Crystal Viper
To Really Enjoy Living on This Earth

29.12.2019

Singer Marta Gabriel of Poland’s Crystal Viper are one of those musicians that you can’t but get a bit envious of – for they manage to do so much in the same 24 hours that all of us have. Marta is not only the voice of her band, as is often the case, for she writes a lot of music and lyrics, she plays piano, guitar and bass, and she is open to side projects, like the recent Moon Chamber release with Rob Bendelow of Great Britain’s Saracen. On top of that, she makes clothes for top metal musicians from all over Europe. The release of Crystal Viper’s seventh studio album, “Tales Of Fire And Ice”, was a good opportunity for us to get in touch with Marta via phone, and make no doubt about it, she is every bit as energetic when talking about her music and life as you would expect from a person that fits the above description.

The title “Tales Of Fire And Ice” reminds me of the series of fantasy novels, “Song Of Fire And Ice”, on which the “Game Of Thrones” is based. Thematically, does the new album have anything in common with “Game Of Thrones”?

No, it has actually nothing in common. To be honest with you, I’m hearing this question pretty often. “Tales Of Fire And Ice” is a title that actually contains lyrics from songs from the album. There’s a song called “Neverending Fire”, where the main thing is fire, and we have a song called “Under Ice”. As we like playing with contrasts, we like playing with words, we just thought it would be a cool idea and a catchy sounding title for the album. That’s why we decided to use the title “Tales Of Fire And Ice”. It has nothing in common with “Game Of Thrones”, but I’m a huge fan of “Game Of Thrones”, I’ve seen all of its seasons. I like it, but it’s not connected.

My attention in the tracklist was immediately caught by the song about the Dyatlov Pass. Why did you decide to write about that story?

You know, I’m interested in general in legends about secrets of the world, unresolved mysteries, things and cases, and Dyatlov Pass is one of them. We had this idea to tell the story from a different and kind of unusual perspective – the story on our album is told by the force that killed the hikers. Maybe the force was afraid or it was protecting its own territory. I know that the case hasn’t been resolved until know, but as far as I know, your government just reopened this case in the beginning of this year, and I’m very curious what they will find, because it’s kind of interesting. So many ways, so many possibilities, but no one really knows what happened.

Originally the album cover was painted by Andreas Marschall, but for some reason it got quite a negative reaction on the Internet, and the album quickly got a completely different cover. In your opinion, why did Andreas Marshall’s work get so much criticism from fans? As far as I understand, the band liked the paining, didn’t you?

To be honest with you, I like it. I liked it then, and I like it now. But when we published it, as you just said, a lot of our fans didn’t like it. Crystal Viper are a kind of band who actually listens to their fans, and we want people who will get this album in the future to have an album that they will like not only musically, but also visually. That’s why we decided to change it. It looks like it was the right decision, because most people, friends and fans loved the new artwork from the very first sight. But I will keep on saying that I like both of them. (laughs)

Every Crystal Viper album traditionally has some legendary guests. What about the new one, are there any interesting collaborations on it?

You know, this time it was kind of natural that none of us had any idea to invite some guest. In the past it was like when we were composing songs or when we were recording some demo versions, working on preproduction and so on, there was something in our heads – “Oh, it would be cool to get this solo played by, for example, Ross The Boss!” And this time nobody came out with such idea. Nobody had this idea to invite anyone, it’s as simple as that. It’s not that we try to do the same thing every time, because this album is different, and on this album there are many more differences than having no guests.

It’s like you’re breaking with a very long-standing tradition, because as far as I understand, every Crystal Viper album in the past had guests, right?

Yes, that’s right.

Crystal Viper are now an established band, but in the beginning, on the first record (“The Curse Of Crystal Viper”, 2007), when you sang a duet with Gerrit Mutz from Sacred Steel, was it easy or difficult to get him onboard?

Actually it wasn’t that difficult, because we knew each other, we were kind of friends, and we still are. So we just asked him if he would be able to do that, he agreed, and we were happy. Of course, I’m a huge fan of Sacred Steel, so it was fun.

Some of your collaborations actually get a life of theri own. For instance, with Saracen guys: their singer Steve Bettney was guesting on your previous album, “Queen Of The Witches” (2017), and now you have a side project called Moon Chamber with Saracen guitarist Rob Bendelow. Could you tell me a bit how you got to know the Saracen guys and how Moon Chamber came into being?

