Skyforger

June 19 2011 (Hellfest - Clisson)

Formed in 1995, coming from Latvia, here they come! SKYFORGER!! I didn’t missed the chance to interview the whole band, who had the kindness to share 20 minutes with me, to talk about their very good new album “Kurbads”, their culture and heritage, their point of view about the “Pagan” trend, and many other things. Those who were under the full Rock Hard tent know what I’m talking about! Cheers guys!Thanks to Andy.

Fab: Happy to be here at the 2011 edition of the HELLFEST?
Peteris Kvetkovskis (Vocals, Gt): Yeah, of course, without any doubts (laughter). It’s a big festival, and when we looked at the bill, there are so many well-known bands, and we’re among them! Whouah!(laughter). It’s amazing.

Fab: I was at your show, and it was really cool, the audience reaction was very good. How is your feeling about it?
Peteris Kvetkovskis: The tent was full!
Edgars «Mazais» Krumins (Drums): We were a little bit stressed, which is not always cool for playing, but we did our best

Fab: Too early?
Edgars «Mazais» Krumins: No, no, not too early, just too many people, it was a big crowd. We’re not used to play for a crowd like that, so, you can’t do too many faults (general laughter). Next time, we‘ll play better (general laughter).

Fab: Why so much time between «Kurbads» and «Zobena Dziesma»?
Peteris Kvetkovskis: Yeah, it was a difficult time for us. You know, we are not professional musicians, we are not living by the music, we have to work, to have a job. Some of us have a family, and it takes time to make something, and we had like a crisis, a lack of ideas. There was some time where we were almost in the point of breaking up. We only had rehearsal one time in a week, sometimes even not, because of our jobs. It’s difficult for us to go on tours because of all this. The money we have from our music is… we cannot live by it.

Fab: What’s the meaning of “Kurbads”?
Peteris Kvetkovskis: It’s the name of folklore, fairytale personage. We have this fairytale, very very old fairytale, you know, about a guy who was born from a mare, which is a kind of a she-horse, and there are many variations of this tale. He becomes strong enough to venture into the world and fight evil things…
Edgars «Mazais» Krumins: Basically, the name of the hero is like “Conan”.

Fab: Why the title-song is on a bonus track?
Peteris Kvetkovskis: Ah, yes. This bonus on this album is a cover song from a Latvian old heavy metal band, and they had this song, years and years ago. And this song bears the same name. We like the band so we said “why not?”, it is the same story, let’s make this song, it will fit perfectly.

Egons, the new guitarist replacing Martins Petersons, is entering the interview booth, joining to make the band complete -

Fab: Is there a special meaning to the cover?
Peteris Kvetkovskis: What you see on the cover is a mind’s representation of what we tell on the album (ndrc : the serpent head on the right side of the cover just remember me, except for the color, a Troll’s head from old Dungeon & Dragon Books, nice reproduction ;)). I heard many people saying that, well, this picture is not…well…amazing (laughter) It was made by our old guitarist, it’s a painting done years ago. We found that this picture fits very well, at least for this album. It’s like an old picture from a fairytale book. (ndrc one of our photograph did in fact love the cover and proudly wear the tshirt anywhere she can :p) Ok, it’s a little bit childish, but it fits. And there’s a song called “Last Battle” on this album, and this moment is shown there on the cover, the last battle where Kurbads is dying…
Edgars «Mazais» Krumins: Like “The Black Rider”.
Egons (Guitar): Basically, we’re trying to make some kind of art, in our music but also in our cover, an artistic freedom.

Fab: You said that you’re writing lyrics trying to stick to facts. Is that still the case for this album? And will it be for the future ones?
Peteris Kvetkovskis: For the future, absolutely. For this album, the facts are this fairy tale, you know? And a fairy tale is just a fairy tale, it’s not an historical event, so yeah, for the future albums, of course. For me, when I write the lyrics, this is my… being an historian is, you know, it’s like a hobby for me, I do it by myself, I read a lot of books. For me, it’s very important to write lyrics about things that happened, so no one can come over and say “what is the bullshit you are telling?” (laughter). But it’s just stories, and fantasy or something.

Fab: You recently won the Latvian music award 2010, is this for you a kind of recognition and awareness of the Latvian Metal?
Peteris Kvetkovskis: Well, this is a difficult story. These awards existed years before this nomination for Rock music, which were always won by some pop musicians. It was the first time a Metal band win something. So, it’s like a first step in Latvia, where people mainly listen to Pop music, that they recognized the Metal and accepted it.

Kaspars Barbals (Folk Intrum.): Latvia is a very small country, about two million people is living in our country, so the music scene also is very small. So it often goes like this: in the category “Rock”, there’s very different scenes, it’s Metal, it’s folk rock, it’s pop…
Egons: Even no rock at all (laughter).
Kaspars Barbals: It was kind of surprising that a Metal band won this award.

