(Last month Burning World Records (an affiliate of Roadburn Records) released Mysterium III, the newest album by the Dutch band Celestial Season, and a box set of all three Mysterium albums under the name Orbis Mysterium. Long in advance of the release Comrade Aleks conducted an interview with vocalist Stefan Ruiters which we finally present today.)
Celestial Season from the Netherlands was one of the really successful death-doom bands in the early ’90s. They didn’t reach the status of the UK Three, but the debut album Forever Scarlet Passion (1993) and, more importantly, the sophomore full-length Solar Lovers (1995) made their reputation with some interesting out-of-the-genre experiments. Blurred videos for ‘Decamerone’ and ‘Solar Child’ were a blast!
But the guys chose to change the direction dramatically towards stoner/doom stuff, and that led Celestial Season to lose their positions and disband in 2001. The band was brought back to life in 2011, but after a few efforts they didn’t release anything new until 2020, when the first album in twenty years, The Secret Teachings, saw the light of day. Since then, the band has regenerated almost entirely to the full original lineup and released two more albums in the vein of their early material – Mysterium I and Mysterium II. These albums embody beautiful and deep melancholic death-doom metal with growls, cello, and violin.
But what I need to tell you is that the band has Mysterium III on their schedule. Stefan Ruiters has growled in Celestial Season since 1991 to 1995, and rejoined the band in 2020. He answered our questions tonight.
Well… tonight… That “tonight” happened somewhere in November 2023, as the Mysterium III release date was scheduled for December 2023. But as far as I know, Roadburn Records had problems with the vinyl plant, so the release was delayed, and the album will see the light of day on May 17th, 2024. Okay, it was worth waiting for anyway.
Hi Stefan! How are you? What’s going on in Celestial Season’s camp nowadays?
Hey Aleks, I’m fine thank you. As we speak, we just finished the final mixes and mastering of Mysterium part III, our last record of the trilogy, which is planned to be released on the 1st of December this year. So, we’re excited to see what the fans and the critics will say and do. And, for the most part, we do it for our own sake, for the sake of creating music we like, but when people appreciate our songs, that’s terrific also.
Stefan, you were in the band since its foundation in 1991 but left it when some members decided to change the course in a stoner direction. Did you leave back then because of these changes?
Yes, I did. First, I tried to bend my vocals in the stoner direction, but it wasn’t good enough for the other members. So, Cyril took my place in that period off Celestial Season. After so many years, no more hard feelings; at the time I was really disappointed, you can imagine.
Celestial Season disbanded in 2001 and was resurrected in 2011. At first, the band didn’t succeed and performed a few live shows but didn’t record new songs. How did it happen that you returned to Celestial Season in 2020?
2020 was 25 years after the release of Solar Lovers, which was some kind of success in the underground death-doom scene at the time. And Jason and Lucas met in early 2019, and came up with the idea to bring the original lineup of that album back together again. And they did, with also Jiska ter Bals back on violin, me as vocalist. A pity that my brother, Robert, didn’t want to pick up his guitar after such a long period. So, Olly took his place as guitarist. Jason called me in the summer of 2019 to be a part again of the project, to create some new songs in the same musical sphere as Solar Lovers and Forever Scarlet Passion and also this song called ‘Above Azure Oceans’ from the demo in 1994.
How did you feel about the band’s success in the mid-90s? Did you get more invitations to festivals or was it just your impression after the release of Solar Lovers and two videos? How active was the band back then?
We did indeed do more concerts, and the sale of Solar Lovers was quite good, I don’t know exactly, but the numbers of copies that were sold were surprisingly high. And let me be clear, today I don’t care about this anymore, back then it was also a bit of artistic hedonism, the desire to be as big as Anathema for example, a band we loved very much by the way, personally and musically. Darren was and is such a nice guy.
I left the band quite soon after the release of Solar Lovers, but the band also toured with The Gathering. And then released the EP Sonic Orb.
Cult Never Dies released the Streams of Ancient Wisdom book by Steven Willems. It’s the history of early Dutch death and extreme metal; it covers the period since the ’80s to the mid-’90s, and Celestial Season is mentioned among other bands. Did you feel the band a part of the local extreme metal scene? Did your ways cross with local death metal bands and bands like Delirium or Mourning?