The story of Moon Chamber started in such an unusual way, because my husband, Bart Gabriel, who is also the manager and the producer of Crystal Viper, runs his own record company, Skol Records, and he released a Saracen single some time ago. When he sent copies to Saracen guys, Rob Bendelow, after he got his copy, had this idea – “I will check on the internet who this guy Bart is”. Through Bart’s record company he found Crystal Viper, and he found me, he found my voice. He loved my voice so much that that he composed a song for me, and he contacted Bart and said that he had composed a song and that he would be so happy if I could record vocals for it, because he thought it would sound nice with my voice. Well, for me it was a great thing, because I love Saracen, and I loved that song, because it had a very good melody. But even before I got a chance to record anything, on the next day, Rob sent another song that he composed for me! He said, “OK, the single needs a b-side, so here’s another one!” One thing led to another, it turned out that Rob is very much into composing and playing and he liked my voice very much. It was actually my idea to create a band around those two songs, because it was a moment when Crystal Viper wasn’t very active, and I was thinking about creating another project. I already had a name for it, it was Moon Chamber, so the name already existed. I remember I was composing doom metal songs back then, because I really wanted to start my own doom metal project, and I had a few songs and the band name, but then Rob contacted us, and I thought, “OK, Moon Chamber would be a great name for this band”. From one word to another with Rob, I asked him if he would be interested in doing an entire album – “If you want to compose, I want to sing, I have time right now, maybe we should work together”. He liked the idea, and a couple of months later all songs for the album were ready, one year later we recorded it in the studio, and yeah, the album is done, it’s coming out tomorrow!

Another one of your recent collaborations is with Todd Michael Hall of Riot V. With Crystal Viper you have covered a lot of classic metal songs, but why did with Todd you decide to cover a Lady Gaga song?

First of all, me and Todd are very good friends. A few years ago, when Todd was the vocalist of Jack Starr’s Burning Starr, they had a tour in Europe, and they needed a second live guitarist. I was free, we were friends, and I became their guitarist onstage. That was my first time working with Todd. After that with Crystal Viper, we recorded a Riot song, “Thundersteel”, and Todd was already in Riot V, so we invited him to do some duets with me, and we found out that our voices sounded pretty good together. That was the very first time I was singing together with Todd. This Lady Gaga cover, it was like – you know, I’m playing a lot of my piano; sometimes when I have time, I just sit at my piano, and I play songs that I like. Why Lady Gaga? Well, I’m a fan of music in general, not only heavy metal, apart from metal there are so many genres that I love. I love good pop music, I like classical music and so on, and this song, “Shallow”, is actually a beautiful song with beautiful lyrics. In my case, it was a love from the first hearing. And I actually liked playing it on my piano singing along with it. I came up with this idea to maybe record it and put it out on the Internet just for fun – something that I’d never done before. And there was another idea to maybe invite Todd if he likes the song, so I asked him if he was interested in doing that together with me. He also liked the idea, because he actually loves the song as much as I do. We recorded it together, I recorded the keyboards, I recorded vocals here in Poland, Todd recorded vocals at his home in the USA. And there was also a very nice thing that Riot V were playing at Sabaton Open Air in Falun, Sweden, on the same day as Crystal Viper. You know, there was Riot V, and right after them, Crystal Viper, so were at the same time in the same backstage, and we had this idea to shoot a video for this one. That’s actually the whole story about this project. It was just that we decided to do it together musically to do something different, and also to bring a message through music. It’s also an important and beautiful thing that when you’re a musician you are able only to sing or play, but also to say something important to people.

You know, I interviewed Donnie Van Stavern of Riot V just a couple if weeks ago, and he told me that it was actually Bart Gabriel who put the band in contact with Todd…

Yes, the world is small, isn’t it? (laughs)

Indeed! Two Americans getting in contact with each other through somebody in Poland – it’s fantastic!

It’s just because we were friends with Todd and with Jack Starr’s Burning Starr, and Bart had known the guys from Riot for a long time, and he knew that they were looking for a vocalist, so he put them in contact.

While getting prepared for this interview, I found one of your older interviews online, in which you said that by the time the first Crystal Viper album was released, you could only play piano. But by now you have been playing guitar for a while, and on the Moon Chamber album you recorded all bass guitar parts. When and how did you manage to master guitar and bass? Do you have any plans to learn to play drums as well?

