1. Greetings to Israel from far, far away, WINTERHORDE! First of all I would like to express my gratitude for this interview. I will begin kind of informally - these days, quite a severe winter should be reigning in my land (yet it has not been quite so)...so, how is the weather now in your region?

Hey Naargoth, greetings and hails from the "cold" Israely northern highlands and thank you for taking the time to interview us. :) You've said your severe winter hasn't started yet, well our winter is too scared of our summer and doesn't want to come out.

2. As WINTERHORDE are quite an unknown band in Czech Republic, could you please tell us a few sentences about the history of your horde, about the band members, about how you got together in the very beginning etc?

Ha, I like it: the HORDE, it has a nice ring to it, the bad had quite a "few" changes over the years before actually became "winterhorde" .We started out as a black metal oriented band and since most of the members were from the same bunch, it did serve the purpose, but somewhere along the way it just wasn't enough anymore and a few changes were made to the band. New people came with new attitudes towards metal , so we decided to take ouselves to the next level and challange oursleves with other and more suffisticated elements of the genre.

3. From what I know, since the band started in 2001, you have released two full-length albums (and demo "In Traditions of Winter"). Is this longer time period between the releases a time of inspiration, composing and polishing of the new material or do you spend it by playing gigs, participating in other bands (who and in which?) or by completely different things, such as family, friends, casual jobs...?

Almost all of the above is correct. We do spend a lot of time composing and polishing our music because we are six people in the band with six hundred and sixty six different influences and approaches and everyone has different musical influences and direction, so combining this whole ordeal is quite the challange but this is really the catch and when we finally come to a concensus it hits all the spots. Winterhorde is the main thing in our lives, so we do not waste time on any other side projects and since most of us are university students we do not have the spare time to even if we wanted.

4. Yet now to the most important part - to your music. When listening to the "Nebula" album, I already was pleasantly surprised by the variety and colourfulness with which you perform your melodic black metal, which was confirmed by your latest album "Underwatermoon". Could you try to say into which branch or "bracket" of black metal your current art belongs to?

Well as I already said earlier, we try not to brand or limit ourselves into just one stream. We try to reach as many musical heights as we can, we do however maintain the "black metal" atmosphere because it is afterall our mutual metal cradle so to speak and thanx for the compliment by the way.

5. On what element do you place the main emphasis during the composing process (atmosphere, progressiveness, overall consistency of the album, straight-forwardness...)? What topics does your music touch the most often?

Most of the time the atmosphere is the main emphasis, but thats only on the idea level. Everything else is a part of the creating process and each time it works a little different, but nothing really escapes the grasp of the HORDE, because after we decide on the atmosphere we push and shoot into all other directions of cration.


6. Your latest album "Underwatermoon" is a conceptual one. Could you please in a few words introduce the story of the album and the impulses that lead you to composing it and to the decision of making the album a concept?

This is definately question for our bassist Celestial, he wrote the story. The story is about tragic fate of a gypsy girl, living in Spain and a foreign sailor .Their ways were crossed in the very dark and misterious ways. Most of us are fans of conceptual albums and having our own story, it was just natural trying to do it.I think it makes an album unique in it's own way and that's great.

7. One can very well feel the good unity and "chemistry" of the band on "Underwatermoon". Could you please describe how the album was born and how the composing process and the release itself were?

The idea of the album was born inside our basist's thinking core after that crazy European tour, he then slowly turned it into a full scale story, and when it was completely ready, we started working and making it into an album. We even had an idea about turning it into a live scale show on stage, still thinking in that direction by the way. After the music was written, we called upon a very special persona (V.Santura from Tryptikon and Dark Fortress). This guy is amazing. He got us right away and understood very well what needed to be done. He recorded almost all our instrumental part and after our keyboards man Morgenrott recorded the vocals, V.Santura made the mixing ,mastering and the final touches. After the album was ready, then came "Twilight" guys and it's the story thus far. :)

8. One can feel a strong shift towards more epic, experimental and varied sound that happened between "Nebula" and "Underwatermoon". Is this a natural evolution of your music that we can expect on the future albums too?

