Manifesting seemingly out of nowhere, Gospelheim from Manchester have made some waves with their debut album Ritual & Repetition recently released by Prophecy Productions. Their sound mixture, which is build from goth rock, heavy metal, doom and black metal, featuring, for example, clean double vocals atop of blast beats, has been met with an overwhelmingly positive response by metal fans all over Europe.
In addition to being appealing to a wide spectrum of metal fans, the versatility displayed in the band’s compositions opens doors leading to various paths this project could take in the future. This is part of what makes Gospelheim an exciting project to watch.
Always interested in fledging bands displaying evident potential, we put together some questions which the founding duo kindly answered. Below you can find out how the band came to be, how they got their debut released by Prophecy Productions, where they get their ideas from, what they do to support themselves and what plans they have for the future.
Ricardo (guitar, vocals) and Coco (bass, vocals) clearly invested some time and thought in answering our questions which we really appreciate. Thank you, Gospelheim! And enjoy, everybody else!
AN: It’s not a small feat for a new band to have your debut album published by Prophecy Productions. How did this come about? How did Gospelheim, as it stands today, come to be? Where did the band’s founding duo meet?
Ricardo – We have a friend in PR that had Prophecy’s contact and considering their roster with Dool, Alcest and Acturus, it was a bit of a no brainer really. Luckily, they wrote back to us and here we are, with our tunes pressed in wax on record store shelves.
Gospelheim started as a project first, in my head and then in my home demos. After an 8-year hiatus from playing in bands, I got involved in a project called Agvirre 3 years ago which allowed me to meet musicians again in the rehearsal space and that is where I met Coco.
Coco – I had a chance to audition for Gospelheim shortly after I was dismissed from my previous band. By chance, I heard through a mutual friend that there was this new project looking to audition for a bass player. But much to my surprise this excitement was short-lived because as soon I joined the band, the first lockdown kicked in.
AN: The band was founded in 2020 and Ritual & Repetition was recorded the same year. Did you have some material in waiting, or did you write a whole album in mere months? If the latter is correct, how did you go about it? What did your song writing process look like?
Ricardo – A good chunk of the material was written in 2019, and then during the first lockdown I wrote the 2 last songs, Into Smithereens and Hope Springs Infernal. Once we had the chance, we went back to the rehearsal space to put some final touches on the songs. Me and Coco worked out vocal harmonies and who sings which parts etc. I didn’t know back then whether this project could materialise into a full live band. So, working out the details in its demo version had many advantages for me: I needed to hear a song in full with all instrumentation in order to assess if there is something actually there, if a song stands strong on its own. Also, when working on vocals and lyrics, I found that it helps immensely if a song is completed when you’re trying to figure out metrics for certain words. I also felt that having complete demos with vocals etc would make the sound more appealing and it would paint a better picture of how it was supposed to sound, for potential candidates to complete the line-up.
AN: What do you do for a living and how does music making combine with that? How much time can you devote to the band and to related activities?
Ricardo – I work in a record shop where we also sell a big variety of books, and both horror and foreign films too. That exposes me to a lot of potential ideas and themes for songs, and sometimes concepts as a whole, or things the band could explore in the future. I also think that a retail job where you end up discussing art with people, sometimes provides new insights and different opinions and points of views. Taking all this into account helps me gather ideas, especially for lyrics. I think work and travel have been paramount for the lyrical side of things. When it comes to time and dedication, I felt a big difference when there were no deadlines of course. One thing is to try a couple of riffs, and sing a melody over it, and then come back after a few days to it and see where it goes. But when you have gigs booked, videos to film, photo shoots to coordinate and merch to dispatch, it is a different ball game. The band feels like a full-time job now. It’s great, it’s rewarding, but it takes a lot of sacrifice at the same time.
Coco – I am a full time student doing a masters degree in Media Psychology, and I support myself by working in a pub full time. And that gives me a cross sectional array of people’s values and attitudes. That fuelled a lot of the inspiration behind the lyrical themes and messages in Gospelheim’s music, in a way. As they say, in vino veritas – people open up about their demons when drunk. The last year for me was a big challenge, and a real exercise in time management. Being able to handle a full time job, a demanding uni course and all the work related to Gospelheim became a real test of my limits and abilities. The band is my main priority, and takes up most of my time, but trying to navigate ‘normal life’ around it can be a difficult stunt to pull at times.
AN: Ritual & Repetition is being lauded by reviewers for its unusual combination of subgenres of rock and metal. You have successfully combined goth rock, heavy metal, doom and black metal. Did you set out aiming at that particular mixture? How did your sound happen?
Ricardo – Thank you. Nothing about Gospelheim was premeditated. The only part of it I had fantasised for years, which had been done to some extent, was the clean singing over blast beats, and bands like Dimmu Borgir have done this for many years but I always thought “Can a band sustain this throughout a whole record? How cool would that be?” I was always fascinated by the whole gender bending of music and how a few ideas can be performed in different ways. For example, my introduction to Alice in Chains was through their “Unplugged”. It took me a couple of years to access the original and electrified versions of their songs. It was quite an eye opener to get reacquainted with some of those songs but in such a heavier fashion. I think what I learned from this and a few other bands such as Smashing Pumpkins and Led Zeppelin, is that I had an affinity for an acoustic approach to guitar, sometimes bluesy, but also dark and evil at the same time. And the breakthrough song in Gospelheim that catapulted the exploration of extremes, was The Hall of the Unconsumed.
