If I take part in another metal project, it needs to be really different from what we make in Orakle; I already have something in mind with my mate Olwe from Artefact, and if it occurs it will be quite different, believe me. I also plan to release a solo work, maybe next year, on the crossroads of metal music, electronics, classical and experimental music… Amar Ru (guitars) also has a death-metal concept project evolving around the themes of John Milton’s Paradise Lost. So, to conclude, we’re absolutely not closed to participating in other projects, but first we try to do our best for the one we consider as being the most essential.

9. I guess that you are the main man in Orakle. Do you think that Orakle had achieved their musical peak? Do you believe that it is possible to overcome everything you have ever done, with next album?

Oh, I don’t think there’s a real mastermind in Orakle. Creating music, arranging is my passion so indeed I do contribute a lot, but Clevdh is a really active person too, concerning the overall structure of songs, their pulse, lyrics, and I guess Amar Ru will be more involved in the composition of our next album. Concerning the second part of your question, I wouldn’t say we achieved any kind of musical peak, because if we were convinced of such a thing, we would stop the band or worse, making the same record on and on. Of course, we are very proud of “Tourments & Perdition”, I guess it’s our best work to date and maybe a first-class album in its genre, but I have no doubt, we’ll be proud of next one too. We won’t do the same thing so there are plenty of grounds to explore in order to create other good albums in the future.


10. Well, after your accomplishment you deserve some rest. So, are you resting? Or are you working on upcoming album? It also would be great if label would organize a tour for you. Are you planning something?

We were so exhausted at the end of the recordings, we took one month just screwing around, almost allergic to music, especially ours. It lasted one month, but you know, “no rest for the wicked!!” to quote a famous rocker (laughs). I mean, I like to be an active person, so I started working on promotion for Orakle along with the label, also thinking about different musical stuff, and now we rehearse a lot for the upcoming shows. For the moment, no tour is planned. All of us have daily jobs, so technically it’s quite difficult to organize a long tour, but I hope we’ll play as much as we can in Europe next year, definitely. If someone’s interested, please contact us directly at [email protected] !!!

11. Fact that you are all almost equally old, is positive or negative? Do you live in same town?

Well, I don’t think age has a lot to do with the quality of music; of course, the four of us are in our twenties, so we have quite similar concerns, but I guess it’s also natural to have more acquaintances between equally old people… And, yes we used to live in the same little town with Clevdh, now we’re in different places but all in the Paris suburbs: Eithenn and I in the west, Amar Ru in the east and Clevdh in the south suburbs; that is important because we rehearse on a weekly basis and we can see each other regularly.

12. That´s all from me. I just want to express my gratitude for „Tourments & Perdition“ for it is the best 2008 album together with Klimt 1918 “Just in case we´ll never meet again”. Last words are yours, as usually.

I don’t know Klimt 1918, but all my gratitude for those kind words, as I guess it’s a compliment. Thanks a lot for this interview, I hope it will bring some enlightenment around the new album. If people want to discover Orakle in your country, know that some songs are available on our official Myspace page at www.myspace.com/orakleband. And, if you really enjoy and want to support us, just buy the album (laughs): Plastichead, Soundcave, Napalm Records, Holy Records, there are plenty of distributors worldwide this time. See you soon.

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Informace o článku: Přidáno: 02.01.2009 Přečteno: 28x Napsal: Fastred

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