(Comrade Aleks had a very cordial conversation with one of the three Fernández brothers who make up the Epic Doom Metal band Samarithan, and we’re happy to share their discussion with you today.)
During the endless searches for perfect doom I’ve met Samarithan, a trio from the Basque Country consisting of three brothers: Alberto Fernández, Guillermo Fernández, and Carlos Fernández. They started their crusade in the name of epic doom metal not long ago: the trio released four singles one by one from 2020 to 2022 and it culminated with the debut full-length Tales of Doom released one year ago by Demons Records.
The album bears the bliss of Doom Gods and this noble and dedicated endeavour has a lot to offer to dedicated followers of the Doom Cult, even despite some obvious and unavoidable influences. These Tales of Doom are to be told by one of its masters – Carlos Fernández, so heed the call of Samarithan and let the Doom into your hearts.
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Hi Carlos! How are you doing? What’s new on Samarithan’s side?
Hi, Aleks. First of all, thanks for your interest in our music and congratulations on your excellent website. Samarithan is now writing material for what would become our second album. The process has started but, as we live in different cities in Europe, it might take some time before we release it.
But Metal-Archives points out that you all live in Basque Country. Has your situation changed?
That might be an error, indeed. Guillermo and I live in Barakaldo (Basque Country-Spain) and Alberto, our elder brother, lives in Eislingen (Germany). This is an international but family Doom band!!
I think that Samarithan is the only band where the whole lineup consists of brothers. How did you manage to start playing doom all together?
The project started in April 2020 when the three of us, along with the whole World, were locked down at home due to the Coronavirus plague. It was an old dream of us to work together in a project and Epic Doom Metal was the obvious choice for us as we all love the genre to death.
I found only that Guillermo played in some obscure band named Willow around 1994. Does anyone else have any experience of playing in a band before Samarithan?
Guillermo sings and plays guitar in a Metal band called The Name since 2003. They have released four albums (amazing all of them) and you can find them in all streaming sites (Spotify, Apple Music…). Alberto plays guitar in a german Hard Rock band called Sign and I used to sing in a Black Sabbath tribute band named Electric Funeral and then in a Hard Rock band called Crazy World. We are a very musical family!!
Does this mean that you were involved in rock and metal music since your childhoods?
That´s right. We grew up in the ’80s listening to all the classic Heavy Metal bands and very soon Alberto and Guillermo started playing guitar and writing songs. I’m the only one who has started singing and writing songs more recently (2014), but the three brothers have always been die-hard Metalheads since our childhood.
Carlos, how did it happen that you and Guillermo perform vocals as Alberto plays all instruments? Didn’t you want to help him a bit and remove some responsibility from his shoulders?
To be perfectly honest Guillermo played some guitars here and there and a couple of solos (“Valley of Pain” and “Saturnus”) and keyboards as well, but it would have been quite long to detail everything, so we decided to credit all the instrumentation to Alberto. Nevertheless, Alberto played 95% of the guitars, the bass, and the drums for the album. It was easier for us to be like that considering that Alberto did most of the recordings at home in Germany, along with the mixing, and Guillermo and I sang all the vocals in Spain.
And how do you share vocal parts with Guillermo?
We decided to give Guillermo a more important leading role in the vocals because he is an amazing singer. You can’t keep your best football player sitting on the bench and Guillermo is our particular Messi!! “Saturnus” allowed us to share vocals as it tells the story of two characters, Saturnus and Zeus, and having two singers in that song offered a more intense sense of drama. I sing “The Triumph of Death” as lead singer with Guillermo making the second voice and in the rest of the songs he is the lead singer and I sing chorus and speak recitations.
It seems that doom metal isn’t popular in Spain; there seem to be just a few bands performing this music. Why do you think this is? Is it something what doesn’t fit your mentality?
Doom Metal is an underground genre in Spain, as it is in most countries in the World. The doomy, dark and gloomy sounds can be found in most Metal genres as a result of the influence of Black Sabbath and other pioneers, but in Spain there are very few examples of Doom bands and most of them play Death Doom (Helevorn, Dormanth, Sun of the Dying…). I don´t know any other band in Spain that plays Epic Doom Metal apart from Samarithan.
I would mention Misty Grey, who perform cool traditional doom, I shall interview them soon as it seems that they’ll have a new album around the end of spring. However, do you feel yourself a part of the world’s doom scene or the Spanish metal underground? Or is it just a hobby without any big expectations?
Samarithan is a part of the Spanish metal underground even though we are only a studio project band that can’t play live due to our personal circumstances. We’ve been interviewed by some important Metal websites in Spain and our music has received quite good reviews which makes us part of the scene but, at the same time, it’s also true that we don’t try to make a professional career out of all this. This is our hobby at the moment.
Which bands besides Candlemass shaped your vision of Samarithan?
