AN NCS INTERVIEW: SCALD

Aug 062024

(The comeback album of the Russian epic doom band Scald has been out for 10 days, and to help celebrate the event we’re publishing Comrade Aleks‘ interview with Scald bassist and lyricist Velingor, which occurred not long before the release.)

Scald was a unique and short-lived phenomenon on the Russian scene in the ’90s. The band gathered in Yaroslavl in 1993, but disbanded in 1997 after the tragic death of vocalist Agyl. Scald‘s first and only full-length album, Will of Gods Is a Great Power, was released posthumously on tapes, but it was only in the 2000s, after its release on CD, that the band began to get recognition and reach fans abroad. Their truly epic doom metal with Viking influences in the vein of Bathory sounded expressive, talented, and powerful.

Scald was revived in 2019 on sheer enthusiasm for a single performance at the German Hammer of Doom festival, when Chilean vocalist Felipe Plaza Kutzbach, who lives now in Sweden, volunteered to perform as Scald’s frontman. Felipe sings in two epic doom bands, Capilla Ardiente and Procession, and thrashes with Deströyer 666. He has a wealth of experience, gifted by the [heathen] gods.

With all the difficulties that exist today for international cooperation and adjusted for the covid period, the release of a new Scald album in itself is a real success. That new album, Ancient Doom Metal, picks up where Will of Gods Is a Great Power stopped years ago.

After the disbanding in 1997, all members of Scald participated in different projects and bands, playing death-doom (Halter, Intothecrypt) and prog folk (Tumulus), but the new material is still the same epic doom based on Scandinavian and Slavic mythology. Felipe‘s singing style organically conveys the spirit of Scald, and, perhaps, the band is lucky to have such a strong vocalist in its lineup now.

Six sweeping tracks for 43 minutes sound like one ancient saga, the character of which changes from battle hymns to the gloomy celebration of the funeral. Here’s the interview with Velingor (bass), who will reveal how Ancient Doom Metal took its shape.

Hi Velingor! How are you? How does the promotion of Ancient Doom Metal go?

Ancient Doom Metal will be officially released on July 26th, and so far it’s been going great! New reviews keep coming up, and they are all full of delight. The reaction to the first promo single – “ALU (My protection)” – is also amazing, we are getting a fantastic response to it from the fans all over the world.

Back in late 2019 you were working on a full-scale comeback, and then Covid spoiled everything. How did it influence your determination to return? Didn’t you think just to put everything aside and live the normal life?

Unfortunately, yes, Covid became a huge problem for us, just like for the rest of the world. We already had several appearances at various festivals planned, but they were all cancelled. Therefore, all we could do was keep working on the new album.

We were lucky though – the reunion was decided upon in early 2019 and took place in November, weeks before the Covid outbreak. By then 22 years had passed since the tragic death of Agyl, but in all this time none of us quit music, we all kept going, starting new projects and evolving as musicians. Sure, there were periods of inactivity for almost everybody (for example, Karry admits that back in 2000s he sometimes didn’t touch his guitar for few years in a row). But we always kept coming back. So it looks like “normal life” (considering that playing music is “not normal”?) is not for us.

What’s the current situation in the band? How do you see the chances to support the release with some gigs?

Well, now we need a bit of time off after quite the complex mixing and mastering of Ancient Doom Metal. But there are already ideas for new songs, and we’ll definitely start working on them later. As to live shows – it is complicated, but preliminary negotiations are currently underway regarding concerts in Europe and possibly in South America.

I think that once you said that you reworked old song ideas for the second album. How did you work on new material? Did you compose everything from scratch or did you really use some concepts from the past?

All old SCALD songs are safe and sound, stored in sealed packaging))). I mean, it is possible that they will be recorded and released some day, but not yet. Right now we are bursting with new ideas, and we want to implement them. That’s why the Ancient Doom Metal album consists of brand new songs only.

The earliest idea goes back to 2018 – it’s the main refrain to the song “The Master Of The Lake”. Harald originally composed it for our studio project INTOTHECRYPT (pagan shaman metal – check it out, the album called Vakor was released in 2019 by Ordo MCM), but it was put on hold since the reunion of SCALD, which obviously is of higher priority. But that piece was too good to go to waste, so we decided to use it, and that’s how the first song of the album was born.

Did you think to use some of Tumulus’ songs or sketches in Ancient Doom Metal? Although it’s quite difficult to rearrange this more progressive style to the epicness of Scald. By the way, did Scald’s return raise some interest towards Tumulus?

