photo by AJ Savolainen
(We present Comrade Aleks‘ extensive and informative interview of Mark Kelson — co-founder, guitarist, and vocalist of The Eternal, whose new album was released in June by Reigning Phoenix Music.)
The Eternal was born from the remains of one of the first Australian death-doom bands, Cryptal Darkness, and Skinwalker is the seventh full-length in The Eternal’s career. It was released in June by Reigning Phoenix Music, and I need to tell you that since the release of their last album Waiting for the Endless Dawn (2018), the line-up of the band has changed dramatically.
I don’t know how, but The Eternal’s founder Mark Kelson (vocals, guitars) and his bandmate Richie Poate (guitars) lured the rhythm section of Amorphis – Jan Rechberger (drums) and Niklas Etelävuori (bass) – into the lineup. Also the vocalist and keyboardist of Amorphis are listed as guests, and this is, of course, something out of the ordinary!
The doom component of Skinwalker is minimized, and Mark and his comrades play their heavy gothic metal quite briskly, weaving patterns of airy melodies and delivering melancholic vocal parts almost without looking back at their death-doom past.
The Eternal can sound truly heavy, and they are athletically lean. But it’s not their goal, as Kelson has a death metal project Nefariym. In terms of deep, melancholic melodies, The Eternal demonstrate a criminally high level of mastery of the instrument. There are tracks here the duration of which reaches a frightening ten minutes, and this is required by the progressive direction in which the band sometimes go, carried away by working on melodies. And although for someone this will be a plus, for others the album’s duration of 65 minutes may seem excessive. Either way, rest assured: The Eternal use every minute wisely.
And let’s use our time wisely as well: here’s the interview with Mark.
Hi Mark! How are you doing? What are you up now, music-wise?
Hello! Well lots of things at the moment. As well as celebrating the release of Skinwalker we are recording 13 new songs for the next album and two stand-alone tracks, so lots of recording, and the new material is shaping up really well. This line-up is very creative and it’s great to be really active in the writing and recording space, this is my favorite part of it all. Also I have a few albums coming out that I have either recorded, mixed, or produced, as I work as a Music Producer here in Melbourne at my studio, Lucidity Sound, so it seems no down time! Which I love.
You founded Cryptal Darkness in 1993, then you renamed it The Eternal in 2003. It seems like you had a big jubilee in 2023. Did you celebrate it somehow?
Well I don’t think I count the two bands as the same. Maybe in the early days of The Eternal I carried some of my material over, but that is kind of where it ended. So I would say The Eternal celebrated 20 years last year but the only time I think about Cryptal Darkness is when I am reminded by someone, which is ok, but it is such a long time ago, and The Eternal is really the baby I have fostered since birth. I am never very organized at celebrating so maybe I will remember to do so if The Eternal hits 30!
On Facebook, you mentioned that the contract with Firebox Records back in 2004 “opened the door to see the world”, and now I don’t find any live shows in your schedule, if there was any schedule at all. Are live shows out of your priorities nowadays, or is the situation more complex?
Well, it did open a lot of doors and we have played in around 32 counties since the band’s inception, but also it is not my full-time job. I make my living as a Music Producer and Audio Lecturer at a University in Australia. And yes, the band does have an international fan base, but we are not a big band, so we tour as we can and when it is financially viable. And of course, Covid times did not help, and we have been working on the new album with the new lineup.
So now we have a new label in Reigning Phoenix Music and new members who are based in Europe. We have a lot of touring logistics to work out, which we are working on now. I expect you will see us live somewhere in early 2025 and we are working very much on this right now!
Can you talk more about your work as an Audio Lecturer? How is it connected with your job as producer and, maybe, with The Eternal?
Yes, I have been teaching audio production for many years here in Melbourne, and so does Richie our guitar player. It’s very connected to what I do with artists and of course with The Eternal. Creating music and the techniques behind producing it and getting the best out of artists is something I am very passionate about; I’ve worked very hard to have a great studio in my home so I feel very lucky to make music with many talented artists, and of course The Eternal are all audio nerds so we have a great time not only making music but sharing our knowledge with each other.
Well, Jan Rechberger and Niclas Etelävuori are in the lineup now. How did you come up with this idea? Did you search for musicians with special qualities, or was it a matter of luck to get two ex-Amorphis members on board?
