... INTERVIEWS ...
Possessed Tormentor zine
Hello and how you doing? The fall is slowly coming… A pefect time to get into WIJLEN WIJ, I reckon?
S : Hello, i’m doing okay thank you. Fall tends to be most suited for the kind of music with death as it’s main concept,
although the season is never really the end of things, just the beginning of a long death-like slumber. Wijlen Wij’s concept
is far more finite i suppose.
I am just sitting and listening to your debut album for the third time this day and I gotta say I still don’t have enough
of it! It` s just…doomy; dark and totally filled with negative emotions! I can`t find other words to describe it. How
do you like it yourself and what` s been the response to it?
S : I’m quite happy with how it turned out, we did put a lot of work into it over the course of several years. It was good
to see it all come together in the end as a finished album. Making it doomy and dark was the obvious course to go for all
the members since that’s the music we’re all into. As for negativity i don’t really think we did put so much pronounced negativity
in it or at least we didn’t intended for it to be upfront, but that probably depends on the listener’s views on death and the
prospect of it : is death a negative thing that should be feared or can you easily accept it as the final and natural conclusion
of what we call life.
K: I would probably agree with Stijn that the emotions are not all that negative; there are many passages that suggest of hope
and even redemption. That might sound unusual for ‘funeral doom’, but ultimately, as Stijn suggested in the answer to the first
question, there are different ways in which you can approach death and embrace its all-encompassing inevitability. Perhaps then,
the Wijlen Wij project in general and this particular album in particular, are doing just that: embracing and celebrating death
in all its aspects.
Well, as far as I am concerned the music itself plays the second fiddle in case of WIJLEN WIJ. The most important thing to me is
the ATMOSPHERE it generates. Music in your case is just a tool, something unimportant, a thing utilized for creation of atmosphere.
Do you agree on this?
S : Up to a certain level that’s true, atmosphere is definately important but i woudln’t say music is just the tool. There are
definately elements in the songs that are only there for musical purposes. In the end i’m also just a musician who likes the sounds
of the instruments i play and a few experiments here and there are always nice. I don’t go as far as putting in technically difficult
guitar solos for instance, just to show off skill, though.
K: Music is –and you will have to excuse me for paraphrasing the Buddha- just the raft; if it takes you to the other side of the
river, surely you are not going to take it with you on your shoulders when you climb up the mountain, just because it brought you
this way? Music is the necessary tool. Atmosphere is the key. The actually work takes place in the human brain when it tries to make
sense of ambiguous stimuli, thus creating ‘atmosphere’.
WIJLEN WIJ is totally unknown to me and many others I presume. Can you please tell us what the beginning of the band was and whether
you (have) had any other band before WIJLEN WIJ? Also, please tell us shortly if you` ve released any other suff besides this full
length on Aesthetic? Any titles are still available?
S : We started with several people (Kostas, Heiko, Lawrence, Nicolas and myself) putting some rough ideas for tracks together, we
rather quickly figured it might be an interesting experience to actually try and start a real band. And for a long time, that was
the only thing we did, besides deciding on the project’s name. Kostas had a few tracks in the works, Lawrence was working on a lot
of lyrics and i had one track myself.
It might have been more than a year before we did something productive again, Kostas and Lawrence combined their ideas into several
rough versions of tracks and the idea of an album started taking shape. At that point my contribution was limited to one track i had
written myself. Shortly there after Kostas moved to the UK and Lawrence had to spend most of his time on school related projects,
i was quite busy with school as well then, so we didn’t really have much opportunities to finalize our tracks and start recording.
There was no change in this situation for another year until we finally managed to get a few days off and Kostas came over from the
UK to start recording. He had already finished arranging the songs so everything was ready to go. Lawrence was still occupied by
school projects so i ended up playing bass guitars as well as doing the vocals that were arranged for him. Kris (from In Somnis)
joined us on drums, so we had a full line-up with the four of us. It didn’t take all that long to get everything recorded from there
on. The mixing again took several months due to my job but eventually our album was finished. Kostas had some contacts in the UK and
this resulted in Greg Chandler mastering the album and Aesthetic Death releasing it.
All of us play in other bands, Kostas’ main project is Pantheist, Lawrence has his Solicide solo-project and Kris plays in In
Somnis. I have several solo-projects myself and released and participated on around 20 albums. We have several releases for all
these other bands and projects but this is the first one on Aesthetic Death.
To me, being a member of so called `funeral doom` scene has neither pros nor cons. It gives you an unlimited freedom within the
term of ` funeral doom` but it must have also its restrictions, mustn` t it?. Could you please tell us what your criteria for a
funeral doom band are and what are the limits in your opinion (if any, of course).
S : It’s up to composer or musician to set the limits. I didn’t set any so there’s a lot of different things i can do without having to worry about belonging to a certain subgenre. For me funeral doom has little to do with the kind of music, although the term ‘doom’ may be misleading in making one think it’s only related to doom metal. Ambient or gothic or other music genres can be equally funeral-esque. The most important thing for me is wether or not the concept is funeral doom in nature and in which way it is translated into music.
