DARK ART CONSPIRACY INTERVIEW!

Here is a new interview with the Australian Death/Doom band “The Maledict”  

1. Please tell us about the history of your band “The Maledict” and its members.

We’re a death/doom band from the middle of nowhere in Australia and have been playing since 2012 – Karl (Freitag, drums) and I had been in a band together previously, while for the other half of the band this is their first project.

2. What made you guys decide to form a band?

Stuart (McCarthy, bass) and I had been messing around for quite a while with random recordings (we did lots of terrible and strange covers and parodies, which shall remain sealed away forever). As things went on, I started probing into recording more and more until I’d ended up with a small collection of actual demo material, though at the time I had no real plans for it. I think at some point we were drunk, had been jamming for a few hours and made the decision to start a full band and start taking it seriously. We ran into Karl at random in a bar a few nights later – Karl and I knew each other via previous bands we played in, so we cornered him and said “We’re starting a band and you’re in it.” He just shrugged and said “Okay,” and he’s been with us ever since! Henry was the last addition to the lineup and we started gigging about half a year later.

3. How would you describe your style? Which bands influenced your music?

Early on, our stuff was sounding very, very different from how it does now. Our first few song ideas had a very gothic metal-esque thing going on, a la Type O Negative, Sentenced, later Cemetary etc. As we kept going, I started taking on more influences from stuff like Celtic Frost, dISEMBOWELMENT, Novembers Doom etc and the music started to get quite a bit heavier and a lot darker. The old gothic influence is still in there but it’s very downplayed.

4. Your new album “Dread” caming out as self-released how did you decided to release it by yourself? have you tried to contact to any labels yet?

It just kind of happened that way (: We’d only been planning on doing either a second demo or an EP, but as we kept working on it the scope for it just grew and grew. We have looked at a few labels but didn’t feel a massive amount of pressure yet since getting a widespread distribution is something almost anyone can just do themselves in this day and age. It’s certainly not off the table, but we were content to just do our own thing for the moment and see if anyone cares – first and foremost it was a project we did for ourselves.

5. How did you guys came up with your band name and is there some specific meaning behind it?

“Maledict” is an archaic term for “cursed”. We just thought it sounded cool and seemed appropriate. It’s not really symbolic of much, we just needed a name and Fluffy Bunnies was already taken.

6. Could you tell us about the lyrics / themes /concepts you focus on or plan to focus on? How did the all ideas come about, and how do they influence the writing process?

I’d been talking about the importance of sentiment and honesty in art with someone a few years ago and that led to me deciding that I wanted ‘Dread’ to be both the title and the theme of the album. Fear, uncertainty and regret make up a big part of it. The lyrics and music are all dressed up in a fantastical kind of aesthetic, but most of it stems from that listless feeling one gets when you realise you’re well into adulthood and still haven’t found any sense of purpose to your life, your past is peppered with things you regret and you’re carrying around a heap of emotional scar tissue.

I hate that idea of being dominated by the ‘wille zum leben’, the natural inclination that you’ll just be born, grow up, subsist, reproduce, die and then that’s it — and when you are trying to resist impulse that and look for meaning elsewhere, you arrive at a deep sense of nihilism that you’ve got to work through. I found myself becoming repulsed by seeing other people who seem to be unknowingly resigned to their impulses, and then doubly disgusted with myself when I did a double-take and realised I was no different.

There’s a good product waiting at the end of all that, I think, but all said, it felt good to take the album as an avenue to just indulge myself and channel all the negativity in my head into something tangible and constructive. It was hugely cathartic and I think the result was something really pure.

7. Band has been formed 2012, Do you remember your first show and what was it like?

Yeah, we opened for a show headlined by Witchgrinder and Sydonia – I had the flu and a bad case of stage fright, one of us had only played one show in his life and one of us had never been on the stage at all. All said, we were pretty sloppy and statuesque, but nobody died so that’s cool I guess. We’ve gotten better since, bwaha. (-:

8. Do you have any amusing stories from when you recorded your album or when you where on the road?

It all seems pretty normal at the time, but in hindsight, I can only weep for all the hotel clerks that have to spend their days coming into rooms where there’s a microwave oven and a bar fridge under the covers of one of the beds and all the pillow cases have been stuffed with Cheetos…

9. Tell me a little about the releases you have and where they are available for purchase?

We’ve got a demo with really shitty production called ‘Salvation in Yielding’ which came out two years ago and a brand new album called ‘Dread’ which I think is quite a lot better. By the time anyone’s reading this they’ll both be up on our bandcamp site: http://themaledict.bandcamp.com

10. Let everyone know what the band has planned for the future.

Now that the album is done we’re intending to just push it as hard as we can – gigging as much as our schedules and lives will allow for, sorting out new merch and maybe even look at widening our distribution of the LP. In the meantime there’s always more music in the pipeline as well, though I’m hoping it’ll be in later 2016 after we’ve all had some time to take stock of things when we can start putting some new music in the slow-cooker.

11. Where can we listen to your band and where people can buy your stuff?

Same place as above, themaledict.bandcamp.com. If I’m not lazy and have actually got it together in time, we’ll also have a website together at http://www.themaledict.com

12. Anything else you think you want to add and people who haven’t heard about you before, should know?

Eh, we’re alright I suppose.

Check out THE MALEDICT official sites:

http://themaledict.bandcamp.com

http://www.themaledict.com

http://facebook.com/themaledict

*******************************************************

http://www.myspace.com/darkartconspiracy