Line Up:
Michael-Vocals
Andi-Guitars
Stella-Guitars
Hannes-Bass
Roman-Drums
Well,Friends Of Aristocracy!
We speak again of our newsroom, where in a little while, we will have in all its emotions, the interview 179 of the Aristocracy.This time, we talked to an aggressive band with a playful melody. However, with a great contemporary freshness. Without a doubt, the band established new ways of making their sound and making their compositions. consolidation of what they did on their debut album.However, every musician knows or at least should be aware that it can always improve from show to show and from album to album. We are talking about Vermocracy, an Austrian band that presents us its second album entitled Age Of Dysphoria.We want to thank the band for the album and for answering our questions as well as lends The Metallist for introducing us to this sensational band.Let's go to one of their songs for this unprecedented interview with the Brazilian press to take place.
A1:Good morning guys. Let’s talk about the composition work in “Age Of Dysphoria”?
Andi: Ok, this is not going to get a romantic answer like - “I woke up in the morning and wrote down a whole song” :).First of all, the works have been quite dysphoric sometimes (OK - bad joke) due to lack of input and inspiration neither positive or negative) during the pandemic. Anyway, for this album Stella and I (Guitars) did the initial composition work together. It all starts with a guitar riff or more, or a melody one of us thinks a song could be based on. If there's some material which fits together we start thinking about a basic structure and start to write the second guitar and the baseline at the same time. Within this stage there is a lot of discussions, trial and error. Then we try out the new stuff in the rehearsal room and Roman (drums) brings in his first ideas which is very helpful especially when we are stuck. Furthermore, the whole rehearsal situation, doing this together triggers emotions and consequently creativity. When the instrumental parts are almost done and start to sound like music Michael starts to add the vocals.The approaches for this differ from song to song. Concerning Lyrics, on this album we had great support from Bettina Neustifter.
Generally, we try to follow some basic rules like in any other music style e.g. tension and relieve rhythmic and harmonic,repetition,putting a theme into another context etc. And sometimes we immediately switch between beauty to massive aggression or the other way round.
A2:I very much agree with the third song on this new album, but what would be the context for the band to see the world full of injuries?
Michael:The song is primarily about man-made damages and injuries of our environment. Global warming and climate changes are the visible effects of a very long history of systematical greed and ignorance.Pollution and environmental damages are detectable in every epoch of great civilizations,for example the Roman Empire.A life of mankind and nature in perfect harmony seems like wishful thinking when we are looking on this long list of wounds from which our world is suffering.
A3:A great friend of mine says that failure humanizes much more.For you, to make a dystopian image of it, is it because you also believe in the humanization that generates failure?
Stella: Yes and no.Throughout the history of mankind, failure has been an integral part of progress, as a species as a whole and every individual on its own. Looking at the current state of the world right now, it is obvious that certain technologies have been invented to eliminate the “human element” in industrial processes that can be automated or done solely by machines. A good example of excluding humans from an equation would be heart surgery and special robotic devices that work more precisely than the world's best surgeons.So, not all of it is inherently bad but of course, human decisions have led to a series of economical, political and environmental problems in the last couple of hundred years.
A4:What kind of rudeness inspired this album?
Stella:I consider myself to be a pretty calm person, overall but if there is too much negativity going on in my life, I tend to express it through music. Also, rehearsals, life shows and so on have been really great, sort of cathartic, release of energy since I have been a teenager. Some kind of aggression has to be part of the metal sound, the extend varies from song to song in my opinion.
A5:Some literature or film inspired the band?
Michael:Daily news and currently discourses are a great inspiration for our band. In addition to that we are a lot in science fiction and historical topics too.
A6:How is Vermocracy different from your previous bands?