AN: One comment on social media said your music sounds like the Pet Shop Boys meeting black metal. Does the evident plethora of influences really include such divergent streams of music, or is it narrower after all? Which bands had a formative effect on you?
Ricardo – Very interesting question. I like a lot of different music. I can listen to Johnny Cash, Chromatics and Mayhem, all on the same day. Genres mean little to me. I will literally give anything or anyone a chance. Even if an album is getting pretty panned, I like to have a listen, so I can form my own opinion.
Coco – For me, the founding blocks would always be bands like Type O Negative, HIM and Marilyn Manson, but I also have a really soft spot for bands like Queen Adreena. This also includes a more feminine and heartfelt aspects of Katie Jane Garside’s music, with projects like Ruby Throat. I always felt drawn to music with an experimental and quirky quality, bands such as Sonic Youth and Black Light Burns.
AN: You say that one source of inspiration for Ritual & Repetition were old horror movies. Which ones specifically and what do you like about them?
Ricardo – The silent era ones. I love ingenuity, the atmosphere, and campy acting to compensate for the lack of dialogue. And how important music can be in films like these. I love films like Caligari, Nosferatu, Metropolis and many more. I was in a very very short lived project somewhere between Agvirre and Gospelheim, a kinda more guitar orientated synthwave jam with Carpenter vibes (Both John and Brut). And one idea we toyed with back then was to play along to film footage. Now, I’m not a filmmaker or a director, but that made me sort of imagine a band playing along to silent era type of films. I think that planted the seed in my head of how some of our songs would score some of these films. …
AN: Among the songs on your debut album one track sticks out for being an instrumental and also for being unusually named after a system of canyons on the surface of Mars. How did a feature of Martian geomorphology end up on your album? And what does it represent?
Ricardo – Although Ritual & Repetition is not a concept album, there are recurring themes in the songs mostly such as how faith, or the lack of it, become drivers behind people’s actions and words in particular situations. But a topic that interests me a lot is the future of religion and multiple faiths. I guess that comes from a fascination with films such as Dune and Equilibrium plus a bit of Nostalgia from cartoons like Thundercats, Transformers and Ulysses 31, I felt the playful mood and the changes that song captured that 80s vibe, while the blast beat section is more Space Odyssey like, when Dave goes through the stargate. Then one day I was reading about water on Mars and something about Valles Marineris popped up with an epic image of the canyons. When you read about the canyons, you read about signs of flooding etc and therefore the potential idea that there was once life on Mars. That idea of an ancient civilization worshipping cats on synthesisers, flying across the canyon fits the playful mood of the song I think.
AN: Prices of food an energy are rising all over Europe. People will have to work longer hours to make ends meet and will have less money to spend on non-essentials. How will the looming crisis effect your band, other bands, shows, labels, venues and the whole underground music scene?
Ricardo – I think the biggest problem we’re facing is customer confidence. There has been such a wide range of cancellations of shows and tours that people feel like they should wait until the last minute to buy their tickets. But with rise of living costs, the costs of touring have increased, because its effects on fuel, venue rental and crew.
Coco – It will surely take some time to adapt to these new conditions we’re facing, and we could assume that the entertainment industry will be affected, but it’s hard to say to what extent, and which sector will suffer the most. Even with the increasing prices, we battled through lockdowns and Covid not so long ago, and despite the difficulties, people still want to go to live shows and catch up on the lost time. I don’t think the music industry could suffer any more than during Covid lockdowns, with no live shows, and no opportunities to write and record with other people. If we survived that, we must survive the cost of living crisis too.
AN: Gospelheim has rather suddenly grown from a private project of related souls to a public entity. How does that feel?
Ricardo – It feels great. The response has been overwhelming. We tried to do everything so far with maximum impact and I guess that worked to our benefit. We polished this record with a punchy and shiny production, we chose “Into Smithereens” as the first single to make that sort of splashy entrance. This was the sort of project that when we started we were determined to make an impression. We made a plan, set deadlines, we sent out emails to promoters, radios etc, and eventually record labels. Were confident the record was strong, but no one knows how these things are going to be perceived until you release them, so everything is a gamble in the end.
Coco – Yes, we’ve put a lot of work into Ritual and Repetition, and there was a lot of uncertainty surrounding the reception of the album. After all, music is a very subjective thing, and with the mixture of different styles and genres, as well as the clean vocals, it was hard to predict how digestible it will be for the audiences. Thankfully, the response has been wonderful, and it feels amazing to see all the work we’ve put into it flourish into something wild and beautiful.
AN: What are your plans for the future? Are you planning to go on tour? Not only in the UK, but also in mainland Europe?
Ricardo – We want to play as many shows as possible next year, yes. We keep getting asked about tours too but at the same time we have been advised to stay away from them for a while because it is a messy business right now, too many bands trying to do it all at the same time and people can’t afford all these shows right now. I think a tour of the UK would be the safest option first, and if the offers materialise, maybe do a show or 2 in Europe. I don’t think we have enough pull right now to sell tickets for a European tour so we’d need a strong headliner.
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