Jan is still in Amorphis. It all started after the tour for that album in 2019. We were playing in Helsinki and reconnected with Jan and Niclas; we had first met when The Eternal toured with Amorphis on their Australian tour for their Circle album. Helsinki was our last stop on the 2019 tour, and also, we knew we had some issues within the lineup. When we returned home, we lost our drummer at the time and this was also when the Covid thing started up in early 2020.
So, needing a drummer, we reached out to Jan, and as Amorphis wasn’t touring he was happy to jump on board for some session work. But the relationship personally and professionally really blossomed and we really wanted it to become a more permanent thing, so Jan joined the band.
The following year while we were still working on Skinwalker we lost our long-term bass player due to family commitments, which is more than understandable, so as we had one Finn onboard, we reached out to Niclas to see if he would join our little international party, and he also jumped on board and the lineup was solidified.
photo by AJ Savolainen
How much of Jan’s and Niclas’ ideas are in Skinwalker? As I remember, they weren’t involved in songwriting with Amorphis, so I wonder what kind of influences they could bring with them?
I would say it started with myself and Richie at the early demo stages but they both became very involved. I also wanted the band to be a platform for them to contribute. For example “Deathlike Silence” was the last song we wrote, and we worked on that together. Jan has great arrangement and compositional ideas, so the guys contributed a lot to the final shape of all the songs.
For our next album Jan and Niclas have already contributed two demos each that are great songs, and to be honest I find that exciting. Those songs bring a different perspective and it is exciting to put my stamp on them, so it is very much a collaboration between the four us. All the guys are great writers, but I guess things tend to filter through me as my voice goes on it. I’m really excited about the new material we are working on.
Your previous album Waiting for the Endless Dawn was recorded in a quite big period between 2015 and 2018 – correct me if I’m wrong. Was the recording of Skinwalker such a huge journey as well?
Every album we make takes a lot of work. It is very layered and cinematic work, and we produce the records ourselves so usually there is no outside music producers, so we have the luxury to take our time and do the best we can on our own.
Skinwalker took a long time because we had the above-mentioned lineup changes and had to work through covid, not to mention it is an international collaboration and we had to travel between Europe and Australia to work on the album. So Skinwalker took about three years also, but with so many roadblocks and time re-developing the material among the new lineup.
That being said, we are already recording the next album and plan to have it finished next year, so things are moving a lot faster now we have the workflow established, and it is very exciting, Also I think we will have a few stand-alone singles coming out in the next eight months or so, so not so long to wait for new music from us.
As I understand, you recorded and produced all songs on your own; how did you organize recording sessions with your bandmates? I remember those stories from the time of Cryptal Darkness, when you just lured My Dying Bride’s violinist Martin Powell to Australia and recorded his parts together.
We didn’t always record our own albums but the last three have been done like this, and probably since the 2nd or 3rd album I was becoming very involved in the production. But now we are in a situation where every member has a studio space and we all are sound engineers and music producers on some level — we love all aspects of making an album, writing, recording, mixing, producing. The whole thing is an awesome experience; we are basically sound nerds that get to record our own music.
So two of us live in Australia, and two of us in Finland, and we are working remotely every day but we do like to get together for any aspect we can. So we finished the demos for the new album in Helsinki together and we will either be in Melbourne or Helsinki together to mix the next album. This approach has been working really well for us!
You mentioned that you are working on the new material already. How do you manage to keep such a good creative pace? And will you take a pause to let everything settle after Skinwalker’s release, or do you aim to finish and release the next album as soon as you can?
We have 13 or so new songs. While we were negotiating our deal with RPM, Skinwalker was completed, so we just wrote and it was a very creative time. In fact, as I mentioned, we are also recording an additional two songs for release, hopefully one later this year. I want to take full advantage of the creative flow we have right now; everyone is excited and it all came very naturally. I think after a long period where things took a while its refreshing to be able to move quickly with our ideas.
I spend a lot of time in my studios and creating music is my favorite thing to do. I expect we will have the next album finished next year. Of course when it is released is a different story. But also expect a couple of stand-alone singles over the next 12 months to keep things moving!
By the way, I was surprised that Martin Powell didn’t appear on this record, and he actually hasn’t appeared on any recordings for some time. Is it a conflict of schedules or something? He was a part of the band for years, and he took part in songwriting as I understand.
I have worked with Martin for many years. He is on two Cryptal Darkness albums and more recently the last two The Eternal albums, When The Circle of Light Begins to Fade and Waiting for the Endless Dawn, and it is his music on the title track of that album. So he was like a studio member, but also Martin has moved onto other things in his life and when I asked him to be involved in the new one I think he is just in a different place and I hugely respect that. He is welcome to join us on some songs he likes, but I also love that he is happy in life and enjoying what he is doing.
