If you caught our review of the majestic Hexenhammer, you’ll know our rabid appreciation of that record. Witchsorrow have always been a rather special band, but even so, with the thematic weight of the Males Maleficarum acting as a lyrical and musical anchor, the band have crafted their finest album to date and one that still looks certain to top end-of-year lists. We were lucky enough to secure a chat with Necroskull, who took time out of a sunny bank holiday to detail the making of the album, the themes that underpin the lyrics and the creation of that amazing artwork.
The last time we spoke, you were in the middle of a very hectic touring cycle for the last album, so the first question I have is to what extent you feel the heavy bouts of live work impacted upon this record because it’s ferociously tight.
Well thank you. Um, the thing is that we played a lot of gigs and we had a lot of bigger stuff as well. That year we did Download and we did a lot of other festivals – we did HRH and we played a lot of big stages and I think that the way that it had an impact is that, when you’re playing in those sorts of venues and at those sorts of things there can come a point during certain songs where you’re looking forward to the next bit and you’re kind of thinking that the next bit’s going to work really well but you have to play all of the bit you’re doing first, which works, but it’s not the bit that you’re really looking forward to, so you start to think, maybe subconsciously when you’re writing – you maybe start to strip away some of the flab or whatever. You cut to the chase a bit more, but I think just the fact that we played live a lot more than we had previously to that, just because we were playing together a lot more, we were getting inside each other’s heads musically a bit more and actually doing it and knowing what certain strengths are, you could say.
What always surprises me with you guys is that, in most cases with three pieces, when the need comes to play a solo, there seems to be a gap where the rhythm guitars would be on record, yet that never seems to impact you – how do you maintain that sound throughout?
I think it’s more a case of us not really knowing what we’re doing! But, as far as tech stuff goes, I’m not really a pedals kind of guys. I have a couple, but I don’t have this enormous board or anything. I have this one distortion thing on and as long as I’m happy with how that sounds I’m cool with it. Emily is… I think if she had just one giant dial on her amp, I think that would make her happy. We play everything turned up far too high and far too loud, I think sometimes. In a sort of technical sense but, I think what that means is that you get this nice thick, heavy sound behind when we drop out and go into a lead or whatever. We played a thing recently that was part of a series of gigs that a load of other bands were doing as well. We did one, Parkway Drive did one and it was in this tiny bar and we were still the loudest band that have been in there so far. I realised then that there is a certain kind of… limited knowledge, I guess, of how our gear actually works, so we just fiddle with it. So, I don’t know how other guitarists do all this, but you just turn everything up, don’t you? I like that because I’d rather have a really loud guitar than that sounds perfect, but really quiet.
I guess it harks back to the core of the old school heavy metal bands – slam up the dials and see where it takes you…
There wasn’t really the kit to kind of play as we do now. You didn’t get anything for free. Drummers had to hit a lot harder and guitar players had to turn up really loud or else they wouldn’t get heard through whatever crap PA there was, so they had to turn up really loud to compensate. I think there’s a bit of me that can’t get it into my head that there’s actually a PA out front, because I can’t really hear it where I’m stood and I can’t quite get that there’s someone balancing all the sound and stuff. So, I’m like “it’s not loud enough! Go louder!” So, yeah, it all stems from a slight ignorance of how equipment actually works, I think.
The album is immense in so many ways, and I know some of the tracks are built into the Hexenhammer concept. When you put together this record, was it more conceptually drive than the others?
Not really, no. The Hexenhammer thing – it sort of echoes through the whole thing I guess. The way I view writing lyrics always has this bottom line of that sort of end-of-the-world / apocalyptic sort of thing, and that being reference to witches and black magic and all that kind of stuff. I think, really, there wasn’t really a concept-concept. We came up with the title ages ago – Emily and I were at this torture museum in Germany and she saw it written on one of the exhibition things and it’s the Males Maleficarum which decried witchcraft and explained to people… it was anti-witch propaganda, basically, made by a clergyman. Emily spotted it on the exhibition and was like “yeah! Write that down! That’s good!” and… when I was writing the lyrics, I had it as like… we decided that that was what we wanted to call the album and that’s what gave it a shape and made it a bit less vague and I thought of it like a hammer! It’s just a big old book written by an old man, but when I was writing the lyrics I couldn’t get away from that idea – my brain just kept insisting on writing the lyrics like there was this almighty sledgehammer weapon thing that was used to crush heresy. That song is kind of weird because it goes all over the place and my point of view changes between lines and if you try and unstitch it all, I don’t think you’d ever get to the bottom of what it’s about because I don’t think I know. So, it’s a weird song because there are bits of it that are about… I wrote it all in one go and once I managed to get the first couple of lines out the way, after a long time of putting it off, eventually it all just came out really quickly after that. But it kinda changes tack and goes all over the place and there are places where I’m singing quite literally about burning witches and stuff, but then there are other lines that are more subtle. Here’s stuff in it about the wage of being in a doom band – the celebratory thing about being proud to be a doom band and there are other bits which are more questioning authority and who can say what’s right or wrong – who are you to wield this Hexenhammer. There are things about being careful who you call a witch because you may find yourself on the receiving end of some of their black magic in return.
