(With agonized apologies to Comrade Aleks and the members of the Netherlands-based group Stuporous for our lamentable delay, today we present an excellent discussion among them, with a focus on the band’s debut album released in January by Void Wanderer Productions and War Productions.)
You should know Stuporous, as there was already a track premiere last fall at NCS, don’t you? It’s a killer band performing a mix of black and doom metal with jazz elements. Its members play different styles of extreme (and not so extreme) metal in Belgian and Dutch bands, some of which are members of the Zwotte Kring artistic collective.
Their first full-length album is Asylum’s Lament, so named after the experiences of the band’s vocalist Devi, who works in psychiatry, and you can easily imagine what kind of crazy stuff you can find here.
And here we have all members of this highly artistic outfit answering my questions with patience and passion. Or something like that.
Hi Stuporous! How are you doing? How are the preparations for Asylum’s Lament’s release going?
Stuporous: First of all, thanks for the interview! We are really looking forward to the release of our debut album. Making Asylum’s Lament was an intensive journey. It’s different from anything we’ve done before with other bands and we gave each other all the creative freedom. Now the album is ready. Finally. We are curious to see how our debut will be received.
All of Stuporous’ members, all three of you, play in different bands and got involved in Zwotte Kring. I suppose that not everyone here has heard about it. Please tell us about Zwotte Kring, what does it do to unite the bands that stay in it? I see that its band members have different concepts and lyrics, at least.
Stuporous: The Zwotte Kring is a musical collective of friends who are all very active in extreme music. Some play in each other’s projects. This group arose organically, especially during the pandemic. Within the collective, we help each other out with matters such as PR, mixing, mastering, photography or layout. Passion and enthusiasm are most important to us. Bands under the Zwotte Kring flag include Asgrauw, Teitan, Meslamtaea, Sagenland, Schavot, Grafhond, The Color of Rain, and Stuporous.
Does this collaboration work? Do you organize Zwotte Kring gigs for example? Or do you support each other through split-releases?
Stuporous: So far, the collaboration has mainly involved recording and producing music together and promoting each other’s work. There have also been split releases. The collab certainly works because Zwotte Kring seems to have become a – sort of – brand name. For a new band like Stuporous, working under the Zwotte Kring flag works a bit like a catalyst. People notice us, know the band members, and know what to expect. That has an advantage over a band that comes completely out of nowhere. Zwotte Kring gigs? That sounds like a good idea, though many of the bands are studio-projects.
It’s said that Floris Velthuis is the mastermind behind Stuporous, and as I understand, your story with black metal started in 1998 with Meslamtaea. What drove you to create another band besides those few you already have? Dark jazz is something atypical in the black metal palette, though I believe that I can recall the name of one band that tried it. However, Izzy Op de Beeck has been playing in Meslamtaea since 2020. What prevented you from trying all these experiments in that band? Or was it Devi who worked as a kind of catalyst to start Stuporous separately from other projects?
Floris: The idea for Stuporous actually arose from Meslamtaea, which has been eyeing jazz and doom before. I wanted to experiment with a lower tuning. It turned out that this invited a more stripped-down approach to music, which differs from Meslamtaea. I came into contact with Devi, who masters both deep grunts and clean singing, in a style unusual for Meslamtaea. Devi came up with the bandname Stuporous. Stuporous ended up being a completely new entity from Meslamtaea.
Izzy: My approach to Stuporous is different from Meslamtaea. Within Stuporous I can explore the melodic and almost ballad-like side of music, while Meslamtaea invites me more to experiment.
And what’s left for Meslamtaea now? The most recent album Weemoedsklanken was released in 2022, so do you have some new material?
Floris: We are currently in the mixing/mastering phase of four tracks for a new release. This will be a split with The Color Of Rain. Although both bands have a different sound, there are similarities (other than sharing two members). Both like colouring outside the lines, looking for experimentation and we have matching lyrics topics. It will be a new chapter for Meslamtaea.
Devi works in psychiatry, and Asylum’s Lament reveals stories of “mental disorder and depression, based on true events in the psychiatric facility”. I suppose that he touched this topic in his band Marquis. How do all these stories complete the album? How did you work on the lyrical side of the songs?
Devi: The stories are based upon actual stories of patients that I worked with. I obviously altered a lot of the stories to connect them. There’s a bigger plot throughout the album. But every individual story is hugely based upon real life cases of suicide. Real cases of murder or people that I met in my work. That’s where the lyrics are coming from.
How efficient is the system of mental healthcare in the Netherlands? And do you / Devi feel a side effect of working in this area?
Devi: The healthcare in the Netherlands for psychiatric care is pretty decent. We have communal healthcare, so that is pretty okay. But there is a lot of stigma on psychosis and addiction and that’s what you see. I work in the Southern regions of Rotterdam, which might be the worst part of the region. So we do see some side effects because people are trying to hide the worst parts of society. There’s a lot of self-stigma, that doesn’t help. A lot of people that have psychosis use drugs. A lot of people using drugs need psychiatry. That’s bad.
Don’t you think that this is a direct result of drugs’ legalization? The Netherlands is known for its open-minded view towards drugs, and I believe that a lot of tourists still search for this. Drugs and the red-light district of Amsterdam is the stamp, I wonder if it’s possible (and necessary) to get rid of it.
