Interview with Polish melodic death act Elysium

Conducted on August 27.th 2003 by Metal Coven.dk

Hi, we are a ten-legged-melodic-metal-commando from Wroclaw, Poland. Please spend a while reading this. I hope you’ll enjoy this interview just as I do.

Definitely rather spending than earning money (huh)! It’s completely impossible to make money playing metal in Poland. So what’s the purpose? What is the sacrifice for? We are just bunch of extremely nice guys who all know what they want to do and they want to make good music. It’s often that word “message” comes last to one’s mind when speaking of metal music. People think that all this metal is about stabbing, incinerating, shooting, vomiting and adoring the satan. It is quite wrong and we really don’t want to contribute this fallacy. I believe that gore stories are out of date now. We really want to make people think of the reality around them, focus their attention on some pending issues. For me it’s more precious for a band to have mere twenty, but completely understanding fans, than mad hordes of drunken, headbanging people who don’t even care what it is all about.

It happened under the influence of bands we listened to and constant evolution our band’s abilities. With each album, our music is getting heavier. It seems that we’ve evolved from Moonspell/Anathema wannabe to the real metal band. The second “Eclipse” was somehow a transition, warmup before the “Feedback” album. It still consisted in sombre melodies, slow interludes and stuff. Maybe it seems obvious, but we always wanted to make Elysium sound like the band we always wanted to listen to. And here we are – we woke up one day and realised that Elysium sounds no more like Moonspell or anything alike. People who were fond of our first LP must have had quite disappointing encouter with our recent release “Feedback”. It’s harsh, heavy and true. Just like we planned it to be.

Unfortunately – not yet. For the time being I must admit averything is good except for the line-up. This issue always makes me upset. It seems that with every other Elysium LP the band has another line-up. Elysium is definitely ill-fated in this matter. Permanent changes are something that absorb our precious time that could have been devoted to creating kick-ass music. Presently we have rehearsals with new drummer. He’s awesome, but making old songs with him will surely take some time.

Music is, like in most bands, made first. If I paralelly to being a guitarist were a singer, the songs would surely be composed with stronger focus on vocals. Since I am not – the songs are strongly guitar-based.

For the record: I must shamelessly admit that the lyrics are very good and interesting. Briefly about them – our songs’ most common topic is suicide, with all it’s aspects. With all all ways leading to the ultimate decision. We are not a bunch of timid, weak creatures who say “suicide is cool”. We just try to analyze how it comes to one’s mind to commit suicide, how desperate he is, what the man feels, how he thinks, behaves, reacts. Apart from this, some songs are about overwhelming technological progress. About people mutually misunderstanding. Sometimes the lyrics are a commentary on current events – conflicts and frustrating changes in nowadays world. Generally everything that might possibly make us think for a moment.

We are quite open for any experimenting. Elysium, as you probably heard on “Eclipse” or “Feedback” is open to electro music. “Eclipse” had innovative industrial intro and outro which, unfortunately, angered lots of people. On “Feedback” you could hear slight keyboards in the background or ever whole pieces of beautiful intrumental music in “Venus Project”, with strings and djembes. There were also plans for my arrangement of Bach’s prelude as an outro of “Feedback”, but this was rejected.

There’s no preaching. To preach, you yourself should be perfect. If not, songs are just a vague attempt to draw listeners’ attention to certain issues. However I am afraid that lots of metalheads completely disregard lyrics, even though there is lot to learn from. It’s really sad. I wish people spend a little time understanding the message.

New pieces of music emerge rather spontaneously, within a second I can imagine a riff and seize my guitar to make it sound. Lots of music is made during rehearsal, sometimes barely impovised stuff turns into a song after a couple of rehearsals.

Huh, lots of: rotten guts, smoked beans, rhubarb, drunken chicks, purcupine sexual life, diarrhoea pills, scalds, australian economy, penis blisters, medieval plaques, goat fucking, ant eaters, blizzard riding, bath bubbles, dog barbers, keyboard layouts and lots more…

Every Elysium musician is highly skilled instrumentalist. It is really pleasure to play music with these guys. I am a first degree music school graduate, however devoted myself to metal, huh! In my past-time I give guitar lessons, which virtually helps me make ends meet. I started playing guitar about seven years ago under stunning charm of Metallica’s “…And justice for all”.

Yes. Oddly enough, listening to diverse music gives us boost to creating. Sometimes even more than listening to bunches of metal albums. For the record – one song on “Feedback” (“Sinusoid forward”) was created under influence of Stravinsky concerto.

Strange as it may seem, we like King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Ulver (the recent albums, I mean), Coil. I am the huge fan of Dream Theater, Planet X, Gordian Knot, Attention Deficit and also lots of jazz-fusion guitarists like: Frank Gambale, Richie Kotzen, Allan Holdsworth, Ron Jarzombek, Alex Skolnick (ex-Testament).

World Hello Day – a sad reflection about our sick reality, where people need to establish a special “World Hello Day” to be kind and polite to one another. And this is for real!

