Why CARACH ANGREN’S next album is influenced by Manson.
How did Marilyn Manson inadvertently inspire one of the Netherlands’ biggest extreme metal bands?
IT’S JUST OVER two years since Carach Angren – one of The Netherlands’ biggest metal exports and undoubtedly one of the more successful black metal-related bands on the scene – released their fifth full-length, Dance And Laugh Amongst The Rotten. As it turns out, the genesis of their as-yetuntitled follow-up – scheduled for release in the first half of 2020 – dates back to almost the same point in time, as co-founder Ardek explains…
When did you start writing the new record? “I’m always writing, and this album I’ve been working with on and off for over two years. I have an idea for a riff, I record it, put in some computer drums, put in some violins, then sometimes within days I’ll have a full song. I send it to the other guys and we may move some parts around, then I start building the song behind my computer and that is what you hear on the record. The orchestra work I do at home, every flute and violin, and the vocals we record at home too. Then the drums and guitars are recorded in the studio.”
You’ve got a long working relationship with Tidalwave Studio, the studio of Patrick Damiani, also known for his work with bands like Falkenbach and Secrets Of The Moon…
“He actually plays and records all guitars and bass on all our records.
We write it and he records it. Not many people know that. He’s not only a very good engineer and producer, but also a great guitar player and he can track everything in a week. He also gives his ideas when we record the drums. That’s nice, to have a fresh light on things.
Is Patrick also mixing the album?
“No, this time it’s a totally new guy for us called Robert Carranza. I found out about him through Marilyn Manson’s The Pale Emperor. I was never a Marilyn Manson listener but I somehow heard that album and the production is so big and heavy I thought, ‘What the fuck? How did this happen?’ And that never left me. It’s a new thing because he’s not normally into extreme metal, so there were a lot of eyes on my decision.”
Were there any other changes you consciously made when working on this record?
“I learned a lot about production this time and in the songwriting I was already thinking about how it’d sound in the end – where to put instruments in the stereo image, technical things like that. I worked a lot on synthesiser sounds as well; there are some songs that are fairly simple by our way of doing things, but I worked the most on those.
People will hear it and think, ‘Oh, it’s a short, simple song’, but I worked a lot on the sound of it, taking a synthesiser melody and trying a million different effects before choosing something. There’s a song that’s three minutes, just two or three riffs, and in the past we would try and make it more lengthy, so there’s been a conscious decision to keep some songs shorter. Less is more – it’s a cliché but sometimes it’s true.”
You’re known for creating fairly complex metal songs, so how do you think the reaction will be to this shift in approach?
“I predict that some people will like it and some people wont – that’s usually the case with our releases! Ha ha ha!”
You’ve been keeping quite quiet about the lyrics on this album. Can we expect another conceptual work?
“I was fascinated about this subject and even went to talk to scientists, visited museums and read books. It’s a concept album about a particular person, but as always we take the freedom to drift off in other directions. It’s not super-linear like [2015’s] This Is No Fairytale, it’s more in the vein of the last album; there’s a lot to discover for those who want to go into the story but on the surface there’s these cool songs to get into.”
THE NEW CARACH ANGREN ALBUM IS DUE IN EARLY 2020 VIA SEASON OF MIST