Stella: The song structures are well thought out and the general interplay between the instruments is very unique and sometimes even complex.For me, an Extreme Metal band of five people can create an almost “orchestral sound”, for a lack of a better term. Melody lines can flow together or next to each other, apart from the traditional “lead guitar/ rhythm” playing. We are able to explore different song structures and having a singer who does not play an instrument at the same time, gives us creative freedom in the use of vocals as well.
Michael: I am active in this scene for over 25 years now.The way of working in Vermocracy is very different to some of my previous bands for it connects professional working with private friendship. There is a lot of respect between all the members and everyone can bring itself into this project. We also create music that we personally love and not trying to copy something just because we believe it is selling at the moment.
A7:How did the band arrive to Black Sunset Records?
Michael: We released our debut album in fall 2020, which was very difficult to promote because of the pandemic.So,before recording the second album, we agreed to find a label as a partner for the new release first. We recorded a 3-Song demo and sent it to some of the labels we thought to be suitable. In the end Black Sunset/MDD Records made the best offer, so we signed.
A8:What´s the idea behind the album’s artwork?
Roman:We've been working with the same artist from our debut album, because he had done such an outstanding job and we absolutely wanted to keep working with him. In the artwork of “Age Of Dysphoria” he depicted the impotence, the emotional states of vulnerability and fragility in this apocalyptic nightmare, but also the morbid beauty that sometimes lies in destruction. The working process was particularily inspired by “The Grace Of Hypnos” and resumes the elements from the first cover.
A9:Not that I don't like the band's dark vibe, but how and when was this decision made?
Stella:I wasn't involved in the decision making process but any kind of Death Metal without a certain emotional weight or “darkness”, if you will, doesn't feel right to me. Given that “darkness” certainly is not the only thing that our songs convey, from my point of view.
Michael: Because I have a very strong Black Metal background lots of the dark vibes came on my demand when I joined. But I think no one in the band is unhappy with that.
Andi:Various shades of darkness are part of me as well as all other aspects. In my opinion this applies to every human. Doing this music gives me the opportunity to express a large range of my personality. And hey, sometimes I even catch myself with an honest smile on stage when I recognize a crowd having a good time because of our music.
A10:The question may seem a bit cliché, but I need to ask it. Do you consider that this second album represents a maturity for the band?
Michael: Vermocracy” was a collection of songs and lyrics which were created over quite a long period and could be seen as an overview what the band is about. The creativ process for “Age Of Dysphoria” was way more compact and planned. Also the lyrics are more connected to each other. For writing them we worked together with Bettina Neustifter who helped us finding the right words to our ideas.
Stella: I didn't contribute any material to the first album but if not maturity, the second one definitely has a different flavor to it, given my involvement in creating a majority of the basic song material.
Andi:Mature sounds like this is the best we can do and we are finished with this or retire. Musically, you can always do better. In terms of organization,we definitely grew and learned a lot.
A11:Is this album conceptual?
Stella: Instrumentally speaking,I didn't have a specific concept in mind.
Andi: No.
Michael:About the lyrics, it was not planned to have a certain concept in the beginning.But soon after the first ideas, we realized, that we are following a particular topic in every piece and look at it from different views. Our first expression was “hopelessness” but then we came to the term “dysphoria” which fits perfect to each of the songs.
A12:Why do you say that your songs are playful?
Stella:I listen to lots of different kinds of guitar music/ metal, so, naturally, I try to incorporate some of these influences into every song I write. It tends to be a bit cluttered with lots of ideas in the beginning, so I and Andi have to reduce the songs to the most refined ideas, until it is actually a song, not just “riff salad”. Some of the original “playfulness” tends to remain, though.
Andi: A few riffs are poly-rhythmic. We also tried to create 2 voiced guitar lines which differ in rhythm but fit harmonically. From my point of view this is the most sophisticated way of writing for 2 guitars and bass. But we are no classical composers and there is still much to learn.
A13:The band feel differences between “Vermocracy” and now “Age Of Dysphoria”?