(laughs) This is actually a good question! Only space is limiting me, because I have no free space at the moment at home where I could put drums to play them on a daily basis! (everybody laughs) When I was a kid, I really wanted to play piano. I was six or seven when I told my father that I wanted to be a musician, and they send me to music school where I was playing piano for many years. As I was growing up, I started to listen to many different genres of music, and heavy metal had always a special place in my heart. I started singing in local bands and so on, and when Crystal Viper was born, you are right, I was composing mostly on the piano. But when you are composing music, and you have bandmates, you want to show them how to play your songs, but you are limited to only one instrument. It was not easy to play guitar riffs on the piano, so I just needed to learn to play guitar to show other people how to play the songs that I had in my head. I was actually learning to play guitar when composing my own songs, and I was developing my skills when I was composing Crystal Viper music. (laughs) I wasn’t playing covers by other bands, and it look me a long time. Sometimes when you want to show somebody something you don’t need to play well, but if you want to record demos, work on preproduction, you need to have better skills to be able to record. So I was getting better and better, and at the end I became the second guitarist in Crystal Viper. When I learned to play guitar, it was kind of natural that I started to play bass. When I was composing music in my home studio, I recorded vocals, I recorded piano, I was programming drums, I was recording guitars – alright, to get a solid demo I need to record bass as well. Thus, I started to learn bass guitar. I would love to play drums - me and Bart, we have our own set of drums, a pretty good one, but we keep it at our rehearsal room, we don’t keep it at home, because we have no space for that. I’m thinking quite seriously about buying electronic drums, they are not that big, and I can play them with headphones on and record pretty easily on my computer. But, well, it won’t happen tomorrow. (laughs) It’s a thing to think about in the future, not now.

On your recent EP “At The Edge Of Time” you have a version of the title track in the Polish language, which is something you do quite rarely. I was actually surprised that your voice sounds much different in Polish than in English. From your own perspective, which language is easier to sing and to write lyrics in?

“At The Edge Of Time” was actually the second song we recorded in the Polish language. The first one was “The Last Axeman” on the first album, we also had it in Polish, but it wasn’t very popular because we didn’t have any music video for that. With “At The Edge Of Time” it was like – we recorded it in two languages and created and published music videos for both versions on the same day. We did it just for fun, to do something different. When you’re a musician and you’re working on music, sometimes you have crazy ideas, and you want to realize everything you have in your head. It was something like this with this Polish version. Which language is more difficult? You know, it depends on the lyrics you want to write… Well, how to say that? The lyrics for “At The Edge Of Time” first came in the English language, the Polish version came later, and they are about the same thing, although we had to change some lines, because, of course, you cannot translate from English to Polish using the same words. I think in the Polish language we have many more words to describe something than in English. The Polish language is kind of interesting for me to sing in, because I don’t do it pretty often, I mean, I don’t do it at all. I think that the best language for heavy metal is English, because I think it’s more melodic, and it has this kind of softness when you’re singing. The Polish language is a Slavic language, we have a lot of “g”, “zh”, “ch”, “rrr” and these kinds of things. For us it sounds nice, but for people from behind the border it might be kind of weird to listen to this. And Crystal Viper is a band that plays mostly behind the border, so singing in English is kind of more reasonable. (laughs) Recording in Polish was fun and interesting, maybe we will do something like this in the future again. But I will tell you something more interesting – last year with Crystal Viper we recorded a song in the Hungarian language. I don’t speak Hungarian at all, but in Hungary there’s a band called Ossian, we are huge fans of Ossian, and we got this opportunity to record a cover song of Ossian for a Metal Hammer compilation for an Ossian anniversary, and Ossian have their lyrics in Hungarian. This was something, you know – to record vocals in a language that you don’t have any idea how to sing! (laughs) I think I did pretty well, and even people from Hungary said I’m pretty good in Hungarian. (cracks) Maybe I’m good at languages, and I don’t know it!

That was actually my next question. I’m actually a very big fan of Hungarian rock and metal, and I love Ossian, but how did you get to know them? Are Ossian big in Poland?

I would say that classic heavy metal is not very popular in Poland. Not only Ossian, but heavy metal in general. But they are huge in Hungary, really. We had an opportunity last month to support Ossian, to be their guests at their anniversary live show in Hungary, and man, people love them, really. And they are amazing live!

