Back with a remarkably strong album in Evil Rising, The Heretic Order are out to bring their ferocious brand of classic metal to an ever-growing audience. Having played a storming set at Bloodstock, and with new tour dates coming soon, we took the opportunity to speak to Lord Ragnar about the development and writing of the album. Step into a world of Evil with The Heretic Order…
Evil Rising has taken some time to record, could you tell us a little about how the album developed and how the recording process went.
Well, we did it practically like the first one. I actually had all the songs already written and it was just a question of getting the band together. We actually changed drummers as well and that’s why we took a little bit more time to record it. We had Evil E… we changed drummers and we got Doctor Pain, and he was much more technical and better for the band, so we had a period when we couldn’t do the album. He came in and I think it was about a month and a week and he learned all the songs in a month and a week and we went to Madrid, a place called Rosales, which is in the middle of a mountain range over there, and we tracked the drums. The rest of the stuff we did in London – the vocals, the guitars and the bass.
Listening to the record, it’s got a very classic metal sound I would say; it’s a little different to how you are presented on stage.
Well, it’s what we do. Maybe the recording is a little more polished, but it’s what we do really. We never pretended to be anything new or anything innovative. We’re just a metal band, we enjoy what we do. I think the scene in England and in Europe, everyone is very generic and a lot of bands sound the same… that’s my opinion. There’s a new style of metal with shouty vocals, the same kind of beat and I’m getting a bit… we’re thinking we’re getting nowhere. Metal is very underground nowadays and I think it is a lack of song-writing, so we just went the old way and that’s what we do. We never pretended to be anything new. We just like the classic metal – like Priest, Maiden, Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne. It’s kind of ‘pure metal’, I would call it. Maybe some things are tinged with a bit of Metallica and Slayer and stuff like that, but basically it’s classic metal.
It’s cool to hear that organic, classic sound and I guess there is a certain pressure for bands to get their recordings to sound super-polished…
We just wanted the album to sound like it does. I produced the album myself and it’s what we were looking for. I don’t think it’s overly polished or anything like that. I believe we achieved what we wanted to achieve and, as with all music we’ll have our detractors. Some people will like it, some people won’t… The important thing is that the band likes it, that we’re confident and really happy with what we do; so we’re happy and, if anything, it’s other people who have the problem! I don’t think you should follow trends or a pattern in music. From the early 50s and 60s rock ‘n’ roll was a rebellious thing. You had to be unique and into your own thing. So, trying to copy other people’s production… like I say, we are borrowing a lot from the metal past and the classic bands like Sabbath, but we’re happy with the way we approached it.
You have, I think, a great way of taking your influences and putting your own twist on it and there’s a great example on the album – Mortification of the flesh – which has a bit of a Hallowed be thy name vibe, but then it spins off in its own direction…
Those influences, you have them, and they come to the fore when you’re composing. It’s not that you sit down and you think “now I’m going to make a song in the vibe of Iron Maiden”. It just doesn’t work like that. I start composing a song and it’s a journey, like writing a book, and the lyrics have a lot to do with that. Depending on the lyrics…. They’re quite dark stories from history with maybe some occult elements. So the music and the lyrics marry together and that’s why the sound takes me to those places. It’s like I say, it’s not intentional – I never sit down to sound like Maiden or anything like that, it just happens! Afterwards I realise, “oh shit! It sounds a bit like…” But metal’s been around… since the 70s it’s been in the world, and nowadays it’s very difficult to get something new going. Even so, as I said, we never pretended to do anything new – we just do metal… heavy metal. Nowadays it’s started to be a taboo – you say ‘heavy metal’ and some people look at you like “what?” – that’s just how it is. We’re not some sub-genre… it doesn’t matter to me. We’re really that confident in what we do and we play simple heavy metal.
One of the things that we spent some time talking about last time were the lyrics. It’s nice when you can look at the liner notes, check out the lyrics and they have some depth. Again, you’ve dug into a mix of real history and real events with some fantastic elements around that.
Yeah yeah. It’s very historical and it’s about real stuff that happened. Straight down (to hell) talks about the Nicene council, which was the council created by Constantine back in the 300s when the Catholic Church found its identity. Before that it was just different groups of people who were spiritual and they didn’t have a political agenda or anything like that and then the Nicene council was put up by the Roman Empire. That’s one, and then there’s the Forest of the Impaled, which is about Vlad the Impaler, who was a character in history with whom I’m fascinated and the way the Ottoman empire that was representing Islam, was trying to conquer Europe (they were beaten at the doors of Vienna in 1600s). All of this history is very interesting, I really like it. Then there’s a song, scourge of God, that talks about Gilles De Rais, who was a sub-lieutenant of Joan of Arc. She was in the 100 year war between the English and the French and she was burned at the stake and he was demonised and made out to be a Satanist-paedophile who flayed children and, under torture he confessed and was flayed alive. He had a really bad death and then he went down in history that way because history is written by the people who are in control… and it could have been like a set up because the guy had loads of power in France and the Dauphin did not want anyone to spoil his victory against the English. History is important and humanity has a dark past and you don’t need to invent anything, you just tap into different stories of our insane history!
Is it a challenge to take these elements of history and write them in a way that leaves elements open to interpretation…
I think, as I’ve said before, that history isn’t very clear and it’s written by the people who are in control. So, there’s always a little margin of doubt in the story. It’s like “OK, the story goes like this… but was it reality?” I’m more like a story-teller because the doubts are in my head as well as I look at the story, you know, did it really go like that or was it the other way. Nowadays, something similar to what they call ‘fake news’… in fifty years’ time, people will talk about the Russians and Novichok and blah blah blah… and all this stuff about Al Quaeda… in fifty years, everyone will know a certain version because history gets diluted in time. It’s exactly the same. I think, more in the old days, it was more difficult to really know what happened. Stories were written by the monks and shared by the church and people in the countryside were illiterate and people didn’t know how to read and write, so who knows the reality and the truth of all these stories. Nobody knows or is alive to tell the truth, so I always leave that element of doubt and ask these questions in the songs about the reality of the story and give my interpretation, obviously.
