BLACK CROWN INITIATE – Humbly proud

 

Life is sometimes unpredictable and often full of madness and other weird stuff, but occasionally new great bands pops up from the gutter that lights up everyday. BLACK CROWN INITIATE is one of those bands that hit me like a stroke. Their debut album "The Wreckage of Stars", which I think is one of the best albums of the year 2014, have receives a lot of great reviews and with that in mind, I contacted the band for a chat. On the other end; Andy Thomas.

Hello from Norway and congrats with your debut album entitled "The Wreckage of Stars". Are you pleased with the album yourself?

Thanks so much for the support! We are very pleased with the album. We know how much work it took to make and we are very thankful to anyone who took the time to listen. Obviously, we have goals for future albums and things to change, but we are humbly proud of our first step!

How would you describe it to our readers?

Hopefully dynamic and emotional, like life. We wanted the music to ebb and flow and to evoke very specific feelings, most of which aren’t necessarily pleasant. We obviously love heavy metal, but we all listen to very different things, and I think the album varies from moment to moment. At the same time, we also aim for maximum cohesion within the songs and the album as a whole.

Do you have total artistic freedom while you’re in the studio, or is it more of a controlled environment?

By the time we hit the studio, our songs are 100% composed, so there isn’t much freedom there. When we write, however, we don’t put limitations on ourselves or each other. We try to let the songs guide us and give them what they need in order to feel dynamic.

You are playing death metal, but it’s still very difficult to tell what specific genre because of the variety in your songs/music. Is it difficult to build the songs together with all this different parts, vocal lines and riffing?

Honesty, we all share the desire to make the music we do, so there isn’t internal resistance. We love surprising ourselves. We don’t have too much difficulty writing because we all have a hand in the process, and someone is bound to have an idea at almost all times!

Influences are something all bands and musicians have, whether they wanna admit it or not. Where would you say you get most of yours?

If you asked each one of us that question, you’d have five totally different and equally long answers. I love so much music that I’d need multiple interviews to elaborate on it all. That being said, most of my non-musical influences come from my personal life, my inability to process and accept reality, the questions that I have about almost everything, the writings of Eastern spirituality and Nietzsche, and the films of Kurasawa, Kubrick, Tarkovsky, and David Lynch.

On your Facebook profile one can read the following: "Black Crown Initiate is the sound of a sentient being at war with itself and everything else; an entity holding on for dear life as its inner and outer world dies." What do you mean by that?

I am a very self- destructive person; mentally and physically. When I wrote the EP especially, that was what I heard when I looked back on what was written.

Where do you find most of your inspirations when creating new music?

Mostly my personal life. Guitaristically speaking, I play a great deal of guitar, so I listen for things that strike me as interesting.

You have only released one album so far but what are the biggest challenges with creating a Black Crown Initiate song or album?

I would say the execution of it live while delivering an energetic show. For me, playing live is a destructive act, and I get very angry/upset, so it can be difficult to focus.

Black Crown Initiate was formed last year but that doesn’t necessary mean that you guys don’t know each other. You guys are also members or have been members of the band Nightfire. What’s status on that band?

I quit that band to start Black Crown Initiate, so I’m not really the person to ask. Last I heard, they were inactive.

What’s the biggest difference between these two bands?

In my opinion, the music of Nightfire was very unemotional. Instead, the focus was on technical showcasing. To me, that supersedes and interferes with the music to such a degree that I don’t see a point in even playing it.

Any chance seeing you guys live over here sometime in the future? You know, European fans are the most honest 😉

It would be a dream of ours to play in your beautiful country, let alone anywhere in Europe. Time will tell, and we certainly hope so! Cheers!

 

https://www.facebook.com/BlackCrownInitiate