1. Salutations to summer England, men. It is still some time left before we may greet winter but we can spend that time with your fresh new album “The Mercian Sphere”. I really have to congratulate you because I think it is very well made and almost impossible to disappoint listener. What are you doing so shortly after the release? Have you started with an active album’s support or you’re still enjoying your holidays?

It’s been a crazy time for the band and we haven’t really had a lot of time to sit still with everything that is going on in the press etc. Shortly after the release we have been doing lots of press, both domestic and international as well as playing some festivals etc.

We are currently booking a tour for early 2011 in Europe so we can bring our music to our fans in Europe and we are hopefully going to be getting out and about with some great bands in Europe to support that.

Besides that, we are doing a UK tour in December with our good friends Cnoc An Tursa from Scotland. I would advise everyone to check them out if possible.

2. If I’m right the name WINTERFYLLETH means winter full moon in old English and herewith foreshadowing winter, something like its greeting. Could you disclose the mystery behind this name and legends accompanying it?

The word ‘Winterfylleth’ is from the ancient Anglo-Saxon ‘old English’ language and represents the modern month of October. It simply translates, as you rightly say, to meaning ‘Winter Full Moon’. The folk of that time had a festival at that period of the year welcoming the onset of winter at the end of the harvest. The festival of the Winter Full Moon, the full moon in October being the first full moon of Winter. The people of that time used the moon, stars and the sun as a virtual, living calendar. So the position of the moon in the sky at various points in the year was very important to our ancestors.

3. I am glad I can say that I see a great progression in “The Mercian Sphere” when compared to your debut album. And I don’t want to do “The Ghost of Heritage” injustice. But I think that it certainly lacked several things. New album is much more aggressive, more cohesive, more black metal-like and rawer. Have you intended to move from the debut but still keep your identity? I find the final result to be very pleasing and rejuvenating.

I feel that The Mercian Sphere represents Winterfylleth at our most virulent and best. On this record we truly tried to focus in the on the essence of what was great about our first album and distil that into this record. We spent a lot more time in pre production for this album, spending weeks / months pouring over the songs and the structures until we got to the point where we could go into the studio to record.

Having progressed to working with Candlelight we have had the backing and support to be able to spend more time in the making of the album, which I think shows through in the finished product and has allowed us to make a record we are all truly happy with. Working with Chris Fielding @ Foel Studios has also helped us immensely. It is refreshing to work with someone who instinctively knows what you are trying to achieve and who has such a great track record, having produced some classic albums by bands like Primordial (who are a big influence of ours), Napalm Death and Electric Wizard.

As with The Ghost of Heritage, our aim on The Mercian Sphere was the same, in that we wanted to bring relevance to inspiring and interesting aspects of our national history to then insight interest and inspiration in other people. Im hoping this is something we have achieved and in our hearts this is something that we are very committed to achieving in everything we do with this band.

4. WINTERFYLLETH are absolutely embracing old English traditions and its rich history. How much the “olde English” differs from the contemporary English? For example WINTERFYLLETH differs from “winter full moon” quite a lot. I am sure that there are terms and words that nowadays generation doesn’t know at all. Well, as it is common in other languages and countries.

If you are interested in topics like this you should check out sites like this:
http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/

You can listen to 76 sound recordings and over 600 short audio clips chosen from three collections of the British Library Sound Archive: the Survey of English Dialects, the Survey of Anglo-Welsh Dialects and the Millennium Memory Bank. You’ll hear Londoners discussing marriage and working life, Welsh teenagers talking with pride about being bilingual and the Aristocracy chatting about country houses. You can explore the links between present-day Geordie and our Anglo-Saxon and Viking past or discover why Northern Irish accents are a rich blend of seventeenth century English and Scots.

5. Personally I like various dialects of our country. I like to listen to them and then I try to guess where the speaker might come from. I also enjoy to discover old Czech words and incorporating them into my vocabulary. But not everyone understands this :). Do you create your lyrics directly in old English? Do you for example use snippets from old texts? Or do you create lyrics only based on your experience with old legends? Do you also focus on direct description of important places such as castles, old settlements or the country of England as whole?

On ‘The Mercian Sphere’ the main source of lyrical inspiration was a book called ‘The Codex Exoniensis’, which for all intents and purposes, is the annals of Anglo Saxon long verse poetry and is one of few links to our ancient history that can truly give a detailed insight into it. On this album we have concentrated on a number of interesting and beautiful stories from this text that have a real relevance to us that we have wished to celebrate in our music.


6. The whole album is permeated by a ternary saga of “The Wayfarer” songs. We may guess that they represent one cascading story which couldn’t be squeezed into a one song. When creating this song, have you already thought about splitting it into three parts or it just emerged when you realized that it is too long for a single song? Who is the mentioned “Wayfarer”? When listening it leaves an impression that almost anyone could be “Wayfarer”. The evocation of atmosphere is exemplary!

“The Wayfarer” trilogy is actually based on a traditional story called “The Wanderer” from the Codex Exoniensis, that tells a tale of a lost soul recounting his former days in light of the deaths of his leaders and friends in battle and learning to deal with his personal solitude and grief by finding solace in his homeland and the place he chose to defend with them. We also used a number of other poems from this book in other tracks such as ‘The Ruin’, ‘The Honour of Good Men On The Path To Eternal Glory’ and ‘The Fields Of Reckoning’.

7. I was fairly surprised by a re-recording of “Defending the Realm” which is found on your debut album. The former version didn’t satisfy you? I think that the new version has expanded only slightly. What made you to re-work it?

