The Divinity of Oceans
What's up at Captain Ahab?
Daniel: Besides collecting new ideas for our next release we’re concentrating on promoting our new album live this year. We just confirmed our second tour that will lead us through Germany, Austria and the Netherlands in October 2010 as support act of “The Vision Bleak”.
The new album "The Divinity of Oceans" contains a lot of Death Metal but also epic passages. What led you to do it?
Daniel: On “The Call of the Wretched Sea” we wanted to record an album by composing a story with the stylistic devices of funeral doom. This time we didn’t want to limit our sound and created the song writing process more open minded. We all grew up with death metal in the 90s and still like this kind of music ...so it was just logical that death metal would be a tool for us.
Also, vocals are very varied. Do you sing everything, or you have invited some guest vocalists?
Daniel: Originally we wanted to invite a guest vocalist but in the end we weren’t able to realize it because of the lack of time.
Our music became more complex referred to what we’ve done before, so I also wanted to adapt the vocals to that change by adding more clean parts and experiment with my voice to have more elements for expressing the matter of the story we’re dealing with.
Try to reveal your creative process. How do you compose tracks, what do you lay biggest stress on?
Daniel: Most riffs on “The divinity...” were born in my little home studio. We’re not a band that’s having rehearsals regularly, so I wrote most of the stuff at my place this time. I have no special ritual or something like that ...I just need a creative moment, time and coffee.
If you’re reading a story you are creating pictures in your imagination. What I want to achieve is to compose the pictures that came to my mind during I read the books of Herman Melville, Owen Chase and Nathaniel Philbrick.
I don’t know any band that would deal with similar themes as yours. What attracts you most to the seas and oceans?
Daniel: Besides the fact that I also do not know a band that deals with that topic it’s just personal interest in books and movies about sea related stories. It is also the sea itself that fascinates me ...its beauty, its force and the secrets it hides in its depths are delicious food for imagination and inspiration.
Haven’t you been thinking over shooting a video clip for the new album?
Daniel: We actually thought about shooting a clip this time. We had a vision, support by our label but in the end it was just too expensive for us to realize what we wanted to. Of course it would have been easy to realize just filming the band playing a song at the beach or something stupid like that, but that’s boring and none of us wanted that ... but if you want to create something special, and have songs that are at least 7 min long, it’s getting expensive really fast.
Have you already read something from H.P. Lovecraft? For you would fit stories as “Call of Cthulhu”, “Dagon”, “The White Ship”, or “Medusa's Coil”, associated with the seas and oceans, I think.
Daniel: I haven’t read anything of H.P. Lovecraft to be honest although many told me that his stuff is really good and would fit to the AHAB concept but ...there’s so much stuff we could work with and who knows, maybe we’ll compose one of his stories in the future too.
The trilogy is complete now, have you thought about topics for the next album?
Daniel: I guess this is THE question I was asked in every interview...so I’m going to answer as usual to this one ....yes we do have a topic for the forthcoming album. It’ll be a sea related story again of course, the content will be very different and it’ll be a new exciting challenge for us ...more details will stay secret! :D
Would you like to travel around the world on the ship? Maybe it would be a good opportunity for composing music.
Daniel: That would be very inspiring for sure. If I’d have the money and above all the time for such a long journey I’d definitely do that.
Have you done somewhat different at "Divinity of Oceans' opposite the debut?
Daniel: The way of composing was different. On “The call...” we composed song after song. We haven’t started composing a new song before the active session was finished. This time I collected riffs and guitar solos, recorded them in my little home studio, selected the best stuff and added the parts together to create the songs. Furthermore this was the first time I had the possibility to record ideas for an album at home ...by that I was able to keep most of the ideas that came to my mind.
What environment do you think is best to listen to your music? Maybe the floating ship? Ha.
Daniel: In front of the stage!
Your band is active about 5 years, which period do you like most to remember?
Daniel: Well there are many great moments when I think back..... The people I met and the places we visited. The first show at “Summer Breeze” open air was great for example. Our show and Behemoth’s show started at the same time, they played on the main stage while we played on the party stage. I really thought that none would come to see us but ....there were so many people, I couldn’t believe it ...overwhelming!
First gig outside of Germany was very special back then, leaving Europe and playing a show in Calgary, our first tour ....many memories we’re very grateful for and we’ll never forget.
Would you like to play this year in Czech Brutal Assault Fest? Last year ESOTERIC played there... (This question was asked before AHAB confirmation for Brutal Assault).
Daniel: We actually do play at Brutal Assault Fest this year and are really looking forward to it. That festival has a really excellent billing and this is going to be our first show in Czech Republic. I’m sure that show going to be a very special one, for the Czech metal heads as well as for us.
What position does Funeral Doom Metal have in Germany? Ok, it would be all, you have the last words. Thanx for the interview. Could you add your current top 5 albums?
Daniel: Funeral Doom is absolute underground music; I don’t even know a real German funeral doom band. With the birth of the “DOOM SHALL RISE” festival here in Germany doom metal in general got a little bit more attention, the fact that we will play this years “summer breeze open air” again this proves that. Besides I wouldn’t call our style funeral doom. We still have some few funeral elements in our music but also worked with death-metal elements as I already told you above. We prefer to call our style nautic-doom that gives us much more room for creating music and that description suits us much better.
My top 5 albums....well that’s difficult because I’m not really up to date, but I just try to remember 5 of the CDs I have in my car at the moment.
Those are (in no specific order):
Isis - In the absence of truth
Clutch - Strange cousins from the west
Totenmond - TonbergUrtot
Porcupine Tree - The incident
Iron Monkey - Iron monkey
Thank you very much for this interview!
