With Witching Hour (Prophecy Productions) German doom/gothic metal formation The Vision Bleak returns to the fold after an absence of three years. Ghost Cult caught up with Ulf Theodor Schwadorf, the band’s guitarist, to discuss the new album, its concept and the rather special video clip of ‘The Wood Hag’..
It’s been three years since Set Sail To Mystery. What triggered this prolonged break between albums?
Well actually we played two tours after Set Sail was released and afterwards both me and Konstanz had a little time off for The Vision Bleak and cared for our other projects Ewigheim (both Konstanz and me) and of course Empyrium.
Witching Hour sees the return of a more guitar-orientated direction in comparison to the symphonic leanings of the the previous album. How come?
We didn’t plan this – it just came as a natural evolution. Most of the material has been composed on guitar (exception ‘The Wood Hag’ – it’s core theme was composed on the keyboard) so that makes it more guitar based. Besides we kinda wanted the album to have this rockish, fresh vibe of our debut album which is best achieved by a more rock/metal Sound.
Witching Hour seems to be a concept album of sorts. Can you shed some light on the concept and what it means to you personally?
It’s lyrics and music deal with witches – classic middle European myths, fairy tales and sagas. It’s very close to our cultural heritage and some of the stories and tales I know since childhood – so it’s a concept very close to ourselves and how we grew up. Besides all this it’s sort of a dedication to the magic of the female entity. Mother of all, succubus, death-bringing fatality. Males are usually obsessed with females, if everything went right, you know…
What I really like about Witching Hour is the seamless ease of which a slew of different musical influences and this creepy/horror/vaudeville type atmosphere get combined with very memorable songs. How do you manage to pull that off and what’s your secret?
We just compose music that we like hearing, you know. I think it has a lot to do with your inspirations and what they mean to you. Like, I love the catchy riffage of Metallica‘s Black Album, that combined with the darkness of Entombed‘s Clandestine and the mysticism around Maiden‘s work in the 80’s. Two musicians can be inspired by the same bands but take completely different roads in their music…
Can you take us through the motions of writing and recording of Witching Hour?
It was a great time and we enjoyed ourselves a lot. I think you can hear it on the album. You can hear we enjoyed playing our instruments and playing songs that we really like. We really put ourselves into kind of a tunnel vision during the recordings. No outside influences or business thoughts – just us and the music…
The video for’The Wood Hag’ has this Nightmare Before Christmas/Tim Burton vibe. Who created it and how does it tie in with the song itself thematically?
It was created by Fursy Teyssier. A very talented film maker and great friend of us from France. We love his work and agree it has kinda a Tim Burton vibe – which is not the worst thing actually, hehe…The theme of the song and the video is the very famous German Fairytale of “Hänsel und Gretel”.
The Vision Bleak has two core members. What are the pros and cons of working this way versus having a full band?
I really like to work in this setting. Pros are that ideas never get watered down by unnecessary input from too many people. I see no cons, actually. Ok, we never rehearse really (except with our live band for touring obviously) but that’s something I do not really miss, to be honest…
The band signed to a relatively small label. Would you ever consider moving on to a bigger label, in order to get better touring opportunities and more exposure?
We got quite some offers by bigger labels as well but we prefer to enjoy artistic freedom and the faith in the band on a smaller label like Prophecy…
Making ends meet as a musician was never easy. How do you manage?
We both have music connected jobs as our main income so we do not necessarily need the money we earn with The Vision Bleak. It’s just sort of a added bonus. I am producing other bands in my studio (www.studioe.de) and Konstanz works as a drum teacher.
What touring plans do you in support of the new album?
We just came back from a European tour with Saturnus and label mates Dordeduh which went really fine. In Spring next year we will do another tour to celebrate ten years anniversary of our debut album The Deathship.. and promote the album once more…
Raymond Westland