I was incredibly fortunate to interview Black Metal legends Summoning last week:
1. What drew you to black metal, and what made you choose the names you did for the band and yourselves?
silenius:
when we started summoning of course we did not know that this band can be alive for such a long time, but somehow we succeeded all over those years. in the beginning we just wanted to release an album to be as cool as our musical heroes and so on and so on. in the early 90ties black metal was not just music but a whole life-style which i lived 24 hours a day. everything was in the rise, and in the move and creativity was floating all over. of coursed nowardays 25 years later a lot of things have changed. summoning is of course very important for us, but meanwhile it is just a part of our live and not the center and the act of composing is far more focused and thoughtfull compared to the beginning. but of course it is an honor of us that meanwhile our music is a source of inspiration for quite a lot of younger bands. so it seems that our music has a kind of quality that spreads unto the hearts of younger generations who maybe continue this style and make their own ideas out of it.
as our whole concept is based on tolkiens middle earth concept it was necessary to use alias names to bring everything in a fitting context. the band name was inspired by “diabolical summoning” a phrase used by the norwegian band dark throne. the logo was designed and done by protector.
2. Where do you draw your lyrical and musical influences from?
silenius: as i said, all our lyrical influences and the whole concept is dedicated to tolkiens middle earth creation, seen from a darker point of view. in our youth we of course had a long metal socialisation, but later the musical influences came fron a wider range like dark wave, dark ambient, soundtracks and-scapes, martial industrial folk and many more fields…
3. How did you go about writing and recording your newest album?
silenius: we had some material left from the old mornings dawn session and took this as a starting point to make something new out of it. usually i compose most of the keyboard melodies, while protector adds some more melodies here and there. then he is doing all the guitars and drum pattern while i work for the lyrical concept and collect paintings for the visualisation. finally protector is doing all the mixing and mastering.
4. What plans do you have for the future?
after our work is done we usually go on a long winter sleep…