Robex Lundgren virkblogg.

Have any of you played in other bands? Yes. Everyone has played in many other bands before - Hopelezz, Bleeding Heaven, Interrorbang, Onkel Tom and many more!

What are your names? / Who plays what? / How old are you?

André Blackmeyer - Guitars (24)
Patrick Kluge - Vocals (31)
Raphael Swierczynski - Drums (24)
René M’Pembele - Guitars (23)
Robin Pörschke - Bass (27)

Have you had other previous members? Oh yes - meanwhile really a lot of people has been a part of „Call of Charon“ - definitely more than a dozen musicians.

Did you make music even when you were young? We are still young. Okay, not that anymore, haha. I think most of us started to make music around the age of 14, 15. Everybody in Call of Charon played in previous bands before. For example Patrick and Robin have been active in half a dozen different bands and startet as teenagers. 

Where are you from? The German Ruhrarea, actually we are based in Duisburg.

What year did the band form? 2006 

What's your style of genre? Deathcore. Call of Charon always had some kind of a „hardcore attitude“ and this is still very important to us. We have a lot of death metal influences but also like a modern, fast an aggressive sound as most metalcore bands deliver - so yeah we are a deathcore band!

How have you developed since you started with the music? You learn from your mistakes. That’s even as quite as important than to improve your musical skills. The longer you make music, the more decisions you have to make, the more people you work with - the more you learn what you should not do! Call of Charon is a good example: We started in 2006 and had two amazing years - then some egos crossed and the band nearly got lost. Round about six years later we reunited in the old line-up and recognized that it was such a good feeling to make music again - together - that some of us decided to keep the band alive and bring it back full time.

Do you have other interests of work outside the band? Of course - all members have regular jobs.  

Are you looking for a booking agency, and what are your thoughts around that? Who isn’t looking for a booking agency? The opportunity a booking agency can offer is absolutely great, hopefully in the near future we find a company to work with.

Are you looking for a label, and what are your thoughts around that? We got lucky to quickly find a new label that will release our upcoming split CD. Our past record label „All Life Ends“ is out of business since 2009, so we immediately started locking out for a new partnership. Our relationship with „Kernkraftritter Records“ started pretty good and we will see how things work out in the future. At the moment we have some kind of an „agreement" were both sides have their advantages. 

What made you decide to make this music? This developed more and more - the first demos from 2006 sound A LOT different than our actual material. The older we get, the more experience we gain, the more our sound developed. On one hand we want to fulfill a technical side and on the other hand we want our songs heavy with a lot of „mosh“. Through the years we learned how we can do this best.

What are your songs about? Nothing specific! Usually the lyrics claim to be „meaningful“. We always try to deliver a message and want to take the opportunity to deliver lyrics that have a statement. In the past, our songs have been about domestic violence, child molestation, pollution and other serious terms. The lyrics on the new record will differ a little bit, because of our long absence we wanted to make a true „band song“ that is about our return. But yes, indeed the other two songs have typical topics like „rape“ and „letdowns“.

Who does the composing and writes the lyrics? René & André write the arrangements and Patrick does the lyrics. 

Do you start with the music or the lyrics? Usually we do the music first. 

Do you compose in a certain inviroment? No. In most cases our guitar player René composes guitar riffs and arrangements at home. André is more into figuring out new parts when we rehearse - so it’s pretty different how a new song comes together.

Have you done any covers live? Sometimes we thought about that - years ago we already rehearsed „In dying days“ from „As blood runs black“ but didn’t played it live. When we rehearse a cover song, from time to time we get a bit enthusiastic, but in the end we keep it for us. Do not expect any covers from us in the near future…

What language do you sing in? In English.

What are the least and most people to attend one of your gigs? The least people could be about only a dozen and the most should be around 200.

What ages are most of your concert attendants? There is not a typical kind of person that shows on on our concerts. The crowd is usually very mixed from teenagers to mid 30’s and mostly they come from different „scenes“ - Hardcore-Kids, Metalheads, Death Metal dudes - we welcome them all to our concerts!