I know the book and the author. Great achievement by Steven, well done. Well, we focused more on the international scene than the Dutch scene. We played with bands like Altar and Gorefest and The Gathering – all great bands, although at the time we were also competitors, trying to reach and please the same crowd/fans. Af far as I know, we didn’t play with bands like Delirium or Mourning. We did some shows with Lords of the Stone, coming from a small village up North in the Netherlands. This band focused more on the old ’70s metal and we appreciated that very much. Sleep was another band we adored.
You didn’t join any other band since you left Celestial Season in 1995. How easy was it to growl again?
No, I didn’t create music pre-2020. Of course, I had to find my technique and voice again, but after 1 or 2 months it all came back to me, even this feeling to sing – well, growl haha – again, was amazing. It was a relief to do it again, to resurrect, reinvent yourself after so many years.
The first album released after your reunion with Celestial Season is The Secret Teachings (2020). Did you get a chance to contribute your own ideas to the new songs? What was your main goal when you worked on this material too?
The songs were already there, and Jason had some lyrics, but for some songs I could write new lyrics. But this felt very convenient, we always did it this way in the early days, and in this new period it goes the same way. Jason, Lucas or any band member composes the music. I or Jason write the lyrics for the new song and then the music and lyrics blend organically.
My main goal was to express my feelings and ideas on the struggle we’re in to live in this world, in this life, on this planet. And there is always a way out of misery, and that’s to look at it metaphysically, to find some piece of mystery that is also in this world, not tangible, but really alive in your mind, and you can create your own world, your own escape, your own artistic way, to survive the manic and tragic elements of being alive. ‘Smile, surrender, kneel and fall’. As I sing in of the songs on Mysterium III.
How was it after The Secret Teachings release? It was pandemic time, and I wonder if you got any proper feedback.
Well, the album was received quite good, after so many years, a quarter of a century haha. We were amazed by the positive critics and energetic feedback from listeners. For us, the pandemic was not a disadvantage at all. We just created our music, and covid couldn’t withhold us from our reunion.
Death-doom bands appear one by one, and a lot of bands somehow have managed to gain their own individuality, something that differs them from others. How do you see Celestial Season’s identity?
The band’s identity? Musically, we all try to be as free from any clichés as possible. And still remain and hold the line of creating music in a way we always did before. These two elements, be non-conformist but also true to some musical standards, are the pillars on which we stand
After so many years of not being in Celestial Season, it still feels, it again feels, absolutely great to write songs and lyrics for the recent albums. You mentioned the balance between all the different instruments, and this was important to us, and in a natural way we came up with songs on The Secret Teachings, but also the Mysterium trilogy, that echoed the music we created in the early period — not intentionally but it just was the result of our desire to become the old-new Celestial Season and for the old fans’ sake an immediate reminiscence of what we did in the ’90s.
Did the situation change after the release of the next album Mysterium I (2020)? It was released by Roadburn’s Burning World Records, so I suppose that the album had wide-ranging promotion. Two videos were shot as well, so did it work in the end?
For The Secret Teachings some videos were shot as well, for ‘Lunar Child’, ‘The Secret Teachings’, and ‘The Ourobouros’. Also, this record was released by Burning World. We were quite satisfied with the results. The fact that our music was brought into the world again after so many years was an absolutely thrilling moment and it still is. The momentum is still with us, we are at this moment at the end of an extremely creative period. And looking forward to having the Mysterium trilogy in our hands as a collector’s box. All three Mysterium albums will be released separately, but also in a box containing the complete trilogy. As Burning World did with The Secret Teachings, Solar Lovers and Forever Scarlet Passion.
One of the band’s most-known tracks is the experimental ‘Solar Child’ taken from Celestial Season’s second album Solar Lovers. It keeps death-doom elements and some stoner-like riffs as well. Did you think to create something similar? The ‘Lunar Child’ song is an obvious reference to ‘Solar Child’ but it was composed in a very strict death-doom metal way.
We don’t have the intention to literally compose a song that is similar to the older songs, as you mention ‘Solar Child’, or ‘Decamerone’. We don’t want to run around in circles.
