Information
Author: Mourning
Translation: Dope Fiend / Fedaykin
Line Up
Wotan - Bass
R. Rikk - Drums
Shub Niggurath - Guitars, Vocals
Count D. - Vocals
Lughma - Guitars
Seide is a new band that moves in the French black metal underground and in which they play members and former members of other realities already known as Temple of Baal, Nydvind, Sow and Anteis Symphonia. In 2011 they debuted with "Here Is No Truth", let's learn a little more of it conversing with them.
Welcome to Aristocrazia Webzine, how are you guys? How did the band born? And why the choice of this monicker? What is the fanatical devotion that you follow or that you fight?
Count D: Hi, quite fine, thanks... Seide was born in 2007 with Shubniggurath (guitars), Herr-Rikk (drums) and I (vocals/bass). Our aim was to create raw music with a minimal line-up. We did a few gigs with this line-up but then Wotan (bass) and Lughma (guitars) joined us and the compositions have become more sophisticated since. The term 'Seide' refers to a freed slave thanks to his unwavering dedication and service rendered to his master and by extension a fanatical blind devotion to a leader. This word is also rooted in the birth of Islam, Zeid was a freed slave of Muhammad, finally adopted by him publicly. We are against its significance to address the issues that oppress men, the very ones that blind free-will by imposing stultifying benchmarks. This allows us to address certain emetics issues such as religious blindness, political blindness, family blindness and self-confinement.
I perceived in the platter thrashy influences and a Scandinavian black metal matrix especially in the melodies, what are your musical reference points?
Wotan: It is a quite hard question as we all in the band have really different feelings with music. Early Samael and the 90s Norwegian scene are still among the band’s main references. But we listen to many other things like death, thrash and even non-metal music. In black metal, we like a lot of bands such as Dornenreich, Ravencult, Monarque, 1349...
"Here Is No Truth", what is the truth that you search or that you want to pursue and why the choice to use multiple languages ?? In the drafting and performance of the lyrics?
Wotan: What "truth" generally means is more like a manipulation, as political or religious leader want you to believe in (and fight for) an ideology called truth, and that is only a dogma. We have to denounce it and search for the truth that is more like an inner perception, something that cannot always be told and shared. It also means the feeling that truth cannot reveal in a world made of chaos, wars and perpetual lies. We could say we use different languages as different ways to catch the multiple forms of truth. It’s depending on the feelings or topics the songs are about too. For example "Ein Unendlicher Blitz", that’s about a German soldier fighting in Stalingrad, it’s a kind of evidence that the song had to be sung in German tongue.
I noticed that the lyrics are by Count D. (singer), Wotan (bass) and Shub Niggurath (guitarist), three people who take care of the lyrics and then express themselves, so also in the instrumental part or you have a precise schematic to compose the songs?
Count D: We all bring ideas and riffs to the songs, even if the main contributor is Shubniggurath. But all the songs are reworked with the whole band during the rehearsals. According to lyrics, it is the same and it depends on the mind context we all are. We all believe in others and that builds a kind of dark core, even if the main goal is not to spread the good talk, as we are no prophets, but display on stage and albums a sincere, strong and deviant message.
Two choices had impressed me: A) why to repeat the song "Fire Within" of Anteis Symphonia, a band in which Count D. he played? An emotional issue? B) the cover, why the ruins of Stalingrad after the bombing of 1943? They have a specific meaning for you?
Wotan: The choice to cover "Fire Within" on the album came naturally after the band had played this song several times on stage. It has changed a lot and become much longer since the first Anteis Symphonia version. So it’s a real Seide song now. About the cover, this corresponds to the warlike and ghostly atmosphere we wanted for this album. It’s not precisely about Stalingrad as an historical theme, but more as a symbol of a claustrophobic and devastated place where all has turned into chaos, a kind of metaphor of what the world could become. It goes with the roughness and darkness of the music.
Count D: I created "Fire Within" in 1998 with Sephiroth, a close friend of mine. I’d personally chosen this song for re-living the old and true past black metal area. And fuck! This reminds me too the long nights playing only with spirit and booze, as it shall be!
You being part of one of the most active black metal scenes and as musicians you're in it for a while. How have you seen it evolve? What were the years of true brilliance for the extreme France?
