Haerken rule- there’s really no other way of saying it. Musically adept, it is the band’s remarkable stage-craft that takes a quality band and turns them into a headline act. One of those bands that seem to be forever prefixed with the comment “have you seen…” Haerken always deliver and their set at HRH metal this year was one of the two-day event’s stand-out performances. We had the opportunity to catch up with the band just prior to their slot and, as a result of the entire band descending upon your hapless interlocutor, they are presented here as an articulate (perhaps marginally schizophrenic) single entity. Good-natured, funny and full of interesting anecdotes, the band discussed their development and future plans – read on and meet Haerken…
The first question goes back to last year’s uprising, because that was the first time I saw you play with a full-blown stage set – how do you go about dealing with the presentation of the band and how often do you have the opportunity to present it in that way?
The concept of the theatrical side of it has been around for a long time. We’re now just about getting the stage space to start being able to do it properly. But, right back to when we first discussed anything, we were talking about ideas that were way beyond anything we could ever imagine.
It’s a fundamental part of the concept and it is a theatrical performance. How you deliver that is by somehow convincing Johnathan to keep coming to gigs with us [laughs].
It’s probably taken a big leap since I joined the band because I take an interest in what the stage looks like, even sometimes down to where people are standing at a certain point and working all that stuff out. So we approach it as much as a piece of theatre as we do as a band on stage. … Which means we often spend almost twice as much time in rehearsal as other bands… not to mention Sunday afternoons in Steve’s garden making weapons and other grand things like that [laughs].
It’s incredibly challenging for a band, as they grow, to try to incorporate that theatricality and to make it work, and there’s a big jump, as well, moving from smaller venues to main stages like Uprising. Was it challenging to fill that amount of space?
I think the actual challenge was that, the ideas were all there. The thing is we’ve got ideas to do…. If we could book out Wembley stadium (and the budget was limitless), we’ve got the ideas for that. But it’s a case of scaling it back to what we can actually do, afford and what’s practical to be able to move around and put on the stage.
So, actually, what we do, is we scale down our ideas to fit the venue we’re playing and how much space we’ve got backstage to store all our shit.
So that you don’t piss off all the other bands…
[laughs] We have a sort of pool of bits that we can call on and as we get closer to a show, we work out what we need, how long the set is, what songs we play, the journey the set’s going on, how much space we’ve got, how much money etc. and then we’ll work out what we can get on stage and if we need to build something else, then we’ll build something else. But yeah, it’s a bit of a journey and it’s often persuading venues and production management of festivals to come along with you and buy into that whole idea of putting on a big show in a fifteen minute turnaround.
Those blokes that turn up in jeans and t shirts and play guitar… that isn’t us…
Folk metal as a whole is a well-populated genre, but your take on it – digging more deeply into English mythology rather than dealing with Viking themes – is quite different. So who’s the main source of interest in that side of things?
Well, we started it at work and Justin went away and discovered Amon Amarth and came back and asked if I [Ben] wanted to start a band – he wanted to play some death metal – so we started thinking about it and I figured it was a great idea but Vikings were being done to death. There’s loads of great mythology in this country, so we thought we’d do something medieval. We both came back and it seems we’d both had the same idea at the same time, so we came out with this Robin Hood / King Arthur… sort of… great stuff! We spent nearly two years putting the concept together and the band together.
In terms of developing the lyrics – when you’re trying to dig into mythology, trying to condense history and mythology into a concise set of lyrics…
Well, they’re not that concise!
…How much work does it take?
They’re not concise and it’s not very easy as well, when you’re trying to be all Elizabethan and clever!
The style of the lyrics is more of a theatrical device, we’ve chosen to use Elizabethan language and it’s evocative rather than anything else…. Technically it’s a little bit later than the era in which the lyrics are set…
…And it’s way more colourful as well.
It is more colourful and people understand it. Middle English is a whole other world for people to understand.
Some it’s not that bad – if someone read Chaucer to you, you’d probably get the gist of it, but to look at it, you wouldn’t have a clue. There’s only so niche you can go.
