„Abandon Of The Self“, the latest record by ERYN NON DAE. impressively proved that the French metal scene has a lot more to offer than its outstanding black metal acts. Making use of this opportunity, bassist Mickaël André gave us an interview about the more or less obvious influences of the band, the idea behind their latest album as well as his opinion on easy listening music and some other things.
I have to admit that I couldn’t even decipher your bandname with a translation program on the internet. So what exactly is the meaning of ERYN NON DAE.?
There’s no particular meaning, we were forced to change our former name due to our signing with Metal Blade Records in 2009, we were called End. at that time. So we wanted to keep the letters END and just thought that ERYN NON DAE. was sounding good!
When speaking about your musical genre, you are not that easy to classify. What is, in your opinion, the essence of your music? What do you want to trigger in the listener?
The essence of our music is emotion! We really want the listener to experience something deep inside, it can be joy, sadness, oppression, tension, surprise, love, power, anything that can make you feel alive and sensitive. We want our listener to drown in our music and we know that our music can be quite demanding, but I think it’s kind of a bridge you have to cross to be able to see something…
Your music is often compared to Godflesh, Tool and Meshuggah. Do you feel honored by this comparison or would you prefer people to just look at your music independently?
We have no problem if some people need to give some clue about the way we sound. But as any artist, I guess, we would like to sound just like ERYN NON DAE. and we’ve been working that way for a long time now. I think it’s something we’re getting closer and closer to with „Abandon Of The Self“ but, one more time, I can understand this need to categorize, our brain naturally does that.
What are otherwise your musical roots? Are there also influenced that might not be so easy to be heard in your sound?
I think that roots and influences don’t not necessarily go along together. We all are in our late thirties and early forties so our roots are to be found in Metallica, Sepultura, Machine Head or Slayer, it can be surprising for some of our younger listeners but these are the bands we grew up with, and later we found interest in Nine Inch Nails, The Dillinger Escape Plan or Neurosis for example, but it’s not really our roots. I also think about Prodigy, Tool or Rage Against The Machine concerning Mathieu. And even if you shouldn’t be able to find much more ressemblance between ERYN NON DAE. and these bands, I can really perceive the influence of „The More Things Change“ from Machine Head in Franck’s and Yann’s guitar work, the textured things comes from these period I think and even if we never used typical old metal riffs, these are clearly our primary roots…
I’d say your music is not that easy to get into. What do you think about music that is more easily accessible?
We all listen to some easy stuff, and we fully understand why some artists play this kind of popular music and also the pleasure you can find in simple things, I mean life is about simple pleasures in a lot of moments, so music is the same. And in my very personal opinion, making a good simple song holding together with only a few elements is something very hard to achieve, even more when it’s your conscient goal. But the debate could last forever, some easy listening stuff can’t really stand the test of time and we all want our music to sound timeless I think… So it’s a vast debate…
Your current album is called „Abandon Of The Self“, its predecessor „Meliora“ was released in 2012. What was the reason for the rather long time in between?
We spent two years playing some too rare gigs and after that we were kind of frustrated of this lack of concerts for „Meliora“, so it slowly made things bad within the band, we tried to write some new music in 2014 but this wasn’t satisfying, so we had a small hiatus in early 2015 before feeling that it was time to try something else. Then we wrote and recorded „Abandon Of The Self“ in two years, which is very quick for us… As I say very often, the band isn’t our job and we need to be completely satisfied with the songs before going into the studio so if it takes several years, it’s not a problem for us.
What do you perceive as the major difference between your previous work and „Abandon Of The Self“?
It’s hard to nail it precisely. We feel a huge difference between „Abandon Of The Self“ and our other releases, the main thing is that our music don’t rely on guitar riffs anymore but more on beats and textures, I think they are the most significative differences.
The lyrics of your songs seem to be quite critical of society. What are they about in detail?
On this record, Mathieu wrote about his need of reunifying fragmented parts to form a whole, it can be applied to each of us but also on a more universal level, the critic of our society isn’t something very new in music nor in our lyrical concepts but I don’t think that it’s the main theme, it just is a constitutive element of the assessment of the world we live in and Mathieu writes about trying to become a better human being in a better environment.
What connects the album’s title to its lyrics? And what does it mean to you to give up one’s self?
The album title embodies this idea of giving up our individual ego to give birth to something bigger than us, but it can’t just be restricted to this main idea.
I can’t speak for Mathieu but for me these few words coming together can be understood as the welcoming of exteriority but not necessarily with the necessity to erase what you experienced until now, it’s more about finding an equilibrium between different weights inside and outside of you. I remember thinking only about the word abandon, it’s very personal but this word alone means so much to me, and it’s also very related to the way „Abandon Of The Self“ sounds compared to „Meliora“, there is a form of abandon when you think about some precise element in our music. I’m not sure if that answers your question but these are some elements to think about…
Do you think it is important to write political lyrics or do you also find appeal in purely personal lyrics?
I think that maybe you focused on the lyrics of „Stellar“ or „Fragment“ because Mathieu rarely writes only about politics, he makes some clear allusions to it but 90 % of his lyrics are purely about his personal feelings. I remember that we very often discussed the fact he was using the „I“ very often on „Hydra Lernaïa“ and since these discussions he tries to think about it, not that we don’t want him to use it too often but it was just an interesting angle of reflexion for „Abandon Of The Self“ and the future.
