AN NCS INTERVIEW: NEBELKRÄHE

Unfortunately, we had to cancel our last planned show due to Covid-19 (but everyone is healthy again!), so things are a bit quieter at the moment – apart from the upcoming release, of course.

We did the interview just a year ago, but you prepared the release of the re-recorded first album Entfremdet. So the crucial question here is what was your motivation behind this act?

There were several reasons for this. One is that we had been dissatisfied with the release for a long time. It was the best album we were able to record at the time, but a lot has happened since then, we’ve learned a lot and, from today’s perspective, the album has fallen far short of its potential. I still love the songs, but they were horribly recorded and the sound just sounded like what it was: homemade.

When we were working on Ephemer with professionals in the studio, I started dreaming about how nice it would be to have this album in the same quality – and the dream turned into the question: Why not? After not releasing anything for ten years before Ephemer and not being very fast at songwriting, it made sense to continue with something that had already been written. So I immediately booked new studio dates and got started.

Well, sounds reasonable. How long did you think through the idea of re-recording the album?

The idea itself has been around for many years … I’ve also repeatedly heard the question of whether something like this will happen at some point from friends and fans of the band. In the end, however, it was a rather spontaneous idea when I realized that the album would be celebrating its 15th anniversary in 2024 and that would be a good occasion for a re-make.

The whole thing happened very quickly: we were in the studio in August 2023 to record the drums, then I recorded all the string instruments, umbrA recorded the vocals, and in August 2024 we were back in the studio, this time with V. Santura for the mix and master.

What were the major points you wanted to change in those songs?

Well, I have already mentioned the sound and the overall recording quality as a central point. But then, of course, there were also a lot of details that turned out not to be perfect in retrospect – and if you have the chance to optimize something again after 15 years, you naturally take advantage of it.

So I started by reworking all the bass tracks because I saw a lot of potential for more melody and groove here. Then we adapted the drums so that everything works together. I only changed very little on the guitars and overall arrangements, a few details, a few cuts, things like that – but the basic structure remained the same songs, which was also very important to me.

Finally, we improved the vocals a lot: Umbra‘s technique is of course much better today; there were also many parts that he had already sung differently live over the years, because a different division of the vocals was simply snappier, and we also tried out a lot during the recordings to bring in even more aggression, more dynamics, and more variety in the vocals.

You worked with two sound-producers this time. How did you communicate with them? Did you have a complete vision of the album when you entered the studio?

That’s not quite true, we were only in two different studios, as we had already done for Ephemer, because it turned out to be perfect for us: For the drum recordings we were with Christoph Brandes at Iguana Studios (Imperium Dekadenz, among others) – he is a drummer himself, has a great studio and lots of ideas. So Latrodectus, Christoph, and I were able to invent and implement a lot of details spontaneously during the recordings, which was a lot of fun.

For the re-amping of the string instruments, as well as the overall sound of the album, we were back at V. Santura‘s Woodshed studio (Triptykon, Dark Fortress, Anomalie, among others). V. Santura is an extremely sensitive person when it comes to music, and with every album I have the feeling that he intuitively understands where the sound should go so that it fits the material – although Entfremdet (2024) is much straighter black metal than Ephemer, he took the perfect direction with the first mix – the rest was then fine-tuning and – once again – improvisation and creativity in the studio. In this respect: If I had a vision, V. Santura sensed it and realized it perfectly.

A lot of black metal bands tend to an unpolished, raw sound, trying to stick to their guns and play straight in your face like it was back in the days when black metal was born. Nebelkrähe sounds quite balanced – you have that healthy modern approach and necessary aggression as well. What’s the best example of a “right” black metal sounding album for you?

I think it’s important to differentiate what “black metal” means in the respective context. Of course, a true black metal album needs a different sound than post-black metal or avant-garde … In the end, the sound simply has to fit the music. V. Santura has a very keen sense of this, as you can hear from the wide range of his productions – and also hear when you compare the two albums we did with him, Ephemer and now Entfremdet (2024):

Ephemer was a musically much more complex album that was only extreme in places … that’s why we worked with a much “softer” sound that allows for a lot of dynamics. The material we wrote in our early days and which became Entfremdet in 2009, are far more “typical” black metal, which is why we also worked with a rougher, heavier sound for the re-make.

However, it is very important to me to still sound “contemporary”. A lot of what is considered true today only works if you take the context of the time into account – but if you produce an album today that sounds like this, it just comes across as thin and badly produced. It’s about capturing the spirit of the music and realizing it in the best possible way with the means available – which for me always means: The songs should sound like they would in a perfect world in the rehearsal room or on stage.

