Odraedir 2017 Interview

1.Can you give us an update on what has been going on with the band since the recording and release of the new album and the time in between 2013 to 2017?
Yes, definitely. We didn´t want to underestimate the preparation. At first we needed to compose the new material and after that we started recording the stuff on February 2015. In 2016 we did some improvements and started mixing and mastering on March 2017. And now the album is finally done. So we spent all the time to record everything correctly and in the last point we needed to make some rearrangements in background music made by flutes, bagpipes and so on to fit the songs perfectly. It was a long way where we learnt how to operate with details and I must tell you the time worth it, it brought us a lot of valuable experiences which we’ll use the next time.

 2.How does the new album different from the stuff you have done in the past?
I don´t think it´s so different, we just continued in our ingrained style: heavy rhythms, melodies supplemented by background music and harsh vocals. Maybe there´s a difference in the amount of orchestras, it´s increased compared to the previous albums. Also the production is much better and we spent waaaaay more time to record and complete this stuff :D.

3.How would you describe your songwriting progress over the years?
It´s hard to describe but we focused more on structured and complex composing. The songs are compact as we put a stress on deeper details. In fact it’s probably only us who takes care about them as those details are pretty hidden but we simply like it :).

4.Since 2013 have you done any live shows that have stood out in your memory?
First it was in 2013, when we went on the small tour with two bands full of great guys, Knaat and Heathen Foray. That was an amazing experience which we‘ll never forget. Than in 2014, we played on Made of Metal open air festival here in the Czech Republic, which was our first big festival experience.

5.Are there any touring or show plans for the new album?
Sure, it’s very important to promote our new album in the Czech Republic and abroad as well. Concerning the domestic shows, some are already behind us and several are planned in the near future. We would like to make some small tour including Germany and Austria, as in 2013, in the first half of the next year but there are no certain dates yet. We´d also love to play at some open air festivals, we’ll definitely apply for some in Germany.

6.Last time we talked you where unsigned and the new album is self released, has any labels showed any interest in your newer music?
No but we haven’t been so visible in past years which is not the case of nowadays. Now we have a new album which represents our music on a good level. We plan to ask around whether some label would be interested in cooperation as music distribution… we’ll see.

7.How have you fans reacted to your musical progress over the years?
Our fans were positively surprised by the progress we made. We also noticed a high interest in having our CD :-). It can be told we spread CD’s all over the world as it reached even USA and Japan. On the other hand this is also caused by better connection between bands and their fans via Bandcamp, Facebook, Youtube and other mediating parties which went more and more into our daily lives over past years.

8.Are there any current musical influences or inspirations over the years that have played a role in your newer music?
There is a number of bands we all like and there is definitely an influence on our creations but it’s impossible to name any certain. Simply, what we compose is formed by our taste which doesn’t have any strict borders.

9.What are some of the things you would like to try out musically during the future that you where not able to do with the new album?
We can’t say we were not able to do but we want to experiment a little bit. For example we plan to drop our tuning. Plus we wish to try bringing our music into a concept album but that’s a challenge for sure... a tempting one :D.

10.Before we wrap up this interview, do you have any final words or thoughts?
We are thankful for the great support which we got over those years as well as the one we got during the last months as Legends of the Dark Times album was released. We also let some T-shirts made to this occasion and it’s a wonderful feeling to see fans with our T-shirts on below the stage, that’s really a great support for us, thank you. And few very final words... we are looking forward to see each other at concerts, visit us and you´ll be kindly rewarded... :-)

Bandcamp

Bandzone

Facebook

YouTube

Odraedir/Legends Of The Dark Times/2017 Full Length Review

  Odraedir  are  a  band  from  the  Czech  Republic  that  has  been  featured  before in  this  zine  and  plays  a  pagan  mixture  of  folk  and  melodic  black/death  metal  and  this  is  a  review  of their  self  released  2017  album  "Legends  Of  The  Dark  Times". 

  A  very  symphonic  intro  with  pagan  chants  starts  off  the  album  along  with  some  folk  instruments  a  few  seconds  later  and  after  the  intro  the  music  goes into  a  heavier  direction  while  also  introducing  melodic  guitar  leads  onto the  recording  along  with  some  grim  black  metal  screams.

  They  also  mix  the  folk  elements  in  with  the  heavier material  along  with  death  metal  growls  also  being  used  at  times  and  acoustic  guitars  can  also  be  heard  in  certain sections  of  the recording  and  the  riffs  also  use  a  great  amount  of  melody  and  when the  music  speeds  up  a  decent  amount  of  blast  beats  can  be  heard.

  Clean  pagan vocals  are  added  on  some  of the  tracks  and  while  some  of  the  songs  are  very  long  and  epic in  length  and  throughout  the recording  you  can  hear  a  great  mixture  of  slow,  mid  paced  and  fast  parts  and  nature  sounds  can  also  be  heard  briefly  along  with  a  track  being  an  instrumental. 

