Samael
In A Fair Game

16.03.2016

The black magicians of Samael have been more and more reluctant lately to draw attention to themselves. It’s been five years since the release of their latest studio album, “Lux Mundi”, but the Swiss four-piece are still working on a next masterpiece with no unnecessary haste about it. However, they do go out from time to time even amidst studio work. Last year they rocked the festival circuit with the show based on 1994’s legendary “Ceremony of Opposites” album, and now they are bringing it to Russia, so the upcoming gigs will feature the performance of “Ceremony…” in its entirety. Shortly before these gigs I reached out to frontman Vorth to discuss both the upcoming record, which is still a work in progress, and various dark corners of the band’s history as well as to clarify some details of the upcoming shows.

How did you come up with the idea to play “Ceremony Of Opposites” in its entirety live? Why did you choose this particular album, and not “Passage”, which is an equally classic record?

It’s hard to say. One of the reasons was that two years ago there was the 20th anniversary of the album, and we thought about maybe doing a couple of shows with that. But there was no real interest at that moment. Then our management got in touch with different festival organizers, and they wanted to have it. We did four shows in Canada first, and then it kind of started to grow, and we did almost every European festival with this formula. And we’re happy to do this in Russia, because it’s something different. We’re not only playing this album, we’re playing the whole album plus some more recent material, so it’s gonna be interesting for people to attend this special event.

“Ceremony Of Opposites” is more than 20 years old. Do you strive to play it as close to the original version as possible, or do you want to present an up-to-date version of it?

It’s kind of in-between. One of the things is that we’ve had a drum computer for 20 years. “Passage” was released in August 1996, and it’s been 20 years since we’re working with the drum machine. We’re gonna do the whole album with the drum machine as well, so that will be different from the original. We kind of update little things, but basically we’ve tried to stay as close as possible to the original.

You started with Samael in the late 80s. At that time Celtic Frost were the most successful and almost the only ones of your countrymen playing extreme metal. Were you influenced by Tom Warrior’s creativity?

Of course. I’ve always been a big fan of what Tom is doing, I love Hellhammer, I really love Celtic Frost, and I’m a big fan of Triptykon, the band he’s having now. It’s somebody I really have a big respect for, and it definitely had an influence on us in the beginning.

Speaking about the beginnings of our career, your first three albums have recently been re-released on cassette tape. Is there a big demand for this medium among your fans? And what medium (CD/vinyl/mp3) do you personally prefer?

I cannot really tell you how big the demand for it is, because there is a Greek company that is doing the tapes, and they made a deal with Century Media. We got just a few copies for our official shop. I think it’s more of a nostalgic thing, because nobody really listens to them anymore, although for me personally it was cool to have them. They’re of good quality, and they kind of remind you of the time when it was an important medium to have.
As to the question about my favorite medium, it’s hard to say. I’m a big fan of vinyls, because they’re bigger, the cover is bigger, the dynamic of the music is quite often better done than what you’ve got on CD. I like CD, too. I’m not a big fan of downloading things, I haven’t downloaded anything yet at this point, I’m still buying CDs. To me the quality is better, and I like to have the object. I like to have the information that comes with it. If I listen to some music on the radio, that music doesn’t matter as much, I don’t need to own anything, and if it’s something I choose to have, I want to have it on CD.

A year ago you parted ways with longtime bassist Mas, who spent nearly 15 years in the band. Why did it happen?

The thing is Mas – probably you don’t know – is doing the lights for more than 10 years now. He has done lights for many bands, including In Flames, Dimmu Borgir…

Yeah, I saw him in Moscow with Carcass…

How he’s working not only with Carcass, but primarily with Carcass. He’s had a lot of shows, and there were a few occasions when he couldn’t make it to our gigs, so we had to find somebody else to play with us. He’s actually the one who called Drop so that we could have somebody to cover for him, and when we started to play with Drop, he really fit very well. We felt that maybe we had to make a real decision, and I think that was for the best for both parties, really.

How much did the band change with the addition of new bass player Drop?

Hmm… It changed a little, but it’s hard to say. Drop is formerly a guitar player, so he’s got a very precise way to play the bass. And he’s a producer as well, so he’s got a good understanding of music. I think he’s bringing something more… Some of the songs, he’s playing as they are on the record, but at the same time, he finds some interesting spots to play more harmony, which wasn’t there before. And he’s really tight. I think we’re tighter with him than we’ve ever been before.

How did you end up recording some vocals in French on the latest album by Rotting Christ (“Rituals”, 2016)? By the way, what is the meaning of your words (I don’t speak French unfortunately)?

We were playing a festival in Norway, and Sakis (Tolis, Rotting Christ singer/guitarist – ed.) came to me and talked about the project. I’ve known Sakis forever, Xy produced two Rotting Christ albums in the late 90s, and they’re good friends of ours. He said they wanted to have this poem by Baudelaire, “The Litanies Of Satan”. That was something we felt like doing back in the day. I knew the version of Diamanda Galas, and once I heard it, I thought it was good enough, and I didn’t think we could bring anything more to it. But Sakis wanted to try it, and I said, “Well, I’ll give it a try”. He sent me the music, and I actually recorded the whole poem, but he just used half of it, because, I think, he wanted to have accent on what could be called the chorus, and we ended up having the chorus for the rest of the song. I think they’ve done it well, I just received the CDs a week ago, and I’m very happy with it.

You live in the country that has more than one official language. What is your native language? And what language do you use within the band?

Within the band we speak French. We come from the French part, that’s probably one of the reasons why Sakis asked me to do this French poem. The most spoken language in Switzerland is German, but it’s not really German, it’s a kind of dialect of German. I understand German, I speak a little bit of it, but if I go to the German part of the canton, we end up speaking English, that is the easiest way to communicate, I think.

