NEVALOTH interview...

Hell – please briefly tell us about Your band’s history
Delgrast: We founded Nevaloth in the summer of 2008. Originally there were six of us, but two members, a guitarist and a vocalist, left us or were kicked after a few months. Later that year I decided to take the vocals in addition to playing keyboards. In late December 2008, Vilozof joined the band on guitar and since there were no personal changes. Our line-up is as follows:
Delgrast (me) – Keyboards/Vocals, Vilozof – Guitar/Vocals, Nargil – Guitar, Daddar – Bass & Svjatogor – Drums. In late 2009 we started recording our debut album, La Diabolica Commedia. Old songs which didn´t make it to the album were recorded for a demo, which was distributed only among close friends. Then in June of 2010, La Diabolica Commedia was finally released via Sonic Temple Records.

What exactly is Nevaloth? Please explain the meaning of this name.
Delgrast: Nevaloth is a word which comes from the ancient Hebrew language, originally נבלה. It means something like “heretics, apostates, unbelievers etc,” a group of people who lapsed from the majority´s religion.

You’ve been through few members shuffles and now Nevaloth seems stable. Do such a band drink a beer sometimes eg after rehearsal?
Delgrast: Of course we do! Not sometimes, but almost always we have a beer or two after a rehearsal. Members of Nevaloth are good friends, but it is the musical vision and the will to play black metal and perform live gigs which holds us together. Most of the time we are stuck in different cities, more than 300 kilometers from each other, we keep meeting only because of the band, so we aren´t annoyed of each other that much as well.

You signed a deal with Sonic Temple Records for releasing „La Diabolica Commedia”. Is it for this album only or will You cooperate in future?
Delgrast: We will try to move to a bigger label, but they already promised us to release our next album if we won´t find anyone better.

Musically, I can feel polish Doom Metal bands’ influence! Have you ever heard polish doom projects: Cemetery of Scream, Sirrah, Mordor, Wintershadows, old Atrophia Red Sun… do you know these names?
Delgrast: Wow, that´s interesting. Honestly, I neither heard of nor listened to any of these bands, perhaps except Mordor, but I suppose there are plenty of bands with that name and I´m not sure whether I heard the one you mention. There are several other, I would say more mainstream bands from Poland, like Hermh or Vesania, which I personally sometimes listen to. Anyway I´ll try to find these doom metal bands and listen to their records, thanks for the recommendation!

Blasphemous Metal…as you name your music is by a lot of reviewers simplified to Atmospheric Black Metal. Do you accept this name as well?
Delgrast: Well, at this time we actually accept the label “Atmospheric Black Metal”.Blasphemous Metal is just the name of one of our songs. But if you would hear some of our new material, maybe you´d view it as a little bit more technical and chaotic than the songs on La Diabolica Commedia, not exactly atmospheric, and perhaps not even so “black.” Perhaps later, when we will compose more unique and peerless music (what is our goal), we will classify it as “Blasphemous Metal.”

In first days on Nevaloth, one could hear Mayhem and Dimmu Borgir influences. Don’t you think that both bands lost their musical identity while releasing newer albums? Especially Dimmu Borgir is not really respected amongst Underground today.
Delgrast: I have to admit that I am not a big Mayhem-fan and I haven´t been through their whole discography, but I don´t think that they´ve lost their identity with their new albums. I see their last works “Chimera” and “Ordo ad Chao” as solid, raw and perhaps even decently experimental black metal albums. Yes, they evolved over those long years since De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, no wonder when the band consists of mostly completely different people than in 1991: but the evil feeling is still there.
Dimmu Borgir is another case. I would say that it is no more a band, but a machine for making money. I know that Svjatogor and Vilozof enjoy the very first album of that band, “For All Tid.” I view this album as a bit amateurish and enjoy newer releases, such as “Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia” and “Death Cult Armageddon,” even though they can´t be considered as black metal. The new 2010 album sounds more like soundtrack to some hollywood movie, and I heard rumors that the band members composed only very little of the album: most if it was composed by the orchestra director they co-worked with. It´s a shame when an artist stops doing art and does only money instead.

You didn’t play live often in 2009, yet they were top quality – agreed?
Delgrast: Agreed. Nevaloth is the first band for all of us and we were in 2009 just getting started, getting contacts and so on. We played a lot of gigs in Banská Bystrica and nearby towns, as well as Dark Night Symphony in Nitra.

If it comes to amount of gigs – was 2010 a better year, after „La Diabolica Commedia” release?
Delgrast: Yes, it was much better. We played a lot of gigs in other Slovak cities for a lot of people, as well as we got the chance to perform with Anaal Nathrakh on their stop in Slovakia, again in Nitra, on 30th September, what was some hell of a concert.

Nevaloth’s „La Diabolica Commedia” is written in three languages: English, slovak and latin? Explain this idea.
Delgrast: Right, it´s those three languages. La Diabolica Commedia is no concept album, so there was no need for having it completely in one language. The eldest song, “Krvilačnosť & Túžba” was written by me already in 2007, before we even started the band, and only later I decided to write more lyrics in English. I also know a little Latin, and it seemed fit to have the ambient song “Liber Legis Luciferis” in this ancient language. It was no intention to have three languages on the album, it simply came naturally. The next albums of Nevaloth will be however conceptual works, unified by one language. The upcoming album will be in English, and the next ones: we´ll see…

Do you target your lyrics to local fans or would you prefer an international success?
Delgrast: I target lyrics to absolutely anyone who is interested in mythology, philosophy and religion, not just local fans. I´d be completely satisfied if our music would approach as much people around the globe as possible, but it is more important for me to have the liberty and independence which an artist needs. If our only goal was international success, I guess we would play satanic pop metal like Semargl (by the way don´ t get me wrong, I personally enjoy even this band, even though I would never consider their new album as “Black”). For me, writing music is like exploring myself and the options which I have as a composer. I don´t want to write music thinking like: “Someone else has to love this!”