We love Black Sabbath and all its classic albums with Ozzy and Dio, but we dig a lot of the albums that Sabbath made with Tony Martin, specially The Eternal Idol and Headless Cross, which we find amazing and terribly underrated. We also love bands such as Paradise Lost, Memento Mori, Solitude Aeternus, Abstrakt Algebra, and more recent bands such as Sorcerer, Below, or Capilla Ardiente.
Nice choice! Your first album Tales of Doom was released by the local label Demons Records almost one year ago. What was your vision when you started to work over this material? What did you want to achieve during these recording sessions?
We started it all as a way of fighting against the crazy situation caused by the pandemic and the lockdown. It was all so bizarre and I felt the need of getting in touch with my brothers more frequently doing what we love most: music. So I suggested making one single song, which was “Fuga Mundi”, and the process, the daily connections via Zoom and WhatsApp sending ideas, lyrics and recordings gave us such a great relief and fun that we decided to go on and create more music together. We didn´t have the intention of making a whole album and release it properly, but one song followed another, and, in some months, we had enough material for an album and the decision then was obvious.
When and how did you understand that you had the whole album completed?
As soon as “Across the Moors of Damnation“ was completed we felt that a full-length album was coming. Our first song, the one that started it all, was “Fuga Mundi”, then came “Saturnus”, “Valley of Pain” (with the opening fanfare “The Gates of Samariah”), the instrumental “Cerverus´Lair”, “The Triumph of Death”, and the last one was “Methuselah”. As I’ve already said, it was all about making just one song, but once we opened “the door to Doom” we just couldn’t stop…
How did you organize the album’s recording? Did you already have the label on your mind when you started to work over these songs?
The recording process normally started with a main riff which I gave to my brothers and then they recorded it and transformed it into a more elaborated thing. Guillermo and Alberto are the true musicians in the band and they created the structure of the songs with the chorus, solos, and so on. Most of the lyrics are mine but Alberto wrote the lyrics for “Across the Moors of Damnation” and “The Triumph of Death”. Guillermo wrote most of the vocal lines and all the different archives were shared via Google Drive or Mega. Tales of Doom is a product of its time and digital tools were essential to make it all happen.
Initially, we didn’t have the intention of releasing a whole album, as I said, but when we finally decided it Demons Records was the obvious choice for us. Demons Records is a local label which works very well with many local bands in the Basque Country and has its office here, in Barakaldo, where Guillermo and I live, so it was the obvious choice for us when it came to release Tales of Doom. They have made a great job and we are very happy with the result.
Do you promote the album on your own too?
Yes, that’s right. We have a Bandcamp site (https://samarithan.bandcamp.com/) where you can buy our album as well, but we don’t have a manager or someone who promotes our album, so we make it all by ourselves. Very underground, indeed…
Which components of epic doom metal do you see as vital ones in Tales of Doom?
Our music is based on dark, thick, doomy riffs and strange melodies, along with epic arrangements with keyboards and chorus. We love clean vocals (sorry for that), and singers such as Tony Martin, Dio, Russell Allen or Jorn Lande are the ones we have in mind when composing the vocal lines, which we think are very important in our songs too.
What kind of song lyrics do you feel are most natural for Samarithan?
We love to tell mythological stories as you can read in “Saturnus”, biblical related stories as you can read in “Methuselah”, or adaptations of works of art such as “The Triumph of Death” (Bruegel) or “Across the Moors of Damnation” (Dante). “Fuga Mundi” was inspired by the pandemic lockdown and “Valley of Pain” is a metaphor of the Spanish Civil War as it happened in Valdepeñas, the hometown of our father Eugenio.
Your father Marco Fernández recorded keyboards for one of Tales of Doom tracks. Is he a musician too?
Well, Marco is Albert’s 15-year-old son, actually… We didn’t make it quite clear in the credits, apparently, so it might be confusing… Yes, he played keyboards in “Saturnus”, and we are very proud of him. Guillermo’s son, Aron, is also learning to play guitar and drums and we often make jokes saying that the five of us could make Samarithan a total family business…
Oh, sorry, it was me who hurried and didn’t read the information carefully. What are your ambitions regarding the band’s prospects?
We can´t play live because Alberto lives in Germany and Guillermo and I live in Spain. Alberto only comes over for Christmas and that makes it impossible to make plans for live shows, which many people are asking us to do, so now this is only a studio project, I’m afraid.
What are your plans for the rest of 2023?
We have started to compose songs for a second album, but this has only just begun, so it’s quite possible that it will take us some time before we have something new to show you. We are very happy with the reviews and comments we have received for Tales of Doom and we feel that some people like our music a lot, so we will continue making Epic Doom Metal songs in 2023.
Thanks for your time, Carlos! I wish you all the best regarding Samarithan’s new album! Would you like to add a few more words to our readers?
Thanks a lot to you, Aleks, and to all the readers of your site. We hope you enjoy our music as much as we enjoyed it making it. It’s a dream came true for us, and we hope to give more news as soon as possible. Stay Doomed!!!
https://samarithan.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/SamarithanDoom