Interview mit Khaoth von Khors

I guess that a lot of our readers might not know KHORS yet and I think it’s time to change this. Please tell us something about you and your music.
We are a band from Ukraine. We are spreading our dark kind of atmospheric music since 2004, we have six full-length-albums out for now plus a brand new EP. If you’d like to dig deeper into our music and what we are standing for, you can always find us in social networks which is the easiest way to discover something new. So find us, like us, subscribe to our channel and you will follow our news if you are really interested in details.

Your music is usally labelled as „Pagan Black Metal“. Do you feel comfortable with this expression? What does especially „Pagan“ mean for you and your music?
Pagan is a fundamental thing we’ve been gathered around, but I can’t say we feel comfortable with the expression of „Pagan Black Metal“ for our music, as we think it’s something very common. We’ve got a label of atmospheric dark metal band and I think it’s a more definite way when it comes to a more or less clearer tag for the music we play. This is a kind of a potion we do chemize using our own vision of black and other kinds of metal, and with unique ukrainian taste as well.

Speaking of ukrainian taste: Unfortunately, I think that in particular the ukrainian metal scene is not that well-known here in Germany, yet it has quite a number of bands worth listening to. What are your thoughts on your country’s metal scene?
I consider Ukrainian metal scene is very strong and interesting topiс to discuss, but I do agree it is not wellknown abroad by number of reasons. Ukraine isn’t countryside of any metal style, genre or subgenre, and never forget we had a quite difficult situation with presenting ourselves outside Ukraine and ex- USSR area for a long time. But the situation changed a bit recently with VISA free of course, so you can already follow some new names from here, and I hope the world will know evenmore from here next years.

How is it the other way round? Is metal from Germany a big thing for ukrainian metal listeners? If so, which bands from here are well-known in your place?
Of course Germany is one of the most important countries for metal listeners here. When I started to discover rock and metal music back in my school years, I remember Scorpions were one of the most popular bands from out there. Later Helloween and Kreator and a bunch of bands of the so called „Bundes thrash metal league“. Later In Extremo and many bands like them, Rammstein and their pleiades. Ukrainian metalheads go to German metal festivals and shows and I would like to say from me that I love to be in Germany with shows very much.

When it comes to Black Metal, I think that your sound is somehow different from other bands of this genre. You have typical Black Metal guitars and such, but also lots of atmospheric and acoustic melodies etc. Do you use this elements in order to sound different a typical Black Metal band, or is it more because they fulfill concrete aspects regarding the songwriting?
This is our way of songwriting. This is not about specific desire to sound or to not sound like something. This is just a result of mixing of our ideas into a certain song. I can’t really describe why we sound like we do, this is more like an inner formula installed into us, but I can admit that of course we do agree in a band that we should sound like KHORS. 

Then let’s speak about „Beyond The Bestial“. It’s an EP that contains three new songs and three re-recordings. What’s the story behind the EP title and the self-named song?
Well, this is mostly about a spiritual side of your attitude, an intangible part of a life journey and the title reflects the idea almost exactly. Nothing but a touch of your inner cosmos. 

With „Frigid Obscurity Of Soul“ you have an instrumental track. What’s the idea behind it? Does it also tell a story, even without lyrics?
Honestly, this entire song is the result of one spontaneous jam session, later decorated with arrangements. We wanted to repeat it with lyrics on our new full length, but later dropped this idea and remained it kind of a naked story for thoughts. This is cold and melancholic and probably sounds the best with the lyrics untold.

The three re-recorded songs all hail from your second album „Mysticism“. Why did you choose those numbers and especially from this album?
Winterfall is one of our all time favorites, then Jurgis (vocals and guitars, editor’s note) proposed to make Red Mirrors in acoustic version. We loved to try to re-record “In the Cold Embrace of Mist” as we never played it live before, but I personally think we failed with it. I don’t think we’ll go for such experiments again. The story should sound once.

Almost four years have passed now since the release of your last full length, „Night Falls Onto The Front Of ours“. Is the EP release mabye a hint that we can expect a new KHORS-album quite soon? 
I think yes. I can definitely say that it will sound like KHORS, but most probably a little bit heavier than “Beyond the Bestial” sound. We already started to work on a new album. This year we don’t plan to play many live shows, but to focus more on new songs so I hope we’ll enter the studio by the end of this year.

We’ve almost finished and I’d like to close the interview with our traditional metal1 brainstorming. Please note down what comes to your mind reading this things:
Darkthrone: I love their first record.
Snow: Love it.
Scandinavia: Black Metal and landscapes.
Paganism: The roots.
Ukrainian food: Bortsch and dumplings.
Lord Of The Rings: Happy to never watch this.

That’s it! Thanks again for taking time and I leave the last words up to you. If there’s anything you’d like to add, feel free to do so.
Thanks so much for your time. Thanks to everybody in the metal community that still is dedicated to it.