The original album was recorded with five of you in the studio, and now you worked on it only as a trio, with you dealing with all guitars and bass. How did it predetermine the final result?

Well, on the one hand it was a bit more work for me, of course, because I ended up recording the album more than five times – bass, two guitar tracks per side, and some extra tracks like solos or leads. I also had to learn guitar parts that I had never played before – and teach myself how to play bass. But somehow that was the attraction for me, especially as I had been looking for a reason to buy a bass for a long time.

On the other hand, everything was just as I had imagined it, I could work at my own pace, and didn’t have to coordinate with anyone or wait for anyone. Apart from that, there was no other option: there were only three people left from the original line-up and, for perfectly understandable reasons, it wasn’t so appealing for our new members to record an album that they had nothing to do with (apart from a few songs that we play live). And I wouldn’t have wanted that either. Entfremdet (2024) is a project close to the hearts of those who were also involved in the original, and that’s how we’ve now realized it.

But you rehearse the new songs with Miserere (guitars) and Nys (bass), don’t you?

Not really. The album was a pure studio project. I composed all changes to the songs sitting at my computer with the guitar or bass. In the rehearsal room, we only play the songs that are currently in our live set.

Why didn’t you change the artwork? Does it still fit this material well?

Changing the artwork was just as out of the question for me as leaving out or fundamentally altering a song – Entfremdet was a thoroughly thought-out album from start to finish, with everything having its purpose, even if the execution wasn’t perfect. The artwork is, therefore, not just an image for me but an integral part of the album.

However, if you look closely, you’ll notice that we did make some improvements here as well—for one, the image is no longer blurry but finally displayed in perfect clarity. Also, it is now shown in its full glory, without my clumsy alteration with the black fade-out in the bottom right and the logo. So, we did the same thing with the artwork as we did with the songs: We brought out the original quality, which, unfortunately, was hidden in the debut due to our amateurishness.

What are the Entfremdet lyrics about? What shaped this aspect of the band back then?

The album title Entfremdet means something like becoming alienated or distanced. I think it’s fair to say that this is a typical theme in Black Metal, but also a common theme for people on the verge of adulthood. Ultimately, all the lyrics deal with leaving the beaten path and searching for happiness and fulfillment outside of societal norms.

“Lichtbringer,” for example, is a retelling of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, and in “Blick vom Ebenholzturm,” “Über den Fluss hinweg,” and “Mein ungleich Ebenbild,” the protagonist consciously distances himself from the society around him in various ways, sometimes physically, sometimes in terms of his mindset. The Arcadia trilogy, with which the album ends, describes one long search for meaning through various ideologies and concepts, which attentive readers of the lyrics might uncover—leading all the way to death.

Are these songs lyrically actual for you today? Did you feel an urge to re-write some lyrics?

Fortunately, we managed to channel our ideas and maybe also our “teenage angst” into lyrics that, even from today’s perspective, I still find quite timeless and not at all embarrassing. In that sense, I really saw no reason to change the lyrics—except for a few repeated phrases or verses to fill gaps in the arrangement.

What are your further plans for the rest of 2024?

Honestly: to recharge my batteries. The year has had its fair share of lows recently from the band’s perspective … we had to cancel two shows in a row due to (thankfully not too serious) health issues, the organization of further shows has proven to be extremely difficult and time-consuming, and an album release—even if it’s “just” a remake – is enormously demanding. Besides the music, I also did the image editing and album layout, worked with our video editor to conceive two clips, and, of course, there’s a lot to coordinate with the label and the PR agency.

So, once the album is out, my primary goal is to take a breather. If everything goes as planned, we’ll play a release show in Munich at the end of December, and after that, we’ll see what comes next. Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as it used to be—especially finding opportunities to perform has become really difficult.

Oh, when do you aim to release the videos?

The first one was already released a few weeks ago – it’s a (comparatively) elaborate lyric video for the song “Über den Fluss hinweg” – and the second one will be released on Thursday, October 24th, followed the day after by the digital single, for “Als meine Augen ich aufschlug” [that’s the one NCS premiered], for which we will release two alternative versions of the song in addition to the album track: A piano-based version written by our singer umbrA and a super exciting doom-noise-like remix by a musician friend of ours, Arl3cch1no.

Thanks for the interview, Morg! Good luck with the Entfremdet (2024) promotion!

Thank you for your time and your interest in our art!

https://www.facebook.com/NebelkraeheOfficial/

https://nebelkraehe.bandcamp.com/album/entfremdet-2024

https://thecrawlingchaos-records.de/NEBELKRAeHE-entfremdet-2024-Digi-CD