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Emptiness

Wywiad przeprowadził - Wouter Roemers
Quickly laying waste to domestic underground competition Belgian brutal death metal formation Emptiness is setting their sights onto dominating the international scene as well. Formed by Nerath Daemon (who later would join black metal elitists Enthroned) Emptiness laid down two underground recordings in two consecutive years. These recordings led to quite some interest from the scene, domestic as abroad – from which a European mini tour ensued. Now, at last, their new album "Guilty to Exist" has been released, which was reason enough for Masterful Magazine to ask founding member/guitarist Nerath Daemon a couple of questions about Emptiness. Hi. Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions. How is everything in the Emptiness camp? Any noteworthy developments people should be aware of?

Hello, our album "Guilty to Exist" is finally out after one year delay. We have a mini tour in preparation and some gigs in England.

With two decent demo's under the belt Emptiness is not exactly a newcomer to the underground scene. In retrospect, how do you look back at both "Eternal Rising" (2001) and "Necrorgy" (2002) - both are only separated by only a year's time, but display quite a musical evolution already. Anything you want to comment from your side?

Since the beginning we are in perpetual evolution. We still play some songs of our demos (some of them have been re-recorded for our album) live. If you compare "Necrorgy" to "Guilty to Exist", you'll hear the evolution, but we keep the atmosphere with an evolutive sound . All our songs nowadays are worked on until complete satisfaction, it was this for our demos, but now that we are better musicians and that we are more experienced, we keep on becoming more professional.

Both demo's opted for a dense, occult death metal sound reminiscent of American genre veterans such as Incantation and Immolation. Founding member Neraeth Daemon (ex-Enthroned) originates (obviously) from a black metal past. After years of playing black metal, what brought on the idea to form a death metal band?

I formed Emptiness with Phorgath 2 or 3 years before joining Enthroned. At that time we wanted to do a black metal band with death metal influences. We were more into that style like most of our songs before our official demos. But this loud death metal sound came naturally after all. Before forming Emptiness, I had no black metal band.

As stated previously the Enthroned lineage is an important factor. In what ways has the Enthroned background of certain members helped in establishing Emptiness in the underground scene over the years?

Probably some Enthroned fans will be curious to hear Emptiness, or it helps probably for promotion 'cause Enthroned is more famous, but our music is really different and the concept too.

Witching Hour Records and Painkiller Records are two parties Emptiness has been in cooperation with. The first went out of business, causing one of your albums to suffer quite a delay. "Guilty to Exist" - your latest record - eventually had the same problem. How do you feel about Painkiller Records, it's common knowledge that the label always has had financial problems, are you satisfied with their work they put into distributing and promoting the band?

Witching Hour Records didn't do serious work, just sold a few copies of "Necrorgy". I don't know if this label still exists, maybe for noise music. Concerning Painkiller, all of us were disappointed that the album has been released too late. Regarding promotion, I didn't hear anything until now, maybe in the future. But honestly I don't really know what to wait for. It's a pity because we really want to deliver a professional work and break away from the underground. Only good labels and motivated promoters can do this, it's only a question of luck and origin for most of the bands.

The concluding track on "Necrorgy" was a 4 minute instrumental ambient soundscape. Is E. Invoked a project that brought ambient into Emptiness, or do both exist as separate entities that complement each other, musically and conceptually?

E.invoked is only a personal project. I do it in the same global concept of Emptiness, which is at first creating music. But as it is a solo project, it's only my influence which can be heard and E.invoked's albums have their own concepts, when some parts of E.invoked are mixed with Emptiness music, it's used to create the atmosphere of Emptiness and a personal touch. All those ambient sounds are really important and we use it in concerts too.

Since the first releases the band has always consciously decided to use pseudonyms instead of real names. Why exactly? To let the people fully absorb the music at hand or is there another reason behind that?

At the origin Emptiness was more black metal, and it's a "tradition" for us to use pseudonyms in this scene. We kept them until now, and it's a medium to remain anonymous for us. After leaving Enthroned I changed mine with my real name initials.

Some time ago Emptiness did a European mini tour with Mor Dagor (DE), Asmodeus (AT) and Athanor (IT). This trek took you through Germany, Slovenia and Switzerland. How were the crowds reacting to this all-underground package? Will Emptiness undertake more tours in the future?

We had a great success in Slovenia, maybe one of our best shows. Germany and Switzerland were like everywhere else, a good reaction from the crowd. We will do our best to tour again. We wait for all serious demands.

Only a handful of Belgian bands ever make it to the international scene. As you are part of the scene for quite some time already, are there any notable differences in comparison to some years ago? Has the support - both domestically as abroad - become better over the years?

We don't really want to be trapped only in the Belgian scene, it's a good purpose to make our music for abroad too and play far from our home. After 7 years of existence, we have better conditions everywhere, it's a normal thing to achieve after all the work invested to reach our goals.

Bassist/vocalist Phorgath is also part of death/grind combo Hybrid Viscery. With them he recently released a split cd with Italian band Psychofagist on the Japanese Amputated Vein Records. Slowly Hybrid Viscery is gaining international attention and recognition, does one band have priority over the other?

According to me, Hybrid Viscery is the most intense and brutal band that I've seen on stage. I know that they start to be famous in the grind metal scene, but Phorgath doesn't really know if he's still in the band .. : ) Emptiness stays his priority after all.

Alright, that sums it up here. Thanks for taking the time to answer our interview. End the interview as you feel fit. Cheers!


site: www.emptiness.be
info/booking: phorgath@hotmail.com / phorgath2@hotmail.com


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