Cheers,
http://www.ahab-doom.de/
Daniel 15. 4. 2010 Storm
Daniel: Besides collecting new ideas for our next release we’re concentrating on promoting our new album live this year. We just confirmed our second tour that will lead us through Germany, Austria and the Netherlands in October 2010 as support act of “The Vision Bleak”.
The new album "The Divinity of Oceans" contains a lot of Death Metal but also epic passages. What led you to do it?
Daniel: On “The Call of the Wretched Sea” we wanted to record an album by composing a story with the stylistic devices of funeral doom. This time we didn’t want to limit our sound and created the song writing process more open minded. We all grew up with death metal in the 90s and still like this kind of music ...so it was just logical that death metal would be a tool for us.
Also, vocals are very varied. Do you sing everything, or you have invited some guest vocalists?
Daniel: Originally we wanted to invite a guest vocalist but in the end we weren’t able to realize it because of the lack of time.
Our music became more complex referred to what we’ve done before, so I also wanted to adapt the vocals to that change by adding more clean parts and experiment with my voice to have more elements for expressing the matter of the story we’re dealing with.
Try to reveal your creative process. How do you compose tracks, what do you lay biggest stress on?
Daniel: Most riffs on “The divinity...” were born in my little home studio. We’re not a band that’s having rehearsals regularly, so I wrote most of the stuff at my place this time. I have no special ritual or something like that ...I just need a creative moment, time and coffee.
If you’re reading a story you are creating pictures in your imagination. What I want to achieve is to compose the pictures that came to my mind during I read the books of Herman Melville, Owen Chase and Nathaniel Philbrick.
I don’t know any band that would deal with similar themes as yours. What attracts you most to the seas and oceans?
Daniel: Besides the fact that I also do not know a band that deals with that topic it’s just personal interest in books and movies about sea related stories. It is also the sea itself that fascinates me ...its beauty, its force and the secrets it hides in its depths are delicious food for imagination and inspiration.
Haven’t you been thinking over shooting a video clip for the new album?
Daniel: We actually thought about shooting a clip this time. We had a vision, support by our label but in the end it was just too expensive for us to realize what we wanted to. Of course it would have been easy to realize just filming the band playing a song at the beach or something stupid like that, but that’s boring and none of us wanted that ... but if you want to create something special, and have songs that are at least 7 min long, it’s getting expensive really fast.
Have you already read something from H.P. Lovecraft? For you would fit stories as “Call of Cthulhu”, “Dagon”, “The White Ship”, or “Medusa's Coil”, associated with the seas and oceans, I think.
Daniel: I haven’t read anything of H.P. Lovecraft to be honest although many told me that his stuff is really good and would fit to the AHAB concept but ...there’s so much stuff we could work with and who knows, maybe we’ll compose one of his stories in the future too.
The trilogy is complete now, have you thought about topics for the next album?
Daniel: I guess this is THE question I was asked in every interview...so I’m going to answer as usual to this one ....yes we do have a topic for the forthcoming album. It’ll be a sea related story again of course, the content will be very different and it’ll be a new exciting challenge for us ...more details will stay secret! :D
Would you like to travel around the world on the ship? Maybe it would be a good opportunity for composing music.
Daniel: That would be very inspiring for sure. If I’d have the money and above all the time for such a long journey I’d definitely do that.
Have you done somewhat different at "Divinity of Oceans' opposite the debut?
Daniel: The way of composing was different. On “The call...” we composed song after song. We haven’t started composing a new song before the active session was finished. This time I collected riffs and guitar solos, recorded them in my little home studio, selected the best stuff and added the parts together to create the songs. Furthermore this was the first time I had the possibility to record ideas for an album at home ...by that I was able to keep most of the ideas that came to my mind.
What environment do you think is best to listen to your music? Maybe the floating ship? Ha.
Daniel: In front of the stage!
Your band is active about 5 years, which period do you like most to remember?
Daniel: Well there are many great moments when I think back..... The people I met and the places we visited. The first show at “Summer Breeze” open air was great for example. Our show and Behemoth’s show started at the same time, they played on the main stage while we played on the party stage. I really thought that none would come to see us but ....there were so many people, I couldn’t believe it ...overwhelming!
First gig outside of Germany was very special back then, leaving Europe and playing a show in Calgary, our first tour ....many memories we’re very grateful for and we’ll never forget.
Would you like to play this year in Czech Brutal Assault Fest? Last year ESOTERIC played there... (This question was asked before AHAB confirmation for Brutal Assault).
Daniel: We actually do play at Brutal Assault Fest this year and are really looking forward to it. That festival has a really excellent billing and this is going to be our first show in Czech Republic. I’m sure that show going to be a very special one, for the Czech metal heads as well as for us.
What position does Funeral Doom Metal have in Germany? Ok, it would be all, you have the last words. Thanx for the interview. Could you add your current top 5 albums?
Daniel: Funeral Doom is absolute underground music; I don’t even know a real German funeral doom band. With the birth of the “DOOM SHALL RISE” festival here in Germany doom metal in general got a little bit more attention, the fact that we will play this years “summer breeze open air” again this proves that. Besides I wouldn’t call our style funeral doom. We still have some few funeral elements in our music but also worked with death-metal elements as I already told you above. We prefer to call our style nautic-doom that gives us much more room for creating music and that description suits us much better.
My top 5 albums....well that’s difficult because I’m not really up to date, but I just try to remember 5 of the CDs I have in my car at the moment.
Those are (in no specific order):
Isis - In the absence of truth
Clutch - Strange cousins from the west
Totenmond - TonbergUrtot
Porcupine Tree - The incident
Iron Monkey - Iron monkey
Thank you very much for this interview!
Cheers,
http://www.ahab-doom.de/
Daniel 15. 4. 2010 Storm
interview