(Following some delays on our part, today we present Comrade Aleks‘ interview with guitarist Marcin Piwowarczyk from the Polish band Cemetery of Scream, who trace their birth to the ancient year of 1992 and still go strong.)
I’m a long-time Cemetery of Scream fan. I remember those innocent days when me and my buddy shouted out the lyrics of “Anxiety”, their best-known song from the first album Melancholy, at a local graveyard. I remember how I watched and appreciated the metamorphosis the band went through from death-doom to… to some experiments within the genre that could be classified as “gothic”. And though I knew that those times, those vibes, won’t return and the band have changed too much, I awaited their new material.
There was a huge break since the release of their last album Frozen Images. It saw the light of day in 2009, and I knew that new songs were already prepared in around 2016. So what happened? It took too much time, yet here they are.
Sleaszy Rider Records released Cemetery of Scream’s sixth album Oceans in November 2023, and here we are with the band’s original guitarist Marcin Piwowarczyk.
Hi Marcin! Thanks for your time, I hope that you’re fine there and teh promotion of Oceans goes according the plan. What’s the band’s current status?
We’re still alive and kicking. Our line-up miraculously remains the same, and our music has a lot of fans and energy.
I saw that you were going to take part in December’s Doom III with Schema and some other bands. How many gigs are planned?
Yeah, we did take part in it, but it’s only one of a lot of events, festivals and gigs that we’re planning!
Songs from which albums do you play live now? Olaf is able to produce a proper growl, so I wonder if you perform your old stuff nowadays too.
Well, retrospective trips are very essential and good, but – of course – we always prepare nice medleys of tracks, so there will be a few ones from the latest album, too; every time the tracklist is a natural flow of old and new songs.
Cemetery of Scream was founded in 1993, and that means that the band celebrated its 30th anniversary not so long ago. Accept my belated congratulations, and here’s the question regarding your plans for this celebration: Did you have something special for your fans?
Since the time we began playing, a huge mass of metal stars has disappeared from the music scene, so we are very proud to be old-age on-stage frontmen after all these long decades. Actually, we want to celebrate it in a moderate way: concerts, T-shirts, gadgets and some more surprising merch… Fun and power, that’s it!
If I remember correctly, we made an interview with you in 2018. And back then you said that “the new material was recorded three years ago”. What happened? Was this material left untouched or did you rework some of your songs?
Actually, it’s more complicated. The material fully recorded in 2015 had been mysteriously lost before it was sent to the pressing plant, and it had literally vanished from the hard drive. Even today, it is an enigma that still gives us sleepless nights (may it never happen again), but luckily everything has had a happy ending. We had to record all these songs anew, rearrange them so that they could sound more modern, and the final result is what you can hear on the new album.
I didn’t find any information about Cemetery of Scream’s current lineup (I mean from Sleaszy Rider Records’ Bandcamp and Metal-Archives). Is everyone still in the band? We’re speaking with you, and there’s Olaf on vocals for sure. What about others?
Like I said at the beginning of this interview, our line-up miraculously remains the same, but if you want to dig deeper, you will find much info about our current (previous and unchanged) line-up on the net. So, to make your search easier, the band members are: Olaf on vocals, Katarzyna on keyboards, Paweł on lead and solo guitar, Grzegorz on bass, Tomasz on drums, and myself Marcin on rhythmic guitar.
Any news from your original vocalist Marcin Kotaś? Do you plan his guest appearance in Cemetery of Scream one day?
We’re not in any close touch with him these days. But anything may happen, so who knows what tomorrow might bring…
Back in the ’90s I had that beautiful VHS compilation with Cemetery of Scream’s “Melancholy” video. There were Celestial Season’s clips as well. Celestial Season returned to their original death-doom sound three years ago and everyone won. Didn’t you think to return Cemetery of Scream to its Melancholy state as well?
Many fans and journalists keep asking us the same question, but you must understand that we have much evolved since Melancholy, and evolution is the state of developing and moving forward, never backward (then it would be de-evolution and degradation), so we may use the old elements to build something brand new; however not to rebuild the old structure. Amen!
Also, you said that Oceans would have “a very deep and spacious aura like endless waters, like the most profound depths where there is also a chance of reaching a new land, a new hope”. Are these qualities still actual for you now? The album was composed literally in another world, and now everything in the world flies in the shit-hole. Each year brings just more of a new shit. I remember that your EP Fin de siècle (1999) was dedicated to the war in the Balkans which took place back then – didn’t you want to change the Oceans’ concept regarding the current situation in the world?
Oceans is a timeless and more universal work about ebbs and tides of metaphysical history, about the unknown depths of oceanic space and all that has been lost in it, about endless births, lives and deaths, and basically about unpredictable chaos – “the current situation in the world” as you call it.
Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect from the band after all these years, but Oceans sounds like a continuation of your previous album Frozen Images (2009). How did you to manage to keep the similar vibe in the new songs?
On one hand, each album of ours is a continuation of the former one – but on the other hand, each of them is quite a different piece of art. So Oceans might sound like a continuation of Frozen Images, yet this latest album of COS seems to be definitely more orientated toward multi-instrumental and sometimes even slightly progressive music illustrations. The vibes are very oceanic: waving, going away and returning…
Cemetery of Scream did a lot of interesting experiments in the past, but now it seems that you found your niche and it’s close to gothic metal. Do you feel like that? Does this “scene” still exists in Poland?
If you really insist on pigeonholing our music, let me correct you a bit: it is not just simple goth metal, but a combination of atmospheric doom metal with gothic.
There are a kind of sitar parts in “In the Blue” and in “Full of Stars”, and eastern vibes are something common for Cemetery of Scream. What attracts you to these tunes?
Nice of you to have noticed, actually, because we have never concealed our fascinations with the oriental sounds and motifs. Hence we often reach for and use the “spices” of the Orient.
Isn’t it the right time to record another part of “Apocalyptic Visions”, as you already have three songs with such a title in your discography?
This track and its subsequent parts all come from the prophecies of Nostradamus. So you could be right, when the time comes, we shall do it and release another episode…
I saw that Avantgarde Music re-released your first album Melancholy in 2021 with the bonus track – an orchestrated version of the title song. Can you tell more about this reissue and this bonus?
We were offered a proposal from Avantgarde Music to dust off our ancient stuff and also have a special version of the track “Melancholy” recorded in an orchestrated style. This task (and challenge) was accepted by our fantastic friend and composer from Ukraine, Mr Paul Dubrovsky. Apart from a beautiful CD released as digipak, there is also a nice analogue, vinyl format of this debut album of ours.
As Oceans was originally composed many years ago, what can you say about the next album?
A couple of songs have already been composed, maybe one of them can be heard during our near future concerts…
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Cemetery-of-Scream/163517517023
https://sleaszyrider.bandcamp.com/album/cemetery-of-scream-oceans