Interview mit Lucas Gadke von Völur

Hello! Thanks for taking part in this interview. How are you doing?
Hello, Lucas from VÖLUR here. We are doing well. I just got back from a European tour with my other band Blood Ceremony and now I’m back in VÖLUR gear and excited to tackle promoting our new record.

Some of our readers might still be unfamiliar with you and your band VÖLUR. So, to get started, please introduce yourself shortly.
Hello, we are VÖLUR, a trio from Toronto, Ontario. We like to write very long songs about wizards, saga heroes and Germanic myths. The band is myself, Lucas Gadke (bass and vocals), Laura C. Bates (violin and vocals) and James Payment of Do Make Say Think (drums). We like weird dark sounds and folk dances.

Your music is quite experimental. So, there’s probably some listeners to whom your tracks are just too hard to get into. Did you already get some feedback like that from some people?
My mom came to see us a while back and asked my brother „is this devil worship?“ That’s one opinion, but so far it’s been mostly positive feedback from people, except for some negative comments on MetalSucks. We’re trying to learn: „don’t read the comments.“ I haven’t heard personally anything negative specifically from anybody. I think metal listeners have a good capacity for complex music. And I think anybody that’s not going to give a 13-minute song a chance isn’t really our target audience so I’m not too terribly interested in losing them.

Of course, your music does contain some really gripping melodies, but it’s far from easy listening. Is there some kind of border that you don’t cross when playing or composing so that the tracks don’t get too abstract or is potentially everything possible?
We recorded a whole track on this record that didn’t get included on the album that was about 21 minutes long and had a 4 minute full on 12-tone composition string quartet section in the middle… we realised it would have been too demanding for even the most committed and adventurous listeners so we’re holding that one back for a future “single”. On the next record, we’re looking into doing a lot more free improv stuff as Laura and I have been listing to a lot of Alice Coltrane and Aluk Todolo. So we’re really not afraid of anything. But at the same time, I don’t want to push everything to be all insanity all the time. I want there to be a nice balance. So I’m also not afraid of having a passage that is in Bb major and completely consonant.
When you’re composing abstractly you do have to check yourself occasionally, but still approach it in the same way that you must keep yourself in line when you’re composing melodically… like „Is this too corny?“ „Does this just sound like everything else?“ „Is this genuinely compelling?“ My goal is to try and not make boring music, or completely alienating music, playing dynamic and emotionally sincere music is our objective.

Is your songwriting intuitive or rather consciously planned?
It’s a healthy mix of both. Melodies and riffs come in snippets, sometimes inspired by a literary or mythological theme, or by another piece of music. And from that starting point we etch things out in detail. But the smallest details develop organically, as you play them together as a band. So the framework can be seen to emerge deliberately, but the nuance happens intuitively. Alternatively, a melody can happen spontaneously. I don’t want to shut myself out to anything.

Your bandname VÖLUR derives from a female Nordic seer, right? This perfectly fit the topic of your EP „Disir“, however, on your debut full-length „Ancestors“ your lyrical subject is a slightly different one. In which way does the name still represent your musical work?
I like to focus on the trance aspect of it. To recite a poem, to dance, to play music you have to lose yourself into the well of time and let the art flow through you. The Völur are female figures, and can be related to the Norns who can be seen to represent the three parts of time, past, present and future. And music very much exists in time, not apart from it, and you have to be conscious of all these. And the best way to do that is lose yourself in trance. And that’s what I strive to do when I play music. It happens sometimes, at the very best performances.
So the name was less about the first EP and more about us as musicians. We are not Norns, who are like the Greek Fates, but we are merely humans trying to approximate what they do.

Looking back, are you still satisfied with „Disir“ or would you change something?
It’s impossible to change anything from the past really. I’m happy with how it turned out and how it acts as a snapshot of where we were at the time, compositionally. It’s a moody and repetitive record, and that’s exactly what I wanted to make. It was us getting to know ourselves and as a band, and considering it was only a one day recording and mix session, I think we learned a lot about ourselves.

Stylistically, you stayed true to yourselves on „Ancestors“, however, there are far more growls and raw parts and the different elements seem to be more balanced in the course of the tracks. Would you agree on that and if so, what’s the reason for this?
I do agree. I think that we’ve simply grown as composers and grown as a band. We’ve been playing together for about three years now, so we know what to expect from each other. And we know not to be reactionary, that things will take time to settle in. The addition of more growling and extreme parts came from us being able to stretch out as a group and on our instruments. I’ve got a kind of „everything and the kitchen sink vibe“ when I think about this band. I basically want to throw all the sounds I like into it. And I think that, when mixed with clean singing, growling or screaming can add an exceptionally emotional dimension. I’ve often felt, when I play loud noisy music, that there’s an element of transcendence, that the noise and the feedback will somehow carry you from this earthly world somewhere else. I know it’s not intellectually true but it feels that way. And the screaming helps with that.

The album is longer than its predecessor, even though it also has four tracks. Why did „Ancestors“ demand longer compositions and why did you once more separate them into four tracks ?
I don’t know if it demanded longer compositions, that’s just what was came out of our heads at the time. I based the songs on large, sprawling literary figures/ideas and therefore they require a fleshed out, sprawling pieces of music. But it was a challenge to myself to see if I could create a genuinely compelling long song. We’ve all heard some long jams that tend to trail off around the 8 minute mark, so I wanted to avoid length for length’s sake, that’s just how long the songs took.

Is there something else that in your opinion makes „Disir“ and „Ancestors“ substantially different from one another?
Well, we had a substantially longer time to record this album. Like I said, we did „Disir“ in one day, „Ancestors“ was done over a couple weeks of studio time over the span of a year, so we were able to flesh out the details a lot more, do more overdubs and actually, take our time and carefully consider the songs. To me that’s the biggest difference. There was even some room for experimentation in the studio. And of course, there’s way more vocals.