K: An artist has to kill genre names. We constantly tread on the scattered ashes of the countless genres and subgenres. That’s what we have to do; when you are creative you don’t have a choice other than following your heart and see where it takes you.
Your debut album brings a strong air of Finnish scene, that` s my opinion. SKEPTICISM is a band that comes to me mind at the moment but still there are some hints of EVOKEN` s `Embrace the emptiness` traceable too, I think. What` s your general view on this matter and how do you like these two bands and Finnish scene in general (DOLORIAN, UNHOLY etc)? Also, can you tell me if there are/have been any other bands of this genere in Belgium?
S : I’m more a fan of Finnish doom than of the US scene. Add Thergothon to the three bands you already mentioned and those are amongst my favorite bands. US doom tends to be over produced which has a negative effect on the atmosphere. As for being influenced, i always try to be original in what i do and never borrow ideas from other bands, but i’ve listened to a lot of different kinds of music in my life, of which funeral doom is only a small section so i guess in one way or another all this music has been an extra subconcious source of inspiration.
There are several dark doom bands in Belgium, but i haven’t heard anything like Dolorian or Unholy, these bands remain unique.
Being a funeral doom band means you probably have never played live and will never do it in the future, right? Have you ever thought about a hypothetical live show? How would it look like? What the audience would be?
S : Except for Lawrence, we have all done live shows with our projects. Kris and myself have played in Pantheist and i’ve done several gigs with UDOM. I think we once briefly talked about a live performance with Wijlen Wij, but i don’t think it will ever happen as organising the preparations and rehearsals won’t be easy with people living far apart and having other musical projects that need their time.
The funeral doom live shows i’ve seen didn’t look all that different from other metal genres. There’s perhaps a more modest stage presence and it may seem less active compared to black metal for instance. Atmospheric elements like lightning and smoke are common, but you’ll find that at most metal gigs as well. The more calm nature of the music as compared to black or death is also mirrored in the behaviour of the audience, less mosh pits, headbanging and stuff like that.
How do you see the relation between WIJLEN WIJ and other (black, death etc) bands of the metal underground? Do you feel a part of it at all? Or is funeral doom a totally unique music genre?
S : Personally i don’t feel a part of anything and don’t care to be. I don’t feel ‘funeral doom’ either and don’t want to be. The whole genre politics is of no importance, it’s the music that matters to me. There are obviously in all genres people who think that only their genre has an elite status and everything is inferior.
I just want to create my music and anything else that people think is related to this process is of almost no importance.
What is considered the ‘funeral doom genre’ has actually released more unique music than for instance black or death metal or even other doom subgenres.
K: Music genres are stale; creative persons cannot cope with this staleness. Their view on music can be very defined, but has to be brought out spontaneously at all times. Sometimes it’s close to a subgenre, sometimes not. This is of no importance to the creative person, more to the listener who subscribes to a scene.
What, in your opinion, is the relation : band- band` s music- band` s music`s listeners ? Are these three equally important to you guys or you just concentrate on, let` s say, the second one? What` s the most important one out of these three in your opinion?
S : The music comes always first, the band second as it’s the tool and the inspiration that creates the music. This if course easier said than done if it’s not a solo project. But i believe a band that puts it’s members on the first place also tends to make compromises more easily that for instance make the music more commercial and results in a bigger pay check for the members. For Wijlen Wij i’m sure we won’t run into such problems since we all have a more or less non- or even anti-commercial idea about the music we write.
As for the listeners and fans, i always made it clear that i don’t take any advice or comments regarding the way in which i create my music, i will not make any changes to please a certain group of potential listeners. I don’t make this music for other people, but for myself in the first place, if others end up liking it and buying CDs, that’s fine, but it’s not the reason why the music exists. I have to admit it’s always nice to hear from people that they really like or even understand and can relate to your music of course.
K: Once in a while, you feel a strong connection to a certain listener, who seems to ‘get’ what you are doing. This communication on a deeper level is what music is all about in my view. This however doesn’t happen very often and therefore it shouldn’t be the driving force for the artist. Making this type of uncommercial music is like walking blindly on a pile of shit and hoping to stumble upon the little treasures hidden in the pile. Most of the time a pretty pointless exercise, but occasionally some lucky bastards stumble upon precious jewellery.
Simply, what are your lyrics about? How important are they as far as WIJLEN WIJ is considered as an entity? Pity to say there aren` t any in the inlay. Any special message to pass to the others, huh?
S : Lawrence has put most of the work into the lyrical concept i believe, my contributions to that are limited to the abstract lyrics for my own track.
K: Most of the lyrics have been written or co-written between Lawrence and myself. They all deal with abstract material that was too personal to publish. We prefer to have the listeners make up their minds about them. The Dutch lyrics in sonnet form of the track ‘Wijlen Wij’ are the key to the lyrical concept and they can be found in the booklet. But again, they shouldn’t distract from the music and its atmosphere.
