by Magnus Persson/ Vocalist of Hyperborean
1. Can you tell us a little bit about the band for those that have never heard of you before?
1 We are from Sweden, we formed 11 years ago so we've been around for a while although the band has not always been active it was on hold for some years before we decided to go and record The Spirit of Warfare. Our music has quite a few influences, I see most people are defining us as melodic black metal and I guess that fits, although I would hesitate to fully use the black metal moniker as we do incorporate elements from other genres such as Thrash metal for example.
2. How would you describe the musical sound of the new album and how does it differ from previous releases?
2 A mixture of different extreme metal genres, mostly from black metal. The album differs quite allot from our early demos, they were more melodic in nature and had allot of focus on keyboards. The sound of The Spirit of Warfare is harsher, although there still is allot of melodic parts mixed in there. The music is more guitar driven and riff oriented than our previous works. The songs are also generally longer and have more of an epic atmosphere to them.
3. What are some of the lyrical topics and subjects the new release explores?
3 The overlapping lyrical theme is warfare ( obviously ). Mostly focusing on world war 1. Most of the songs deal with that time period in one way or another. Weapon Mankind is about the preface leading up to the war. Killing Grounds is about the trench warfare and the fevers that plagued the soldiers. Viper and The last stand.. deals with the battle of Thermopylae and are the only songs about pre modern warfare. A new Sun rises deals with the aftermath of the war and the intellectual despair that followed it in a combination of a lost faith in mankind after the atrocities she produced during the war, and also sense of spiritual emptiness left behind by philosophers and scientists that challenged and in some ways discarded religion. The sick man of Europe is about the war torn former Yugoslavian nations leading up to world war 1 and ending with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo in 1914, an event that triggered ( although its important to point our that it didnt cause ) the great war.
4. What is the meaning and inspiration behind the bands name?
4 Hyperborea is an ancient greek word describing a mythological extreme north. A Hyperborean would then be a inhabitant of said north. We thought it fit well as most of our early material focused on norse mythology, it would probably have been more logical to pick a name derived from old Norse instead of old Greek, but what can you do, sometimes things doesn't make perfect sense.
5. What are some of the best shows that the band has played so far and wow would you describe your stage performance?
5 We don't have a full lineup so playing live isn't an option right now, so I guess we are a studio band at the moment, that might change in future though. We did play some live gigs early on but those were years ago so that's not really relevant today.
6. Do you have any touring plans for the new release?
6 No
7. On a worldwide level how has your music been received by melodic black metal fans?
7 Well the album has just been released so its hard to tell at this point, but the reactions so far seems good.
8. Are there any other projects besides this band or is this a full time line up?
8 Hyperborean is our main priority, there are some small projects here and there but nothing of importance.
9. What direction do you see your music heading into on future releases?
9 The lyrical approach wont deal as much with war as I am kind of feed up writing about that subject at the moment. Misery will be the main theme musically so the lyrics will follow on that subject and then there will be some other underlying themes as well( do not worry, there will be no suicidal teenage angst crap ) Also most of the songs on Spirit were written five or six years ago so the next batch of songs we write will probably reflect that.
10. What are some bands or musical styles that have influenced your music and also what are you listening to nowadays?
10 as for musical influences you would have to ask Andreas our guitarist. Personally I mainly listen to older bands like Emperor, old Satyricon, Dissection, Taake and also some classical stuff mixed in there as well, I like Dvorcak.
11. Does Occultism or Paganism play any role in your music?
11 Not really, our first demos focused on norse mythology but we have moved away from that as I find it kind of boring to always write lyrics on the same theme, I would say our world view is more rational in nature, Darwin before Crowley so to speak.
12. Outside of music, what are some of your interests?
12 I read allot of books about history and that's mainly how I find subjects to write lyrics about for Hyperborean.
13. Any final words or thoughts before we wrap up this interview?
13 Thanks for this interview, keep up the good work with the zine and keep promoting the underground!
13. Any final words or thoughts before we wrap up this interview?
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