(Earlier this year we helped introduce to the public the newest album by the long-running Spanish death-doom metal band Golgotha, and today we present Comrade Aleks‘ interview with its leader Vicente Javier Payá Galindo.)
NCS readers already read the in-depth text about Golgotha’s newest album Spreading the Wings of Hope, or at least you should. Anyway I’d like to remind you about this oldest Spanish death-doom band once more and invite you to read the interview with its founder Vicente Javier Payá Galindo, the guitarist and the author of music and partly the lyrics. Maybe it’ll help to understand the motivation of Golgotha’s members better, maybe you’ll dig the album after that. Who knows?
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Hi Vincente! How are you doing? What are you up to?
Hi, I’m fine, thanks, and you? Well, I am going to answer your questions!!
Me too, thanks for asking. Only two years passed since the release of Mors Diligentis, and here you are with the new album. That’s a pretty good pace. How easy was it to compose these eight new songs?
It’s true that only two years have passed, but I was eager to do more. The songs weren’t difficult because I already had them in my head. However, they weren’t easy either because I put a lot of effort into making them as perfect as possible and ensuring they convey all the emotions I want the listener to feel.
Spreading the Wings of Hope is a kind of… optimistic, even ambitious, title. Did you form the entire album around it? Was it a part of the concept from the start?
It is an ambitious title, but it’s very organic and sincere. The whole album is an ode to hope, but every hope begins with a situation that isn’t good, something you have to go through, suffer from, and then be rewarded afterward. Thinking about the reward is what gives you hope!
You decided to present the album with the official video for the “Human Vultures” song. Did you choose it because of the entire vibe, or because of the lyrics?
I chose it for both reasons!! We tried to make a video that expressed everything we say in the song. We wanted to show what it feels like when there are people around you who try to feed off your mistakes or weaknesses. There are people who wait for you to slip up so they can take advantage of you. And we wanted the video to capture that suffocating atmosphere caused by the falseness of “friends” or “acquaintances” who can harm you.
These lyrics touch quite a wide “social” theme, what influenced you when you wrote them? I remember that you touched a lot of topics related to “humanity” and “humanism” in the previous album as well. Is it an integral part of Golgotha?
Yes, we like to tell the stories we see and give them our own perspective. We’ve told stories about friends, ourselves, and society in general. In all Golgotha albums, the songs are not made-up stories; they are all real and things we’ve experienced up close. I think that, in addition to music full of emotion and sadness, we have very beautiful lyrics that are worth understanding, so there will always be someone who identifies with them. If that happens, I hope that hope helps them keep going.
The albums’ lyrics are written by Andrew Espinosa, María J. Lladó, and you. How did you decide to share this responsibility this way?
There’s a small mistake here. The lyrics in the last two LPs were entirely composed by María J. Lladó and me. We compose them together, think about the title, and decide who or what we want to talk about, then we start writing.
This time you switched from Xtreem Music to Ardua Music, and there you have the great company of artists like Counting Hours, Marche Funèbre, My Silent Wake, and TodoMal, to name a few. Does it grant you a feeling of belonging to the doom scene? And how does this change benefit the band?
Yes, we changed labels because we wanted to be with one that was more focused on doom, and although we play death-doom, we believed we would do better with Ardua Music than where we were. Even though we weren’t unhappy with Xtreem Music—they supported us for years, and we are very grateful to them—we felt it was a more extreme label, and we needed something more in line with our style.
The change has benefited us a lot because our new album has been promoted more than ever before. Ardua Music works with Imperative PR, and they do a magnificent job of getting your album to places we never thought we would be heard. We are very happy with what Ardua Music has done. But with this label, we had a deal for a certain number of CDs and cassettes, and nothing more.
TodoMal’s Javier Fernández recorded keyboards for Spreading the Wings of Hope as a guest. Does his work differ from the things Miguel A. Riutort did during the recording of your previous album?
Yes, they are very different. This album has far fewer keyboards than the previous one, and that was something I told our producer Javier Fernández to do. I wanted the album to sound more guitar-driven and not like the previous one, which had too many keyboards and eventually became tiring for us. Above all, we wanted to shed the gothic metal label that we didn’t feel represented us at all.
You work on a verge between almost orthodox (in a wide sense) death-doom metal and dramatic gothic doom. How do you perceive this “gothic” part of Golgotha? Can you imagine the band without this element?
I try to give my Golgotha music a death metal and doom metal sound. There have been times when it had a gothic touch, but mostly when Amon Lopez was on vocals because he really liked that style. But since he left, I’ve tried to remove that gothic influence and steer it more toward my own style. So yes, I can imagine and want to remove that element from my music and keep it in death-doom, which is how I like it.
You chose once again this synthetic style of artwork, and that’s, as I think, uncommon for such an ancient band as Golgotha is. What made you take this choice?
One day I was online and happened to find someone who made these kinds of covers. I talked to him and told him that I wanted a similar style but one that followed the line of the previous covers of my albums. It’s the visual line I wanted to follow since we made Erasing The Past. In that one, there was a head from which its essence was escaping, hence the title. Then came Mors Diligentis, which was about the fear of death, and this latest album is about that character saying “enough.” I had thought of this cover and commissioned it, and I didn’t care how it was made, only what it reflected. The meaning it has is what counts!
How do you organize your activities with Golgotha taking into account all teh other bands where you play? Did you manage to play some gigs to promote the new album?
The truth is that I have several bands, and I organize myself very well. I work in the morning, and in the afternoon, I dedicate myself to my bands. Right now, I have four active ones, with which I rehearse and perform live.
At the moment, I’m composing and recording the new album for Unbounded Terror, with whom I’ll be going to a festival in Huesca in a few weeks, and in November, we’re going to Seville. Every day I compose, record, rehearse, and… spend all day making music. But that’s my life! I would love to have concerts this year with Golgotha, but for now, we’ve paused everything because our guitarist has had health problems, and we’ll wait until next year when he’s recovered to present the album.
What are your further plans for the rest of 2024?
To prepare a setlist to present the new album next year, with a variety of songs from all Golgotha albums. And with my other bands, to keep working, especially with Unbounded Terror, as we have several concerts before the end of 2024.
https://www.golgothaofficial.com/