Do you care about the listeners of WIJLEN WIJ at all, or are they just unimportant to you, just beings who` ve bought the recording of yours?
S : I think i more or less answered this in question number 9. In the end it’s of course these people that buy the album and as such provide some support for the band, but that doesn’t make them important enough to have any kind of influence on the music. It doesn’t give them any rights to decide on the direction the band should take, although many believe that they own the band if they buy the music and that the band owes them.
K: Again: the artist creates and doesn’t catalogue, that’s not his job. Listeners are there to listen, discuss what they hear with each other and perhaps create a community where good music (in their humble view of course) is promoted and bad music is banned. But again, that has nothing to do with the artistic duty, which is abstract and often far removed from the reality of genre wars and subgenre moaning.
Ok, please tell me to what degree is the music of WIJLEN WIJ intentional and to which spontaneous?
S : I can only comment on the track i wrote. As with most music i write it is mostly spontaneous, i don’t sit down and force myself to write music. I have ideas and let them grow in my head until they reach a certain stage and then i start writing a few additional elements and work on arrangements.
K: This music just cannot be anything else that spontaneous. It’s so extreme and uncommercial that it would be truly pathetic to create it with the idea to please people and be at the centre of everyone’s attention. We are at the frontiers of what is called extreme, and we device our own rules with complete disregard for conventions. That doesn’t mean that we don’t respect what is good and that we don’t build further on stuff other good bands have worked on in the past. But all this happens without a clear plan or commercial aspirations. I want everyone to realize that people who make such extreme music usually fund that music themselves without expectations of further rewards or even covering their expenses. This is as extreme as it can get.
To me vocals on your debut release are perfect. They suit perfectly the music and the their sound on this disk is as it should be: it` s distant, inhuman as if coming from the depth, tired of life and existence if I may speak of a couple of things coming to my mind right now.
S : Between Kostas and myself i believe we cover several very different vocal styles and the vocal arrangements were of course made with that in mind. I’m quite pleased with how it worked out myself and my own performance on this album is some of the best i’ve done so far. We had the experience of course from our previous release from our other bands, so we already have a good idea of how the vocals work best with the music we create, i definately think that contributed to the quality of the vocal arrangements on the album.
K: Yes, I think Stijn excelled himself in this album. I added some clean vocal flourishes here and there, but that was only a small touch of redemption in an otherwise inhuman universe.
The best track on the disk appears to be ` Bridges`. It` s a bit different from the others though I can`t say the difference myself but it` s probably more melodic than all the other five tracks on the disk. It can as well have been released separately, can`t it?, in a way SKEPTISISM did with ` Ethere` mcd. Musically, it reminds me pretty much of Swiss MORDOR` s ` Csjethe`, as it` s got the same stuffy, apoclyptic atmosphere. Also, this track has lotsa ambient elements, was it intentional?
S : It’s my favorite track as well. I don’t think it’s all that different from the rest, it has of course it’s own special elements but the entire album is pretty coherent in sound. I don’t really like the idea of a mCD, seems like a waste of resources to put 20 minutes of music on a CD. The Ethere mCD is different in that it’s longer than a lot of the so-called ‘full-length’ album released within the metal genre. I can’t comment on any similarities between Bridges and Morder as i haven’t heard the latter. The ambient elements are definately intentional, after all i write a lot of ambient material and i tried to add a few things here and there during the mixing and arranging stages.
K: ‘Bridges’ is about death and its possibility of rebirth into something new. I agree with Stijn that it fits very nicely with the rest of the tracks, so there is no reason to release it separately.
How did the process of creation of your album` s music look like? How long did it take to have all the music completed?
S : Part of this is already answered in question 4, it took a long time and it was not easy to find a suitable time to get together and get some work done as we all had other things to do that took a lot of our time. In total i think we worked a little over 3 years on this album.
What do you expect from a listener of your music? do you think one should start listening to it when in a proper state of mind, or what? Can you think about any special places appropriate for a listener to divulge into WIJLEN WIJ?
S : Most of the music i’ve written can be listened to in different situations, i’ve heard quite some stories on that from fans, but in the ends it’s not my job to tell someone how to experience the music, it’s up to the listener to create the perfect environment to enjoy the music.
Personally i can listen to this kind of music anytime, but mostly it plays in the background. If i have the spare time, i listen closely and use headphones, though i almost always avoid high volumes.
Ok, that` s it, I think. Thank you very much for your time!! Please share some facts about your future releases/plans and stay doomed!! Ta!
S : There are vague plans, but nothing really concrete. Perhaps we do another album for Wijlen Wij, but i think we already created something unique and trying to surpass that won’t be easy and it probably will end up being so different that it has nothing in common anymore with Wijlen Wij as the entire creative process that led to this album was rather unique as well. Perhaps Wijlen Wij is supposed to be a one-album only band.
K: I wholly share these sentiments. To quote dISEMBOWELMENT ‘we will never pass this way again’. The stream is ever flowing, and you can never know what it will bring in the future. The only thing certain is that whatever comes will be different from the present.
