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 SENTINELS OF BALTIC HERITAGESkyforger is one of the most promiment and most talented bands from Latvia. They’ve released their 5th masterpiece some time ago, and it seems that many doors and opportunities are opening for these guys. Seduced by their powerful and splendid sound, I couldn’t resist but to do an interview with this excellent band. With Peter, on of the founders of the band, I have spoken about their ’’Kurbads’’ album, its concept, his views upon Mythology, origin of band’s symbol, some personal stuff etc. I hope that those who like this band and those like to read interviews with interesting bands would enjoy this conversation I did with Peter, who was very kind and pleasant person for the talk. Big Hails to Peter and rest of the Skyforger!
‘Kurbads’, your fifth album has been released. It seems more mainstream sounding than your previous works? But, also, ‘Kurbads’ stands for your most professional and top notch release so far. This will sound strange, but at the beginning of record process in our minds we were up to make some raw sounding, harsh album. Somehow on the way we started to work too much on bid to make everything as best as we could and seems we forgot about our first aim heh. So in the end album sounds as it sounds – I am not sure if it is bad or good, at least when I listen to it - I am satisfied. We worked much harder here than before to make everything sound great. We did a lot of re-arrangements to songs, even in process of recording session. We want people to not judge this album only after one listening and with unfulfilled expectations for another Latvian Riflemen or some standard black/folk metal. Just give it another try - read lyrics, catch atmosphere with artworks and listen it as a small story… Recently, you’ve appeared in one BBC special where you talked about Folk music, can you tell us about that a little bit. How they contacted you and such. We played as invited guests (it was one song project together with local folk band AUĻI) on annual Latvian Music Awards ceremony and there was that guy from BBC there. So it seems that he liked what we did and we were in right place and in right time as he worked on that report about Latvian folk music. He caught us after the show in backstage and did little interview. He also said that he was not interested in any other pop band, only in us haha. That’s the story. I must to ask you, what’s that in Slavian people that bound them so much to pagan and folk metal shape of music? As far as I know, most of Russian, Ukrainian, Latvian bands are so much into that folk and pagan stuff. What kind of things for you makes Slavic mythology greater than for example Nordic or Greek? Firs and most important of all: we are not Slavian, not Slavonic nor Slavs - we are BALTS, Baltic people! Latvians and Lithuanians! Sorry, but this is very important for us, as we are last two Baltic nations left in the world and always was left behind in history books, thanx to all bigger countries which don’t care about such small countries. And here’s maybe comes an answer: we and other Eastern European people were long under the rule of Soviet Union and they oppressed everything which was national. In soviet time it was even forbidden to celebrate our local summer solstice event, which is complete nonsense. Now, when we are free, we took our strength and self identity from such things as our pagan history, traditions and folklore. These things are cornerstone of our survival in old times and now. That’s why there are a lot of pagan/folk bands from this side of Europe. If there is no local culture, who would we be? Another group of faceless people? But we never say that our culture or mythology is greater over other nations. It’s different, but in the end it came from same roots as Nordic or Greek mythology. Here are just few examples: in our language old pagan god is called Dievs, in Greek Zeus, in Latin Deus etc. Our thunder god Pērkons rides the sky and throws lightning as he hunts evil spirits, he uses axe and are known as Blacksmith as well. Same is with German Wotan, Slavic Perun or Nordic Thor. We are Indo-European people and we have same roots as Celtic, German and Slavic and many other nations.  How much time did process of recording, mixing and producing did take, are you satisfied with the final product? The production on this album is simply great, I must say. We started to work on songs years ago, but it went slow in the beginning. Finally when all possible songs were ready we went to studio and suddenly our second guitarist Rihards decided to leave the band. So I had to do all guitar jobs myself. It took some time again to learn riffs and to rearrange everything to my taste. We recorded everything here in Latvia, in our band-mate’s Kaspars studio. So we hadn’t that much stress as we was alone there, it was like you are recording everything in your friends home. We recorded things, then went home and listened to them and if we aren’t satisfied, next time we rerecorded