Devi: The war on drugs is a huge failure and causes more harm than it was intended to solve. I’m not denying that drugs cause problems, but prohibiting them doesn’t make them vanish. Meanwhile it causes problems like crime, pollution, stigmatisation etc. The same happened during the ’30s of the past century, when alcohol became illegal in America. It handed a huge market over to the mafia. Crimes increased, the death toll rose, the quality of alcohol could not be controlled, etc. This is a topic that deserves a long and nuanced explanation. Chasing The Scream (a book by Johann Hari) is a comprehensive way to get involved in the topic. What I (and other addiction experts) wholeheartedly believe is that addicted people need care, not a prison sentence.
Stuporous’ black metal roots are obvious, but what about doom metal? From where did you absorb these influences?
Izzy: For me mainly the nineties doom of My Dying Bride, Anathema, Cathedral, and Paradise Lost. I grew up with that and the gothic and orchestral aspect appealed to me.
Devi: Ahab and Yob, while my clean vocals are inspired by My Dying Bride, Anathema, and Katatonia.
Floris: My interest in extreme metal started with Paradise Lost. That quickly turned into black metal, while I discovered doom bands like Mournful Congregation and Thergothon. The inspiration for Stuporous comes mainly from the Dutch band Orphanage, and Sear Bliss from Hungary who also uses trumpet in blackened doom.
Black metal, doom metal, trumpets – Asylum’s Lament sounds balanced regarding musical elements, but how did you know when the proportions were optimal?
Floris: Writing music is a matter of fine-tuning until a track feels ‘done’. I like to put demo material aside for a while and listen again with fresh ears after a few weeks or even months, and rewrite it if necessary. I found balancing and proportioning more difficult with Stuporous than with my other projects. Not because there are so many elements in it, but rather the lack of them. The music is slow and the songs are long and intentionally stripped-down. It was a matter of feeling and intuition about how long the attention could be kept on the music.
My attention span is actually very short and that’s why I was inclined to shorten songs too much. Devi slowed me down with this, because he needed space to develop his stories. The vocals on the music had a hugely positive impact on my attention-span, and with a lot of deliberation the result turned out fantastic. When the album was finished, Devi offered to make a dark jazz intro. This completes the album.
Devi: Balancing music for me also works on intuition. I’m always trying out several things. Sometimes something works, and sometimes it doesn’t. I did make a conscious effort not to get in the way of orchestral and trumpet pieces.
And how did you work on this material in the studio? I wonder if it was a challenge for you after all these years in other bands.
Floris: The process works roughly the same for many of our projects. There is one person who writes the main parts and delivers the music to other band members, to write and record additional parts. In Stuporous I wrote the main parts, that were delivered to Izzy and Devi for trumpets and vocals. With their added parts, I went back to work at home to finish writing the music and mixing. Vocals or trumpets can really influence the atmosphere of the music in such a way that sometimes it inspired to change things in the main parts. This way the files went back and forth a number of times. Making an album is always a challenge.
There are several black metal scenes with their own features that we can divide according to their place of origin: Norwegian, Hellenic, French, and maybe German. It seems that the Dutch scene has its own specific elements, its own creative drive too. Can you highlight specific features of the local scene?
Devi: Yes, there are bands with a typical Dutch sound. Especially the early 2000s, when we were the pioneers of the gothic scene with bands like After Forever, Epica, and Within Temptation. I don’t think that applies to Stuporous. We are inspired by bands from America, England, Scandinavia, and Hungary.
Floris: If you talk about Swedish, Norwegian, German, or American bands, then I have an idea how this sounds. But for the Netherlands I don’t know if there is a typical signature sound. Apart from the female-fronted gothic bands Devi mentioned. There is a great diversity of bands here in all kinds of styles that you can also find in other countries. Even within our own collective there are bands in the most diverse styles. The ‘Dutch Wave of Black Metal’ is apparently a thing, but I don’t know what that sounds like.
Izzy (who actually is from Belgium): I don’t think there is a specific local style. Many of us are inspired by the Scandinavian black of the nineties, or the Hellenic black like Rotting Christ. Everything is influence.
Can you say that there’s some local cultural influences in Asylum’s Lament? A kind of cultural code?
Floris: No. When writing music, I try to physically see the atmosphere of a landscape. In the case of, for example, the band Schavot, that’s a Dutch landscape. Even the lyrics are Dutch. But for Stuporous, it’s the rottenness that occurs in every place in the world.
What are your further plans for Stuporous? What are your priorities – to perform the new material live or to focus on writing new songs?
Stuporous: At the moment there are no specific plans for a future release. Band members are currently working on various projects. Like we said, there will be a Meslamtaea / The Color of Rain split in 2024. A new album by Asgrauw is also in the final stages. Teitan and Schavot are also active in recording new material. Izzy is active in Noctu, in the dark jazz ambient band Waveshard, and the stoner doom band On All Fours. There will be a vinyl reissue of his old legendary black metal band Avatar.
When inspiration strikes for doom, Stuporous will follow for sure! A live performance is not planned though, because there is no live line-up and logistically, rehearsing would be a problem. You will find Devi on stage though with his band Cthuluminati, and Floris as drummer from Asgrauw.
Okay, then thanks for the interview gentlemen. It was a pleasure. I wish you all the best with promotion of Asylum’s Lament, and I hope that the feedback will be encouraging enough to make you return with another album sooner or later. Any final words?
Thanks for having us! We like to do a shout out to the labels Void Wanderer Productions and War Productions for believing in this project. Thanks!
https://voidwanderer.com/product/stuporous-asylums-lament-cd/
https://voidwandererproductions.bandcamp.com
https://war-productions.org
https://warproductions.bandcamp.com/album/wpcd047