Well, friends of the Aristocracy! Our mission today is an interview with the beginner and international band White Mare. This band is international because it mixes two Swiss and one Dutch. This band mixes Doom and Death with a pleasant but tragic melody. tragic beauty can be shown with their debut album entitled as Isle Of Bliss. The photo above already presents this trio for you. Therefore, D.G will give us this exclusive interview for Brazil.Before interview number 33 that you will see in all your emotions, we have a song from them.
A1:Talking about the composition work in Isle Of Bliss?
D.G. (keyboards, vocals): I started working on “Isle Of Bliss” a few years back, not really knowing what would happen with these tracks. At the time, around 2018, I was merely “toying” with my keyboards, but I realised after a few months I had a demos that could well be turned into decent songs. I started looking for a guitarist and J.A. from Doomcult got in touch after I posted about it on Facebook. So I gave him already pretty advanced songs, on which he started tracking down guitars and bass. I then added vocals on top of it and voilà: we had our first full-length. T.W. joined us at the very last minute to record the drums.
A2:Where did your interest in mythology come from?
D.G. I used to study archaeology and French and English literature and I have been fascinated for years with epic poems above all Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and romantic art, that revived classic themes and figures in the 19th Century. That’s something that has been very central to my lyrics for many years, notably in my other band Nightshade. But this time, I really focused on these antique figures.
A3:Some literature or film inspire the band?
D.G:Mostly romantic and symbolist poetry and painting: Keats, Turner, Byron, Goya, Leconte De Lisles, Baudelaire, Vigny… Add of course, antique authors like Homer and Hesiod. What fascinates me with these texts is that they were written centuries ago, but you can still read them with a present-day perspective and find they reflect our own lives. The song “Les Oiseaux de proie” is a rendition of a Leconte De Lisles’ sonnet, by the way.
A4:Can we believe that the despair presented in your songs are part of the members lives too?
D.G:To some extant.Writing lyrics is definitely a way for me to express very intimate feelings in a disguised manner and I’d say Isle Of Bliss is definitely a personal record. More than despair, it reflects the growing fear I feel about getting older: seeing time fly, feeling myself age, watching dear ones aging, falling ill and dying, starting to reflect about death not as a romantic idea but as a fatality…
A5:I loved the fact that some of your songs were long. But was this something pre-arranged or did it come naturally?
D.G:It came quite naturally. I wanted to write epic but also very straightfoward songs. I mean all the bands that inspired me to start playing doom music write long songs: My Dying Bride, Draconian, Saturnus… I really wanted to catch that “epicness” and hope we did, but I think it kinda works. You also have to consider that everything at a very slow pace… Had we use “normal” rock tempos, we’d have ended up with 4-5 minutes songs.
A6:I thought the band's use of the piano was beautiful. But I need to know if the reason was to give an air of greater agony in their songs or just to move the listener as was the case of this interviewer?
D.G. Thank you very much for your kind words. I am not a pianist and mostly played this instrument by ear. I think my very limited capacities with this instrument helped create this mood: they are very simple, stripped lines, somewhat reminiscent of funeral dirges. I’ve been using piano in other bands like Duthaig. It’s an instrument that conveys a lot of melancholy.
A7:What´s the idea behind artwork´s album?
D.G:This painting by Swiss artist Oriane Binggeli represents the Lofoten archipelago in Norway. I’ve worked with her for a while, a few years back, but didn’t know she was a painter until she posted this picture on Facebook. I was blown away by it and showed it to J.A. who was equally adamant at using it as a cover for our album. I think that this painting represents quite well the idea you can have of an “Isle of Bliss”.
A8:What kind of subjects don´t deserve a White Mare Song?
D.G. Hard to say,I write in a very intuitive manner. I would say politics, aggression, violence would definitely not fit. I’ll keep that for my text thrash band. Oh, and there won’t be songs about Vikings and pirates, I guess.
A9:How is White Mare different from your previous bands?
D.G:Well, for one thing, it is the first time I take such an active part in the writing of the music. I usually “only” come up with the vocals, lyrics and, sometimes, keyboards but never entire songs. I am active in quite a few bands Diablerets, Nightshade, Duthaig, Alkuharmonian Kantaja, Sic Semper Tyrannis and all of them have a very different approach. I listen to a lot of music in different genres and I love to experiment with them…
A10:It´s easier or more practical a band like powertrio?
D.G:I wouldn’t count ourselves as a powertrio, as both Jorik and me play different instruments. If ever we have the opportunity to bring White Mare to the stage, we’ll have to hire some musicians. But this is “practical” in the sense that J.A. being a very talented guitarist as well as a solid bass player, we didn’t go looking for one at the time we wrote the album.
A11:Is man an animal that carries the corpse on its back all the time?
D.G:It’s actually much worse than that. We are an animal, but a very frail one and we were also given reason, curiosity, self-consciousness, hope, conscience of time… We hope we can rise above our animal condition but we fail and we are left to contemplate our own failures and mortality… We are constantly trying to leave a mark upon History, for we perfectly know that in a few years we will be nothing more than a carcass. It’s exactly what myths like Prometheus’ and after that the Christian myth of Eden and Pandora’s depict.
A12:What´s Homer’s Odyssey?
D.G: It’s a Greek epic poem, written in the 8th Century B.C. It tells the story of Odysseus who’s trying to sail back home after the war in Troy, depicted in Homer’s other epic, The Illiad. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odyssey).
A13:This album is conceptual?yes or no and why?
D.G:Yes and no.“No Isle Of Bliss”, “To Rest At Last” and “The White Mares’ Procession” are all refering quite obviously to the Odyssey but then again, these myths are all used as metaphors to wine about some more personal struggles. The songs are clearly linked in terms of imagery and topics - again dealing a lot with the passage of time and the process of aging - but there is no full narrative behind the album.
A14:How band arrive to Symbol Of Domination Producions?
D.G:We sent our album mixes to labels out there and among them to Satanath. His owner also has this label called Symbol Of Domination and he thought White Mare would fit into his catalogue.
A15:What does time want to devour in the second song?
D.G:This song is based on the myth of Cronos or Saturn in Roman mythology who devours his children, as a metaphor of the cruelty of time. I had the picture of Goya, “Saturn devouring his children” in mind when I started writing it. As I grow old, I’m really starting to feel as time is chewing everybody’s days away…
A16:What´s bands influence ours?
D.G:As far as I’m concerned, I’d say Slow, Draconian, Theatre Of Tragedy, My Dying Bride and Saturnus. Funnily enough, I started working on White Mare after hearing Nortt and Deinonychus latest albums, in 2017. I wanted to go for a black-doom/dirtier record, with keyboards used in the background. But then J.A. joined with his amazing “clear” sounding riffs and leads, “ruining” my initial idea and turning it into these epic doom pieces. Which I am very grateful for.
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