them. Kaspars asked not that much money for an hour as we’d spend in big professional studios. After all we did all of our albums this way – I mean here in Latvia, in our local friendly studios. I think we are used to it and possibly cannot record anything good in time limited foreign professional studios where every minute counts. Later we went to our sound engineer Gints’ studio – our old good Phoenix and did all mixing plus mastering there. So far I think Kurbads is our best album, but of course that is still a lot of things which I want to change now and maybe if there would be another chance, do everything in different way than we did now. What Kurbads means? Kurbads is the name of main hero from this tale. It means nothing, but some people go and try to translate it anyway. “Kur” in our language is “where” and “bads” is “hunger”. So approximately you can translate his name like “Where hunger is” because he was born from mare that was hungry and ate pike fish entrails! What kind of things you do to get inspiration for music and lyrics, are those walks in the nature, or maybe reading, or even usage of alcohol and such? Mainly they came from reading books, watching historical movies and walks in Nature, as you said. And my fantasies too, of course. But mainly I inspire myself from books: I read a lot and all about history, not only Latvian, I’m interested in everything from whole world’s history. To what kind of living are members of Skyforger devoted? Do you have also daytime jobs besides playing in band? Yeah, sure we’re working people. Band is nothing but a big hobby for us. This is our problem at some degree, as we can’t spend that much time for band and playing music. Everyone of us has daily jobs, some have family and few has children, so it is not that easy to get together and play. We aren’t professional musicians, we learned everything by ourselves, so we can’t go out and find pro musician job. We must work, because so far there isn’t such possibility to play in Skyforger and get enough money for living and support family. I, for example, work in big theatre here as plumber (watermaster) and man who take care for heating/ventilation systems. Luckily for me is that I work on shifts and have some free time to spend for band as well. Other guys: bassplayer Zirgs works in local typography house as a paper cutter; drummer Mazais work as night watch in University and helps his mother keeping food shop. Kaspars, our bagpipe player, are luckiest of us all as he works with music: he owns his personal small recording studio “Lauska” (where we recorded Kurbads lately), but he must work very hard to get money and keep his business on the run. Martins, our second guitarist, work as carpenter in some private company. So we are hard working men 5-6 days a week! Do you planning to shoot any video for song of the album, or even to go with releasing of DVD live video, or maybe live audio album? For me personally, ‘’Black Rider’’ seems attractive for video coverage. Yea, we actually think about it now. We did a great presentation show here in Riga for Kurbads and filmed it. Now we are thinking of some possibility to make a DVD with this concert and add some more stuff in there. One of this can be possibly new video clip. We got some small bit money out of that show and hope we can make it. We are thinking to make video for Bewitched Forest. Why? Because at some point it can be much easy story - wiser to do that than, for example, for Black Rider. But it is just a misty plan for future, only time will show us if we make something out of it. On which song you are most proud in your carrier? Ha ha – I don’t know!!! Really! If you ask, I think this song is only still ahead, in future. But to answer question anyway, maybe it can be Migla, Migla, Rasa, Rasa (from Thunderforge album) – I see how people love it so much all around the world. There are even some Mexican bands covering that and playing live with original Latvian words! On this album, you keep it up with your basic sounding, but it’s evident that you’ve opened yourselves for experimentations with heavy, death and some modern music postulates, how you came up with that? I don’t know what to say actually – we did everything as always. We are open-minded to every kind of music and if we hear that this is good riff or great idea, we are free put it into song, as we do not restrict us in any styles or limits. Simple as that. There was no special calculation or aim to make it this way or that way. I just play guitar and then somehow catch good (in my opinion of course) riffs. Then I offer all ideas to band. Some other guy maybe has another riff and we try to stick it all together until song is ready. We always follow our inner feeling if it sounds good or bad. If we have some discomfort with new song, we try to rearrange it or just throw away. What’s the situation with recording studios and labels in Latvia? Is hard to be metal band out there? And how much of support you have from the local fans? There is a lot of small private and some