THE MORNINGSIDE surprised us with their recent album „Yellow“, which featured an interesting lyrical concept and beautiful music between Death-Doom and Post-Metal. In the following interview with singer/guitarist Igor Nikitin you will learn more about why there are just few vocals on the album despite its concept, how Kurt Vonneguts novel „Slaughterhouse-Five“ influenced the lyrics and if it’s possible to tell a story without a single word.
Some of our readers might still not be familiar with you, so please tell us, how you would describe the music of THE MORNINGSIDE.
It’s quite a question. It’s always complicated to describe music, especially your own music. THE MORNINGSIDE sounds like metal. Positive, but melancholic music with distortion and screaming vocals. Well, something like that.
Of course, your music is quite heavy, but also very melodic and definitely not brutal. Do you consider taking a rougher approach sometime in the future?
No, we don’t plan anything. We tried launching more brutal and aggressive sounded material in 2014, but planning doesn’t seem to work in regard to music. Actually, I have a feeling that our music appears by itself and our part is just to record it.
Which bands had the most influence on you and your music?
Lots of different. First of all, I think, such bands as The Cure, Carcass, Bad Sector. Jazz, Blues, Rock ’n’ Roll, Ambient, Metal. It could’ve been a longer list, but anyway the first place would always have The Cure.
You recently released your fourth album called „Yellow“, a really interesting concept-album. Your usual melodic Death/Doom is now even accompanied by emotional Post-Metal. How did you come up with the idea to change your sound that way?
It’s happened by itself. However, our songs always had Post-Metal and Post-Rock elements, and „Yellow“ just has a bit more of them.
As I already said, „Yellow“ is a concept-album inspired by the novel „Slaughterhouse-Five“ by Kurt Vonnegut. How exactly do the lyrics of the album connect to the book and how did it come about that you chose this concept?
Well, the album’s lyrics aren’t really related to „Slaughterhouse-Five“. I just always loved Vonnegut’s character Billy Pilgrim, a person, who got „unstuck in time“. When I’ve been creating the „Yellow“, I thought the album could be conceptual, but it wasn’t the right time to try out my own idea, some unifying framework for lyrics, you know. So I decided to use something already originated, already existing. Then I remembered „Slaughterhouse“ with the main character, Pilgrim, returning to the past.
Despite this interesting theme, „Yellow“ doesn’t seem to be focused on the vocals but rather on the instruments. It even starts and ends with a purely instrumental track. Why is that so?
It’s because I don’t really can and don’t really like to sing. It’s a complicated thing. When Ilya [Egorychev, bassist; editor’s note] and me had been creating our new album, we had no one who was able to sing, so I had to do this. And now we just don’t want to invite a vocalist. Moreover, I always try to put interlude on the main place in our songs. That’s how things work in the new album. And the direction we chose implies that kind of accents. Actually, that’s how things always work for us – instrumental part has always more honorable place than vocal part, even in our other albums. The first and the last compositions are instrumental. Maybe I’m wrong though. I always forget everything, I should re-listen to our albums.
The last track featuring vocals is a gentle ballad with acoustic- and clean-guitars and completely cleanly sung vocals. Did that part of the story require a calmer approach?
The song required that approach. I think it’s nice, it’s interesting to dilute our typical heavy sound with something different. So it happened this way.
What do you think of bands and musicians that play solely instrumental?
I think it’s great, but it’s pretty tricky for me personally to create an album with no words at all. But maybe we’ll try to do this one day. It would be interesting.
Do you think, a story can be told without words?
I think it’s possible, but it would be the kind of story where every listener will think up their own details. However, the idea is nice. Perhaps, in some ways it is a right approach.
The autumnal cover-artwork really fits the melancholic mood of the album. What can you tell us about it?
I told the guys the Billy Pilgrim concept idea, and we came up with the tram. We thought it’d be cool if our character were able to travel through the past on tram. And so now we see this Soviet nostalgic tram on the cover.
How do you perceive the russian metal-scene? Any other remarkable bands to be found?
There are a lot of metal bands here, even some fairly well-known. But the problem is that I don’t really listen to metal. And certainly not the Russian one. If I listen something with distorted guitars, it’s foreign bands like Iron Maiden, Helloween, Carcass. But it happens increasingly rare.
What are your plans for the near future of THE MORNINGSIDE?
It’s always a complicated question. Of course, we have some plans, but it’s hardly possible to fulfill them all. Actually, we don’t plan anything extraordinary, we just want to record another album. The only thing, we’d like to find some way to launch our albums at least a little more often than once every two years. But well, we’ll see.
So, we’ve already reached the end of our interview. At last, I would like to ask you to take part in our traditional Metal1.info-Brainstorming. What comes to your mind while reading those terms:
Putin: A character from very popular TV show named „News“.
Trve Black Metal: Oh, it’s something very serious, so serious that I can’t take this seriously.
Trump: Another character from that TV show.
Favorite concept-album: I’m not really sure that The Cure’s „Disintegration“ is conceptual, but let’s name it.
Literature: Marquez, Bradbury, Pavic.
Country with the best bands: I guess, it’s UK.
Alright, thank you again for the interview. Is the more anything you want to tell our readers?
I’d like to wish them even more good and different music!
9. Januar 2017 Stephan Rajchl