How was the feedback on „Ancestors“ – also in comparison to „Disir“?
So far the feedback has been really positive for „Ancestors“. We’ve had several people reach out to us out of the blue and say they just discovered us and really like the album which is heartening. We’ve got some great reviews from journalists we really respect. I was recently on tour with Blood Ceremony and brought some copies of the LP to sell along with me, and had some people come to the show to pick one up from the source, meaning I got to meet some fans, which is always a genuine pleasure.

Is there a song or specific part on „Ancestors“, that is the most special to you, and if so, why?
I’ve wanted to do a real heavy metal gallop for a long time and I got to do one on „Breaker of Famine,“ like a nice swinging triplet feel with a heavy riff. It was actually a riff that Laura brought to the table, and when she brought it, it felt almost like a gift. Like this really serious kind of fist pumping thing in the middle of all these slow riffs. I quite enjoy it. Feels like a fan blowing the hair back moment (I am bald for the record!).

While on „Disir“ you dealt with the female figures of Nordic mythology, „Ancestors“ is dedicated to the male figures. In which way do these characters differ from one another?
The biggest difference would have to be the degree to which they are fleshed out in the original text. Female figures in myths and the sagas are usually less written about so they’re more like composites of sketches rather than the fully formed male saga heroes. But in a way it was kind of freeing on „Disir“ because we could use our imaginations more. The characters discussed in „Ancestors“ are almost feel like real people (and they were), but it requires a bit more loyalty and interpretation. I don’t like to speak about the differences between men and women because I think that’s a little stale. The pieces generally reflect a meditation on a myth or a figure and the emotion that they bring to my heart. They’re not particularly based on an innate quality of gender.

On the opening track „Breaker Of Silence“ you also sing in German, just like the first track on „Disir“ was called „Es wächst aus seinem Grab“. What’s the reason for this?
I like German! I think it’s a beautiful language. I’ve been „learning“ it for about 4 years and I’m up to the point where I can walk into a bakery and buy bread.
A while back I was reading about JRR Tolkien’s real life inspirations and I read that his inspiration for Gandalf came from a Swiss postcard of an old wizardly looking man that was called „der Berggeist“. I really liked that notion and kind of had this private dream of a primordial cosmic wizard figure on a mountaintop. So it seemed only fitting to sing it in German, as if he is stepping down off the mountain and into creation, and then flying across the sea. That’s what the song is about to me. Probably doesn’t make intellectual sense, but there you have it.

All four songs begin with „Breaker Of“ and go on with one other word. What’s the meaning of this?
It comes from an Old Norse expression. After a battle, the chieftain of a band of warriors would collect the gold arm rings from the slain. If he was a generous man he would break the rings into pieces and give them to his retinue. Therefore a generous man was called “breaker of rings”. We actually wrote and recorded a song with that name for the record (the one with the string quartet!), but due to time constraints we have not released it yet, but stay tuned for a single that is very dear to us… So I took that expression as a description of a man and mapped it onto the other qualities of the characters. Basically it was an attempt to give the record some kind of cohesive unity.

Your vocals and growling are quite powerful, but still, your music is widely instrumental. Do you think, you could let the music do the talking and still express the whole concept?
I don’t want to be lame and say „the voice is an instrument“, but I’m going to be lame and say just that. At first I wanted to be an all instrumental band, but vocals really just add a whole other timbre. That’s why the first record has so much chanting. Also, there’s only three of us, so we need to have the most amount of voices that we can!

How important are lyrics to you compared to the music itself?
Hopefully they work together as a cohesive whole and can add some context to the music and the concept. Unlike the music, the lyrics are written in a more spur of the moment fashion, and then edited and worked out later. I’m not sure if there’s a hierarchy of elements in this band, I know in pop music that the vocals are king, and I suppose for us there’s a big emphasis on the instruments.

Considering how raw and powerful your music is, I imagine that your shows have a very special kind of energy. How important is doing gigs to you in comparison to working in the studio?
I love playing live, it’s really the way I know how to work best. We recorded all the bed tracks together live off the floor for both records. We like to bring out the smoke and some dark images. My favourite part of playing this music live is using the dynamics in a live setting. If we’re playing well, getting close to that trance state, you can bring the focus of the room to a very small point in those quiet parts. You can have people listening intently and, dare I say it, sometimes you can hear a pin drop, that is if we are doing our job right. We are really hoping that we can do a tour in the future and are working on putting something together.

According to the press info, you plan on doing more albums about Nordic mythology. Do you already know, what the next album will deal with and when it will be realised?
That’s true, that’s where most of my inspiration comes from. The next album will deal mostly with more supernatural characters, gods, goddesses and their devotees. No idea on when it will be done. We’re writing, and you can’t force that. But we’ve got a couple new songs (long ones obviously) and are looking forward to getting back into the studio.

Now, let’s go through our traditional Metal1.info-Brainstorming:
World Religions: Some of the best music is religious, Qawwali is the shit.
Gender: Let people be who they want to be. It’s none of my business really.
Pagan/Viking Metal: „Blood Fire Death“ is a good record.
President Trump: He’s very close to us here, geographically, and it makes me feel greasy.
Modern technology: We had a guy buy our tape on Bandcamp from Israel, that’s pretty cool.
VÖLUR in five years: Doing the score for the filmed adaptation of Hrafnkel’s Saga.

Thank you once more for this interview. The final words shall be yours:
Thanks for reading, folks! Feel free to check out the album and keep an ear out for our top secret tape series…

Publiziert am 6. September 2017 von Stephan Rajchl