1. Greetings. It is quite common in funeral doom that a single person composes everything in the band. How do you compose when there are four of you? Don’t you sometimes have a problem to find a mutual agreement?

Greetings. The main mastermind behind the album was our former guitarist, Oleg “Merethir”. He created the basis of each song and other members contributed to that afterwards. So there were no problems with this as Oleg and the rest of the Narrow House always had a strong vision of the music we wanted to create. And yes, there were five of us originally.

2. Where in your opinion begin the roots of this genre?

Metal began as a riot but with more and more musicians involved in this genre there just had to be new riots within the metal itself. I think that people just fed up with thrash and death metal which have always been considered as a “fast” music. Might be that at some point someone just had a thought “What if you play extremely slow instead of extremely fast?” Might be that diSEMBOWELMENT were the first to come up with this idea. Actually, I just felt in love with the sound of their clean guitars and always tried to do something similar with my bass throughout our first album.

Such bands as Thergothon, Skepticism (shared a stage with these guys and fucking proud of it), and Funeral are generally considered to be the pioneers of the funeral doom. I don’t have problem with that. Each of them has brought something specific into this field and helped to shape the genre as we know it today.

3. Why did you decide to play this genre of music and why exactly do you call it “apocalyptic doom”?

Okay, lets clear a few things first. We choose ambient (or “atmospheric” as some people prefer) funeral doom as a style for “A Key to Panngrieb” and we have never called it anything else. But after the departure of Oleg “Merethir” from the band we have chosen to move forward and came up with this new “apocalyptic doom” stuff which is all over our website and social media pages now. I know that this is pretty confusing for people who don’t know our past, but I hope that this interview will give you some clue.

So, why have we decided to play this genre? Well, in early days we started with some gothic doom stuff that has never seen a light of the day. We just realised that we don’t want to be another gothic band on the Ukrainian stage. Instead we decided to explore something more serious and rare for our metal scene - funeral doom. How rare is it in our country? This might surprise you but we were the first to give “live” funeral doom performances in some of the Ukrainian cities. We had an honor to actually introduce some new people to this genre. So you might call us one of the pioneers of funeral doom here in Ukraine, ha-ha. Most of other funeral doom bands here are actually a one man band projects who never play live.

And now a few words about what is actually “apocalyptic doom”. The thing is that I always have been in more traditional doom metal which is a rare thing here in Ukraine too, so I’ve chosen it as a new basis for our future music. Fortunately or not, I added some other elements to our new material and couldn’t call it “traditional doom” anymore. We have a saxophone as a solo instrument and cello as the bass. We have slow parts and speedy parts. More clean vocals, less growling. Most songs don’t have lyrics at all, as I don’t feel like singing when there’s nothing to tell. The music does it all, it speaks to listener’s souls directly. Catchy doom guitar riffs, shorter songs, beautiful pianos, even acoustic compositions. It is a powerful and emotional music. Check out some videos from the live gigs at our YouTube channel if you feel like.

4. If I am not mistaken you also have a woman in your band? Is she a fan of such music or is she in the band just for the professional reasons?

Yes, you are right. Her name is Catherine and we use her to attract male fans to our music. Just kiddin’. She’s actually into this kind of music and currently the only original member of Narrow House that is left by now except me, of course.

5. What brought you the contract with the label Solitude Productions? This label represents many great bands from the states of the former Soviet Union. What is your opinion about the label? Are you satisfied with their efforts?

When we were ready with our album and started to search for the label, Solitude Productions were one of the first to contact with us on this matter. We agreed to sign a contract with them, and I’m really glad we did that. This label has a good reputation throughout the world, and can be considered as the best doom metal label in post-USSR with no doubts.

They produce quality CDs and I’m very pleased with how our album sounds and looks as a physical product. The other thing that literally amazed me is their list of submission which they use to send the new releases for the reviews. It’s huge!

So, yes, they are professionals and I’m very grateful to them for all they did.

