No fantasy, just thought

Archaic Metallurgy want to present you Edain, who hail from The Czech Republic. Their debut album 'Through Thought and Time' was released in June. Let's check out the latest news and stuff from this dark heavy metal band. The answers were provided by vocalist Martin Brňovják.

AM: Greetings from Finland guys. How are things in Czech Republic?

Martin Brňovják: Terve kaikki! Technically, it should be autumn already, but it is still hot as hell, which makes me spend a lot of money on beer to make myself a bit more comfortable, hehe & well, giving it a second thought, it's not that bad after all.

AM: Almost the same thing here. It's warmer as it should be, and beer definitely helps, hehe.
You are a new band, so can you shed some light on your history, both the band and the members, please?

M.B.: Edain as a band have existed since 2007, basically the time when the activities of our previous band Absurd Conflict started to go down. Martin (Král, guitar) had some material, which he could not use in Absurd Conflict, and he also came up with the name for the band, so it was sort of logical that we start something fresh, although together with Jura (Jiři Staněk, drums), there's 60% of the previous band retained.

I brought in Pavel (Jeřábek, lead guitar) with whom I was playing in Carbon Dioxide in the meantime, and when we completed the line-up with Zdeněk (Záhora, bass), we were clear for start.

AM: You released your debut album 'Through Thought and Time' this summer. How it has been welcomed by metal community?

M.B.: The album has been out since June, so it's fine we've had so much response already, especially if it's generally positive. We have played a few fine shows around, although I could imagine more activities going on. But then again, we cannot play in our hometown every other weekend, although that's where the most people come to support us. I would love to push the band somewhere further, for starters, we've sent a couple of CDs around the metal media to make the world know we exist, and it's pleasant to see the response is generally good. I mean, we are not a major label band to secure commending reviews, so the fact alone that somebody takes a proper listen to our album and writes a detailed account on it, is complimenting.

AM: In my review, I mentioned that you're influenced by Opeth to some degree, but manage to sound quite original in general. How do you depict your music yourselves?

M.B.: Yes, Opeth is often mentioned; our guitarist Martin, who is the author of majority of music on the album, is a big fan of Opeth, so the traces are quite obvious, still the rest of members add their own feel to each song, to each bit, and we are not trying to stick to some formulas, so that helps us avoid this "model copying" approach, although indeliberate. I mean, I don't believe that diehard Opeth fans will actually like our music, because we sound more like a heavy metal band from the 80's, just complex and technical. I don't object, of course, still, personally, I am more pleased if people compare us to Celtic Frost, for example.

AM: In my review I said you play dark heavy metal. Hopefully that's okay then!
Can you tell something about the cover and the lyrics concepts?

M.B.: These things were conceived independently, but in the end we made them click together. Lyrics deal with a psychological dimension of a person-person or person-world relationship, trying to link the psychological drives with modern social and technical environment, there's basically no fantasy in it, just thought. The cover is more like a symbolic impression of a single person being lost vis-a-vis this post-apocalyptic machinery and destruction. We have played with symbolism a bit, in the lyrics as well as with the pictures and photos in the booklet. And the idea is to make the concepts even more thoroughly worked out in the future, that is to make the music, lyrics and imagery more united, but since we are all equally active in contributing and voicing our opinion on the final stuff, we'll see to what extent this is possible, hehe.

AM: 'Through Thought and Time' was released as a companion with Czech extreme metal magazine Pařát, but of course also alone. You didn't release it through your label Zero Budget Productions. How come this kind of a plan with it?

M.B.: Zero Budget Productions is of course a logical choice, and we can fall back to it with our future releases, no problem. After all, we're taking care of the distribution and promotion as a regular release under our own wings. The Pařát Magazine offer was a great chance to secure a good distribution in our own country. And for a band with basically unknown name, just imagine - over 1000 copies spread among people within 2-3 weeks of the release, how many small underground record labels can guarantee you that? So it was a good advantage for the first step to be made, which saved us a lot of headache with promotion, I believe.

AM: I definitely see the meaning of that move now.
Edain will perform live towards the end of this year, to support the new album. Do you already lose you good nights' sleep for the excitement about playing live? Seriously, how do you guys like the live gigs? What are you going to play with the new album material, if you're willing to reveal anything..? Any old Absurd Coflinct material or covers?

M.B.: Sure, playing live constitutes the top enjoyment, or success, if you like. Even though we should be happy - and we are happy playing generally small clubs with relatively low attendance. So we are looking forward to those dates planned, and hopefully we will be able to extend our schedule much more.
Regarding the live setlist, we've not been urged to experiment too much with it, once the album has been out some 4 months only, we stick to playing the material from there, adding new songs as they come out out of our rehearsal room. Absurd Conflict takeovers are probably out of question, since we are really into making it a new band, but classic covers are also a matter we like to consider very often, so sometimes we have to kick ourselves back to paying attention to our own material. We have done a cover of old Yugoslavian band Bombarder, which we occasionally play live, and we also did a selection of classic hard rock and heavy metal tunes, but that was a special occasion when we played at the wedding of our guitarist. Still, it's somewhere in our minds...

AM: When metal music has been there for over 40 years, in form or another, how do you feel it's best to do it? Edain are satill a young band, so how are you planning to take over the world? Stick to a band's own mixture of well-known styles or do you try to find something new into Edain's variant of metal music?

M.B.: Well, first of all it's fine that despite these long years we are still not disqualified in taking our chance at playing metal. And honestly, we're not planning to take over the world or redefine the metal genre, my personal point of view is being a metal fan trying to maximally enjoy the music I like. The beneficial aspect for Edain lies in the skills and tastes of individual band members. Without giving it much thought or calculating, I believe we will be able to create interesting music for some time.

AM: Is there any truly hot stuff cooking in Brno metal cicuits at the moment?

M.B.: Not sure, if I can speak of anything truly hot, unless I happen to be at one of the rock clubs with local girls late at night, but I can confirm there's a lot going on on the music scene, plenty of young bands playing power, black or grind, the older guys from the classical black/heavy metal period are still going strong, even the big names from the 70's prog scene started to play comeback concerts. If you add in the ever growing metalcore craze and the non-commercial punk/HC community, you end up with quite a living town with lots of bands, releases, concerts, and opportunities to have a glass of good beer.

AM: I'm done with the questions, so if you have something you feel must be said here, please do it!

M.B.: Well, hopefully this is not my last opportunity to speak on behalf of my metal activities, so I don't feel compelled to come up with any definitive conclusions, in any case, thank you for your support, it is an honour for me to answer an interview for a Finnish zine - it brings a pleasant touch of cold from the north during these unceasing hot days here. Kiitos!

AM: Kiitos to you you for this great interview.

Edain (from left to right): Zdeněk Záhora (bass), Jiři Staněk (drums), Martin Brňovják (vocals), Pavel Pavel Jeřábek (guitar) and Martin Král (guitar).