Raw & Wild - '80 heavy 'zine / Web

:: INTERVIEW TO FROZEN SHADOWS

PLEASE, PRESENT YOURSELVES OUR READERS...
Greetings. This interview will be answered by Myrkhaal, singer and keyboardist of Frozen ShadowsŠ

WHAT'S ABOUT YOUR HISTORY? WHO DECIDED TO FOUND THE BAND? THE MAIN FACTS IN YOUR HISTORY... WHAT'S ABOUT YOUR PREVIOUS RECODING PRODUCTION?
Frozen Shadows was invoked in late 1995 by Namtar and myself. We used to play in another group called Tenebrae that I formed in 1993, but the musical direction the group was taking was not what we wanted. We wanted to create extremely hateful and dark Black Metal instead of the softer breed the others wanted to turn it into, so we decided to leave and create a more extreme entity. We released our Empires de Glace demo in 1996 and our first album Dans les bras des Immortels in 1999. We went through line-up problems after that, since we were looking for a new drummer, but we finally came back in 2003 with a stable line-up, signed a record deal with Holy Records and released our Hantises album in 2004. Our line-up is the following: Alvater (guitars), Melkor (drums), Myrkhaal (vocals/keyboards) and Namtar (guitars/bass)

I GUESS YOU MUST REALLY SATISFIED WITH THIS DEAL OF HOLY RECORDS...
Nothing to complain about so far. The communication is good, especially since we are all French-speaking, and I think both sides are satisfied about our collaboration. For us, it has been the chance to get a better distribution, especially in Europe, and Holy Records have got an album and group that are very different from the rest of their roster, which I believe was the plan from the beginning.

A QUICK INTRODUCTION TO 'HANTISES'? WHY SUCH TITLE?
Hantises is basically 50 minutes of hatred, anger and violence, and is the sum of all our frustrations. We hate most of what surrounds us, and everyday life is often extremely irritating to us, since we must live in a society full of people that we consider as quite simply put wasting good oxygen and that would be better off with a bullet in the head. H?????A ?INTantises is a French word that can either mean the manifestation of evil spirits or an obsessive fear that tortures your mind. We liked the double meaning, and since we felt that it gave an excellent idea about the overall tone of the album, we decided to give this title to it.

YOUR ALBUM HAS A STRONG BLACK METAL BACKGROUND... WHAT'S ABOUT ITS MOOD?
I think that Hantises is a good example of how you can evolve within the Black Metal frame without forgetting it¹s roots, going soft, or ³selling-out². Our music has gotten a bit more technical and complex, but it is still extremely brutal, dark and haunting. The mood we are trying to set up is always negative, whether it is hateful, evil, rebellious, eerie or sometimes depressive. We are leaving the ³happy goth/bm melodies² to all those COF clones out there, and in our opinion this has nothing to do with Black Metal! What can I say, BM in general looks more and more like a pathetic travesty of the goth scene, but there are still bands like us who remember how it should be doneŠ

THE SOUND IS VERY BRUTAL... MORE INFOS ABOUT YOUR SOUND?
We definitely went with a more brutal sound for Hantises than for our first two releases, as I think we could not have put out such an album with a raw sound. The music as a whole is too complex to have that good old Darkthrone sound, even though we love that sound! There are guitars everywhere on this album, 4 tracks and sometimes 5 or 6, so with a raw sound the whole thing would have been a complete pile of noise. Plus, Melkor is an extremely fast and technical drummer, so we had to keep everything a bit more clear and give more depth to the sound to hear what he is doing. On the other hand, we managed to keep that special guitar fuzz, and that is what I think makes the sound of Hantises so brutal. It is a lot more in your face that what we did before, and if we have things our way, the sound will be even more powerful on our next album.

WHAT'S ABOUT YOUR WAY TO WRITE? WHAT'S THE ROLE OF LYRICS?
Lyri?????A?cs, or poems as I like to call my lyrics, are extremely important for me, especially for Black Metal or any music that is negative for that matter. I think that many people are unfortunately downplaying the importance of lyrics, and many Black Metal groups have incredibly ³cheesy² lyrics that sound totally uninspired and pretty stupid if you ask me! My poems are cryptic, dark, hateful, antireligious, but they also have an important esthetic value. Screaming ³Satan² every two line simply does not cut it in my opinion, lyrics must go deeper than that, they must transmit a message, a vision, an outlook on things. I always try to keep this in mind when I do write a poem for a Frozen Shadows songŠ

I FEEL AN ANGRY ATTITUDE IN YOUR SOUND...
You just summed up Frozen Shadows and Hantises very well. Isn¹t Black Metal supposed to be all about anger anyways? I guess most people have forgotten this

INTERESTED IN SPREADING MESSAGES THRU YOUR MUSIC?
Of course! As I¹ve said before, Frozen Shadows is rebellious, antireligious, antisocial and hateful, and that exactly our message. No fancy vampire stuff, no cute dark love songs, only Death, Darkness and Hatred. Good old ³anti-life, anti-light,² if there are still individuals out there you actually remember what this is all about!!!

WHAT'S ABOUT YOUR FUTURE PLANS?
We¹re hoping to record a new album sometimes in 2005 to make sure that there won¹t be another five years between our albums! Asides from that, maybe start playing live, but there is no guarantee about this yet.

WHAT'S ABOUT YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE?
I mostly keep to myself and my close circle of friends, so there is nothing much to tell. My work reflects this fairly well: I am a professional translator. In other words I have a job where I can stay in my corner and not being bothered by anyone! Everyone in the group either has a job or is studying, so we have much to do outside of Frozen Shadows. So for us, doing music is much more of an expression of our anger than wanting to have a cool ba?????A ?ndŠ

ANY LAST REMARKS?
I¹ll just end this with a special curse for all Italian BM maniacs out there: surrender yourselves to hatred!

For more infos:
holyrecords@wanadoo.fr (e-mail of recording-company)

EMANUELE GENTILE

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