Why is it then that classic heavy metal is not very popular in Poland? More extreme Polish bands like Behemoth or Vader are famous all over the world, why is it so difficult then to break through with more traditional metal in your home country?

To be honest with you, I have freaking no idea! Really, seriously, I don’t know! But it has always been like that – more brutal bands have been more popular in Poland. We have a very strong black and death metal scene, and there are still a lot of newcomer bands. Why heavy metal and classic metal are not popular, I really don’t know. I wish I’d known, but I don’t.

On your Facebook page you recently asked your friends to suggest any new metal bands that you may have not heard before. Have there been any suggestions that you listened to and got really impressed?

You know, when I did that, I was checking all of them, and actually I found some cool stuff, but honestly most of the things that were interesting to me I knew before. I really didn’t find anything new, but it was interesting, because being a fan of music, I kind of like discovering new things, and I always believe that maybe I will find something nice. It’s a very similar thing, for example, with YouTube – you write “Iron Maiden The Trooper”, you are watching Iron Maiden, and you have suggestions on the right side of the screen. Sometimes you can also discover some nice things this way. The Internet is a powerful tool for finding new music and being able to get to music you want to listen to.

My next question is also Facebook-related. Late last year you closed down your clothing line Thunderball Clothing – once again, after a lot of negativity online. I was hoping you would change your mind, but I checked the company’s Facebook page yesterday, and there’s been no posts for a long time. What hobbies do you have now, when you don’t make clothes anymore?

With Thunderball Clothing the story is that the name of the company and the label do not exist, but I keep on doing this. For example, this year I was working plenty of times with Sabaton, I dressed both line-ups for the Wacken anniversary show – there was the current Sabaton and the old members, I was working with Alissa (White-Gluz) from Arch Enemy and so on, so I didn’t quit this activity, and I’m still doing it. I just don’t have a new name for this, because this year I was focusing more on the new album, on working with a new band member and on changes that we had in Crystal Viper. I stopped playing guitar live, Eric (Juris) joined the band, we were working on album pre-production, there were so many things to do that I just kept on working with artists and musicians, creating creations for them, but I didn’t put anything online. Right now there’s no platform for me to show it, because Thunderball doesn’t exist, I didn’t create anything new in the sense of a company name, but I keep on doing in, and very soon I will announce it officially with a new name and so on. I just need more time, because sometimes I feel like the days are really too short.

That’s a problem I know very well! (everybody laughs)

OK, so it’s not only me!

You just mentioned that you stopped playing guitar in Crystal Viper. Why is that?

It’s because for many years I was standing on stage during the entire show glued to my microphone stand for most of the time. I was limited in movement, in contact with the audience, because my left hand was on the guitar, my right hand was on the guitar, and I couldn’t make any gestures during my playing and so on, and I had to stand in one place. And I’m the kind of person, I’m like a ball of energy that needs to explode (laughs), and with playing guitar I couldn’t do it on stage. Right now, when I don’t play guitar, I can run, I can jump, I have better contact with people. It’s amazing and it was actually the main reason to look for a second live guitarist and for me to quit playing guitar live. But probably – I don’t know when, but we have some plans for the future – we will perform some songs with three guitars. We will see, I think it will be cool. I love playing guitar, sometimes I miss that, but in comparison with what I can do without a guitar on stage, I think I prefer to perform without a guitar.

Maybe we will see Crystal Viper with three guitars next year at Russian festival Big Gun, what do you think? And in general, what are your expectations from this festival? You will be coming to Russia for the first time…

Well, I don’t know if we will do it live in Russia next year, I would love to, but we will see. Our expectations… I expect to have fun first of all, because we play music to make our lives more beautiful, to be active, to really enjoy living on this Earth, which everybody knows sucks sometimes. This is the reason that we play music – to make life better. Our plans for Russia are the same as for the other live shows – to go there, to do our thing, to create a heavy metal hurricane on stage, and we are pretty excited, because this is gonna be our very first time in Russia. We’ve never played there, and I’ve never been to Russia at all in my life, so we can’t wait really.

Crystal Viper on the Internet: http://www.crystalviper.com/

Special thanks to Irina Ivanova (AFM Records) for arranging this interview

Interview by Roman Patrashov
Photos courtesy of AFM Records
October 24, 2019
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