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.
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