The first song that was released before the album as a whole was „Astral“, wasn’t it? Do you think that this song works best as a representation of the album or is there another reason for it to be released at first?
We discussed a lot of the extracts from the album, we were split between our wish to come back with something quite surprising like „Stellar“ or „Abyss“ and our will to introduce these new elements more progressively and finally „Astral“ was a good way to bring people into this new era in a smooth way. I’m not saying that it was my very personal choice but we always make decisions collectively. So we played it wise with a quite straight forward first extract that doesn’t necessarily sums up all you will find on the album but rather makes the link between „Meliora“ and this new one.
You sometimes make use of deep droning sounds in your songs like for example on „Stellar“. How do you create these sounds and what do you what to express through them?
We very often create them with the usual combination of guitars in distortion and reverb but this time we used a lot more electronics and fuzz sounds. They serve as moments of rest sometimes, because we need our music to behave like a wave coming and going. So it depends on the songs but it’s just another tool to play with dynamics.
When writing and performing music, do you focus more on atmosphere or rather on technical performance?
Of course on atmosphere and emotion. Our music is demanding to play but not as much as Ulcerate for example. Our music can be perceived as technical mostly because of the drum parts, Julien, our drummer is always challenging himself with his technical skill but he is the only one in the band working that much on his instrument. So we use his skill to make some contrast between the textured guitars and electronic work because we all enjoy his weird ideas when it comes to find some drum parts. And I think that it’s an important part of our sound, I think he will never stop trying to improve his skill…
The artwork shows a human body that is covered in streaks of shadows. What was the thought behind it and in which way does it reflect the lyrical content?
We wanted the whole artwork to be based on simple photography without any heavy photoshop to mark a difference from „Meliora“ where the artwork was based on paintings and manipulations. The cover is related to a sentence Mathieu sings in the song „Fragment“, it says „what we all seek by fragments, the connection between our body, mind & soul“. It’s a representation of this fractured creature.
You cooperated with Debemur Morti to release the album. For what reason did you switch labels and how did you end up at this particular label?
Our relationship with labels is not always very easy because the band is hard to sell and work. But switching labels isn’t alway our choice, Metal Blade Records ended our collaboration quite quickly after „Hydra Lernaïa“ because they were expecting much more sales, and we didn’t wanted to propose „Abandon Of The Self“ to our previous label simply because we didn’t feel any affinity during our collaboration on „Meliora“ with them. So we are always searching for some structures who really understand the band, our wishes and our music because there is no easy money to make by working with us, I don’t want to sound too negative but ERYN NON DAE. is a hard band to work with because of the niche music we play, that’s not easy every day but that’s the way it is.
What have you got planned next for ERYN NON DAE.? Will the next album also take rather long to follow up?
I wish I could say no but who knows! It’s been our fourth record now if you consider our first EP, so we need to find another interesting angle of attack to avoid the feeling of going round and round in circles before making another record. We have also a few gigs coming and we are trying to play more, as much as we can. A video should be released later also…
We have this little tradition at Metal1.info where we end our interviews with a short brainstorming. What are your thought on the following terms?
Avantgarde: Quite a really hard word to use and do define, what is really avantgarde, is it about dividing a guitar fretboard into 90 frets and making music with it or is it about pushing a song further than 3’30…? Everybody has a different opinion on that…
Emmanuel Macron: Ouch! It’s probably just another president… I’m always interested in our political situation here in France, and even more in all the communication masquerade we see everyday on TV, it’s very interesting for me to see them acting and saying different things depending on the moment and on the context, I mean they are acting, as maybe we do in our everyday life but there are much more people attentive to what they say and do and I have to admit that Macron is very, very smart at this exercise, and it played an important role in his election, this new era he promised during his campaign is actually provoking massive strikes here in France which is known as a very conservative country, so most of the country gave him the ability to start some massive and profound changes to our country but at the same time, we refuse each single reform he engages. I’m no saying that it’s good or bad, but it’s a very interesting situation to look at and to think about.
Punk: I have to admit that this word doesn’t make any echo in me, speaking about music or anything else culturally.
Sci-Fi: I’m not very much into Sci-Fi, I can watch some Sci-Fi movies from time to time but, one more time, it’s not something that attracts me. Mathieu is much more into Sci-Fi than any of us in the band, especially when it comes to movies. I think he is the only one who still buys DVDs! (laughs)
Gojira: They simply are the reason for which French bands are now considered as potentially interesting. I miss the mystery found on their firsts records, there were some really weird songs, something coming from another place, and even if I appreciate „Magma“ for its immediate strength, I miss some unpredictable moment like „Over The Flows“ which was attesting some very personal aspect of these guys. But I only have respect for them, even if I think that their music has lost something now to permit a lot more people to understand it, they still are a very interesting band on album, an even more impressive act on stage and some of the most welcoming and kindest guys I’ve ever met.
French food: I think about my mother’s cooking! It’s completely cliché but yes, I like our food, without any chauvinism in it and the meal is sometimes the most pleasant moment of the day.
Alright, thanks again for answering our questions. Is there still something that you want to tell us or the readers?
Just a big thank you for your interest in the band, and thanks for your questions! Cheers!
23. Mai 2018 Stephan Rajchl