Maybe you could have some sort of Chaucerian side project?
You mean we haven’t got enough work to do?!?
The research that goes into what we’re doing is absolutely absurd but I’m hoping that one day we’ll get famous enough that we’ll get honorary history degrees from Oxford University because we’ve put the work in…
You don’t print your lyrics in the booklet, but you’ve put the story that surrounds it, so you’re trying to get people interested in the idea but not make the lyrics too explicit to the listener?
We like to think that the lyrics are clear enough to listen to. So, what we’ve put into the liner notes is what we’re passionate about. We want people to be interested in the stories that we’re talking about and to go away and read up on them themselves. Find out for yourselves that we’re not bullshitting. There’s a lot of research that goes into this. There’s quite often too much story to get into the song, so you put the highlights in, tell people roughly what it’s about and hopefully they’ll go and find out for themselves. The idea is that we’re modern day bards, aren’t we. A lot of these stories, many people won’t have heard before, so we’re kind of an educational death metal band…
I think someone once said ‘horrible histories of heavy metal… the grown ups’ version…
What comes first? Is there a narrative idea that inspires the music and then the lyrics follow or do you have the lyrics and you try to mould them to the music?
Yes is the answer! Yes! Both. All of them! All of the above!
Someone’s got a musical theme or idea and that gets developed by that one person and then it’s bought to the table and everyone chips in and looks at it that way. At the same time, that creates an emotional response. So, from what part of folk lore we’re looking at… is there a historical tale that we can tell that actually portrays the emotion we’re putting across musically…
From our already brimming collection of tales, we’ll pick one that suits the music. We’ve already got plenty of ideas, both musically and lyrically and we kind of match them up as we go.
In terms of recording, have you got ideas for a new album?
We’re currently working on something. We’ve tracked drums and they’re off being edited at the moment. We’re then obviously going to be working on guitars, bass and other instruments and then working on vocal ideas and getting those down. We’re hopefully looking for a release before Christmas.
Is it going to be an independent release?
I’d love to get a wider distribution – to get the stuff out there to more people. But we’re not chasing labels, we’re quite happy working as a tight-knit unit – that’s worked really well for us so far. Having that creative freedom is important to us. TO be able to explore what we do. The next record is a bit of a jump from the first one. I’m not going to say anything more than that, but it’s a big project that we’ve really been able to get our teeth struck into. It’s definitely not going to be another rehash of ‘Warriors and Kings’, it’s a completely different musical theme and there are no four-minute singles on this…
In terms of packaging and artwork – being such a theatrical band is it important to you to have a physical product?
How do you put a wax seal on an MP3? Everything that we do gets treated with the same attention to detail as the music and the lyrics. We’re very proud of our debut album and being able to present it in the way that we have, represents something really innovative and it’s hard to be innovative with a CD because everything that can be done with it has practically been done and actually we found something that maybe hasn’t. Maybe we can go backwards and start etching out stone tablets. We’ll give out sheet music – you have to play it yourselves!
There was a Thurston Moore CD that came filled with… actual rubbish… so you could put it in a nice Hessian bag… No? I feel like Jez in Peep Show now…
I hope you’re not expecting a kick back!
Quick – write it down!
The theatricality makes you the ideal festival band – so having festivals like HRH which seem to be growing in popularity and number – have you noticed there’s more opportunity for you to get out now than there was a few years back?
Yeah – certainly, the festival circuit has been a really good friend to us. It plays really well on stage and especially the indoor festivals really suit what we do. Yeah, there’s always been a fair few festivals, but there seems to be a little more cohesion now and so many more people who are aware of what’s going on and they’re travelling to it and that, for an indoor festival in our local O2 venue is really cool.
Any final words?
No! Yes! I want to say a Waes Hail. Drink Hail!
I’m going to have to write all this up now –you spoke more than you said you would!
Find out more about the mighty Haerken here: http://www.haerken.com/
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