In the next album, we are planning to push the progression even further and we will not be taking any hostages either I can definately say, that we are going to reach elements and aspects that we havent managed to reach yet, but I believe that its only the right evolutionary process that we as band must follow.

9. Shifting the music over the borders of platitude can not go without (among other things) solid and always progressing vocal performance, which for sure is the case of "Underwatermoon" too. Were all the vocals done just by Horeph or did the rest of the band also participate?

Most of the vocals on the album are Horeph's wheather they are clean or grawls, but as I'm sure that you have already noticed there are famimnine touches here and there, this is not him of course, ha ha. There were also songs in which other members participated as backing elements, while the narrations were done by the author himself.

10. Your lyrics on both of the albums were in English - have not you ever thought about writing (at least some part of) your lyrics in your mother tongue?

Our band is a mixed society and we have more than one native language, but english is very colorfull and almost everybody speaks it and if to be honest, this idea never really came up. It was too obvious since the beginning that the lyrics will be in english.

11. How is it when it comes to the visual side of your records? Do you do these by yourself or do you let the graphic studios do their job?

We all follow the approach of: let the proffesionals do theyr job, because nothing is done as good as it would be by someone who dosn't really know or understand how to do or what to do, which is why we turned to graphic studios for that exact reason.The artwork for "Underwatermoon" was done by famous brazilian artist Gustavo Sazes who has worked with many great bands.

12. Where and in what do you usually seek inspiration and where can one most probably meet you in such moments? Is it in the nature or more on the city corners, in the boozers etc...?

Each and every member has his own personal inspiration seeking places and moments, for me personally it happens while im working on a scetch or a building drawing, but ispiration is a strange thing, it can come to you and most of the times it does by surprise whenever and wherever you might be and whatever you might be doing.


13. Taking it a bit from the other side - what has the reactions of the fans been so far, when it comes to the new album? Do you see any major differences between the reactions coming from the Israeli scene and those from the rest of the world?

Honestly, there's no major differences between local and global scences about reactions on the new album. Music is international language on one side and it's very individual from another.Although, Israeli listeners are more familiar with older Winterhorde works, so they can judge the progression more clearly I guess. We are part of this scene, people grow with us, seeing us playing live, talking with us, whereas listeners from the rest of the world just get it as it is. Both of reactions, in fact are very important for us as a band.

14. I would stay by the previous question a little longer - what about your general reception in Israel? I mean, for example, have you ever had problems because of the music you play? How is (extreme) metal in general seen in you homeland? How do you, as an insider, see the Israeli metal scene?

Israely metal scene is quite flourishing it never takes a brake always kicking each and every year we have more and more bands coming from all over the world to perform and, if i needed to tell you which ones then it would require a full page :) and we never really had problems playing this music, although it is not the main attraction in our area. Most of the people here listen either to southern mideteranian music or pop music, even the metal listeners prefer the more pop oriented genres like new metal well at least most of them. I personally prefer it that way it makes kinda unique.

15. What about you and live performances? Are you planning to also come to the central Europe with WINTERHORDE?

There is no doubt about it what so ever, there is nothing like performing and going on tour. There is just so many places we want to go to perform , well to be honest, all over the world if it is possible, and by the way if we already on that note then we do have a Europen tour in plans this October, so, maybe there's a chance to reach Czech Republic as well.

16. I can not end this interview without asking you if you know the Czech Republic and if you have already visited it?

No, sadly I have never had the chance to visit the Czech republic, but I personally and we as a band would definatly want to come and visit. I know our basist is a big fan of your country,he's been there recently, so better ask him, ha ha.

17. Thank you many times for the interview, which I tried to be more of an introduction of our readers and a very promising band WINTERHORDE; and I am looking forward for your future releases and eventually even interviews. All the best and I wish you that the well of your inspiration and passion to create exciting music never dries out!

Thank you very much! We appreciate your kind words and again thank you for taking the time and interview us.

Hope to hear from you again. Hails from Israel and have a great time.