I think having finished ‘The Ghost Of Heritage’ we all felt that we hadn’t quite developed the song to its full potential, so after playing it live and developing it a lot over the 12 months in between albums, we decided to re-record the song to get the best out of it a second time. I would hope most people would agree that it is a massive improvement of ‘The Mercian Sphere’ and shows the song at its virulent and aggressive best.

8. My favourite song on the album is the fifth “Ruin”. Be it thanks to a strong and discreet main melody or the composition itself. It is something like my personal symbol for a more aggressive sound of WINTERFYLLETH. Even if I take that whispered intermezzo into account. What is the story of “Ruin”? Folk instrumental “Children of the Stones” serves as an introduction to “Ruins” and if I am not mistaken, Viola can be heard there. Well, I am not an expert so excuse my mistake if made one, I could use Viola only to beat enemies with it :). Who played the instrument? I didn’t find his or hers name in credits.

As I mentioned above, ‘The Ruin’ is based on a poem from the Code Exoniensis. It is about how the spirit of people lives on in the rocks and creations of mankind despite the wars and battles that go on around them and is also about the Saxon Conquest over the Roman town within which winning ownership The Ruin (a symbolic recreational centre of the city) is almost a symbol of triumphing over enemy and reclaiming the land.

As for Children of the Stones, it is actually a Violin being played over that song. The person playing the Violin is called Caroline Lucas (Simon our drummers’ Sister) who is mentioned in the credits, just below the band member names. Children of the Stones is actually a homage to a classic British television series from the 1970’s of the same name. It is about a modern family that live in a village that is surrounded by a huge stone circle, originally built around 5000 years ago. The series shows how they become involved with the strange spiritual practices of their fellow locals when they discover strange spiritual connections to the stones and the land that they live on. The village is based on a real village in England called Avebury. It is full of archaic, ancient charm. Hence the traditional English folk approach to the music.

9. The only thing I have to rebuke is the constant use of extreme “black” vocals because they sound same during the whole album and they start to bore me at the end. During for example “A Valley Thick With Oaks” they start to annoy me a bit, which wouldn’t happen if the track would be one of the firsts, otherwise it’s very good. I agree that because of heavier nature of material you had to put more emphasis on typical black metal croaking. But don’t you think that during certain parts you could diversify vocals a bit?

I’m not sure I would agree at all. There aren’t a lot of other black metal bands that use the vocal diversity that we do. On our album you will find spoken word vocals, extreme black metal vocals, whispered vocals, sung vocals and choral chant type vocals. What else would you possibly want us to do to further expand on that within the confines of a black metal record. Perhaps you are over looking this because it is a long album but I feel there is enough going on in the music, the dynamics of the songs and the structures to keep thing interesting.

10. Your logos have evolved during your career it’s nice to compare the one from “Rising of the Winter Full Moon” with one with an owl you use now. That one is truly brilliant. Did you create the new logo together with “The Mercian Sphere”? Who’s the author and why it is not portrayed (the owl one) on the front cover?

We have only had two logos in our career, the first one was designed by our drummer Simon for our first demo, but after then we have only had one logo which exists in a few forms. The newest logos are the owl, moon and tree roots, or simply just the tree roots. These were designed by Alexandru Moga of Kogaion Art who has done many great logos, search him out online.

In folklore Owls are symbols of wisdom, patience, and learning. The idea of an owl overseeing things fits in with what the band is about in that we want to educate people about our national history and who it relates to the modern world. The roots are based on a lyric from the title song from our first album “The Ghost of Heritage” which represents how roots are “The veins of our sacred land”, carrying through them the spirits of all who live and have lived in our beloved country.


11. I want to settle the topic about logos once more. I noticed three versions of it. One blue with a lake, second with a same photography but in beige design and third without a lake but with arms and in beige too. Which one is the correct one? What’s up with those covers anyway? .

Distributors and online stores are far too pre-emptive of album releases, so when they request album covers etc we had to send them the art as it currently stood at that moment in time. The correct artwork is of course that of the finished product which can be found on all related sites and tour posters. I agree with the lack of continuity this displays, but the impatience of stores and sellers dictates an interim occasionally, so there are a few “work in progress” versions out there.

12. Some time ago we could read about WINTERFYLLETH compared to a old stuff by Enslaved or to Ulver and Drudkh. I think this may serve as a good link and basic info for listeners. This is usually a work of labels. But I think that with a release of “The Mercian Sphere” it is not so easy to compare your music with the aforementioned bands, do you agree? Even in a past I would find only a few things, like “battle choirs” to be similar to those bands. .

I think that is good in a way as we feel like we are trying to create something uniquely English from the black metal template so many are familiar with, so the fact you cannot find as many links to more traditional black metal is perhaps a good thing.

Winterfylleth at its core is a black metal band that celebrates English/British history, culture, folklore & heritage, but a band that has a healthy respect for the music and styles of our history, hence why we incorporate the more traditional folk songs and the Gregorian esque chanted vocals into the music. We do this so we can separate it as distinctly English away from the Norse or US black metal which has become saturated and over copied through the years, and as I way to take black metal (we hope) down a different tangent that is relevant to us.

13. Thank you very much for the interview and I hope that one day you shall show us how the old England sounds live. .

There are a great number of quality black metal bands coming out of the UK at the moment, check them out:

1. Wodensthrone (Candlelight)
2. Fen (Code666)
3. Altar Of Plagues (Candlelight / Profound Lore)
4. Fyrdsman (Mynydd Du)
5. Skaldic Curse
6. Askival (Darker Than Black)
7. Cnoc An Tursa (Lone Vigil)
8. Iceni