Welcome barbarian doom heroes Surtr! They’re returning with their second LP “Pulvis et Umbra” to plunge our world in the very flames of Pagan Doom and Damnation! Even if one of the crew is injured others hold the banner high and they’re ready to march through Europe to get each of you wherever you hide! Yet don’t be afraid and accept Surtr riffs with your heart and soul.
Salute comrades! As all of us know main news from the Doom World of Surtr is release of “Pulvis et Umbra”, yet first of all, man, Surtr is a trio but Julien is injured, it’s a very sad obstacle on the way of the band. How do you do mate?Julien: Thank you for worrying about me! I'm fine and I'm really longing to play with my bandmates again. I deeply miss our gigs and rehearsals but for the moment I still have to be patient and keep calm to get things back together. I really hope that I'll be able to play again by the end of April. However, it wasn't such an obstacle for us as I asked my friend and excellent bass player Antonin Rubatat to stand in for me for the release party of the new album. He did an awesome job and everything went well. Although I felt a bit sad seeing my band performing with someone else, it was the best decision to take and I'd like to think that this whole process ended up showing that we are a band one can rely on, and that we are not the kind of people who give up as soon as something goes wrong.
Glad to hear, that you’re fine, mate, I hope that you’ll restore soon! “Pulvis et Umbra” is released both on to CDs and vinyl, and it seems as a good start to promo tour, what are your touring plans for the spring and further?Jeff: Actually we had to cancel some shows as Julien was injured. Now Julien has to come back as its best so we will work step by step to get him fully ready for Hellfest Open Air on June 22nd. Then we’ll see about touring. We’ve some plans in Germany and in France for September. We will try to tour the most we can for sure.
Surtr is professional doom band of course and I remember your first full-length well. There were 5 songs with name “World of Doom – Part I-V” and cover version of Reverend Bizarre most popular song. Now your songs at least have personal names, what did happened? Did you get an idea of Surtr conception from the beginning or does it became to incarnate only through “Pulvis et Umbra”?Jeff: When Régis and I have been working on the very first songs of the band, we took the habit to concatenate the songs in rehearsal. So the idea of a concept album came to my mind logically. And we built “World of Doom” has one song cut in five chapters. For “Pulvis et Umbra” I arrived with two songs, “The Call” and “Rebellion” which can be concatenated as one song like on the CD or in some gigs, or played separately. Then I wrote “Sonic Doom” and, naturally, we built smaller tunes which can be played in the order we want, even if, together in the right order, they build a complete story. We don’t think that much about what we want to do : if we want to write a concept album, just a 10-min long song or several small song; if we want to have something epic or something more funeral,... We just play rock n’roll and the result is just what we like to do at the moment we do it. That’s it. Doom metal, and music in general, is something instinctive for us. No mathematics. No complex theories. We are not thinkers, we are doers and rock n’roll is all about that. When songs are mostly composed, then we play them again and again until we all found and put the feeling we want in our personal parts.
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Régis: I don’t think that you need to have a bad life to listen to doom metal. I find that listening to heavy and dark stuff makes me feel alive an able to face the world with more lightweight feelings. In fact, I think that your vision has to be all clear about what’s happening in life. When you really suffer from something, you cannot write about this, because you are focused on the pain. Thus, you just can write doom metal with what remain of this state of mind. But that has nothing to do with the concept of the “World of Doom” album. “World of Doom” was more about how mankind is running again a wall and just speed its end up. These who get the power just do things, asleeping the others for their own need. And this is an epical battle since centuries. With this point of view, I think that “World of Doom” was very “narcoepical” album.
Julien: You have to find inspiration somewhere, and I guess it's part of a musician's job to translate your feelings in what you write. When I take my instrument and just play without trying to think too much about what I'm doing, what will come out is going to sound sad and melancholic or angry. Although I think that i'm rather a nice person, this is just the way I express myself, and it's probably the same for Jeff and Régis. I guess that it's our way to evacuate our own negativity and to share our dark side with other people who happen to feel the same. In this sense music is a great outlet.
What did change in the band since release of “World of Doom”? Did you analyze your work or do you just continue to compose and play music as you feel it without any “scientific” methods?Julien: Yes and no. We still write and play things as we feel it but in the same time, we were getting a bit bored about playing very long songs and thought we would do better at writing more focused and direct titles. As I joined Regis and Jeff, “World of doom” was already written, and I just put my bass lines on the existing pieces. Even if Jeff is still writing the most part of the material, for “Pulvis et Umbra”, we worked much more as a trio, and everybody came up with ideas on which we tried different arrangements. We also improved a lot in the way we play with each other which makes the whole thing more coherent and tight. There's more room for vocals, less but better guitar riffs, the drumming is more solid and groovy, and I've more liberty and space to come up with interesting bass lines. But otherwise, we haven't changed that much, we’re just improving, which is very exciting for the future.
