Carach Angren from The Netherlands are more than just a black metal band, adding extravagantly classical sounds to create a turbulence which reflects grotesque psychological themes and scenes of death. The latest of these works, capturing “seven visions of war” is “Where the Corpses Sink Forever”. To find out more about the band’s vision, Andrew Doherty interviewed Ardek, the key board player and creator of orchestration.
AN: Hello and thank you for answering our questions. So, furious black metal, threatening and insanely urgent orchestral music and tales of horror and death – is there any light within the world of Carach Angren?
Ardek: Yes there is, when the CD finishes haha, no but I think there is actually. As we are storytellers we try to include happy emotions as well in order to take everything down again into the dark swamp. In my opinion you can’t tell a story when you focus merely on evil/ dark stuff, that’s unrealistic.
Take for example the song about the violinist. We portray this guy as an innocent soul with a passion for music. One could relate to him and therefore the song has a lot of impact when you can imagine him in the situation of war. That’s what we try to do, connect people to our music and lyrics and take them on a journey.
Besides this creative approach we are all just pretty ‘normal’ as you can see in our studio reports. We don’t like to be the arrogant fuckers talking about this and that and how good we are etc. etc.
AN: The musical style goes well with the ghastly themes of your albums. I can’t imagine that your home region ofLimburg, which I’ve always found to be rather sleepy and conservative, has led you towards this kind of music. What or who gave you the idea and inspiration to create the horror-ridden metal that you play?
Ardek: Well maybe it’s just because of it being sleepy and conservative. We were all raised as Christians in small villages and lived in beautiful but very quiet places so from childhood we were interested in music and things you could do to creatively. Seregor and I have always been fans of horror movies, stories and music so it was a natural thing we that we listened to black and death metal and at a certain point started incorporating the ghost and horror themes into our music.
AN: Your musical style can loosely be found in other band’s work, notably Anorexia Nervosa, Dimmu Borgir and maybe Cradle of Filth. Is this something you’re aware of or is this similarity a coincidence?
Ardek: Yes of course we are aware of this and people make this comparison all the time, however I think we found a style of our own through the years. It is not a complete coincidence of course as one cannot completely find something new in my opinion but it was never our intension to sound like existing bands. From the beginning we had a very clear goal with Carach Angren and that is to create beautiful, yet heavy and dark story-telling horror music. We don’t get our inspiration from other black metal bands, we get inspired by stories, feelings, ideas we encounter.
AN: I’d say you have a passion for extremity which is second to none. The torture your music represents is both physical and psychological. It’s as if you set yourself the target of going as over the top as possible. As a band, do you simply allow your imagination to run riot, or are there limits? With the combination of metal and classical genres, my impression is that you have a tight control process on the musical side.
Ardek: We don’t have any limits, especially Seregor will go on and on and make up sick ideas. He even goes as far as ‘plotting’ them at parties. I remember the time when he thought of the story behind ‘…And the Consequence Macabre’ he would sit down with some people, tell them the story and see how they react. Almost all of the time people were shocked by it so he would laugh and now that he was on to something haha.
We are also aware that sometimes the themes are over the top, but hey, that’s what theatre is all about and we love to make it almost ridiculous at some point… but not completely, that’s the thing. You can’t take it completely serious but you can’t fully laugh about it. We try to find this edge, also music wise.
We found a very good and solid way of creating the music after all these years. Usually I start out the classical compositions with drum computer tracks and send it over to the other guys. Then they come up with specific guitar-riffs and melodies (Seregor) and Namtar gets better detailed rhythm scapes. In the end a song grows and grows this way, lyrics are added and we are done.
This doesn’t mean we always start with music and add lyrics later. Sometimes just the idea of a story can trigger certain music, that’s what happened a lot on this album.
AN: A distinction you have is your passion for theatricality and story-telling. Is this or the themes of the albums the starting point for your music, or do the nightmares arise and develop from the music you create as a band?
Ardek: It is a bit of both. Usually we think of a story before starting out but I always keep composing new music so there is always something finished around the time we start. More and more, we need inspiration from finished stories before working on the music. That’s what happened on this album too, for example with ‘The Funerary Dirge of a Violinist’ and ‘Little Hector What Have You Done?’.
AN: The stories are so vivid that your tracks are like a cross between the chapters of a book, theatre and cinema. Have you considered presenting your music and lyrics in visual form, or is it jut better being left to the imagination?
Ardek: Good question… we thought of this a lot and personally it would be a great experiment however indeed I would be afraid of spoiling the power of the imagination with it. Visuals could ruin the music if you know what I mean, that’s why we choose to do something completely different in our first video clip. We like to refer to the themes but not completely point everything out in detail. Also this would mean a lot of work to do it properly but that’s not a reason to not do it.
AN: I have to say that for all the ghastliness of the themes and the violence, I find your music hugely entertaining to the point of sometimes finding myself laughing at the sheer extravagance. The imagery can be so simple and crystal clear. “Broke his neck … now he’s dead” on “Lammendam” comes to mind as an example. Aren’t you supposed to be tormenting me and other listeners or am I just sick in the head for appreciating this?
Ardek: That’s exactly how we want it to be! It should be entertaining. You wouldn’t know how much we laughed about certain things during the process, maybe we are all sick haha.