Speaking more about guest appearances, in the mid 90's you participated in the recording of the Sentenced album “Down”. Tell me about this cooperation. What do you remember about working with that band?

It was a different situation there. Waldemar (Sorychta), who has produced almost every album that we’ve done, was also producing “Down”, and that was his idea. He told the band that maybe I could do some vocals, and they thought it was a good idea. We were on tour at that time, we were touring for “Passage” in Germany, and in the afternoon I just went to a studio and did this in a couple of hours. I have almost forgotten that I did it, because it was so fast, and so much amidst the action of our tour, but I’m happy I did it, because I like the songs and they were grateful enough to give me a couple of choruses to do. That was really nice of them.

Your album “Above” (2009) was originally intended to be a side project, and not a Samael release. Why did you want it to be a side project, and why did you eventually change your mind?

Xy did that music thinking it would not be Samael music. It was a kind of mood… We started to work on that material just after the recording of “Passage”, he gave me three songs first, and he said, “Well, maybe we could try to do something different”. I went with it, and then we actually ended up having enough songs to do an album. But we never really finished it, we did the recordings around that time, but never mixed it and never really edited the whole material. We tried to sell it as a project, but a couple of labels wanted to have us officially behind the project, and once we officially let the people know that we are playing on it, it makes more sense to just say, “This is Samael material”. When we finished the whole thing, I thought, “OK, it doesn’t sound like anything we’ve done before, but the spirit is there somehow”. I was the one who actually said, “We should have it as a Samael album”. Xy was not so sure about it, he wanted to rework the songs, but I said, “Maybe the songs are not as polished or as complicated as Samael material, but I like it that they have this rough energy in them”. Eventually I succeeded convincing him and the others to release it as a Samael album.

Speaking about side-projects. In the 90s Xy had a solo project that released an instrumental/keyboard version of most of the tracks from "Passage". Does he have any plans to bring this project back to life and to continue such experiments?

That is the question you should ask him. He spoke about it, but it’s a matter of time. A couple of years ago he actually did an album called “Sedunum”, which was for the city we come from. That was an album of classical music, he had a classical orchestra to play the parts, and that was a different experience. I’m sure he would like to at least remix some of the Samael material at some point, but now we’re pretty much trying to finish our new album that has been in the making for quite some time. That’s gonna be the focus now.

When can we expect this new album? It’s been five years since “Lux Mundi”…

(laughs) I know, it’s been too long. We’re gonna do these shows in Russia next week, and after we come back I think we’re gonna progress with the recording of new material. I cannot tell you when it’s gonna be released, but I could imagine it being released sometime this fall or early next year as the latest. I’m sure the album will be finished before the summer, but you don’t release albums during the summer, and we still have to make a deal with a record company. We don’t know with whom we’re gonna release it, maybe with Nuclear Blast, maybe with somebody else, we have yet to get a deal, and it’s gonna take some time.

Does it already have a title?

(laughs) We’ve had a couple of ideas. As it changes from time to time, I don’t wanna give it out now, because it might change again within the next couple of weeks. We do have some ideas, definitely. The title might be very simple.

Samael gigs are notorious for a very intense light show. Can you describe the concept of using stage lights at your gigs? Who came up with it? And can you imagine playing without a light show – at an open air in the afternoon, for instance?

Yeah, we’ve done it sometimes, we’ve actually played some afternoon festivals. It works as well, because personally I think what matters the most is always the music, that’s the primary thing. But of course, the light show kind of gives our music more ambience, it comes as an extra to our light show and the performance, it’s a plus, and it is welcome.
We’ve always spoken together about what we wanted to do. We always have a light engineer with us, who knows our songs and can work really well around them. As you know, Mas is a light engineer himself, so we had some discussions with him, and he actually introduced us to some light engineers he knew. It’s always good to have an opportunity to work with people who know what they’re doing.

You were one of the very first metal bands to come to Russia in the early 90s. In your opinion, how much has the country changed since then?

It’s hard to say. It has definitely changed a lot, because it’s more open to the rest of the world.  I remember the first time we came to Eastern Europe, it was actually not Russia, but Poland, there was still a wall in Berlin. There was real separation between the East and the West, which is no longer there, and I think that changed quite a lot. Russia, I think, is more open, there are more things happening - I’m not talking about politics here, I’m talking just about music - and most of the bands that play regular concerts here in Europe have a couple of shows in Russia at some point. I think that’s for the better. And there are some Russian bands that have made it even in Europe.

A couple of years ago bands like Behemoth and Cannibal Corpse encountered problems with religious protesters in Russia, and some of the gigs got cancelled. Fortunately it’s calmed down now, but have Samael ever come across any religious activists who wanted to stop you from playing music? And what can you say to people who might be offended when you perform something like “Antigod”?

Personally I’ve got my opinion on religion. I think this is more like a mind sickness than anything else. It is accepted, but it is not justified, as far as I’m concerned. Now, if people are offended, they have to understand that I’ve been offended for life having religious education when I was a kid. I had to put up with it, I didn’t ask anything, so I think we’re in a fair game now.

I’m through with my questions. Maybe you would like to say something to your Russian fans who are looking forward to your shows?

Well, we’re looking forward to see them! We’re fired up, we’re gonna rehearse on Monday, and then we’re gonna leave. We’re ready for it!

Samael on the Internet: http://www.samael.info

Special thanks to Olga Ovsyannikova (Spika Concert Agency) for arranging this interview

Interview by Mikhail “IronMike” Shatalin
Questions also compiled by Roman Patrashov
March 13, 2016
(с) HeadBanger.ru