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Jeff : I've stopped all my other metal side projects when we’ve founded SURTR with Régis. I've just kept my eponymous indus ambient project alive because it’s my recreation since 2002. But actually I’ve just released one album (“Torment”) the last four years and I’ve no plan for the future. It’s kind of stand-by too in fact. SURTR is definitively my only band and main project ever.
What kind of difficulties did you face recording “World of Doom” and “Pulvis et Umbra”? If I remember it right your label Altsphere Productions had some troubles but it’s chief did intend to release new Surtr album anyway.Jeff: As owner of Altsphere I can tell there were no specific problems at the time I released “World of Doom”. In Fact it’s more about common difficulties that every indie label has to face: trying to be visible in the shadow of the main big labels, trying to sell enough stuff to have enough money for the next release and so on…
Julien: For “Pulvis et Umbra”, the main difficulty was to find a studio in our area where we could record the instruments live, as we wanted to keep a natural feeling to it. We were lucky enough to find that in Nancy, at Mon Studio where Yann Klimezyk did a great job as soundman.
Surtr “I’m the Cross”Jeff, may you tell – as an owner of Altsphere – what are plans of your label for a nearby future?Jeff : To be a small indie alternative records label is not really easy. Each release is a new challenge and your future releases depend on the previous ones in terms of money of course. So I released “Pulvis et Umbra” in CD, LP and digital and in April will come the second album of Italian Southern Stoner Death’n’Roll band CARCHARODON. They received good feedbacks and have already a US Tour planned. Check this out if you’re enough open-minded to like a mix of Entombed, High on Fire, Crowbar, Down, Pugent Stench, silly funny lyrics and country-blues music.
I’ve heard only two songs from “Pulvis et Umbra”, they are “I Am the Cross” and “The Call”, both songs sound bloody strong and heavy, yet they are really diverse as if you had different approach recording them. What’s about other songs of the album? Are they so differing too?Julien: You're right, there are definitely a lot of differences between those two songs, but they both ended to sound like a Surtr song. “The call” was one of the very first songs we wrote for this record, while “Cross” came up from jamming at the rehearsal room. We'd like to think that each song has a different and unique flavor to it, that each one explores a different side of the band. We don't plan to stick ourselves in just one direction, but again, this is a very natural process. We're not like “hey, let's do a funeral doom song!” It just depends on our mood in fact. For instance, “Three Winters of War” has a more epic touch, “Sonic Doom” clearly shows a more organic and direct side, and “FKA” shows us experimenting some new directions for the band. It's a varied record, but our own style can be heard through the whole album, and I think it's one of the reasons why lots of people seem to like it also.
And what is your favorite song on the album? True to say I mostly think about my favorite songs but do you have one which you listen with pleasure time after time enjoying it’s riffs, melody and structure in itself?Julien: I really like the intro to “Rise Again” and 'I'm the Cross” is a very cool song. We had a blast writing this last one at the rehearsal room, it came from nowhere and ended to sound pretty good I think, very natural. It's definitely a song that makes my head bang everytime I listen to it. On the first album, “World of Doom Part IV” is still my favorite, very simple, heavy, dark and somehow frightening with a unique atmosphere.
Jeff: I really like to play “Sonic Doom” because the main riff goes straight in your face. But I also enjoy listening and playing “Fred karno’s Army” or “Rebellion” because there are lots of small stuff hidden inside, nice structures and they’re never boring to play.
Régis: I like “The Call” and “I am The Cross”. The first one gets a lot of sides that I like, like sorrow and power. “I Am The Cross” because it is very heavy and a little bit in a Cathedral vein I think.
And let us clarify one thing about band’s name. Surtr is a “giant with a flaming sword” in Nordic mythology, but you’re from France and I wonder why didn’t you take a name of some local pagan heroes of gods… I still wonder how Nordic and Christian mythology have such huge influence onto metal scene - even Manowar has an album about Odin and his friends and most of bands who don’t believe in Christian God use image of his opponent in their songs!Julien: Nordic mythology gods are better than our local heroes :-) I guess that Metal is a lot about not accepting the established order, and rebellion against authority. Using an inversed cross for instance is much more a sign of reject towards common thoughts and right-thinking persons than adoring Satan. It represents the right for every people to be different, unique and responsible for his own life. It's about showing your opposition towards conformity and the world we live in.