We want to entertain people, that’s what it is all about. In my opinion a lot of bands are way too serious and arrogant these days. They start a band and before actually playing good music and work years and years to get a little bit of credit from the audience, they go and print 10×10 meter backdrops, record 60 min studio reports about how intelligent they are and afterwards complain why no one buys their stuff.
Ok I exaggerate here but that’s my point. We are very glad people like our music and we really appreciate our fans. It makes us proud to work on more music and that’s why we try to keep the quality people expect!
AN: “Lammerdam”, Death Came Through a Phantom Ship” and “Where the Corpses Sink Forever” have a similarity of style and share themes of ghost-laden physical and psychological horror. I sense that the latest one “Where the Corpses Sink Forever” has a more serious ambiance and is more targeted with its specific references to World War II on the part of the violinist, who is “haunted by reflections” and the invasion by the Nazis as part of “Little Hector what Have You Done?”. How would you define “Where the Corpses Sink Forever” in relation to its predecessors?
Ardek: Yes I think you are right, it’s slightly more serious. With DCTAPS we had a difficult challenge; work out the pirate theme while Disney flooded it with happy movies. We took this as a challenge and the album turned out to be very adventurous I think. We were really satisfied with it and therefore, afterwards we naturally longed for something more dark again.
WTCSF is also the first album with stories we completely made up ourselves. So we are very proud of this!
AN: There seems to be more of a human element about “Where the Corpses Sink Forever”. Taking “The Funerary Dirge of a Violinist”, there seems to be a musical and emotional battle going on between the violinist and the world outside. The concept seems to be of the musician maintaining self-expression in the face of war and a hostile and military world of death and destruction. What did you set out to achieve when composing and playing “The Funerary Dirge of a Violinist”?
Ardek: After watching a lot of movies about war Seregor and I felt that the individual terror is one of the strongest things and is sometimes underrated in movies and art about war. Especially in Metal, it’s always about the big perspective; canons, thanks, complete armies destroying everything, etc. etc.
We wanted to portray these very small personal hauntings and try to make epic songs out of them. It’s the other way around, instead of describing a war and make suggestions about individual suffering, we start with the individual and slowly draw his background. That’s what we tried to do in this song, with an epic conclusion when he decides to walk the fields; play his last part and gets killed as a conclusion.
Music wise, I wanted this song to have a very strong beautiful, not too difficult melody and I think it worked out. 
AN: Melancholy is something which features in “The Funerary Dirge of a Violinist” and again towards the end of “These Fields Are Lurking (Seven Pairs of Human Eyes)”. Did you deliberately decide to branch out in emotional depth on “Where the Corpses Sink Forever?”
Ardek: When we finished the main stories for the album we felt had to do this even more than before. The characters and stories scream for emotional translation into music so that’s indeed what we tried.
It’s also a development we all went through as musicians and Carach Angren as a whole. This is what we like to do and this is what we will try to develop even further. We found our path!
AN: A technique you like to use is to depict a scene in which someone looks back. This is not unknown in literature or cinema, but it’s rarely done in such a black way. On “Little Hector What Have You Done?” there seems to be several levels of this, like accounts in different chapters of a book. What was your aim in doing this?
Ardek: Well we always like the idea of hauntings, stuck in a place, a house for example. Countless movies are made about this. Seregor came up with the basic story for Little Hector and shortly after it he decided to bring in more layers. Like the tragedy keeps repeating itself. Repetition is a thing through all songs if you have a close look.
From the American soldier in the first song who keeps stuck in a paranormal scene where he can’t kill his friend before he gets tortured – to the tragedy that keeps repeating itself in the house of Hector.
We also like to bring in little or big clues. It’s great to see how people interpret the whole cd. Some just pick out general elements and others come up with a complete story they made up themselves. We actually tried to build a very strong structure this time and it is in there but no one exactly discovered it yet.
AN: And what do think would have happened to Little Hector after so much tragedy in his family?
Ardek: Well he shot him self through the head like we told you haha. If not he would have become another band member I think haha.
AN: Could you ever see Carach Angren moving away from is current world of dark and grisly themes, with music to match?
Ardek: I don’t think so.. BUT we will develop our style further and further, this means we will try to go as far as possible but we will keep this burning Carach Angren feeling we all have. It’s impossible to leave that.
I mean, a song like ‘The Funerary Dirge of a Violinist’ it has elements in it that some would define more as pop or rock or plain classical music. I see it as a challenge to incorporate it in the style, not like cross-over but just to slowly develop it.
AN: “Where the Corpses Sink Forever” has just been released. How do you plan to promote it? Do you have a tour lined up?
Ardek: Yes it is out now, we would like to go on tour so we are looking for opportunities. Meanwhile we get more and more offers to play single shows again so that’s great!
AN: You’ve just joined up with the Season of Mist label. What do you expect to get out of your collaboration with them?
Ardek: Season of Mist is a great label and so far they are promoting us very well. I hope that together we can bring Carach Angren to a wider audience, see what happens!
AN: What’s the next creative stage for Carach Angren?
Ardek: Of course we will continue and write music and stories for our next album, we will play a lot of shows and just see what will happen in the near future!
AN: Finally, is there anything that you would like to say on behalf of Carach Angren to readers of Ave Noctum?
Ardek: Thanks for reading and check out our latest album!
Once again, many thanks for this interview. I very much look forward to seeing you live at some stage, and shall be looking out for your next imaginative adventure with great interest. Good luck!
Andrew Doherty
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