New Interview With Kostas From Pantheist

Here for you Patheist fans is a new interview with the band, more up to date than the previous interview i posted a few weeks back. Here, Aleks gets the low-down on the upcoming Moscow Doom Festival and what is the current plans for the band. The interview is with keyboardist, vocalist Kostas.

-Hi Kostas! How are you? What's new? Is Pantheist's crew ready to spread the words of Doom amidst Russian lands?
Hi Aleks, glad to have a chat again! We are more than ready and can't wait for our gig in Russia; we are practicing tracks from our back catalog as well some new stuff. We want to make sure that people get a good overview of the band's history, since it's the first time we are playing so far from home and people in Eastern Europe in particular, don't have many chances to see us.


-Oh, I think that there're no causes for any worries because we got "Amartia" CDvia CD-Maximum under license of Firedoom and "O Solitude" is well known at least (though someone may think that Pantheist is funeral band still). Serpent's Lair released "Pains Of Sleep" few years ago too. I do not sure about "Journey Through Lands Unknown". If I do not err Sepulchure Union (masterminds of Moscow Doom Fest) putted to the vote Pantheist as participants of MDF. Anyway there are not so much really famous doom-metal bands and Pantheist is one of them. Really, Kostas, you know who you are! How can you determine place of Pantheist in world doom-scene? How would you grade world doom-scene?

I think it's hard to speak of a world doom scene when most doom bands -with the exception of traditional doom- seem to be operating in isolation from most other 'doom' bands. For example, people might say that the 'UK doom scene' has a strong coherence with bands such as Esoteric, Pantheist and Indesinence, sharing some musicians; the reality however, is that we hardly meet the members of the other bands outside of gigs and we only play together when a promoter asks so; we have never tried to create a scene with the three bands playing gigs together etc. Pantheist is also a bit of a special case within the doom scene, with a sound ranging from funeral doom via ethnic music to progressive rock, so as you can appreciate we don't easily fit in scenes or even in most gig promoter's and labels' plans. We really do our own thing and don't particularly care much about who will pick us up. After a while you also learn to develop DIY skills, so we work with a very small number of specific people who are keen to help us and for the rest we do what needs to be done ourselves.


-How did you get this invitation to Moscow Doom Fest?

I have heard the best things about the Fest from Esoteric and The Prophecy, so I was looking forward to get the chance to play there with Pantheist as well. We were first contacted a few years ago for one of the first fests, I believe a member of Comatose Vigil was organizing it back then? But it wasn't the good time for us to do this, as we were just in the process of reorganizing our line-up. So now the time is finally ripe to take the music of Pantheist to Moscow.

-What do you expect of this fest and what ought Russian public to wait from your show?
We expect a hot atmosphere and a memorable day. The Russian public will get nothing less than the ultimate Pantheist experience!


-Will you bring here stylish panties with Pantheist's logo? :-) Man, I wonder - who buy this stuff? :-) It's not sexy, though it could be useful from a practical point of view… Anyway I saw not boxers with any bands' logotypes! I would buy such stuff maybe
We will bring Pantheist boxers especially for you Aleks ;) and Pantheist thongs as well, in case there are beautiful Russian women out there who want to be in intimate contact with our logo; plenty of marketing possibilities there as you can see ;)



-You've told me that sometimes you can catch "frantic working pace" creating new stuff in with amazing speed, so what? Was you agile enough this year to catch it?
Yeah, we haven't been doing that bad lately. We have 7 tracks ready that will probably comprise the next album. We are slowly working on them and rehearsing them, and in the meanwhile we are also in the process of completing a two-track promo to send to labels. However, because the process of getting all material together and arranging it for the band takes a very long time, I also keep myself busy with an extra track for a split cd, as well as a track for Wijlen Wij, which will probably also end up being on the same split.

-There is a popular practice of collaboration between bands which play similar music - time to time they record split-albums. And it looks good for it's a great sign of collaboration; it's some kind of fellowship. Why don't you want to keep your listeners warm producing such releases? I understand that there are no bands which "play similar music" as Pantheist does… but there are a couple of kind gentlemen in the doom-metal scene of England at least.
What a coincidence you say this. We are actually in the process of participating in a split album with Gallileous, Dissolving of Prodigy, and Wijlen Wij. The idea arose in the mind of Mirek from Gallileous to do something different, a themed collaboration about the theme of superstition. We wanted to involve bands that have an atmospheric, mystical sound with keys and obscure themes.
It is true that we haven't had such releases in the past, but this is simply because we haven't had interesting opportunities to do this. The only time we got a good offer to do something special for the fans, it ended with the release of 'The Pains of Sleep' EP by Serpent's Lair!