  Odraedir  creates  another  recording t hat  remains  true  to  the  pagan/folk  metal  style  of previous  releases,  the  production  sounds  very  professional  for  being  a  self  released  recording  while  the  lyrics  cover  Celtic,  Nordic  Paganism,  Nature  and  Battles  themes.

  In  my  opinion  Odraedir  are  a  very  great  sounding  pagan/folk  metal  band  and  if  you a re  a  fan  of  this  musical  genre,  you  should  check  out  this  album.  RECOMMENDED  TRACKS  INCLUDE  "Heroes  Of The  Dark  Times"  "The  Dawn  Of  Odin's  Horde"  "In  The Name  Of  Thor"  and  "Path Of  The  Wolf".  8  out  of  10.

Bandcamp

Bandzone

Facebook

YouTube

Odraedir Interview

1.Can you tell us a little bit about the band for those that have never heard of you before?
Odraedir is a young epic/pagan metal band coming from Prague, the capital of Czech Republic lying in central Europe.  The band was founded in 2009 by guitarist Křen, who did his best efforts to turn his dreams real. Nowadays Odraedir consists of five members. Guitarists Křen and Mtyperys, bass guitarist Oggy, drum master Artiller and growling vocalist Dub.

 2. How would you describe your musical sound?
In general, songs have a quick rhythm inspired by Nordic “humpa”. We play many melodic solos that are still changing with sampled instrument as flutes and bagpipes and many more. These samples are filling small music gaps, making it more complex, dynamic and making the sound “epic”

 3. I know that the band covers alot of Paganism and Occultism in the lyrical topics, how would you describe your views on these topics?
Nowadays our lyrics describe Nordic paganism. We are slowly preparing a CD fully focused on a tale from north, but in our Demo CD Pagan Forest, we dealt with a kind of unspecific pagan topics, including our pilot song Pagan Forest describing a band of druids living in a forest and a song called Occultism and Mystic Practics in Pagan Forest, that is more blackened and describes summoning of daemon horde to punish, let’s say, bad evolving if human society. I was trying to touch a change between pagan and “post-pagan” times but I am probably the only one who takes the text like this, all in all it has a success. Other two songs are dedicated to Norse mythology. Taken from the wider range, our repertoire includes even Celtic topics, like in song called The Rise of Cernunnos that came out in our recent release, EP Troll’s Cave. To shortly describe our view, our relation to the topics, we like making stories that can be “illuminating”.

 4. What is the meaning and inspiration behind the bands name?
Name Odraedir comes from mythology. It is a one of three mead vessels. Odraedir is kettle, others are wooden. The mead gives the one who drinks it an ability of versing and singing. There is a story connected to Odin that he gained the mead from a hideout and as he was drinking in a hurry, a few drops felt down to Midgard, thus giving people that ability.

 5. What are some of the best shows that the band has played so far and how would you describe your stage performance?
Our performance on stage is living, we enjoy movement definitely. As the music is fast, we are so. Give us a large stage and we will use every meter of it.
Our best performance we had was in Brno, the second largest city of Czech Republic, where we played with Russian band Arkona. That was really nice performance because that time it was our first larger concert and we saw, that people enjoy the music even they had nearly no chance to know us. We played as second ones and we heated up the audience that was nice feeling. Later we took the advantage of visiting the city and decided to organize a small Czech tour called Dawn of Heathen Warriors. One of the stops were in Brno. Connected to the tour, these are our next best performances we did so far. We are proud that we can connect foreign bands and play together and possibly show people new bands that fit our style. We did two DOHW tours so far and we would like to continue and make a tradition.

 6. Do you have any touring plans for the future?
From the nearest future we are preparing a tour of middle Europe in September in cooperation with German band Knaat and Austrian band Heathen Foray. We’ll visit bands’ home countries and we plan to stop in Hungary. There are also some more distant plans like this December but only in the phase of “we could” so I wouldn’t like to say any certain data but for sure we’ll do our best to accomplish them. Next planned is the Czech one as I mentioned.

 7. On a worldwide level how has the feedback been to your music by fans of folk and black metal?
We have been abroad once so far on a festival. It was an underground festival called Darkness over Paradise held in Austria in  Wolfsegg am Hausruck. Festival ground was situated on a hill with nice view on distant Alps that was really nice experience. Unfortunately while we had our performance, it was raining, so many people were hidden in a tent just in the front of the podium. On the other hand, some brave ones stayed out and were enjoying the music and compared to other bands we had quite a success.
But what is more interesting is that from the beginning of the year, there were quite lot webzine reviewers, radio moderators and so on who were interested in making review at our EP or just in promoting Odraedir in their programme. Messages were coming from Germany, Poland, also Czech Republic and even Great Britain and Greece. The last one from America was quite a surprise.

