Band: Hand of Kalliach
Date: 26/01/2021
Members: John and Sophie Fraser (answering together)
Instruments: John - vocals, guitars and drums, Sophie - vocals and bass
1.Can you give us an update on what is going on with the musical project these days?
HoK: Sure, thanks for having us on! We’re currently doing a lot of writing whilst we are still under heavy COVID restrictions in the UK, but we’re definitely making the most of it. We’re working on honing and refining the sounds that people really enjoyed from our release so far, and it’s a challenging but enjoyable process.
2.In December you had released an ep, can you tell us a little bit more about the musical style that you went for on the recording?
HoK: Absolutely! Whilst we are both keen metalheads, we are also into our traditional folk music, which is still quite prominently played across venues in Scotland. With Hand Of Kalliach we wanted to combine the two and blend the passion and energy that you find in both genres, as with a lot of styles of folk metal. In particular, from traditional folk music we lift the heavily melody-driven structures, keys, rhythms and time signatures and adapt them to a melodic death metal base. However, whilst we can appreciate and applaud the use of traditional folk instruments in a lot of contemporary folk metal, in our music we tend to make minimal use of these and instead adapt the traditional melodies and rhythms for distorted guitars instead - for example, the high melody in 'Fathoms' which is one of the more aggressive tracks on the EP is actually the sort of melody you might hear on bagpipes, but we think it works really well adapted for the guitar in a metal track instead. We also use a bit of Scots Gaelic, which is a wonderful language for metal - there are a great number of guttural pronunciations that really lend themselves to the atmosphere when screamed! We’re not the first Scottish folk metal band of course, but we do think we’re doing something a bit different in how we go about it.
3.You refer to your music as being 'Atmospheric Celtic Metal', can you tell us a little bit more about this term?
HoK: Yeah, that’s the description we’ve settled on, after a lot of different reviewers/listeners were describing it variously as melodic/ death/ black/ atmospheric/ folk/ prog metal! In addition to the borrowing of rhythms and keys from Scottish folk, we do use a lot of varying vocal styles, some use of synths and a LOT of different guitar tones and approaches (we don’t actually use keyboards - if you think you hear some in the tracks, it’s almost definitely a heavily-effected guitar), so it’s understandable that we’re blurring a lot of genres. With offsetting of Sophie’s much softer, almost haunting vocals with John’s mix of death/hardcore vocals, we aimed to create a much more atmospheric sound than would otherwise be possible, so really calling it ‘Atmospheric Celtic Metal’ was about as simple as we could manage really!
4.What are some of the lyrical topics and subjects the band has explored so far with the music?
HoK: We do write fairly abstract lyrics, but there is a common theme through them in the EP, closely tied to time, mortality, mythology, history and emotion. That said, we don't think there has to be a single, unambiguous message through songs; our personal view is that songs should first and foremost hold the meaning to the person that listens to them - whilst we do have meanings in mind, that's not to say that's what a listener might hear, or want to hear, or even need to hear when they first play the track.
The landscapes of the islands on the Scottish west coast are a big inspiration though; It is historically a nexus of cultures from Scotland, Ireland, and the Nordic countries, and can be a very wild and stormy place, but at other times extremely serene. The duality of the landscape and environment there is something we have tried to reflect within the broader EP.
5.I know that the band's name comes from Celtic Mythology, can you tell us a little bit more about your interest in this topic?
HoK: Yep, you’re right - “Kalliach” is a play on “Cailleach”, which is the name of an ancient Scottish hag god of winter. In Scottish mythology the legend goes that she lives at the bottom of an enormous whirlpool off the coast of Islay, where some of John’s family are from. The story goes she emerges from the whirlpool to usher in winter, and has a lot of malign connotations in folklore; but that said, she is also a creator deity, so the music we make is centred around these dual concepts of benevolence and malevolence, and the history, mythology and land/seascapes of the Scottish islands. But the “ancient god of winter living underneath the huge whirlpool” always sounded pretty metal to John growing up anyway!
6.Can you tell us a little bit more about the artwork that is presented on the ep cover?
HoK: Sure, we’ve had quite a lot of interest in the artwork actually. We actually made the artwork ourselves with one of John’s friends, it’s actually white ink in a big tank of water with the lights off! We really wanted to capture the atmospheric vibe of the EP, with reference to seas, space and time, and of course the central focus of an abstract interpretation of a Cailleach-like female deity.
We really value and appreciate good music artwork, since it’s frequently the only visual cue for the listener as to what you are trying to convey in the music - it should fly a banner for what you and your music is about. Since we were trying to do something with a lot of atmosphere, and a bit different to what might be out there already, we wanted the artwork to be reflective of this. Whilst it took a lot of time to get right we're really happy with the result, and if it prompted some interest then that’s great!
7.Currently there are only 2 members in the band, are you open to expanding the line up or do you prefer to remain a duo?
HoK: For writing, we will probably remain a duo in the short to medium term, purely because with just the two of us we can be very streamlined in writing and recording. We’ve got a battered old acoustic guitar we keep in the living room that we can write a melody on in the morning, and on a good day at the weekend we can even have a rough cut of the track recorded by that night. We can equally change and rewrite things at pace if something isn’t working how we’d want it to. Plus, there’s so much less politics to worry about - if something we’ve written isn’t working, there’s no-one else to offend by scrapping it and starting over!
8.Currently you are unsigned, are you looking for a label and have received any interest?
HoK: It’s very early days for us, and we’re wanting to get at least one more release under our belts before we look to get signed, but we have had some initial interest which has been hugely encouraging.
9.On a worldwide level how has the reaction been to your music by fans of folk metal?
HoK: We’ve been blown away by how much it is resonating with some of our listeners, particularly for what was effectively a home recording. This was a bit of an “out-there” project trying to blend a lot of styles, and we really didn’t know if anyone would be into it. But to have been picked up by radio stations wanting to play us even before we’d started emailing tracks out was massively humbling. When we got the ‘Band of the Month’ slot on Metal Meyhem Radio’s ‘The Midnight Hour’ in January we were speechless. Reviews across the board so far have been really encouraging, we’ve had solid 8/10 ratings from all scoring reviewers which we are of course delighted about for our first outing.
10.When can we expect a full length and also where do you see the band heading into musically during the future?
HoK: We are actively writing for a couple of singles that we will definitely be wrapping into a full length hopefully later this year. We definitely want to focus the elements that people really found unique and enjoyable from the EP and expand that out into the LP, and hopefully this will define our sound further.
11.What are you currently listening to nowadays?
HoK: We have pretty broad tastes between us, covering a lot of metal and rock subgenres but also traditional folk. On the metal side, John is a big fan of technical/melodic death metal with an atmospheric slant, particularly the likes of Fallujah, but he’s been really enjoying a very new nautical black metal project called Thermohaline that is definitely worth checking out! Sophie leans more towards a mix of speed and folk metal tastes, like Primordial, though outside of metal some of her favourite bands are more in the folk/indie space. We think the breadth of styles in our music is probably reflective of these fairly diverse influences.
12.Before we wrap up this interview, do you have any final words or thoughts?
HoK: Thanks John, we would like to say a massive thanks to all of those that have supported us so far, including writers like yourself - we are incredibly grateful for it and really appreciate those that champion the metal underground. The international metal community has been so welcoming and encouraging, so thank you. If any of your readers want to be kept updated they can follow us on Spotify/Bandcamp and our social media links below and they’ll be the first to know when we’ve got new releases!
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