Into The Vortex
So, with “Into The Vortex” I thought, the guitar is doing its brutal deeds to defeat the keyboards. That’s how the song comes across to me, like I’m going to beat the keyboard player with some chords until he can’t stand up anymore. Because I think it’s pretty heavy in terms of the guitars.
G.: “Yeah, it’s pretty heavy. And as much as I love it, it’s a chorus that doesn’t go in straight away. So, I think it’s a really great resolution to the song and it has a dramatic climax. But I think I would have given the wrong impression if I had just taken it as the first single.”
Yeah, I think it would have been heavier than you wanted it to be as first single.
G.: “Something like that. Napalm was interested in just having one single that was a bit more generally acceptable. That sounds so silly and so judgmental, but that’s not what I mean.”
But it fits, I wrote in my review that “A Vagabonds Heart” is the perfect explanation of symphonic metal in the Mito series. And that fits exactly with what Napalm was probably thinking.
G.: “Yeah, and I think you’re right about that too. It’s very classical symphonic metal. Yes, but also modern and freshly packaged. Yeah, that would have been one of the points, why we wouldn’t have thought about it at first single. We thought that it doesn’t show that much of Elvellon’s individuality, but it’s a typical song for the genre. So, like I said, it’s all cool, we really like it, but that was a point where I thought you can’t really surprise with it. It’s something you would expect a lot from us. But at least we were very happy to do it. It was very well received, and the chorus works really well. So, no bad feelings. We are totally behind the decision.”
N.: “Yeah, but it’s also about the fact that we didn’t think about it to be the single and then we stood there asking for it and then they said why don’t you take it? It’s really hard for us to find a song that’s shorter than five minutes just to get back on track.” The Aeon Tree
Did you actually think about it, The Aeon Tree, when you put the longest song between the two shortest ones?
G.: “No, not really. We didn’t think about it. It just felt good to listen to.”
Last Of Our Kind
I think, “Last of Our Kind”, is a quite sad, the song, the whole thing, because the melody itself is quite solemn. Does it have a certain background or is it just, ‘we want to do a quiet song for a change’?
G.: “Like I said, we never create things with a concept beforehand. It comes out of us and in the end, we decide whether it ends up on the album or not. Whether we should follow the idea in general. We’re not the kind of band that has half an album on the shelf and then puts out another album or something. Some bands do that, they have a lot of songs during a production, not at all with us, we work on the individual things for a very long time. And when something fits, we stop working on it early. The song is definitely very special for us, we’ve never done anything like it before. It’s, well, it’s very musical, I don’t want to go too deep into it, but the harmonies are something we’ve never done before. It has very crazy changes, is very creative. It definitely has a heaviness. I think it’s a great song, it would have been a single for me too, but it definitely has a certain heaviness to it, but I don’t think it’s sad. I don’t know, I can’t think of a better way to describe it, Nele maybe you can describe it better?”
N.: “For me it’s a sentimental song.”
Yeah, sentimental is better than sad.
N.: “It’s very heavy, it’s very carrying, it’s just a ballad. I wasn’t actually the lyricist, so I have to be very careful when it comes to remembering what I’m actually saying about it, but it’s also lyrical, the two moods go hand in hand. I don’t find it sad, there’s actually a lot of hope in this song. But it also shows a bit of this facet of integrating the negative side of me. I think it expresses the mood of the song very, very well, if you think about it a bit, what is “Ascending in Synergy” about and what does this album want? In retrospect, this song just fits incredibly well with what we had in mind. I also have to say that I don’t feel sad at all when I sing this song. This simple acceptance of darkness is also part of it.”
Wow, these explanations totally change my mind about the song. I’ll have to revise what I have written in the review. I’ll have to think about it again, listen to it again tomorrow and rewrite it. But I was also thinking about dreaming away and forgetting about everyday worries, that’s what it’s really good for.
G.: “It also has a view of the stars. It should give you a very strong feeling of being part of a universe. It’s a very universal song.”
So, it’s the perfect single…
G.: “No, not really. It has something really great in it for me. It’s a very individual song. We’ve never done anything like it before. That’s what makes it so fascinating to me. As a musician it’s great when you can surprise yourself with something. When you say, ‘I did that, that’s great.’ That’s a really great feeling for musicians. It’s also outside of the framework how other people judge music. It’s something very individual. That came out of me, that’s amazing. And the song totally carries that for me. And that’s why it has such a special role for me, that I think it’s really great. It probably looks different from the outside.”
Think about it, in 30 years you’ll hear the song on the radio by chance. And you think, ‘I know this song, I wrote it at that time. We recorded it. Our song will be played or something.’ Somehow on classical radio or something.
G.: “It probably won’t be played, but who knows.”
Who knows what it will be like in 30 years.