Feedback – The title song is about a very strong feeling. The idea is that virtually whatever you feel to another person, it is gonna give you feedback with the multiplicated power. So it works just like the Karma.

Aeolian Choreography – A song about a man who is so weak-willed that cannot control his life himself. He succumbs to some factors that make him emaciate. Quasi manifesto for all those who are afraid to face surrounding reality and let themselves be driven by other people or addictions.

Sinusoid Forward – Quite optimistic song. Teaches how to observe that whatever you do in your life you somehow make progress. “Anything that doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger…”

4.48 (For Sarah) – This is a tragic history of Sarah Kane, English modern playwright who commited suicide in psychiatric hospital. We might say that her life might be an inspiration for most of Elysium songs…

Venus Project – This one tells about two persons who in spite of feelings, cannot concur with each other because of inability to communicate. Sad but true.

Departure Fresco – Song of all these things a person commiting a suicide makes to say “goodbye” to the world.

Digital Future Anthem – Reflection over our overwhelming digital reality and surrounding uneasy technical progress. No one knows where it could lead us…

Suicide Generation – Yet another “suicide” song. It tells of a situation when a young man, facing the reality of what is life like, with it’s frantic ratrace, corruption and illness refuses to take part in it and commits suicide. The way the world is now produces “suicide” generations of people who deny this madness in the ultimate way.

It has been a while to change our sound from vintage Anathema/Moonspell to really harsh, heavy, modern. What has contributed the most to it was the change of guitar tuning from typical ‘D’ to seven string ‘H’. We changed amps from Mesa/Boogie (the sound of “Feedback” predecessor, “Eclipse”) to Peavey. We introduced fretless bass on “Feedback”. I believe we will use similar sound on our next album. I like it very much, it is heavy but pretty lucid and legible at the same time. We achieved this due to impeccable job of Arek Malczewski, our sound engineer. He made also a piece good job out of many other sessions (Behemoth, Devilyn, Lost Soul), and we are sure we will continue working with this guy on any forthcoming Elysium album.

For me it is hard to reckon. But it appears that recently Nevermore, Soilwork, At the gates. Sometimes Opeth and even Voivod.

Of course there has. There’s no need to mention that. If you want to acquire certain fame, you have to devote lots of your precious time and, unfortuanately, money. All these spread demos, interviews and all this correspondence... All these gigs. Now we have to be pretty careful not to lose all that we worked for that long. We mustn’t stop playing concerts, releasing.

Now that virtually anyone has access to the Internet, things are pretty much easier. But isn’t it TOO easy? I know that some people (like Chris Reifert of Autopsy) don’t use Internet at all, deeming it a useless toy for children.

Some of us work. Some of us are students yet (like me). Maciej Miskiewicz (the vocalist), as an example is a journalist in a huge daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. Our bassist is a Web designer and additionally plays in W.A.R.N., a quasi-new-metal band. The rest of the band is completely devoted to and focused on Elysium. Apart from that, we don’t always have time to play in more than one band simultaneously.

For the moment, it seems that what is most popular in Poland are death and brutal death bands. Melodic metal bands like Elysium are pretty rare here. Actually, any new band that emerges,  turns out to be yet another death band soon. Any band you can hear out of Poland is death-metal band, for example Vader, Decapitated. I believe Behemoth is kinda black/death exception.

We seem to be a band with truly broad range of inspirations. Vocalist Maciej Miskiewicz is a mad zealot of In Flames, Dark Tranquillity, Illdisposed, Soilwork, The Crown, Arch Enemy. I personally like Spiral Architect, Watchtower, Cynic, Meshuggah and huge variety of non-metal bands. Guitarist Michal Maryniak is pretty much into Testament, Nevermore and Voivod.

As for drinks – polish beer exclusively. Guys, should you ever be in Poland, don’t forget to try our Polish beer brands: Tyskie, Warka Strong! They kick ass!

Food: anything that crawls no more is good.

Television shows: definitely English sense of humour, i.e.: Monty Python’s flying Circus, League of Gentlemen and Faulty Towers.

Our essential gear for a rehearsal is rather simple. Elysium use D’Addario strings (for guitars .014 thick), Dunlop picks and accessories, Evans drumheads exclusively. Boss and Digitech pedals for sound. However, during recording sessions we try virtually everything to acquire the sound we like, so Peavey, Mesa/Boogie, Marshall. Sometimes we combine different amps with different cabinets. We like experimenting.

For the band – we have one more LP to record for Metal Mind Pruductions. Then we will possibly try to sign a contract with another label. We’ve got to play more concerts, maybe some tour, maybe somewhere abroad. Yet, for us it is hard to arrange such gigs. I hope in future our label will be more eager to arrange some gigs or whatever. For the time being, we begun rehearsals with new drummer – Pawel Ulatowski. We have a few new songs made. I think a killer LP creation process is in progress! Beware!

Thanx for the interview! Greetings to all Metal Coven readers, stay heavy and support your local scene. Drink beer, listen to good music, think logically and don’t give a fuck.

Check up our recent release “Feedback”. I believe you’ll like it.

Visit our sui-site: www.elysium.metal.pl . English version update soon!

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