With Skinwalker and its quite progressive sound, you went further from the point where you started many years ago. Do you feel that despite everything you have kept The Eternal’s identity as it was, staying in some frames and developing inside of them?
I think the basic framework is still dark and emotional music and that has never changed; outside of that the playing field is wide open. I see as progressive from a more cinematic journey standpoint than an extremely technical one, but that being said we have 4 very good musicians in the band and we love experimenting with progressive elements.
We also love soundscapes, and the art of writing straightforward catchy songs, but as long as it’s from an emotional standpoint we try lots of things, which maybe hasn’t always worked to our benefit as some people really like bands to stay true to the first note they every released; some people would prefer that I make the first or second Cryptal Darkness album over and over again. I don’t really see how that is satisfying for me progressing as a musician. I think right now we are pretty comfortable with the combinations of sounds we are making, but will of course continue to refine that.
So what make you proud of Skinwalker? Where did you surpass yourself this time?
I think it’s great because it’s the most collaborative album we have ever made, so there is a lot more density and complexity to the production. I think it feels very much like 4 people contributing and that is something I am proud of, and of course we did it all ourselves from the first note to the final mix; I am proud of how self-sufficient the 4 of us are. But of course in reflection I will always hear things we can change or different approaches we can take for the next album, but it is really important to finish things, otherwise you never grow as an artist.
Mark, I can understand how you lured two more Amorphis’ members, Tomi Joutsen and Santeri Kalli, and Sami Yli-Sirniö (Kreator), but Tuvian throat singer Albert Kuvezin from the Yat-Kha band seems to be a more exotic choice. From where did you learn about him, and how did you find a place for his voice in the album?
Albert became involved because of Jan. If you listen to “The Bee” by Amorphis, he is at the start of the song, and when Jan heard the Skinwalker demo he had the idea for a throat singer to do a chant, and what an idea it was — that turned out fantastically. Jan has excellent ideas when it comes to the cinematic aspects of our songs.
We are grateful Albert did that, and in fact I would say Jan is primarily responsible for the guest list, who all did a fantastic job. Most people will of course recognize the growls of Tomi Joutsen, which can be heard on “Abandoned by Hope”, “The Iconoclast”, and “Shattered Remains”.
What’s the symbolism behind the album’s title and artwork?
Well, I designed the album cover, and I wanted something more graphic and geometrical for this one. I think Jan may have said “No pretty ladies looking sad at trees” haha, which let’s face it most dark melancholic albums do at some point or another.
Now initially I designed the symbol, and it did not have some kind of deeper meaning but the colour scheme and background tie into that earthy feel or tribal vibe that the original Skinwalker myth has. So, I wanted something cold and ridged like the symbol overlayed to something warm and earthy, which I think matches well with some of the themes in the music.
Yes, and the concept behind Skinwalker… Is it really about that kind of witch from Navajo culture? How did you come out with this idea?
Great question. I think when I was starting to write, I watched a bunch of documentaries on the Skinwalker myth, which is in Navajo culture and is a creature that can appear to you in various forms and may not truly reveal itself until it is too late. In my personal life I was going through some difficult relationships that had caused me a lot of pain. I took the Skinwalker concept and used it as a metaphor for someone that comes into your life and represents themselves in one way but they are actually completely different, I liken this to Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and I myself had been drained by some people in my life who claimed to be one thing but were actually emotional vampires. I just thought the metaphor of a shape-shifter worked really well for the topic matter.
What are your further plans for The Eternal this year?
We are currently recording an older song with the current lineup which will hopefully release as a single in November, and we are also recording a cover song that is quite ambitious in its scope and I think that will follow, and hopefully that will keep us going as we continue to track the new album. And hopefully some European dates as soon as we can, so all is very busy and creative in the world of The Eternal right now!
It’s great to hear that you have such promising upfront planning! Let’s hope that will work according to your plan. Thanks for the interview, Mark! It was a pleasure to talk. Did we skip something important?
Thank you very much, it has been a great interview! To your readers I hope you take a moment to check out our album Skinwalker, out now on Reigning Phoenix Music, and know that we have more music coming your way very soon!
http://www.facebook.com/TheEternal
https://theeternal.bandcamp.com/album/waiting-for-the-endless-dawn