It took a while but in a way the timing couldn’t be better. Arriving a whole 9 years after debut album Dar de duh, its follow-up Har has proven to be a bit of a beacon of light in rather dark times. Fans and critics seem to be in complete agreement that things have transcended the transcendental here and Dordeduh have continued to push musical boundaries into exciting new shapes. We spoke with founding father Edmond Hupogrammos about the past, present and future. Enjoy the read….
AN: Firstly, congratulations on new album Har, it has been a highlight in a tough year and no doubt has touched many people with both its warmth and musical scope. I was quite surprised to realise it had been 9 years since we last talked and debut Dar de duh came out. I know you work painstakingly but did you anticipate it would be quite such a long gap between albums?
No, not really. We had a nice and natural growth with the band, we played at big festivals like Hellfest, Wacken, Brutal Assault and then I had to take a break because I became a parent. It was quite unfortunate for the band, but these things can’t be planned. Or maybe they can be, but we didn’t :). Now I have 3 boys and they got big enough that I can slowly get back into doing music.
AN: I am guessing life got in the way and I believe you may have unfortunately had some health problems to deal with. I hope things are better in this respect now but what exactly caused such a long time period between the two albums?
It was just because of parenting and because parenting is a never-ending learning process. When I got a bit more confident with my new status as parent I went back to playing. But I had no health problems. I do have some now though, hahaha.
AN: Considering the fact that Prophecy Productions deal with an eclectic bunch of artists and ones that work at own pace and level I guess they are one of the good labels to be with. Others, perhaps bigger labels would be more concerned about keeping funds rolling in rather than artistic sensibilities. I am assuming they are not a label to put pressure on and are more there to support those they work with?
You are right. Prophecy is an artist friendly label. It encourages and supports the artist to come up with new ideas and if the ideas are doable and reasonable with the budgets, they are inclined to say yes to them. At least it was like this in our case. They understood my departure when it came about focusing on family and I had no pressure from their side whatsoever. We have a good collaboration with them.
AN: One thing that happened is that you had drummer Andrei Jumugă join the group in 2016. Has this been a move that has grounded the band a bit and made you feel like more of a fully oiled machine? What would you say he has brought with him to the evolvement of Dordeduh? Was he involved collaboratively in the writing of the new material?
I met Andrei when he was 16. He came to our studio to record an album with his death metal band Stellar Soul. We saw him evolving during the years with other projects that he played with and around 2013 we invited him to play with a project of mine called Transceatla. Since then we developed a beautiful friendship and he became one of my best friends. He’s a hard-working and talented person and for his age I think he is very much ahead in many perspectives. We hired him in our studio as well and his progress there is also very impressive. He now handles all the productions by himself. Regarding his input in Dordeduh, he was working side by side with Sol and me for this album, not in writing the album, but in arrangements.
AN: It’s a subject that can’t be ignored, the dreaded Covid must have thrown up further barriers and problems though. What has it meant for you as a band as far as getting together and rehearsing the new music? How has if affected you all in your day to day lives personally as well?
As a band it kinda crushed our release. We could not have a release show and also we couldn’t have tours to promote the album. Usually after a release we should be pretty busy with shows. Until a couple of weeks ago, the only show confirmed was the one at Prophecy Fest. There will be a couple of other festivals as well for this year, but nothing confirmed yet.
In my personal life things got really rough with this pandemic. As I worked a lot in the live events business mainly as a sound engineer, I found myself from one day to another earning 0 income. Since the pandemic started I have had only two shows till now. I also have a recording studio with my colleague and there we had some work, but not enough to be able to live out of it. My girlfriend was also hit very hard, she had to minimize her business as well and she nearly closed it down. In the beginning of the pandemic we accumulated a lot of debts until we realized that things are not going to change and we decided to move out of the city and minimize all our costs. Since the beginning of this year I quit working in my studio and got another job and we slowly started to pay back the money to our friends and to the state, for the failing businesses. Hopefully this year we’ll become free of debts. That’s the aim.
AN: What is the situation like in Romania at present, still bad, or are things opening up and is the vaccination process going successfully? How would you say those in control have dealt with the pandemic in your country?
Things chilled down a bit, but I hope this relaxation of the restrictions was not a bit too early. I am not aware of statistics, but I hope things are going for the better.
I would say, from the little I know, that things got dealt with very irresponsibly. No vision in creating a national program for this urgency, decisions taken randomly often influenced by political interest, corruption and favouritism towards different shady groups of interest. But this review is made through the lens of somebody uninformed.
To be honest, since we moved to this remote village, we try to engage more with a lifestyle that is connected to nature and deal with the urban life only when it’s necessary, taking this madness out of our life as much as possible.
AN: Naturally it would have curtailed plans for performing live although I believe you managed some tenth anniversary shows and even played some of the new material. Did things suddenly come to an abrupt halt, were future live plans and tours hit and how do you anticipate things getting back to normal in the future?
The anniversary show was at the end of 2019. We played 3 new songs on that show. But right after that we went back in the studio to finish recording and arranging the album. So, we anyway had close to nothing booked for the coming period. Our main goal was finishing the album and maybe after that, we were thinking of catching some festivals in the summer and some shows for the autumn of 2020.