No. This was out of question – SCALD and TUMULUS are two entirely different bands, both stylistically and conceptually in general. And unfortunately there has never been as much interest in TUMULUS as in SCALD, although TUMULUS released 5 albums and performed quite a lot – including in Eastern Europe. And I can’t say much has changed since the SCALD reunion.

So here are the four original Scald members, Velingor (bass), Harald (guitars), Karry (guitars), Ottar (drums and percussion), plus Felipe Plaza Kutzbach (Procession and Capilla Ardiente) on vocals. It was quite difficult for you to rehearse together in 2019, and now it seems to be simply impossible. Do you have any chance to perform live with this lineup?

In fact, work on the comeback, which we started about half a year before the Hammer of Doom festival in 2019, was quite easy for us. We expected that everything would be much more difficult – remembering that we have not played since 1997. And sure, we had to rehearse separately most of the time – four of us here in Russia and Felipe in Sweden — but we organized Felipe’s visit to our hometown Yaroslavl for proper rehearsals in September of 2019. It was an amazing experience that made us quite confident – everything was working out perfectly!

As to performing live I already said a bit about the possibilities of touring in support of Ancient Doom Metal.

And how did you organize recording sessions this time?

Well, under the circumstances we could not get together for the recording. The four of us composed and recorded here in Yaroslavl, in our home studios. Felipe worked in Sweden – what a proper setting for creating Viking-themed songs! He recorded the vocals in the legendary Swedish studio called “Silence”. And finally, mastering and mixing was handled in Rybinsk (a town not far from Yaroslavl) in “Bog-Morok” studio (by Ilya Morok).

Lyrically your songs deal with Nordic send Russian mythology, and you wrote lyrics this time, right? It’s said that you even used scientific articles for that — how did it work?

Just like on the first SCALD album “Will Of The Gods Is Great Power” the lyrics are dedicated to the Scandinavian and Russian mythology of the North. And quite right, I’m the main author of the lyrics now (back in the 1990s it used to be Agyl and myself). One of the most interesting sources that I found is the portal which is run by Lyonel D. Perabo from Iceland. He has published quite a lot of historical and archaeological research, quite rare and little-known. Our manager, Tatiana Krylova, also helped me with ideas. The final edits and additions to the lyrics were made by Felipe, who did a great job shaping them into more poetical form.

What motivated you to compose Ancient Doom Metal? The situation in the world now is less inspiring than ever, and after the Covid quarantine it was easy to lose any creative impulse to make music.

All of us are alive, thank the gods. And we haven’t lost the creative impulse. But since the writing and recording of Ancient Doom Metal took place during difficult times (which you mentioned), the album turned out to be even darker than intended.

You have played not only epic doom, but also progressive folk (Tumulus) and death-doom (Intorhecrypt). Did you try something new for Ancient Doom Metal, taking into account your experience?

Over all these years, each of us has adopted something new into our style. For example, Ottar was influenced by Mike Bordin (Faith No More) and Tool; Karry — by Dream Theater; Harald — by Pink Floyd. And I believe Felipe has the most diverse influences. But the basis of the SCALD style remains the same.

Scald’s legendary debut Will of the Gods Is Great Power was released 27 years ago, so how did you manage to keep a very similar vibe with the new songs? How far do you feel you went from the first album in the sense of musicianship and maybe spirit?

When we started working on Ancient Doom Metal, we had no doubt that the album would be in the spirit of Will of the Gods Is Great Power. And so it happened! But we have become much more experienced and musically versatile. I already said a few things about this above.

Velingor, what about Intohecrypt? Did you have time to work on new material in this direction? Can we expect something new from it?

INTOTHECRYPT is a studio project born spontaneously. It was way before the idea of SCALD‘s reunion when Harald and I got together again. We both had interesting ideas and felt like doing something about it, so we started writing songs that were much more fast and aggressive than SCALD, although some melodies on Vakor, the only album released by INTOTHECRYPT so far, might remind you of SCALD as well.

We had further plans for this project but ever since the SCALD reunion happened we had to devote all our time and creative energy to Ancient Doom Metal. So for now I can’t say for sure whether we are going to record something new with INTOTHECRYPT, but it is a possibility.

What are your plans for Scald for the rest of 2024?

For now we are taking a pause and waiting for Ancient Doom Metal to be released – it’s quite an important moment for us. And I believe we’ll be ready to start working on the new songs quite soon. So just listen to Ancient Doom Metal and wait for more news from SCALD!