As far as themes through the rest of the album there’s… it’s all pretty dark, as ever. The devil’s throne deals with an authority thing – it came from… thinking about Donald Trump and the people who are in charge, whether on a giant scale like Trump, or someone who has any kind of control over you and asking where they got their imaginary power and authority from. There’s some other stuff on there… demons of the mind is about nightmares and that was one I wanted to keep in a classic doom mould. I had the title for ages – it’s a movie, an old hammer film. Not one of the better ones, I have to say… it’s pretty good… but I really like the title and it sounds like a reverend bizarre song, so I really wanted to keep it and I had it written in my little notebook for ages, so when we came up with that song and those lyrics, I was like oh right, let’s use this for that and I started writing about night terrors. During certain times I’ve either been dreaming and I’ve been aware, just before I wake up, what feels like kind of a long period of awareness that I’m asleep and actually in a dream and my mind starts screaming at me to get out and, apparently, when I’m doing it I make this sort of Zombie noise and Emily shakes me awake because I’m just lying there, half in my sleep groaning. The other thing is that I can wake up but my body isn’t awake, so I can see and my mind’s going, but I can’t move my arms and I’m paralysed and it seems to me to be quite a cool, doomy sounding idea for a song – this idea that you’re caught between the netherworld and the real world and there are all these demons trying to hold you down and steal your soul. So, that’s what that’s about, which is totally separate from the Hexenhammer concept.
Then, there’re some other things that aren’t quite so shrouded in mystery. There was one song where I had to change the lyrics to give the central character a happy ending. That’s on the Parish because events… while we were in the studio, at Skyhammer with Chris Fielding, I received some news that meant that that song wasn’t strictly accurate anymore and it had actually come out a lot better, so for once I was able to give somebody in one of the songs a bit of a happier ending than they might normally have.
I’m really glad you said that about the Hexenhammer, because when I first heard the album title, like you, I had this idea of some sort of giant sledgehammer.
I had it in my head… when Emily first said it to me in the museum; I sort of looked around for a second because I expected to see this enormous long pole with a big bit of metal with loads of spikes coming out of it or something. It sounds pretty heavy metal, but I think the fact that it’s a book and so much was done off the back of the words in the book, and so many people died… it just shows the power of words used in the wrong way, which I think is quite important these days as well, with everyone able to write as they wish on the internet and have it out there. People, now more than ever, need to choose their words very carefully because you don’t know who’s going to read it and do what with it, I suppose.
It’s a good parallel and witchcraft has always been a good parallel for social ills – when you think about Arthur Miller and the Crucible – that play seems to come in and out of relevance and, as you say, the power of the written word is increasingly relevant. It’s a powerful theme for metal and for doom in particular.
Yeah – it’s also good for lazy heavy metal lyricists like myself, if you need a hook to hang things on. But yes it is… it’s relevant. You think that these things happened several hundred years ago, during the reformation, but it’s not like it’s a new thing to suddenly start comparing it to witches or whatever, but there’s always been a way of people pointing fingers at others and having those ways of blaming people for social ills who maybe don’t deserve it. In one sense you can look at it as a political thing, or whatever, or a free speech thing. On the other hand, there’s also a class thing there. The people who were strung up for this stuff, they were not the rich and the powerful> They were ordinary people who couldn’t fight back and that take on it is also becoming increasingly relevant because there are some people who increasingly have far too much wealth and power and so forth, and it’s becoming a lot more difficult for regular people to get involved in that and kick the door in. The 1% are becoming ever more rich whilst everyone else has to keep scrabbling around and fight amongst themselves when they should be fighting them.
One of the things that you guys do really well is album art, but this time you’ve got Paulo Girardi and his artwork is epic!
Thank you, that was Emily. I’m not a particularly, visually creative person. I can sketch out the themes I want, or whatever, or I can say that I want this colour, but I’m not good at visualising something – I can’t draw or anything like that, but Emily is in charge of that, she’s really good at it. She came up to me and Dave one day and she said “I’ve found this guy, called Paulo Girardi, he’s an Italian painter and he’s done loads of metal albums and he’s fucking amazing and he’s just right at what he does.” I’d not heard of him, and Emily sent me a link and I had a look at his website and I realised that I had loads of records that he’d done the sleeves for – for bands like Diocletian and Craven Idol and Bell Witch and people like that; Blasphemophager and all sorts of bands, but every one of his paintings is incredible and he is someone who’s really into… he’s a total metal maniac, but he’s also a painting maniac and when he works, he just can’t help himself. I think he gets really into it and it kind of consumes him a bit and he becomes obsessed with it. So, that works really well and Emily got in touch with him and they chatted a bit and we sent him the record, and she told him what it was about, and some stuff that we wanted and he immediately came back and said that he knew exactly what we meant and that he loved bands like Candlemass and Cathedral and bands like that. So, we left it with him and not even a week later, he put a thing up on Instagram saying he was working on something for a doom band and it was a half-finished version of what the cover was going to be and it still looked fucking incredible. That was an Emily find and he’s a terrific guy. We’ve not met him yet, he lives in Italy, but he’s such an amazing artist and he’s got so much energy. I’m not really big on art, to be honest. I like some things, but I’m not really someone who appreciates it in that way, but seeing somebody sweat… he puts up videos of himself in his studio, shirtless, with a beard, listening to manowar! Just painting… It’s like watching someone playing a gig, it looks like there’s a physical element to it and he’s got a sweat on working really hard on it and I think that’s something that comes through in all his paintings and we were very lucky that we were able to work with him and I feel really wonderful that he’s done such a good job. I almost felt when we got it back that it would be a shame to put the band name on it, and we had to find somewhere on this painting to stick the logo… It would have been good to do it without one but that would be bad for business. If people want to look at this painting, they have to see our name on it! It’s like having a watermark on it.
Metal’s just one of those things, where a lot of the fans still seem to be physically minded, so when you get bands that take the trouble or get someone like that to produce the cover, it adds something to the whole experience of getting a record, particularly now with vinyl coming back…
Yeah – that’s what I’m excited about. I’ve not had a finished vinyl through yet. We’ve had some test pressings but we haven’t had one with a sleeve on it and I’m really looking forward to that, just seeing the artwork that big. You can look at it on the computer and it looks cool, but I want to see the detail a lot bigger. That’s something I’m really excited about.
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