bigger recording studios around, but no any metal label. Our metal scene is small and real undergroundish, to tell you truth. It’s not hard to make record here, but what to do with it afterwards? No metal labels, no magazines, no radio stations for metal. Only way is put it into Internet and play songs in concerts. As you can imagine, there’s not a lot of concerts here for metal bands too. Luckily we still have our metal club Melnā Piekdiena (Black Friday) here and mostly everything happens there. From time to time some outdoor fests pop up, but apart from that situation is pretty bleak. In western Europe metal life is much more busy. We are biggest metal band here in Latvia and still can gather people on our shows, but we prefer to play not that much here – to not become boring for fans. As for fans - if we can gather 1000 people for a show or even for festival - it is very great, but mostly there are 50 – 200 people at average local show. World economical crisis did hard hit there too, people don’t have money to spend on music and concerts, and they just try to survive. As you know, when there are empty pockets, there’s no music. I heard some rumors, that people in USA are pretty much interested in your music, is that true, maybe something that started with past albums, or thing that started recently? Hmm, I can’t say for sure, but we definitely have some fans over there. When we played in USA, we were really surprised when we saw people with our t-shirts and that big crowd at stage! We hope that with Metal Blade now we will get more fans in USA, as our album is selling there now too. I saw at some websites that there are a lot of people who like that kind of music. What attracted you for this kind of artwork? And how was creator? I know that Aiva Krumina was responsible for ‘Sword Song’ cover, is she again or someone else? This time it was Martins, our second guitarist, who worked with album artwork. He joined the band when we were at the end of recording process of Kurbads. He liked the story and whole idea and he offered to make some paintings for cover. When I saw them, I thought they are good enough for this album. I saw them as pictures from fairytale book and Kurbads is a fairytale after all. To my view all his paintings fits greatly to our album. He surely has his own style. I heard that a lot of people said that they are bad, but people today are too addicted to that great mainstream cover paintings every band have by professionals, so they laugh at everything which does not look the same. If you did not read the whole story, maybe that cover picture looks stupid, some people saw even Vikings in there haha, but it is connected with album and have a meaning! On the cover we can see last battle of Kurbads: he has already killed ogre Black Rider, but Snake Witch sneaked close and managed to spit her venom into Kurbads open wound on his shoulder. To my view all painting is mystical with that dead tree and black cave behind it – it make something like symbol of Underworld and tree’s branch is like a upper ground and you can see forest and moon above on it. It’s like Kurbads is stepped with half step in the Realm of Dead already! And surely do not judge after some low resolution quality pictures on internet. We plan also to do vinyl, so hopefully it would be really nice artwork to see. When I mentioned ‘Sword Song’, that album was released in cooperation with the Latvian Culture Capital foundation, sponsored by your government. Who that came to be? Seems as interesting story. Well, not much story here. There exists this Culture foundation up to this day and everyone can submit their project in hopes for some financial support. As you can imagine there is a lot of people who wants money. It was lucky for us, that we and some of our friends knew right people there at that time. We got some amount for recording, but the rest we covered by ourselves anyway. And that is all here. They just gave us money for Sword Song recording session and we put their logo as support. In the past, you’ve used Latvian symbol ‘Thunder cross’, but you removed it due to some misunderstandings on political basis and such, if I’m not wrong. What you can say about that? I heard that you had some problems like accusations that you are political band and things like that. Yea, middle sign in our old logo was some kind of swastika which is one of our national symbols, which you can found on ancient belts, brooches, working tools, robes, gloves, money and newspapers – everywhere! There is even one political party in parliament of Latvian which has also stylized national symbol. When we started band in 1995, we never knew that especially in Germany this could be such a dubious thing. We were accused of being Nazi band, which was of course not true. Most of this crap is doing by organization so called Antifa. They hunt and try to see Nazism everywhere. All things connected with ancient paganism, history, traditions and even nations’ culture, for them all this is Nazism!!! They are working hard against pagan metal