-I listened only Dissolving of Prodigy (great band) and Wijlen Wij from this list. And last time you said that you have no desire to continue Wijlen Wij, your common project with Stijn van Cauter. So what is Wijlen Wij now?
Well as I said earlier, we are currently working on a track again, so there you go, don't always believe what I say : It's not always easy to collaborate with people over the internet and I'm by my own nature a bit of an impatient person who can't wait for months for people to submit their material, so that has led to some minor tensions in the band and we had more or less given up on the idea of doing anything else together. But then this opportunity arose and it was too good not to take it, so why not? You only live once, unless you are a Hindu of course ;)


-Kostas, reincarnation is not only privilege of Hindu :-) You'll see it next time if you keep your mind clear enough for this. But back to this split and forthcoming album. I do not know absolutely that we can wait from Pantheist after "Journey Through Lands Unknown", so why don't you just reveal some secrets of your new material? Say it, Kostas, or I will ask about it Greg Chandler :-) But I'm sure that he keeps his professional secrets well!
Greg doesn't know much yet of the new material, although he knows at least one of our tracks, since he played a few gigs with us last year after Pete left! As for the nature of the material, if I try to explain to your in words how it sounds like, you will be probably shocked, because everyone (including the band members) is concerned when they first hear me trying to describe new tracks. Until they realize that they are not as shockingly different as they thought they are ;) so let me give this a go: we have tried to make the new tracks a bit more coherent and 'logical' as a whole this time. The previous album gave us the opportunity for plenty of experimentation; we tried a lot of different things incorporating ethnic instruments, unusual song structures, other musical genres etc. Now we have tried to learn from these experiences and channel our creativity in tracks that involve less mood swings and tempo changes; gone are the ethnic influences while we are drawing a bit more from classical music as we have done in the past, but also from progressive and classic rock.


-Do you check the development of your doom-colleagues considering their music and lyrics? Watching a success of colleagues is a good lesson and you can always get some fresh ideas. I do not say plagiarism of course, it's not your way.
I do check other doom bands occasionally, but no much more than I do bands and artists in different genres. I'm naturally curious for everything that sounds emotional and personal, regardless of its genre.


-By the way, what is Stijn doing? Did he start another 4 or 5 funeral doom projects? :-)
I usually speak with Stijn once so many months by email, so I'm not always sure what he is up to. I know that he had to slow down some time ago due to work and other commitments, but he seems to be very active recently again so probably yes, he has another 4-5 projects in the meanwhile ;)

-What are your demands to your music? I know that first of all a song must be the one which you want to listen at least but when do you decide that this song is completed?
I think there comes a time that I just grow tired working on the song. It's that impatience I spoke about earlier I guess. I don't think there is a time where you can say 'that's it, the song is finished'. The more you work on something, the more new idea's arise and the secret of writing a good song is not to indulge in all of them, but to only select the right ones for the track and ignore those that don't really add anything to its essence.


-And when do you say "Stop! It's enough!"? For example - you say that you're working slowly on tracks for next CD, why don't you stop in that case right now?
Because we haven't even rehearsed them with the full band yet! When you play in a band you need to respect certain rules, at least if it is a proper band and not a personal project in disguise. So all members have a period of time where they can listen to the demo's, make suggestions etc and then we all rehearse until we feel the track is ready for recording and performance. In principle, we could go and record in the studio next month if we have to, but why hurry things? Especially since we are talking doom here…my personal goal is to get to the point where the track feels 'good enough' for public consumption; if you search for perfection, you really should be looking at classical masters like Bach or Beethoven and not at measly doom bands such as ourselves…


-Which metal or underground trends do you dislike the most?
Hehe, now we are treading in dangerous territory ;) I can't really say I dislike any genres, I usually listen at the level of the individual band or even individual album/song. I have a classical background studying the piano and I grew up first with pop, electronic and traditional music and then with classical music before I even got into metal, so I was always more interested in harmonic and melodic music, even if it sometimes has a dissonant/atonal edge. So as you can imagine, I'm not a big fan of grind or death metal for instance, but this is not to say that I dislike them.


