On Saturday, December 14th, 2019
Wolfrune Fest, Nox Music & Voodood Promotions Present the Danish gnostic
occult rock band Parzival live at Death Disco in Athens, Greece.
Opening act will be the Greek alternative rock band ULiar. Founded in 1999, Pazival is a Russian electro-industrial
group based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Heavily
influenced by Kapital-era Laibach, the group creates a bombastic neo-classical
music with electronic percussion, plenty of string and horn samples, and dramatic
vocals mainly in German. They will be performing here as part of their
promotional tour of their latest album "The
Golden Bough".
You
started in 1995 as Stiff Miners and have already released under the name
Parzival 10 albums that have experimented various genres such as martial
industrial, symphonic EBM, atmospheric metal, darkwave and electro with influences
from Russian and European traditional music. Did you ever think that the band
would have had such a long history, and did you have from the beginning a clear
picture of what direction the band would have?
Parzival:
It’s a good question. Actually Stiff Miners started way earlier than 1995.
The first album “Giselle” was released on Cleopatra Records in 1995, but the
band started already in 1992. If you asked us in 1995, it would be very hard to
imagine that we would be releasing a new album in such a distant future as
2019, but on the other hand we already had some visions and ambitions for the
future development of Parzival. Music is a vision of art, and as long as you
always have something to say with your art, you can go on as long as you have
this artistic vision burning inside you. We have been going through a lot of
different musical styles, but we enjoy to achieve something new with our music
each time. We can not do a copy of our own music all the time, like AC/DC, but on
the other hand you can hear the spirit and atmosphere of Parzival on all our
albums. Basically it’s the same concept on all our albums, just with different
colours”.
On your latest album "The Golden
Bough" we see the return of electric guitars and acoustic drums making
your sound more 70s rock - doom metal, but always retaining your epic and
pompous style. What would you like to say about this change in direction?
Parzival:
As we just spoke about, it’s very important for us to reach some new musical
borderlines. And test ourselves on the things we never did before. So for
Parzival it’s definitely new with the current influences, which put fresh blood
in our wines”
In
previous works you sung in German, Russian and Latin. The new album is mainly
in English. Is this due to you broadening your horizons and taking it to a
wider audience?
Parzival:
Again, we would like to explore something new. All our previous albums have
been in languages such as German, Russian, Latin, Sanskrit and even a selfmade
language made by our friend Maxim, who helps us with the lyrics. We had one
song in English, “Lord Of The Sea”, on our previous album “Urheimat Neugeburt”
as a test, and we really liked it. So we continued with the English language on
the new album. Not to get on MTV, but to try something new 😊”
The texts used for the album "The Golden
Bough" are based on the book of the same name by Scottish social
anthropologist and folklorist Sir James George Frazer. What can you tell us
about your choice for this?
Parzival: “The Golden
Bough” name is indeed taken from the book by Sir Frazer. The thing is, we
disagree with the author and his scientist work. Because in the view of
Parzival, he put all his ideas in a very primitive way. In the way our album is
called “The Golden Bough”, it’s almost like a reverse engineering of his work,
but it’s only our personal view on his book”.
We saw
recently you participated in festivals such as NCN (Nocturnal Culture Night) in
Germany, Zagovor Festival in the Ukraine, the Wave Gotik Treffen and at Entremuralhas.
How is it for you to perform live in various countries? Do you manage absorb
any cultural influences during your short stay in the countries you visit?
Parzival: “We really enjoy
visiting and performing in different countries. Actually, we always insist on
staying a couple of days more in each country, even on our own expense, to
experience the atmosphere and culture of each country we perform. To learn and
know more about the place we visit. The same with Greece – we will of course stay
some extra time before and after the show to explore Athens, and keep our
Parzival tradition concerning this”.
The Dark scene worldwide has been going strong
for the last 40 years! How do you see the scene today and the way it has
evolved especially with the domination of the internet?
Parzival: “We think it is
much more easy to promote the band and communicate with the fans than in the
past. But on the other hand, everything is way too easy with just one click.
People in our time demands news and entertainment from the artists on a daily
basis – elsewise they will be forgotten. It is a very hard job for musicians to
keep up with the audience at all times. About the scene, there is still plenty
of good bands, but it seems like the “dark scene” have been going down for the
last 10 years. Less and less people are coming to the concerts, atleast in
Scandinavia, but also other countries. And this goes for both goth, neofolk and
industrial scenes unfortunately. Because the artists within these genres can
not produce news and videos each week to entertain audience in Instagram,
Facebook, Snapchat and all these SoMe channels”.
As a band that has sunk deep into European
tradition, history and symbolism, how do you see the state of Europe today?
Although one can say economically Europe is better off than other regions of
the world, do you think ideologically it has lost its path, focus or vision?
Parzival: “We see things
like that MAYBE it’s easier for smaller countries to stay together shoulder to
shoulder with each other as far economy goes. But it’s also only MAYBE. From
another point of view, economy is not everything that unite us. It’s not an axe
of everything. For us, the way we see it – culturally roots of the European
people is more important than economy. Because it is the roots where economy
grows from. And as we know, European countries are also very different, and
it’s bad when economy dictates over culture and religion. So it’s a very big
question that will be too long to go way too deep into. We feel connected to all
European countries, and enjoy the diversity of all European countries. But some
cultural issues can also split. Let’s see how things will turn out the coming
years. Question is short, but answer could last for years. We as Parzival can
not make a certain statement about this, as these questions could turned to
interesting discussions over an Ouzo or ten!”.
This will be your first performance in Greece. Have
any members been here before? As a band, what will you be expecting to give and
take from the Greek audience?
Parzival: “Yes, all
members have been to Greece before in different parts of the country. We really
look forward to perform in Athens, and meet all our Greek friends. We will
perform our best show as possible to entertain our Greek audience, who will be
the first ones to hear new versions of a couple of older Parzival songs. See
you in Athens soon! Thanx for the support to Die Seele”.
Interview by Nick
Drivas.
Photos 1 & 2 by:
Maiken Kildegaard.
Photo 3 by: Falk Scheuring.