Count D: Yes, we are all in the black metal scene from a long time now, even if we are not the oldest ones of course. But it has evolved as the global extreme scene did. There is more material for everyone, no matter their tastes. On one hand, I’m really nostalgic about the "ancient" way of doing music, cause it was a kind of fight for meeting places to rehearse and have the minimum of physical stuff to play with. Today there are so many bands and so many people without the artistic way of thinking, as all the few bands were used by the past. It is sometimes hard to hear some dancing-metal... We all have our proper lives to do so, metal (extreme metal I mean) is no dedicated to that. On the other hand I’m really glad, because if you raise the stones, which by far are not very visible, there are really good bands in France! And I hope that will never stop.
What's fundamentally different from that carried on by the LLN and a nation that now with Blut Aus Nord, Deathspell Omega, Glorior Belli, Peste Noire, Merrimack, Hell Milita, Aosoth, Antaeus and other seems more alive and much more attractive than in the past?
There are not so much difference between the Black Legions and the nowadays scene. It all depends on what you are waiting from music. Bands and collective bands are as humans, drawn into a cycle of life that will die out sooner or later. Most of the LLN (apart from Mütiilation, Torgeist, Vlad Tepes, Belketre and Moëvöt) are so occult that nobody can tell you if they have existed or not. The fact is that all the bands you just mentioned are ones who make black metal for themselves, and not for a private and so-called underground friend-club. And that’s nice.
On the one hand, years ago talking about extreme music was a taboo, it was difficult to find the disks and fans who follow the heavier genres and were seen anything but good, today it appears to have become a "trend", have you noticed this tendency?
Count D: Black metal is like the disappearance of a child or a neighbourhood war crime. It has always existed. But before, as media didn’t see the way to make profit with that, they were used to shut up. The day when they realized that people were disposed to be interested about that or decided to interest people with, they did not hesitate to spread it to the masses, to exaggerate its importance, creating all the media-way to spray all faces even if 90% of them were not concerned about that. So it is just a matter of availability. But young people often confuse the fact that a product is available with the fact it is a nice one.
What does it mean for you playing this music? Do not define the style, just what is going into a sound speech of a certain thickness and conceptual importance.
Count D I’ll talk for myself. Better doing that than self destroying. It’s a kind of my personality I need to externalize for being more or less balanced.
"Here Is No Truth" what feedback had received so far? Criticisms, comments? As has been welcomed by the people who follow you and by the various webzines and newspapers?
Countd D: Some of them were surprised, because they compared "Here Is No truth" with the previous "Dogma", which were slower and dark-shaped oriented. But we do not have received yet bad comments about it. I’ve read a review saying that the album was so good that we are an insult for those bands which try to be known from so much time, ah ah. But you know, I’m waiting for bad reviews, those ones are often more constructive for us. We need to play on other countries than France, I think the audience should fit the best our feelings, I guess.
The metal is culture and culture should help the society move forward and realize their mistakes, we say to open their minds to growth (personal and collective, depending on the topics covered). What do you think has been lost in the cultural movement than the beginning? What bothers you of the music scene today?
Count D: The only thing I regret today is that black metal is more a matter of seeming rather than being. I do respect the bands and moreover the audiences that understand black metal is first on the brain, before being printed on tee-shirts.
I read on the internet that the big labels are planning to convert their releases only in digital formats, the death of art is getting closer? Those, who like myself, loves the physical formats will be forced to live of the past and continue as now to live nicely with the underground, could be the way to ensure that there is a skimming rather than having to hand a lot of "shit" produced today?
Count D: Press people is already use to work with digital formats. It’s a matter of cost for labels, and a matter of avoiding stupid guys to push the music on Internet before the real and tangible work is out. But do not worry, if you don’t listen to "shit", as you said, those bands will follow to believe in Black Art with real and physical formats, like tapes, vinyls, cd’s...
Have you had occasion to present the songs on stage? There are already some planned dates maybe even beyond your national borders?
Wotan: Yes, we played nearly all these song several times on stage and the feedback was good. We still play songs from our 2009 demo "Dogma" too, especially "The Outsider" that is quite demanded. We play two new songs live too. There are no dates planned outside France for the moment but we wish to have the opportunity to tour in 2012, hopefully coming in Italy.
Count D: Italy is full of great black metal bands : Necromass, Imago Mortis, Abhor, Adversam, Frostmoon Eclipse, Nazgul, Eternal Funeral... That should be great to share some stages with those guys.
What they want and where they want to arrive Seide?
Wotan: We are now working on new songs, for a second album or a split-EP to come. We hope to play many gigs in the next months. Take part to a European festival would be a great experience.
The interview ends here, thank you for the opportunity granted to us and I leave you the word one last time to conclude as you prefer.
Wotan & Count D: Thanks Aristocrazia Webzine, thank you for your quite interesting questions. Keep supporting the underground scene. Follow your own truth only.