 8. Currently you are unsigned, are you looking for a label and if so what kind of label do you feel that would be a perfect fit for your music?
Yes, a label would be nice to sign a contract with. But there is a huge problem. In the area of pagan, folk and black metal, which would fit us well, labels risk a lot of money if they sign a contract with young band like us. The “market” of bands vary and not one label met this problem.  It can be told that these labels sign a contract only with that bands, which are well based yet and this will take us a bit more time.
 9. Are there any other musical projects besides this band or is this a full time line up?
Instead of drummer and bass guitarist, who were recruited from underground type of black metal, this is our first music project. Artiller played in three bands before, Oggy played in one together with Artiller and in a rock
 10. What direction do you see your music heading into on future releases?
To be honest this question is hard to be answered. Taken from beginning, from Demo Pagan Forest, the sound was harsh and raw. We used only guitars to make melodies and we were satisfied. We were looking for a keyboard player to underline the melody but no one stayed long with us. Despite of Křen's imagination, me personally, I was really sceptic about adding a keyboard sound and I wanted to leave it like it was that time, just guitars. But last year we decided to record an EP, but there was a bit problem with having exact bass drum as we use it in long and fast passages. It was necessary to start to hold the rhythm by metronome and as we started to use a computer, we decided to try to make some samples. Křen quickly managed everything around that and started to produce not only underlining but complex sound that fills up guitars and gives them more.
Nowadays sound fits us perfectly, we enjoy much every song of “new generation” Odraedir sound every week during band practising, they make us move.  And what is important, people also enjoy them during concerts.
So by the end I can conclude, that as our EP has epic influence, our next release will be “full-epic”.
I don't want to make any prognosis about farther future because you can see style changes even in the sphere of large bands. This is a kind of evolvement, let's be surprised...

 11. What are some bands or musical styles that have influenced your music and also what are you listening to nowadays?
Musical styles that influenced our music are pagan, folk, black and partially melodic death. There are influences of Ensiferum, Equilibrium, Finntroll and Moonsorrow. The music style we listen to cannot be described in general, you know, different people have different taste. But of course we are connected by pagan metal. The range is really wide, starting from pagan metal, folk, technical and melodic dead, black over grind, punk, gothic rock, Irish traditional and folk, up to some rock and even some popular music, dark wave or dubstep.

 12. Outside of music what are some of your interests?
Artiller is interested in breeding of tarantula. I don't have any special interests instead of my work, that is connected to study and that's molecular microbiology (in the meaning of study of bacterial cell, let's say, molecular interactions). Maybe you say “what the fuck is this” but metalists are clever people. I met Křen in the first year of study and that time he was founding Odraedir.  This leads me to him, he likes conspirative theories and he is also porn specialist. Oggy likes fishing and Mtyperys cycling and painting that fit us well, we are really looking forward to the front of upcoming CD, which he will create.

13. Any final words or thoughts before we wrap up this interview?
Thoughts? Our thoughts are encrypted in our songs. Needs to be listened and felt. And final words? I’ve heard, that after long years of American metal history, where took the main part trash metal and hardcore, came an era of pagan metal. My friends, listen to the voice of wild, maybe one day you will hear a whisper, announcing arrival of Odraedir brotherhood.

Bandcamp

Bandzone

Facebook

YouTube

Odraedir/Pagan Forest/2011 Demo Review

  Odraedir  are  a  band  from  the  Chezch  Replubic  that  plays  a  mixture  of  folk  and  melodic  black/death  metal  and  this  is  a  review  of  their  self  released  2011  demo  "Pagan  Forest".

  Drums  range  from  slow,  mid  paced  to  fast  drumming  with  some  blast  beats  being  utilized  at  times,  while  the  bass  playing  has  a  very  dark  tone  with  riffs  that  follow  the  riffing  that  are  coming  out  of  the  guitars  and  at  times  they  have  a  very  powerful  sound  to them,  as  for  the  folk  instruments  when t hey  are  utilized  they  bring  a  medieval  pagan  feeling  to  the  recording.

  Rhythm  guitars  range  from  slow,  mid  paced  to  fast  riffs  that  combine  melodic  black/death  metal  with  pagan/folk  metal  together  to  create  a  sound  of  their  own  as  well  as  some  thrash  influences,  while  the  lead  guitars  are  very  melodic  sounding  pagan  metal  guitar  solos  and  leads,  as  for  the  acoustic  guitars  when  they  are  utilized  they  use  finger  picking  to  add  more  elements  of  folk  music  to  the  recording.

  Vocals  range  from  grim  sounding  black  metal  screams  to  deep  death  metal  growls,  while  the  lyrics  cover  Norse  Paganism,  Mysticism,  and  Occultism,  as  for  the  production  it  has  a  very,  dark,  raw  and  primitive  sound  to  it.

  In  my  opinion  Ordraedir  are  a  very  great  sounding  hybrid  of  melodic  black/death  and  pagan/folk  metal  and  if  you  are  a  fan  of  this  musical  genre,  you  should  check  out  this  band.  RECOMMENDED  TRACKS  INCLUDE  "The  Dawn  Of  Oden's  Horde"  and  "Mystic  And  Occult Practics".  RECOMMENDED  BUY.

Bandcamp

Bandzone

Facebook

YouTube