WALG
1. Your music is not easy to understand, you have to devote time to get into it. The same video each has a different atmosphere. What inspires you to create like this?
In the writing process we kind of go-with-the-flow. For us it is a very emotional process and everything needs to ‘feel’ right. Seeing it's just the two of us we have a ‘ping pong’ kinda way of creating the music. Robert starts with creating the music and sends it over to Yorick so he can focus on the lyrics and record the vocals. After that we ping pong the track back and forth until we are happy with the final result. Seeing we both have our own domain it’s a very chill and laid back process. We love to experiment with different sounds, instruments and vocal styles. We are also fascinated by old folklore, history and rituals, so we love to integrate this in our music. Folk elements blend perfectly with black metal in our opinion due to the extra layers of both sound and emotion it brings to the music. On the second album we started experimenting with these elements with tracks like ‘Verlossing’ and ‘Ik Haat’. We feel that the track ‘Geselberg’ on the latest album is a follow up to ‘Verlossing’ hence them both having their own video.
2. Will you be featured in the Polish zine, have you had any contacts with my country, concerts, fans or maybe interviews?
We love Poland as a country. Great people (and beer). Also, great bands such as Behemoth and Vader. We have a lot of people from Poland that reach out to us. Ever since we released our first album we were and still are, blown away by all the responses. All physical releases for II and III are sold out (more copies of III coming soon!). We never expected the outreach and positive responses we got. We’re getting messages every day from people whose lives are better because of the albums. This is really amazing, inspiring and more than we could have dreamed of. A massive boost to our motivation!
3. After a lot of single releases, I have a feeling that you are bursting with creative energy, you have already released 3 full albums. How long will you have enough ideas?
Walg is our first step into the world of (melodic) black metal songwriting. Prior to Walg we mostly made Death metal and hardcore. Of course black metal is a genre we always listened to and enjoyed a lot. The genre carries a lot of emotion other metal genres just don’t have. For this reason I think we are able to write a lot of music seeing there is a lot to tell. Our goal is to release an album each year. So far so good! We are already working on the fourth album as we speak.
4. How did the pandemic affect you?
You could say that the pandemic helped create Walg. Through some random coincidence Robert contacted Yorick after 8 years and sent him some black metal demos he was working on. Because of the pandemic Yorick's other band was put on-hold. Fueled by all the pandemic frustration, Yorick decided to add some vocals to Roberts demos and thus Walg (en: disgust) was born. The process of Walg’s music creation is done completely online. We don’t live close to each other and are able to record everything at home.
5. Any chance of live concerts, is it possible and feasible?
At the moment we have no live shows planned and no intention of touring. Who knows what the future holds!
6. You also play in other projects. Doesn't it all suit you, how do you reconcile it together?
At the moment both of us are fully committed to Walg when it comes to creating music. Both of us have full time jobs and of course family and friends. At the moment all of this is in good balance.
7. What is Walg talking about in his works?
The lyrical themes are inspired by the overall stupidity of humankind. We’re often disgusted by the human species in general, and this (of course) serves as great inspiration for black metal. Despair, loathing, gloom & melancholy are the main ingredients for most of the lyrics. For us it is easier to express ourselves in the Dutch language. We love the ‘weird’ tonalities of the language and believe they fit perfectly with the music. For example the rolling R and hard G sounds are great to experiment with musically.
8. You have the last word and thank you for the interview.
Thank you for this interview.
1. Hello Ortsul, what does the name of the band mean?
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- As you rightly pointed out in your review, it is LUSTRO backwards (meaning MIRROR). The name itself and its notation have quite a symbolic meaning that not everything is as we see it with our eyes. Our motto is "black metal from nobody, for nobody" and it's probably not very revealing, especially on this scene that we perform under pseudonyms. Music is a reflection of us, to a greater or lesser extent, that's why Ortsul stopped. And it sounds quite alright.
2. The band from Warsaw was founded in 2016. Why didn't you release the first material of the EP "Robactwem Oblazłem" only in 2018?
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- 2016 is a rather arbitrary date, we don't really remember when it all started, we arranged for a loose jam session a few times in different line-ups, we switched instruments until at some point it was decided that we were doing it. Initially, it was supposed to be 3 guitars without a bass, but we were not very good at using all the instruments compositionally, and fuck, we're not Iron Maiden. And why only 2018? We played without any drums for a long time, we were not very good at playing guitars, only after Hetzer joined us, the process of writing tracks somehow accelerated, and the recordings themselves took us some time. While the drums were completed in one weekend, the guitars were being recorded after work and we had some technical problems in between. ​
3. The lyrics on this EP are quite gloomy. What drove you to this style?
- The author of the lyrics is DeValentin, our original vocalist, so I won't comment on what made him do this style, because I don't know it, but the rest of us liked this style and we were heavily inspired by the atmosphere of DSBM.