Regis: Nordic and Germanic mythologies are linked. We are from North-East France and that means a lot to me. We have a lot of history in common with the old German’s culture and even more than with French culture actually. For instance our local language is an ancient Germanic language, spoken here for over a thousand years you know. The name Surtr was chosen because of his role in the Ragnarock tales. He brought doom on earth. In fact he should be THE God of Doom. His name can also be translated as “Svart”, which means “Black” in English. That’s the color we want to show with our doom metal. I like also Christians’ symbols, like the cross. Today the Satanist imagery has maybe become too hype, in that way it is nowadays an established order that doesn’t make any provocation anymore. The Christians imagery shows more how evil and stupid mankind can be. During centuries, men were bounded deprived of their liberties under the shadow of this “peaceful and loving religion”. With politics issues today, we can see that things didn’t change a lot. That’s our role to show it.
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Regis: Satan is a part of the Christian religion, the “bad and the good”, “the white and the black”. But I think that in a certain point, Satan is more linked with the human race in Surtr’s lyrics. Humans are their own slaves bound by capitalism. Consume, consume and die the fuck alone. We are not a stoner band, then I cannot really linked the moto “Worship Weed, Smoke Satan” with Surtr haha. Personally I’ve stopped smocking weed few years ago because I was this slave and I just did nothing with my life, but that’s personal. If I want to get high, I take a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and listen to Electric Wizzard!
Didn’t you think about common simplification in metal scene and in doom scene particularly? I’m meaning that we have here a number of symbols, themes, riffs and clichés which is needed just to mix to get a doom album in the end. Of course, there are good exceptions, I would like to ask you about them and about your vision of this situation.Regis: Symbols and clichés are the way people are able to recognize each other as members of a same group. This is sociology. The metal scene is nothing more than a social group, divided in many sub genres. So all symbols or themes are signs of belonging like everywhere else. For my part, I like the sound and the riffs, I have interest in the themes, I understand and I appropriate myself the symbols. That’s what does the whole metal scene, and particularly the doom metal scene. No more, no less.
Julien: I agree with you up to a certain point, but you should not forget that we mainly use all of this symbols and sometimes clichés because we simply appreciate them. We have grown up listening to metal, reading the lyrics, watching the artworks, and we simply like the whole doom and metal imagery. It's our culture, a kind of religion if you prefer, and an important part of what we are.
By the way, which doom metal trends do you like and which ones are enough silly for you?Regis: I like a lot of metal genres, from death to black, but also thrash or crust/punk. I like music who punches me from the inside, something that can make me feel that I am still alive. I like doom metal that gets a real vision on the nowadays society and living stuff. I think that the must hear will always be Saint Vitus. Slow, dark and down to earth. Mega riffing, punchy and dusty as fuck, that’s doom metal. But I have to say that the whole “occult/ritualistic” stuff is boring me a little bit. Some bands are very good for doing this, but a lot are simple trend followers, coming there to make money. And a lot of bands that were put on the top for a few months, have already split-up. It is a little bit the same with all the retro stuff. There are some bands that I like very much, like Witchcraft, Graveyards or Kadavar, but when the genre becomes overcrowded, you have just to wait a while, which bands make it honestly, because they will still be their in 5 years doing very good stuff.
Surtr is confirmed at Hellfest 2013, and it’s a really good advantage, how often do you usually play and what were biggest venues? By the way, doom is rock music and everyone knows that band’s tour is an endless string of booze, hangovers, sluts and weed smoking. May you entertain our honorable readers with some fantastic stories from Surtr’s gigs? ;-)Regis: Ha-ha, that’s personal, but you have to know that we have nothing to do with Motley Crüe. Hellfest will be the biggest venue where we actually played. I just look forward to it, because I know that the organization is just very good and that they are great people. And it gives us the chance to play alongside bands like Candlemass, Procession or Manilla Road. It is a little bit like a child dream that comes true, that’s all. But that doesn’t mean that all is done, and we have to continue to work a lot and play as much as possible. I also like small venues, where the public is very near and sweat with us. But in all cases, what is sure is that booze will always be there, and so do hangovers too. For the rest…
Julien: I don't want to disappoint you, but we are no rock stars! Touring isn't always as fun as people may think, even if it's still the best thing in life. We hang together a lot outside the band, and it may be there where you could find the funniest and too shameful to mention stories.
Good, thank you for patience comrades! I wish you all the best on your way to the top of Mountains of Doom! And Julien, go back into Surtr formation as soon as you can, hold on mate!Jeff : Follow us anywhere on the Internet and support us if you like. Be doomed !
Régis: Where is my fucking beer??
Julien: Thank you for your kind words and this nice interview! And thanks to all the people who like and share our stuff, we are more than grateful for your positive feedback.
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