Stella: To me, Age of Dysphoria” mainly represents the first Vermocracy album I was creatively involved in, so I'm definitely excited to see, where the journey goes from here.
Andi: When playing the new songs I feel the technical and structural differences. We integrated a lot of Stella's way of guitar playing. Her excessive riffing was tricky for me at the beginning, but it gets better and better.
A14:What kind of subject doesn´t deserve to be in a Vermocracy song?
Stella:I never mess with the lyrics, since I believe that a vocalist should have a lot of freedom in expressing himself through them. There are boundaries, of course: Every kind of racism, fascist ideas, misogyny or other kinds of hateful propaganda don't have a place in Vermocracy and shouldn't have one in the whole scene, either. I am personally not a fan of just blatantly blurting out political propaganda, left or right, without any nuance, so I'm glad that we manage to tackle some difficult themes using metaphors and other stylizations.
Michael: I totally agree with Stella.
Andi:The images we paint shall encourage the listeners to think about them independently without running after any ideology. If people uncritically start to interpret our artistic work as a total truth, we've done something wrong.
A15:Apart from the fact that Vermocracy is the name of your band, can we say that a Vermocracy would destroy democracy?
Roman: In a way,yes. Vermocracy is an invented word, Vermin-Democracy, describing how we see society and the governing systems in place. In many cases countries call themselves democracies but are clearly authoritrian in their core, thereby dissolving and undermining core democratic institutions like free press or the juridical systems. Passing laws that are clearly anti-democratic to justify methods of repression, which in turn ensure control and power. But, what really makes this dangerous is that a growing number of people, within democratic societies, seem to support this kind of repressive, ultra-conservative politics. There’s, again, a desire for a political savior figure, a strong man, or woman, who has the answers to all the complex problems we face. Mostly by blaming some other political party, or a certain group in society, or migrants, etc. This is a very dangerous development. We’ve seen what happened in the past, but many in our societies seem to be unwilling to learn from that mistakes. So, for us that’s a vital part of the Vermin-Democracy as well, this is what we mean with Vermocracy, and in this sense you could say a Vermocracy would in fact lead to the destruction of Democracy.
A16:Apart from the fact that “Age Of Dysphoria” is the name of the album, do you believe we live in an Age Of Dysphoria?
Roman:Yes, that’s why we came up with that title. We address the really big problems, like how we treat our world, as well as very personal feelings of dysphoria. We think this mirrors what’s going on in this age quite proper. During the last 1 or 2 decades there always was the feeling of crisis and collapse. With open eyes we drive our planet to becoming a ruined wasteland. Economies were and still are collapsing frequently, creating an ever widening rift through societies which generates complete hopelessness on the one side and blind decadence on the other. Many try to escape this misery by distracting themselves, i.e. fleeing into virtual environments or excessively using social media platforms with the result of a declining or even total loss of a real social live. This not only facilitates various forms of psychological problems but moreover solidifies our accustoming and ever-growing dependency on advanced AIs providing us the amenities we so dearly need. Think about algorithms so advanced that they can predict and in some cases even fulfill your desires even before you yourself become aware of it. That’s already the case for most social media platforms, but also search engines and some online delivery services ,we’re not dropping names here;)). Although that’s not a bad thing by itself, it means that it’s absolutely possible to use that information as a means of control and of course to manipulate or at least frame public opinion on certain issues. We can be sure that the technological abilities in this area will continue to grow, social live will become more and more virtual, as it increasingly takes place in social media, and it probably will be more common that we live, work and spend our spare time apart from each other. A not very euphoric picture of our time.
A17:Explain the sixth song, please?
Michael:Grace Of Hypnos describes the horror of someone who suddenly gets aware of all the individual responsibilities in life. He realizes that there is no higher being who can be blamed for all the failures and adversity in a personal world and therefore the protagonist wants to escape the situation by closing his eyes and falling asleep forever. He doesn’t want to see or know anything about his own abilities to change things around him.