AN: You have told us in the past that numerology and “the manifestation of the number 7 in specific cultural and esoteric cultures” are a narrative that encompassed the last album and work prior to it. I know you like the listener to interpret things in their own way but that can be difficult especially when everything is presented in Romanian. Can you perhaps give us a bit of an insight into the narrative and themes of the new album?
This album is related to the number 8. It’s the balance; the balance between the inner world and the outside world, the equity from what one shares with what one receives.
AN: What comes first in structuring an album like this, do you have some sort of template you work off or is every album a different process. Is it first built around the themes and lyrics, then the music perhaps, do you record each part separately adding the traditional elements in at the end perhaps?
Usually, I come up with the concept of the album, after that I start to structure the main ideas around the story and allocate songs to the main subjects. Many times Sol and I have already written some themes and parts of the songs that will be reshaped to fit the concept. Some of them will end up on the album, some not. Then next are the arrangements and then we do the orchestrations. Usually this is the stage guitars, bass and keyboards are already shaped, and probably some vocal lines too. In the next stage we add the extra instruments to make particular parts more expressive.
Since we have our own studio, the recording process has been in our minds since the beginning. Usually when we finish composing, we already have a pre-production ready. Like that we can have a better view on all the songs, see what is working in the songs and what not. Sometimes we still alter the structures of the songs to squeeze the best out of the songs. The final stage is the recording process which is a whole subject on its own.
AN: There are some absolutely sublime melodies on the album. There was a reason I mentioned the word “warmth” before as at times the album really is. For example, I said “the melody in penultimate number ‘De neam vergur’ sparkles and sets off all the right synapses in the brain.” I am just wondering if such parts are the hardest to “find” or are they the rock that are used to build the rest of the music around?
The song “De neam vergur” went through a lot of transformation. If you pay attention, in the live dvd from the artbook one can see that the live version of the song is slightly different. It has an extra part in the middle of the song and it has different vocal arrangements. And that an earlier version of it. It was the only song from this album that we used to play live before the album was released. Also, it was a time when the song was actually split and we made two different songs out of it. The first part had some really good themes in it. But those parts will probably never be featured in other songs.
AN: Genre classification is perhaps not as important to a band as they develop and maybe it shouldn’t be for their audience either. I did find that with the new album you have moved subtly away from earlier black metal roots though to a more progressive style along of course with the traditional / folk elements. Would you agree, is it more just a natural thing, or a conscious decision or is it just the way the music has led you?
For us it’s definitely a natural thing. We don’t write music thinking that this should sound black metal, or proggish, or folk. Things end up to be what it feels best to us to be. But I understand that our music needs to be labelled because it has to be marketed.
AN: This is an album that should be taken on its own merit but it is impossible for the odd comparison not being thrown around. That is partly no doubt due to the need for label marketing. I was amused at mentions of everyone from Faith No More to System Of A Down to Celtic Frost and Devin Townsend on the label blurb whereas I found myself mentioning Hawkwind, Enslaved, Arcturus and The Cardiacs. There are no right or wrong answers but would you think of anyone being influential or inspirational to any extent? I guess if you did it would all be artists from at least a couple of decades ago than any more recent?
For me personally to be named next to Faith No More and Devin Townsend is huge. Anyway, I’m beyond honoured to be put next to any of the names you mentioned.
I never imagined being compared with such notorious names in the history of rock and metal music, so I never asked myself such a question. I’m still thinking of myself as being a wannabe musician.
AN: I do feel a need to delve back into the past a bit and sorry to bring this up but Negura Bunget were such an important group to many fans and no doubt defined your personal musical past. Whatever happened between you and Negru remains your business but it must have been quite a shock at his passing so (seemingly) suddenly at such a young age. This can’t have been easy to cope with and may have come at a time when wounds were just starting to heal?
It’s true. Sol and I knew that he would be facing real health problems because we saw and knew about his extremely unhealthy lifestyle and diet, but we did not expect him to drop dead from one day to another. The creepiest thing was that he died a couple of hours before my birthday. When I was informed about his death, I first thought that somebody played a sick joke on me.
AN: I believe you intend to revisit Negura Bunget material live at the Prophecy Festival in September. I guess it is a natural time to do so? Is this something you plan to do more in the future or is there going to be a firm shutting of the door on it and a cut-off point putting the past to rest so to speak?
We will have this show just because it was requested by the guys from Prophecy. I know that some people would like to hear us playing those songs the way they were composed. But for me personally it’s quite a hassle to revisit those songs and I would rather invest the little time I still have for music focusing towards the future, not towards the past.
AN: It’s probably too early but many bands do finish an album and by the time it comes out are hard at work on the next one. Is this the case for you or are you taking a break and preparing for getting back into the live side of things? Hopefully you are not envisaging such a long gap though next time round?
At this moment we’re preparing for the live shows, but I already started to write some new stuff for the next album. I hope it won’t be the case for such a long gap before the new album is ready, but on the other hand we’re not really that kind of band that releases albums every one or two years. I like to spend time with a record until I feel it’s ready to be shared and I don’t like making compromises in this regard.
AN: That’s about it unless there is anything you would like to add? Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer my questions and thanks for all the music past and present. I hope to see you live again when things calm down.
Many thanks for the support and hopefully we’ll have less stressful years for the music industry and a bit more stability on the global scale.
(Interview Pete Woods)
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