Although I’d ideally love to be able to conduct hard-hitting, in-depth interviews, who has the time these days? In lieu of this, I’ve thrown together the below question template, hopefully to gather some interesting and informative results, without taking up too much of anyone’s time.
Introduce yourself – who are you and what do you do?
Tell us about your latest release and why people should listen to your music
Our new album Wither on the Vine is 8 songs of atmospheric, dark, emotional heavy metal. It’s two years in the making, and there are many threads of inspiration and influence across the record from Nick Cave to Norwegian black metal. The album would be of interest to anyone who wants to hear something a little bit different than the usual trends in metal right now, and to anyone who is interested in music with emotional honesty and power. It is a manifestation of the dark shadow the world today casts over us all.
What’s the most important thing to you about your music? What meaning does it give you and what purpose does it serve in your life?
It is and always has been a method of self expression, and an outlet for creativity. For each of us, music allows us to express things in a way that we cannot otherwise. It connects us to other people. Music in general is in our blood, it sustains us. For me pretty much everything I do revolves around music in some way, the infrastructure of my life has been built around it.
Tell us a lesser-known interesting or funny anecdote about your band or music
Darkest Era is a bit of a cottage industry, which is kind of interesting. My wife Anais designed our album cover and a bunch of our merch, and also wrote and directed our new music videos. Our guitarist Sarah has a printing company which prints our t-shirts, and her husband Chris recorded and produced our last 3 albums. It’s a nice working environment.
Finally, what are you listening to at the moment that you especially enjoy and wish more people knew about?
I recently saw Mourning Beloveth play in Dublin and it was one of the most incredible live performances I’ve ever witnessed. They are well known in doom metal circles but really deserve to have a much wider audience, they’re a very special band. Aside from that, there is a Finnish band called Angel Sword who have genuinely written one of the best heavy metal songs ever name Hardliner, but very few people seem to know it. I wish I wrote it.
Wonderbox Metal 