-Ha-ha, no one forces you to speak this :-) So if you begin to reveal your antipathies - which ones do you have to doom-metal music? We have some regular shit about "roses on graves", "dopesmoking" (in some cases), songs about "religion" but I do not remember doom-lyrics about terrors of war or about real global disasters.
I don't have a problem with any of these topics, as long as they are approached in a personal way. I dislike music that tries too hard to belong somewhere, but I applaud everything that has a heart and a soul.


-Why don't you write a album about Lovecraft's myths? It's a popular theme, you'll surely would find new listeners (though most of them will be unhuman ones) and you'll simply keep your lives when Cthulhu will be awaken by Marcus Warjomaa (Aarni)!
Ah Marcus; what happened to my favorite Finnish troll? I haven't spoken to him in a while!
I love Lovecraft -especially 'At the Mountains of Madness'. But Pantheist was never about horror or fantasy stories really, it's more about personal stuff.


-And did you discover something new in music in the last few months?
The new Orphaned Land album is great, oriental progressive metal produced by Steve Wilson of Porcupine Tree! Furthermore I'm also quite impressed with the new Rotting Christ album, it's again these ethnic elements that charm me most about both of these bands. I also finally got hold of the first Mana Mana album, a legendary Finnish band that has been very influential.
On top of that, I have also discovered some stuff that I was ignoring in the past, like e.g. Kyuss and Alice in Chains, so I'm listening a lot to these at this moment.

-I don't want to talk about myself for it's interview about Pantheist but, man, for example I found awesome Japanese band Mouse on the Keys and (shame on me for I found them only now) German Sleeping Karma. They play only instrumental music so don't you think that this way is not too very specific and sometimes it's even better then using vocal lines trying to describe some ethereal substances or delicate feelings?
Yes, I find instrumental music very expressive and some bands really don't need vocals. It's just a different way of listening, less song oriented but I'm trained in that after having listened for years to classical music for instance! Why would anyone want do add vocals to e.g. 'The Belly of An Architect' soundtrack by Wim Mertens, or to Philip Glass' violin concerto? Surely the instruments speak for themselves?

-Do you have other artistic talents except music composition and it's performance? Don't you feel yourself ready for any literary trials? I know that you pay a lot of attention to your lyrics therefore I ask you about it.
Hehe I'm not even sure I have such a great artistic talent in composing and performing : Other than that, I confess that from the age of 10 until I was 20 or so I wanted to become a writer pretty badly, so I was constantly scribbling things, first in Greek, then in Dutch (when I used to live in Belgium) and more recently in English. I even got some recommendations for my stories and essays from teachers, cultural organizations, local newspapers etc. But somewhere along the line, came the internet which basically destroyed my long-term attention span so I grew too impatient to write lengthy texts. Most of them have been destroyed during rages of perceived incompetence or lost somewhere along my many moves throughout the years, although their idea's still live on in the lyrics that I'm writing, and as you rightfully say I do pay attention to them as I'm trying to distill complex idea's and express them in the simplest possible words!

-And I sure not that it's best question which we could imagine but man, what is your occupation now? Does your job have any connection with music business?
I work for Victim Support, a charity which helps victims of crime. I have a background in clinical and forensic psychology, so not so much connected to music as it is to lyrical idea's! The human mind is an abyss and a bottomless pit of inspiration!


-So your songs could be based on real developments? It's interesting idea… How do you relax after work?
Ehm…I play and compose music, hehe. I also like to go for walks in nature with my girlfriend, as I said earlier I find nature very inspiring and relaxing. However, there is not much time for this on weekdays with the frantic work pace in England, so I end up playing music, answering emails and interviews…or not relaxing at all ;)


-Why music is so important for you? Now everyone can start his own blog in MySpace and communicate with everyone he wants, though it's not about only communication, right?
It's about communicating things that can't be communicated with words; but it's also a form of therapy, something that genuinely makes you feel different, and it is also a compulsion: it's difficult to choose music, it chooses you.


-Kostas, thank you for patience and answers! It was pleasure to talk with you again. See you in Moscow! Don't forget to take a pair of boxers with Pantheist's logo :-)
I hope we finish your custom made boxer on time for the gig ;) Thanks again for the very entertaining questions Aleks and see you then!

www.myspace.com/pantheistuk
Interview By Aleks Evdokimov
metallibrary.ru