It is more about the atmospherical, emotional and poetical side of the music which is important to us.
The very same year you managed to release Mysterium II. Foremost, how did you manage to record two massive albums in such a short period of time?
As I said, we were in a flow of composing music. All band members contributed to this — songs were composed by Lucas, Pim, Olly and Jason. And the string ladies – Jiska and Elianne – also added their parts in a very beautiful way. When it is the right time, it doesn’t take much energy to make art/music.
And second, did you see these albums as a series from the start? What’s the concept behind the Mysteriums?
Yes, we did. Jason is the philosopher and mystic in the band, he always comes up with philosophical discussions and metaphysical concepts. And he was and is into this book entitled The Secret Teachings of All Ages by the writer and thinker Manly P. Hall. He reflects on all the esoteric questions and traditions mankind invented and created from the early ages onwards. And Mysterium of course is one of the esoteric and traditional concepts through which we can explain or think about the intangible and underlying motion and mysteries the world is ruled by. Explain the irrational through rational methods and philosophical explanations.
One of Celestial Season’s features is the lineup, which consists of members who were in the band back in the ’90s. How did you complete this lineup? Did some of the ex-members decline to join the band?
We simply asked everybody from that period to join in. My brother Robert and violin player Maaike Aarts (she played on Solar Lovers) turned the offer down regretfully. But new member Elianne Anemaat is very welcomed by us. She and Jiska are a big and important part of our music.
So, there are seven members in the band. Do you have any extra requests for venues where you perform live? I guess that there isn’t much space for maneuvers in standard clubs.
Up till now we haven’t done any concerts. And we don’t know whether we will perform live ever. You never know, though …
What’s the reason? I just remember that the band played some gigs after reunion.
We haven’t actually. You have to ask 1 particular member why we don’t do concerts. But I’m not gonna tell you who it is. And besides, we all have our families and professions. But still, for me personally, it would be very satisfying to do some shows and meet some fans – if they are still out there haha.
As you say, there are also violin (performed by Jiska ter Bals) and cello (performed by Elianne Anemaat) in your tool kit. What was your vision when you decided to use both instruments in the songs?
We wanted to create an atmosphere with our music, a musical sphere where we could direct to all sorts of feelings and with the growl, the whispering, the guitars, and the strings we have the opportunity to reach into all parts of our souls and use them to compose our songs.
Stefan, at this time the band is ready to publish the third part of the Mysterium concept. How will this material hold the line of its predecessors? How close will it be to Mysterium I and Mysterium II?
The line is us, we are the composers and creators. And we also want musical freedom. So, this last part is the most offensive one we released of the trilogy albums, with musical parts that take the listener – at least me, haha – back to seventies metal, but melancholy and drama and poetry and reflections on the tragic human and also ecological condition are the underlying themes why we felt the urge to create our music.
I was sure that you had some lyrical concept behind the trilogy, is that true? And did you write the lyrics together with Jason?
With Mysterium we take a dive into the ever-existing esoteric knowledge and the veiled wisdom of ancient mysteries. That is more Jason‘s part, and my contribution has to do with the alarmist state we are in as mankind, a wealthy civilization (the western world) that is ignorant of its past and blind to the ecological disaster our planet is heading for. But still, amor fati, this is the struggle: we have to survive the hell we created ourselves and for ourselves. And sometimes, even laugh about it. How awkward.
How tight is your gig schedule for the rest of 2023? Do you aim to promote the album using the full capacity of both the band and the label?
Burning World will surely promote the album, and as we do no gigs, the music is all we have, and we hope all you people will enjoy our songs as much as we do. Peace to y’all.
Thank you for interview Stefan, well… what else… Okay, hah, the last question is what kind of feeling did you put in the band’s name back in 1991?
Some anecdotes have to remain secret … No, but it still is a great band name, we love it still. And live in the Celestial Season forever … in your head and after death. Cheers!
That’s all for today, thanks again for a great interview. It was nice to talk about Celestial Season!
Many thanks and best wishes,
Stefan
http://www.facebook.com/CelestialSeason
https://celestialseason.bandcamp.com/
https://www.burningworldrecords.com
https://celestialseason.bandcamp.com/album/mysterium-iii