bands while at same time I didn’t heard how they tried to fight real neo nazists – but I bet they have not guts for that. If they saw rune letters or pagan symbols – you are Nazi. If you sing about your nations’ great events, battles, pagan chanting – you could be labeled as Nazi again. Average people listens to them or organizations alike, and whole Germany is very afraid to talk about it and swastika is big no-no. Some of our concerts were canceled thanx to this and even printing companies in Germany refused to print our stuff as soon as they saw stylized swastika somewhere. So, when we saw all that for few years, we decided that it was enough and changed it. Man, this is a simple hypocrisy: Germany lash itself and whine about Hitler and their Nazi past, try to exterminate everything connected with it, while at same time no one dares to accuse Russia and their communist mass murdering regime. In Russia they still build monuments for Stalin and no one says a word. Under the sign of red star there was killed and enslaved many more people than by Nazis – but who dares to say this to big Russia, cos they won war, right?! Does your name ‘Skyforger’ was in some connection to using of that ‘Thundercross’ symbol? Yes – this swastika or how we call it here “Thundercross” or other pagan name “Firecross” is a symbol of Thunder god Pērkons himself. Skyforger or blacksmith of the sky is another manifestation of Pērkons, when people saw him as a great blacksmith who works in his heaven’s forge. Thunder and lightning can be seen sparkling around then. And that’s why we did put that sign in our logo. Swastika is the sign which give you luck and protects from evil – this sign you can found on almost every nation in the world, for example, even in works of ancient North America Indian tribes! So what now – they all are Nazis? Why people must pay that Hitler chose this sign.. Napoleon and other tyrants had his own sign under which they murdered people. No one cares again; just swastika is a bad guy. It all seems wrong to me. Do you follow the recent pagan folk scene, who do you feel about it? Not that much, I try to stay out of it, but sure I know something. That big boom, which was with pagan/folk music in the last years, gave me a depression – it all went wrong from what I thought it should be. It all became too commercial, too cheesy – cartoon Vikings for sale everywhere, it all turned into another Lords of the Ring parody. Unfortunately… Now when downfall has started, people even laugh about some bands, but it’s too late. We and some other bands started it with serious intentions, to tell about history, traditions, culture and folklore - it is not for masses, but some guys saw how to make good money out of it and now we are where we are. Now most of people (not all of course) don’t care that much about idea, lyrics, artworks etc. behind bands; all they need is jolly melodies, bagpipes, beer, mead, horns and humpaa rhythms. This is folk/pagan for masses now and it sells good. On the bright side, again, it is not that bad if masses of people start to get interested, even if a little bit, into real history, traditions and such stuff more than when they were into Satan/Christ or some gore metal. Do you like bands like Eluveitie, Blind Guardian, Bathory…and what kind of music members of Skyforger like to listen in private? Bathory of course is one of our biggest influences. We are guys from 80’s, so we still like that old good classic heavy metal. Then there was thrash and death metal and black too. We listen to almost every kind of metal, but love heavy metal most of all. Just few bands we like: Saxon, Judas Priest, Venom, Razor, Cathedral, Living Death, Sodom, Axel Rudi Pell, ZZ Top, Darkthrone, Grave, Clannad and so on and on. We got influenced from all those bands and maybe that’s why we jump from style to style in our songs and albums – we mix all this together in one big caldron of soup. What are next plans for the band, some bigger tours, concerts outside your country and such? We will try to promote Kurbads as much as we can, though no very big tours are planned at the moment, due to our daily jobs and lifestyle. Mostly we will play some weekend gigs in some clubs or festivals. All gig info can be found on our homepage or MySpace. But there are one 10 day tour in September coming up, also in October we will do Finnish tour, and then we will see, there might be one big tour in spring 2011. We hope that soon we will start to work for new songs, but this is then another story… That would be all for this time, thanks for your time, and have a great summer. Also, last words for closing of this interview are yours. Thank you, Vladimir, for this possibility. Thanx to all our fans out there and we very hope that you will like Kurbads and take it as a new album, without expectations for Latvian Riflemen or Kauja Pie Saules no.2. It is different again and as always lyrics and artwork plays great role here. Try to check it out! Answers by Peter |
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