4.''Nasza Pani'' 2022. Another stop in the recording of new material. Any staffing issues?
- Were there staffing problems? Maybe a bit like that, we eventually parted ways with the singer, we had to get back together and give concerts with the finished material, we played in Warsaw with Angrrrsth, we visited Toruń, Bydgoszcz, it's not much, but sometimes it's hard to reconcile all the dates. Only when we sat down to it calmly, we started writing material, which was created relatively quickly, but the processes of recording, mixing, and mastering themselves took us over a year for various reasons, but we decided that fuck, in 2022 we need to do it. And we did it a little before the end of the year.
5.'' Nasza Pani '' cover like from vodka, rhyming texts. Who is the originator of the whole idea?
- Let's start with the cover and the title. If you read the text and look at the cover, you'll see that "Nasza Pani" refers to three things, the bottle (of vodka), the Warsaw mermaid and the Notre Dame cathedral. The third refers to 2019 burning, so you can see that initial concepts were made long before the record was released. The fragment "lej, pal" (pour, burn) is also as dualistic, ambiguous as Ortsul itself. As for the lyrics, another vocalist, i.e. Lament, got a free hand on the lyrics again, apparently such a rhymed, more poetic style suited the riffs that were created on "Nasza Pani", the rest of the band also liked such a change.
6. You have already played in other bands. What and how did it happen that you were together - MIRROR - connected?
- I don't know what bands you managed to draw from our past, but before Ortsul no one had ever played black metal and that was probably the main reason, because we were a bit tired of the past doings, there was thrash, there was crossover, there was prog death or death, but each of us at some point evolved musically and wanted to do something else.
7. Coronavirus. Band effects?
- We are still alive, and we can talk about alcohol and music, let's leave politics and medicine to others.
8. Thanks for the answers to the interview. Finally, where can we see you live on stage? ​
- Thanks too! We don't have any play planned at the moment, but we will want to play some this year, you can find out about all things on our FB @OrtsulWABM, and we plan to release a new EP later this year with a new vocalist, Avkas.
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1 . Hello , I have never been in contact with your band . In a conversation with you ( CROM - WALTER ) and after spawning you play POWER METAL. It didn't stop me from doing an interview with you, let me remind you that you played in DARK FORTRESS, what made you change your playing style?
Hi, I am not really sure if we play power metal. In my opinion Crom plays a kind of epic heavy metal. For me power metal is bands like Avantasia, Edguy or sth. like this. Crom is too much combined with epic metal, viking metal and classic heavy metal so that it could be described as power metal. I loved to play in Dark Fortress but it was not enough for me as a musician. I wanted to create my own style of music based on the music of Bathory. And I really wanted to work with clean vocals and choirs.
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2. You are just releasing a new album CROM - THE END OF DARKNESS. Are the title and tracks blackened from everyday life, from this what is happening on a daily basis now and here?
No, it has nothing to do with our current world situation. It's only about a fantasy world, its decline and resurrection. But you are not the first one you asks this question!!
3. Are you a band from Bavaria, your concerts soaked in Bavarian beer? How is the audience receiving you and whether do you play outside the country?
Of course bavarian beer is a classic!! We began to play live in 2018 and were stopped by damn covid. But now that the train has taken off, we are very well received by the audience. The most gigs that are already booked will take place in Germany. But there are also gigs planned and booked for Austria, Danmark and Greece.
4. Covid plague, how did it affect your band?
It stopped us as much as the whole music scene!!! But I used the time to create new songs and record song ideas I never found time for. But now we can do what we always wanted to do.
5. What do your lyrics tell about? Will there be a vision of the world?
Such was the case in the Norwegian Kovenant!
Yes, it's a vision about a world who fell in darkness after their heroes left suddenly. After those heroes left darkness came over the once shining country. But the heroes returned and brought back the glory of the old tones. It's not a complete concept album but there are five or six songs about this story.
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6. Thank you for your time, I wish you success and finally tell us where and how to buy your CD and other gadgets! See you at the concerts!
Thanks so much and mnaybe we will play a gig at Poland one day. Would be great to meet you there!!!
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