Your lyrics are inspired by great people such as Goethe, Nietzsche, Baudelaire or Crowley. Who is responsible for lyrics and how big is this influence?
Delgrast: I (Delgrast) write all the lyrics. Goethe and Baudelaire influenced me only a little, the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche and Aleister Crowley is much greater. To mention other authors who inspire me, I´ll name Max Stirner, John Milton and Georges Bataille.

First Nevaloth material is „Karneval Babylonu” demo. Please tell more about, because it didn’t get You many fans after all. Can you get this demo somehow? Is it true that you have released 15 copies of it only?
Delgrast: Yes, as I mentioned above, Karneval Babylonu (“Carnival of Babylon”, as you might have guessed) is composed only of songs which didn´t make to the album. Our goal was never to get fans thanks to this demo, we only wanted to record some old songs for ourselves. The quality of the sound isn´t very good, so we rather didn´t distribute it, and yes, there are only 15 original physical copies of it, so it is quite impossible to get an original copy now. An interesting detail for you might be that the demo is sung completely in Slovak. It was no intention as well, simply a coincidence that the songs we decided not to include on the album were all in Slovak.
When I occasionally listen to this record, I recognize that some songs do have some power despite the poor sound. Later I would certainly like to re-record at least the title track, Veľký Karneval Babylonu, for some EP, or as a bonus track.

Slovak scene seems to be a little behind Czech one. Same goes to amount of gigs and fests. Which Slovak bands can You recommend to our readers?
Delgrast: Well, Slovakia is a little smaller than Czech Republic, but I don´t think that it´s that bad, in a few years the scenes may be equally strong. Slovak bands are not so well-known, but they certainly aren´t less talented. Out of the Slovak bands similar to us I would certainly recommend Essence of Existence: even though they aren´t very active, they released three great albums, the second one of them also via Sonic Temple Records, or bands Hecate and Abstract. We also have a strong death metal scene, I would recommend you Surgical Dissection, who are preparing a new album, Nonprolific, Perversity, Pathology Stench or Pyopoesy. The Black metal scene in Slovakia is much more underground, we perhaps are the only band which does regularly live performances, others are mostly only studio projects. There are several folk/black metal bands which are quite popular, like Hromovlad and Ancestral Volkhves. Two members of the very first Slovak black metal band Nemrael (founded in 1990, their records are unfortunately impossible to obtain) reunited some time ago in a new project called Alassë, already releasing one demo, but it is a more symphonic metal experience. I´d also like to mention Endless Main, a power metal band, who are releasing their debut album in these days.

Zvolen bands….any more metal projects in your city? Can you tell there’s a metal scene in Zvolen?
Delgrast: Yes, there is a strong metal scene in Zvolen since the early nineties. We are the only ones who play black metal, but there are others like Mäso, Madcult, Morted, Idiot´s Parade, and many other bands. There has also been a new metal pub called “Music Rock Café” opened in Zvolen last year, where metal and rock shows take place nearly every weekend, so everything is going just fine.

Back to your album – title track for „La Diabolica Commedia” is long and pretty weird. Planning such experiments in the future?
Delgrast: Well, yes, I think that sooner or later we will again come up with some songs which will be equally long (the title track has more than 17 minutes), but I can´t say that for sure. Playing a long song is like taking the listener on a very long trip, like telling some old and forgotten epic story, and that is the feeling I´d like to evoke again in other songs. But on the upcoming album no song will extend beyond 10 minutes.

Female vocals on „La Diabolica Commedia” were made by georgeous Denisa Lizoňová. Do you still cooperate with her or was it a single job she made for your band. You know: did her job, took money and left?
Delgrast: We still cooperate with her, occasionally playing the song La Diabolica Commedia live with her, but she is definitely not a member of Nevaloth. She had her own rock band where she was the front-woman, called Riffuse, but she left them some time ago due to her studies. I think that she will appear even on our next works, I would even like to arrange complete choirs with her and some of her contacts.

Is Nevaloth just a passion or do You see in it a Chance of popularity, long tour-trips, girls in luxurious hotels and a load of money?
Delgrast: As I have mentioned above, I view my membership in Nevaloth as a chance to explore new ways of how to compose music, to create something uncommon and unique, to perfect myself. Certainly, I would like to do long tours and to have loads of money and bitches, but I´m not sure whether it is possible without corrupting the more important purpose. I think that you can´t expect that you´ll write good music if you in truth want to achieve something else, e.g. money. You would use your music only as a tool in this endeavor. If you make music only for money, you are no more an artist: you are a craftsman.

That would be all from Deathicism’zine – would You like to tell anything to polish fans of good music?
Delgrast: I wish you all the best out there in Poland, a lot of great bands to be founded there, great records to be recorded there and great gigs to be performed there. Perhaps in some time we´ll do some gigs even in your country. Until then you should observe everything that happens in Nevaloth carefully, because all the songs for our second album are written, we should start recording them this year. There is also a Nevaloth side-project, called Abbey ov Thelema: several ambient demos were released, but a full-length Experimental/Avant-garde Black Metal album is on its way and should appear in the second half of 2011.

Ok, thanx!
Delgrast: Thanks for the opportunity of doing this interview.

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