So, how long does it take to work the lyrics from an initial concept to having a set of lyrics that you’re happy with?
It’s bizarre to explain because the songs come out differently. Some are easier and on some I have to work a bit more to get with the message that I want to get across. So, there’s no rule. Every song has a different story in the making of. And so, some stories just really come to me. I read a lot. I have my Kindle and I’m always reading. I live in London, so I get loads of public transport and I’m always reading and that inspires me a lot. When I’m writing lyrics, I’m inspired by the stories and books I’m reading but, like I said, I watch a lot of History Channel too. I’m a bit of a history nerd! Music is my hobby! I’m the kind of person that, on this tour, we went to Oxford and, in the middle of the high street was this tower built in Norman times (it was pre-Norman, it was Saxon) and I said “guys, I’ll see you later, I’m going up there!” Some of the guys go to the pub, it’s all rock ‘n’ roll, and I’ll do that at night, after the gig! Before that, I have to get my history going around the town and stuff like that. In England it’s very nice because there’s this rich, medieval history in the culture and I really like… sometimes I’m flabbergasted that not many people know any shit. I talk to loads of people born in different cities and, when I went to Evesham (where Simon De Montfort led one of the first revolutions against a King in England), I asked the locals about it and they didn’t even know and I was like “what? He lived in your town and you don’t even know about the Battle of Evesham, one of the most important battles in England?”
They have strong connections to Leicester, the De Montfort family…
Yeah, that’s true. They were a Norman family, and he deposed Edward I’s father and for a while there was the first republic of England. A king was deposed and Simon De Montfort was in power until he was deposed again by the King and his son, who was Edward Longshanks, in 1265. Many people don’t remember that… the Magna Carta (1215), it was a continuation of that. So, it’s a kind of… we’ve always been fighting the kings for power. Simon De Montfort was a revolutionary. He fought for the rights of the people.
Leicester’s symbol, the Cinquefoil, can be traced back to the De Montfort family I believe…
I didn’t know that, that’s something new I’ve learned today.
One of the great things about heavy metal is that it’s very story-driven and it’s also bought alive through great imagery and, once again, you’ve got 5mg doing the amazing artwork for the record…
Yeah – it’s really good. He’s amazing. I actually explained the idea, what I wanted to capture, and he did it. There’s more than meets the eye. You’ve got Ishtar from Babylon, the Godess, there’s an owl and the owl has always been a symbol of the messenger of the gods in the old days in Greek. Nowadays, with Alien abductions, they always see images of Owls and Owls are the messengers of the gods and who knows what the gods are… aliens? Other species? I don’t believe in an entity like a God… but who knows what it is! I just let my imagination run wild. I try not to put any rules in what we do. He’s just very creative. Some people don’t like it and some people do. Some people get it and some people don’t. They just think we’re cheesy and they don’t get it. It’s a bit of a joke, the satanic thing… it’s not that we’re really serious trying to say “look at me, I’m a devil worshiper!” Of course I’m not, it’s just I don’t believe there’s one entity. I think all the evils of the world have been brought by the political ideas of religions. Like the Ibrahamic religions – Christianity, Judaism and so ono… the very hardcore religions – they’re pushy, you know. They were made for power and that sort of thing, I rebel against it. It’s more like taking a stand and the satanic imagery, apart from that it’s really cool and I really like it, I’ve always been a big fan of horror movies and stuff like that, but some people take it the wrong way and think we’re really serious and they don’t get the joke. Once you see us live, you know it’s not… you know! But you know, you have to treat things with a pinch of salt, you can’t take yourself so seriously all the time.
There’s a good way that you can have, maybe, a serious underpinning message and deal with themes such as religious dominance, which is a really interesting topic, but then you can have the showmanship and the imagery and it’s part of the delivery.
Like I’ve said before, for me, I like the freedom of expression and I consider metal like classical music. You have musical passages and it’s not like a pop song. One song might last nine minutes, and I don’t have a problem with that. I know it’s not going to get played on the radio. None of our music is music to be played on the radio or to try to please others. I just do it for myself and if somebody likes it, awesome. I think that’s the way that music should be expressed. Not thinking about a business and trying to do a song that will get radio play. If people like it, cool. If not, tough luck!
I think that cuts to the heart of any style of art… First and foremost you have to please yourself because anything else is just a compromise.
If I was trying to do music to make it and be commercial in the metal world, we’d be doing slam or Djent or any of this more modern style and I’d have a different hair-cut and try to have the latest trousers like… to my knees, you know, and try to be fashionable, but we don’t give a shit, really. We have another agenda. We’re doing this because we like it and if people don’t, well, cool… don’t listen to it!
So, what’s next for Heretic Order?
The plan is to play as much as we can. You know, it’s not my decision. It’s very difficult trying to get some tour. Bigger bands ask for stupid money to support them in buy ons, but that’s the reality of life. You know, we’ll keep on playing and looking and, at the minute, we do everything ourselves. I’m looking for as many gigs as we can find, but our plan would be to do another tour of Evil Rising in England and, at the minute, like I say, we’re looking to try and support a bigger band to get us to that next level. We want to tour as much as we can. We’d love to go to Europe… America… well, we’re trying, let’s see!
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