Fab: So Egons, you’re the new member of the band…
Egons: Yeah, I’m playing (with them) for half a year maybe. But somehow, I feel I should play in this band from the beginning, you know, it sounds good with the band, and they also kinda feels good with me. I’m very happy playing with this band.
Peteris Kvetkovskis: He has played already for many years in a well-known Folk band in Latvia (ndrc : ILGI), so he was already in our music

Fab: Could you share with us some anecdotes or souvenirs from the recently finished “Black Trolls Over Europe II” tour?
Peteris Kvetkovskis: Anecdotes?? (general laughter, as they looked at each other with a lot of connivance between them).
Edgars «Mazais» Krumins: It’s very hard to remember. But I think there was something. Actually, when we played, not the last show but one before the last one, we were in Berlin, and, at some point during the night, we lost the trailer with all our stuff in it. So we arrived in Berlin, and, “Where is the trailer?” (general laughter). And after that, of course, someone find it somewhere on the highway, and bring it back to us, with everything in it…All the stuff in the trailer sure are worth a lot of money. That’s Germany. It would have happened in Latvia, it would have been gone forever (laughter).
Egons: There’s also funny stories in Holland, but we don’t wanna talk about them (general laughter).

Fab: As your country is very far from ours, is there Latvian metal bands that you can recommend to us?
Edgars «Mazais» Krumins: death’n’roll band SANCTIMONY, there are very good musicians, really good onstage.
Peteris Kvetkovskis: There’s an old Thrash band HUSKVARN for example. There’s also new band like FLAYING.

Fab: Do you think that Pagan Metal is becoming a kind of trend, as there is a lot of Pagan Metal bands? Is it a good or a bad thing?
Peteris Kvetkovskis: I think this trend is dying now. Of course you can say pagan is quite popular this times, but we do not feel those bands will last, they will just passes by. We’ll stay, we play something different. Of course, we don’t like that such music becomes too commercial, it lost its meaning. Lately, it’s just about drinking beers and waving some Viking helmet… There were also other bands before us, who play serious music, but they’ve been left behind with all this pagan’s trend and they still exist but they’re not well know even if they deserve it. All these pagan’s bands do too much commercial and we don’t like this.

Kaspars Barbals: We had the feeling that these bands just play this kind of music because it’s popular, but without understand what it’s really about.
Peteris Kvetkovskis: Maybe, you know, when this wave goes down, these bands will change their style of music. They will catch the new trend (laughter).

Fab: Speaking of Pagan, could you develop the things you said about Lithuania and Latvia being the last Pagan countries in Europe?
Peteris Kvetkovskis: For Latvia especially, we were under the rules of many big countries like Germany or Russia, but our people stayed and still lives in the country, and they continue to live by the old ways. In the big cities there were foreign rulers who try to push out the old ways, but until the 19th century, there was still some people in the countryside living by the superstition and old beliefs.
Edgars «Mazais» Krumins: Even now…

Egons: You can still find people in Latvia living in the old ways. It’s still there, and of course, it’s not a popular way of living for everybody, but it is.
Peteris Kvetkovskis: For example, there was, you know, churches all around, the Germans brought this Christianity, and the people, you know, they had to go to church, but the priest spoke in German, and the Latvian people just didn’t understand what he said. So they were here, in the church, and they just listened and then they continued to live by the old traditions (laughter). This is a good thing that so much things survived, and a big thanks to the guys of the end of the 19th century, and in the beginning of the 20th century. There was a lot of enthusiasm all around the country about keeping all the vocals traditions, the songs and many things and write down all of this in books… So we are a happy nation, we have all these things still there in books. Anyone can go and learn these songs and melodies even the very olds.

Fab: Have you a special ritual before going onstage?
Kaspars Barbals: We get together and sing three, maybe four folk songs together, just to warm up. And while we are singing, we get this feeling that we’re alright to go onstage.

Fab: Is there a question that you would have love for me to ask you, but that I didn't ask?
Peteris Kvetkovskis: A question that I can’t even answer: Why we do what we do? Why we play such music? It’s because we are…for many years, we didn’t lived in Europe, and in this old big picture, we were ignored, our culture, our heritage was ignored because we were under the Soviet Union. It was unknown, especially for the big European countries…
Kaspars Barbals: A lot of people don’t even know where Latvia is…
Peteris Kvetkovskis: And we try, with our music, to share some lights about these things. It is very important for us.

Fab: A last word for your French fans?
Peteris Kvetkovskis: We are really, really thankful for all the French guys who came and support us. We were really happy to see such a big crowd there. For a band from a small country, even if we are an unknown band, the tent was full, and the people were giving us their support, and liked our songs. It couldn’t be better!