Albums of Purgatory interview Adorned Brood

 

Albums of Purgatory: Firstly, How would you describe the Adorned Brood sound?

Adorned Brood: Adorned Brood is not only a sound, more a whole concept and the music of course is our most important factor- and to understand the sound you have to know the concept of Adorned Brood.

We’re living close to the nature and we love those cultures who respected our mother nature and lived to it in attachment like the “Celts” or the “Germanen”. In this cultures you also will find some important points that  were get lost in our modern society: qualities like honour, respect,  sincerity, and belief are totally lost now. With our music we try to give the listener the chance to get out of this poor society; to dive into the mystery of old times and feel the spirit of natural living cultures. Our music is with fast passages on the one hand a mirror of the hard times of fightings and war and with our slow and traditional parts on the other hand we try to create the magic and the atmosphere of those lost cultures.

You see, our music is build on strong contrasts – and this it is, what makes music, espacially our music interesting.

AoP: How did the band begin in the mid '90s?

AB: Adorned Brood was founded in Dormagen 1993 from our ex-drummer Ariovist and our ex-guitar player Oberon. Together they recorded the first Adorned Brood Demo “Phobos/Deimos” but the music was more Death/Trash Metal. 1995 was a little recast of some members – Frost and Pagan joined the Band and with them came the traditional influence in the music of Adorned Brood. Soon they recorded the second Demo “Wapen”, sent them to several Record company’s and got a first deal with Folter Records in Berlin. During the preparations for their first CD “Hiltia” Ingeborg Anna joined the Band. With her beautiful voice and her amazing flute-playing she was a perfect completion to the band and from now on the folkloristic style of Adorned Brood got more and more assessment. Folter Rec. made good promotion for this Album and all in all it was sold over 3000 times…

But the label manager of Folter Records tried to slip the money only in his own pockets so Adorned Brood leaved Folter Records. Soon they found a new record company (Atmosphere Records) and  recorded a new Album “Wigand” in winter 1997. During the recording sessions were some heavy personally conflicts in the band and Ariovist and Oberon leaved the band. They wanted to play some faster Music with more Black-Metal influences. But now they gave up to make music… At this time Adorned Brood needed a new Drummer and guitar player: Andreas and me (Tim) made a long time music together before and decided to join Adorned Brood. The recording work was finished – but “Wigand” was a badly sold album- not because it was bad; I think it was a good progress to Hiltia! But the recording company was a new founded one, with no contacts to magazines and so on. So they made only little promotion and only a few knew this album. But with the influence of two new musicians we wrote new songs and signed a new deal about 3 CD’s by Moonstorm Records. 1999 was the new recording session for “Asgard” and now everything was harmonizing and the atmosphere was really good during the whole session! Asgard was like a new-beginning for us, because since Hiltia the people didn’t heard much of Adorned Brood- We became good reviews and critics for this album and played a lot of concerts. With this album we found our new style. During the preperations for our fourth album “Erdenkraft” Pagan left the Band and decided to play some more slower music. So we recorded “Erdenkraft” only with 4 members (Frost, Ingeborg, Andreas, Tim). With Benjamin, a good friend of the band, we found very soon a substitute for Pagan.

AoP: Can you remember your first gig (how did it go)?

 

AB: Regretfully I was not a member of Adorned Brood on it’s first gig. But I heard it was a quite good one…

But mostly as first gigs are: You play very badly, you play for a lot of friends and you make a lot of party! But after this gig nobody would have said, that Adorned Brood will someday play the music like we do it know!

AoP: What are your favourite Adorned Brood tracks?

AB: I have heard our songs so often, that I can’t hear them any more… so I can hardly say what my favourite tracks are.

But if I have to name some I would say: “Welcome Our friends”, “Erdenkraft” and “Göttersehnsucht”. All songs are from our new album “Erdenkraft” – because I think that on this album we did our best songwriting ever.

“Welcome our friends” on the one hand is hard, fast, rhythmic complex and on the other hand full of atmosphere with a little “Intro”, a good guitar-solo and all in all not to long.

“Erdenkraft” and “Göttersehnsucht” are both not so fast; more mid-tempo style – but it makes a lot of fun to perform them on stage. So I think this are me personall favourite Adorned Brood songs.

AoP: What are your favourite all time songs?

AB: Difficult… I hear so much different styles of music that it’s a really hard question.

At the moment I listen to my alltime favourite album – Emperor “Anthems to the Welkin at Dust” hardly followed by

“Queensryche” Operation Mindcrime, Arcturus “Aspera hiems symfonia” and Dream Theater “Awake”. Also Pantera with “Far beyond driven” is a masterpiece in music. I can’t name you single songs, but you can take every song from these albums I named before…

AoP: What was the first record you bought?

 

AB: I think my first “self-bought” record with my own self-earned money was Michael Jackson “Bad”! I was VERY young…

AoP: What would be your  dream band line-up? 

 

AB: Drums: Virgil Donati

Guitar: John Petrucci, Steve Vai

Bass: Kelly Conlon

Keyboards: Tony McAlpine

No Vocals.

 

AoP: What do you think of the position of metal and music in general today?

AB: Can you imagine a live without music? That is the position of music – essentiall for life. No matter what kind of music. For me the important styles in music are those who are “handmade” and can be performed by a real band. Metal, without doubt, is the most virtuoso and most extreme style and therefore for me it’s the most interesting kind of music.

Too bad that the biggest part of the music-scene is controlled by money and people who only want to make more of it. That makes it very difficult for a band to make their own way… (I don’t have to give examples). In this point the metal-scene is little bit different – most bands have their own extreme or interesting style and are not influenced by big record companies who want to sell thousand of records. So they can grow to a “real” and good band.

Metal is not the music to make much money- and the musicians are mostly very idealistic and convinced in their way. That distinguishes the metal scene from many others and that makes the metal scene somehow unique.

 

AoP: Do you have any funny stories about the band you can share with us?

AB: Every concert is a fun-storie -

(But I’ll reveal you that our singer “Frost” don’t wear underwear under his kilt! )

AoP: And finally, what do you see in the future for Adorned Brood?

AB: I hope we’ll have a good future. We are actally hard working on our new songs and will play a lot of gigs this summer. Next year we’ll record our new album and our first tour (REALLY!) is planned for next year. We already have a lot of interesting ideas for our new songs, and really can’t wait for the people’s reaction.

Recently we signed at “Extratours” a very good booking agency, so we’ll have a lot of gigs in the next time.

But the most pleasant is, that more and more people become knowing us – we get a lot of post, even from foreign countries – for example much from Mexico and South Amerika. All in all we have a good feeling, that we’ll still make a long time music together.     

Thanks for the interview and check out www.adornedbrood.de!!!