6. Are you in contact with other Ukrainian bands such as Until My Funerals Began, Funestum or Koloss?

Never met them or shared a stage with, but Funestum sounds familiar. Hmm, let me think. Where could I hear that name before? Oh, sure, I remember now! We were Funestum before we became Narrow House.

Nevermind, people often get confused with this. Actually, we love to confuse people with everything. The story is that we started our funeral doom career in 2008 as Funestum (all of the original Narrow House members are from this band), but then we changed the name in 2009 and continued our music career. This is a very confusing story by itself, so I won’t get into details. All you need to know is that we have produced a nice demo track back then and I still listen to it from time to time. Just visit YouTube and search for “The Gates of Eon”. We never played it as Narrow House, so it’s history now.

7. What does the word “Panngrieb” means? Does the album has any concept? What can we imagine when we read the title “A Key to Panngrieb”?

“Panngrieb” is nothing and everything at the same time. To start with, this word does not exist (well, until we came up with it, obviously), so save your time and don’t try to find it in the dictionary or ancient mythology. “Panngrieb” can be everything you want it to be, it is an individual experience of each listener and our album is the key to it. Our music can submerge you into a special emotional condition, make you ask yourself different questions that are not usual in daily life filled with routine. Who are you? What are you? Why are you here? What for? For how long?

The album has a concept of exploring us, the human beings, our place in this universe, our thoughts and inner world, the reasons we die and what happens next.

While reading the title and imagining what it’s all about - don’t miss the cover art. Our friend Andrey Sivolap did a great job capturing the philosophy behind this album with it.

8. While we are at it, what can we imagine under “Narrow House”? Is it somehow related to the Panngrieb?

The one thing I learned is that most of the people out there are pretty much confused with our name too. We just took it for granted and never thought this will ever be a problem. What is narrow, has four walls (sometimes six) and serves as the last refuge for the human body? That’s right, a coffin, a “narrow house”. That much for the mystery.

What is the coffin besides that? It is the starting point for one’s afterlife, if you believe in it of course. It is the beginning of the new journey that can continue in a form of another life, or even end up in the form of alternative universe.

Listen to “A Key to Panngrieb”, decide what is important to you in this life and what do you want with it, and start your journey to accomplish that.

9. What can you tell us about the lyrics of “A Key to Panngrieb”? By the way what about the future albums? Do you plan to follow similar invented concepts?

The lyrics were written in two languages - Russian and Ukrainian. I have willfully decided to make it this way, so our local listeners would have an opportunity to understand our music in full scale. And it’s far more easy to explain yourself in your native language. However, we have made English translation for the lyrics - they are available at our official website.

Talking about the future albums - one is in the works right now. We will continue to explore human as a subject but from a new “apocalyptic” perspective. The end of the world has always been a serious theme for each generation. We have our own this year. What exactly will destroy us? Aliens? Zombies? Natural disasters? The dying sun? Or maybe people will be capable to kill themselves without additional help? We shall see.

10. How often do you play live? Are there good conditions for concerts in Ukraine?

In the funeral doom era of ours when we had a stable lineup we performed at least once a month. This year we had just two gigs and introduced our new “apocalyptic doom” material. Let’s just say that funeral doom is not a popular metal genre in Ukraine (well, lets be honest - it’s not popular in the rest of the world too). Most local metalheads don’t dig it. Our new stuff should attract more people, but it’s really hard to find somebody who is willing to join the band that plays doom oriented music these days. Most people are sure that “doom” equals to “boring”. Deathcore, hardcore blah-blah core? Yes, please! Doom metal? No, fuck you! Nevertheless, we have a strong doom metal scene but it’s more sludge/stoner oriented.

The situation with concerts is a bit disturbing. And it didn’t start just now. The clubs started to close their doors since our first gigs (this has nothing to do with us, no worries). And now the only great doom festival that we ever had, “Doom Over Kiev”, might never happen again too. To make the picture more clear - the last three concerts we had were organized in the very same club.

