1. Hi THY CATAFALQUE. It's been 5 years since your last record „Tûnõ idõ tárlat“. Why did you waited song long to record new material? Could you tell us what you were up to for that long 5 years?
Well, we have had plenty of serious changes in our personal lives. János moved to Norway to find a job there while I left to Scotland where I am staying for the second year now. Some riffs and motifs had been composed and recorded before leaving our homes but the process was broken for a while. I had to start a new life, to develop everything again and it did take some time. The nine guest musicians also had to be organized, record and mix everything, and finally find a label to release the nearly 70 minutes long album. Yes, it has been a long time, admittedly. It would have been much shorter though if we could have stayed at home and work on the material in tranquillity and calmness but it turned out differently.
2. Let's go to the new album „Róka Hasa Rádió“. Believe me, I haven't heard such original record full of ideas for a long time. I was discussing with my friends the other night about getting inspiration. So my question is: Where do you find your inspiration, or what do you think about where should people get their own inspiration from?
Thank you. Actually I am afraid I cannot provide you with a proper answer about gathering inspiration. For me it comes randomly, in times and occasions I would never expect, just during daytime, and everyday situations, it doesn’t have to be linked to music or anything related to arts. It’s the nature, it’s the city, it’s the sun above the trees, the memories or future hopes. It’s life itself.
3. The lyrics from THY CATAFALQUE are in Hungarian language. Since it's not a very common language could you describe the lyric's concept of the last record?
The main concept behind the album is the relationship between the ever evolving, solid and massive physical matter and the fragileness of human and all living spirits throughout distant childhood memories and scientific explanations of nature. Revolving, rotating movements of past and future, colours, sounds, long lost scents by a strange transmission from a timeless radio. This is from our promo sheet and actually true :).
4. There is a lot of influence of electronic music in your last record. Also the programmed drums make the feeling stronger. What's your opinion about electronic music? Or let's append on previous question on inspiration, from where do this influences appeared on the THY CATAFALQUE?
In general I try to observe and understand music in itself. I mean I really don’t care about separating electronic and metal and classical or jazz and judge them by their stylistic methods. I just don’t mind it. What I mind is what effect they can have on me be it any kind of music. If it’s just two primitive accords that have „the sound”, I am bought. And you can bring me the most sophisticated progressive metal wonder band – without pulling the trigger in me I can’t do anything with them. And so yes, I can find many electronic music precious and interesting as well. “What” is more important than “how”.
5. You are marked as an avant-garde metal on the Metal Archives portal. What do you think about what's the source of the avant-garde in your music? Or what makes it avant-garde? Or even what is avant-garde for you? :)
People usually have problems labelling Thy Catafalque and eventually it’s understandable, I could not pigeonhole our music either. This is what avant-garde metal label means, I think. A kind of perplexity. Basically it’s just metal with unusual elements on unusual themes. If you do it just for the sake of being different to everything, well that sucks. And if you are brave enough you can go as far in experimental avant-gardism that at the end of the day you turn out to be a decent pop band :).
6. There participated a lot of guests on the record. What was the recording and cooperation with all those people? What sound did you want to reach and what sound did you reach? Did it match your vision before recording?
Yes, there are nine guest musicians altogether playing on the album. We needed them to achieve things we could never do by ourselves. The most important aspect above all is that they are all people who are close to me in one way or another. I had known all of them before asking them to participate, with most of them we had been working before on earlier Thy Catafalque recordings, on the Gire album (which is another band of mine) or on my solo record. Eventually I can say it has turned out even better than I’d expected. Particularly the vocal parts of Attila Bakos (from Taranis) and Ágnes (from The Moon And The Nightspirit) stepped over my expectations, they did brilliant job, I could not wish any better. And they are keen to participate next time as well which is something I am pretty happy about.
7. THY CATAFALQUE has only two members. Can you imagine playing live?
We have had some invitations but we do not plan to put this all on stage. It would demand far too much organizing, there would be too many people involved and we have never had any rehearsals before - you know this is a studio project, not a rock and roll band. Not to mention the fact that János lives in Budapest and I am in Edinburgh. Point blank, I do not wish to make my life more complicated. However I do miss playing live - something I really enjoyed with Gire, we had plenty of huge gigs supporting Katatonia, Soulfly or Ektomorf and playing on festivals with really big bands. But Thy Catafalque is a different cup of tea.
8. Why and how was THY CATAFALQUE founded and what is it’s target?
The band was founded in 1998 by the two of us. Earlier we had a dark/black metal project called Gort. In Gort I was the vocalist and keyboard-player, János played the guitar, Zolcsi from Gire was the drummer (in Gire he was a guitarist/vocalist) and we had another guitar player, Péter. After a while Gort was disbanded as we had no rehearsal room any more and we decided with János to keep on working with drum computer so we could come together in my place to record riffs. And this was Thy Catafalque, which was much more extreme black metal than Gort. Anyway in 2000 we recorded the four songs we had written as Gort and it was released with the title Forest Myths EP. I love that material, it’s a transition between dark metal and black metal. The target of Thy Catafalque? Well, just self expression, I think that’s all. That has been our motiviation since we started to play music.
9. Except TC you participate in a lot of other projects. In what place is TC for you? Try to introduce your other projects.
Right now Thy Catafalque is the only active project for me. Gire is unfortunately cannot work as we are far from each other and unlike at TC, this band is not able to exist this way. Which is a shame, it just makes me sad whenever I think of it. Anyway both other members of Gire actually play on Róka Hasa Rádió as guests. Besides it I had a solo album under my name and I had Gort and also Towards Rusted Soil which was also something like a solo project. And I had Darklight and played as session member in Nebron and took part on the latest album of CasketGarden as a guest. But now there is nothing else then TC and I don’t even want anything else to take part in (apart from Gire) as I am always running out of time.
10. Thanks for your time. If you want to say something, anything, here is your space.
Let me thank you for your interest in us and the possibility to talk about ourselves :). All the best!