The truth is that people who organize such gigs are happy when they are able just to return their money back, so no additional income for their work, no. Commonly they are just enthusiasts who love doom metal and want to keep the scene alive. It’s a common practise to pay the bands nothing (we were payed just once). Some of the organizers even ask bands to sell a specific number of tickets for the right to take a part in the gig. Never did that though.

To summarize - doom metal music in Ukraine cannot be considered as a business in any way. It’s more like a hobby that musicians are willing to pay for, and each opportunity to present it to the audience is considered to be a luck.

11. What do you think about Ukraine in terms of politics, economics and history? Do you consider yourself to be the patriot?

I have lived all my life here and my point of view on these topics has changed with the time. The politics is considered to be a funny joke here. It looks like it’s totally okay for Ukraine to have a statue of the pig with our current president’s face in the center of the Kyiv. I don’t know how much time it will take our nation to produce a stable political situation, but right now people and politics are all living their separate life. And I’m okay with that. Actually, it’s even comfortable in some ways. We have a certain amount of anarchy in our daily live. There are rules, but no one seems to follow them. I’m surprised we are still a country.

Economics? Can’t blame it. I have an opportunity to earn enough money to rent a flat, pay taxes, buy beer and everything else I need. But there are thousands of people who don’t. Who’s fault is it? Government's? Or maybe those people themselves? Our nation always liked to blame someone else. This is bad, that is bad. Few are motivated enough to do something to make their life better. Most don’t.

History is the most valuable part of Ukraine. We are proud of our history, but it seems like our nation generally is not able to create something new, just to chew the past and say how great it was. It’s kinda depressing. I was in St. Petersburg this year. I was pretty impressed how much effort Russia puts in transforming their history into their present. Yes, they have their own problems but they don’t whine so much about it.

I don’t feel that I’m a classic Ukrainian person, that people can tell funny stories about. I don’t even like salo that much, ha-ha. There are things that I love about Ukraine, but I despise those “patriots” who blindly cry that it’s the best country in the world. It’s not, but it has a good potential of becoming one. I’ll do my best to help with this.

12. Are you from Kiev? Haven’t you ever thought of relocating to the countryside or to some foreign country?

I’m originally from Kharkov. It’s another big Ukrainian city that was even a capital in the past. It’s popular with it’s black metal scene (Nokturnal Mortum etc.). I live in Kyiv for about 13 years now. It’s funny you’re asking me about the countryside as I’m currently in the progress of building a house there. Each weekend for the past two years. This is what grim and frostbitten funeral doom musicians do here in Ukraine - build houses in the countrysides for themselves, plant potatoes and stuff. Who knows, I might even create a studio there.

I’m also a traveler. I have been to many European countries including Czech Republic, so I can say that I had an opportunity to see how do you people live there. I actually enjoyed your country very much, especially that place where they serve raw meet, you eat with your own hands and there are skulls all over the place. Reminds me of my kitchen. By the way, there is a good chancet hat all original Narrow House crew will gather in Czech Republic this year to hear some apocalyptic tunes of “Godspeed You! Black Emperor”, so if anybody wants to get in touch - feel free to poke me in the eye.

Can’t say I would blindly changed my current place of living. Of course, if I would offered a well payed job, I would consider that. Anyway, there are still things that I can achieve right here in Ukraine. Considering music as a reason to move somewhere else - it is possible too, but I must be sure I will able to have a good life there whenever my music career will be successful or not. I’m sure it will be, but this will take some time for sure.

13. What can we expect from Narrow House in the upcoming years?

Probably the new album will be out next year. At least I hope so. Expect new dimensions of doom metal, bizarre instruments, clean vocals and English lyrics. We will stay true to the atmospheric part of Narrow House and there will be even some funeral vibe for our old fans. The most important thing is we continue playing doom metal, so stay tuned for updates.

14. Thank you for the interview. Do you have any message for your western neighbours and listeners?

Thank you for these unusual questions. The message is: appreciate what you have, be open minded and happy; discover as much good things as you can and don’t waste your life. Have a nice day, sincerely yours, Bewitched.