Do you always play the same songs live, or do you vary? In the past we tried to include new songs in our set lists. For the upcoming concerts the songs will be the same, because we want to promote our new release and still want to play some old stuff.

Do you have a regular place you play live often? Yes, there is a venue called „Parkhaus“ in our hometown where we played about 5 or 6 times - i think you can expect us there in the next year.

What was your first gig like? That was great - we played in our hometown and filled in for another band pretty spontaneous. I remembered that we instantly played as the headliner and had a really good show and a nice crowd attendance…

What was your latest gig? The last Call of Charon show was the reunion gig in the original line-up at Patricks 30th birthday, in last years February. After that concert the band officially disbanded and at the beginning of this year some of the original members decided that it should be a good idea to bring the band back up.

Where do you plan to gig the comming year? Hopefully we can play some bigger shows, support some more well known bands and maybe have some small festival gigs.

When did you start to sell merchandise, and what do you have for sale? We will release our new record officially in September and have the record release show at the end of August - so expect at least a new shirt at our come-back show!

Where can people buy your merchandise? http://callofcharon.bigcartel.com 

What do you think about people downloading music instead of buying records nowadays? This is a very difficult topic. On one hand you can’t deny that downloads have become an important part of the music industry and a lot of actual bands were discovered because they made their name in the internet. On the other hand it seems that music becomes less „valuable“ when you don’t have a cd or even a vinyl in hands. When you want to discover new bands, it’s okay when you download their songs but if you like 'em and stick with them you should buy their physical records… 

How do you think the music industry have changed because of this? Today we don’t have these super artists anymore. There are a lot of talented people that are making music. But when you take a look at the worldwide music artists it’s hard to imagine that there will ever be someone as Michael Jackson or - to stick with the metal genre - a band like Metallica or maybe Iron Maiden. There are a lot of great bands out there and of course we have „big“ bands like In Flames or Machine Head - but can they get as big as Metallica? People will always be creative and (heavy) music will never die but it’s very interesting how the landscape will look like in about 10-15 years.

What do you think of my work? It's always great when someone provides their personal effort to the underground music scene. To give unknown bands some kind of a platform is not a matter of course. Keep going!

How do you think and know that this interview will help you in the music business? Hopefully some people will notice us, maybe give us a listen - that would be great. We don’t expect anything and are thankful for everybody that discovers Call of charon for himself as a new band.

Do you have any role models or idols? Not really, of course everybody has bands and musicians that he likes or prefers but i wouldn’t say that there are any „role models“ for us. 

Is it easier to find inspiration from older bands, or bands that are more active today? Both - for example somehow everybody from us could identify with a Metallica song and also likes to bang heads when The Black Dahlia Murder is in rotation. Inspiration can come from different terms, when you know that you can not reinvent the wheel, you can focus on the more important things - and that should be to improve the wheel. And then it doesn’t matter if your idea is more "80’s like“ or more „core“ or even a „mosh“. If you make music with passion, inspiration comes way more easily.

What have been your biggest obstacles? To find a constant line-up. There are many, many good musicians out there but a lot of them has a big ego and doesn’t know what it takes to play in a band. A lot of people think that they „have“ to force others to something. They want their opinion and ideas adept by others - at any cost. In a band you have to commit to the whole thing. You have to understand that you are just a part of the system and not the system itself. Bands can only be successful when everybody gives 100 % and people put their personal needs aside.

What advice would you give other bands or artists? Stay down to earth and prepare for disappointments. You have to overcome; when you love what you do, when music is your life, you will and you can handle a lot of struggle - just stay strong!

How do you get psyched for a gig? This comes automatically a couple of minutes before we hit the stage. In most cases a concert is very stressful: We have to do everything on our own, have to carry the backline, have to arrange the merch table, have to get something to eat, have to make a soundcheck and when we settle up a show we have to handle that everything runs well. But at a certain point you begin to focus, you warm up, get your stuff on the stage ready and when the intro begins it makes „klick“. This is a pretty good feeling and it doesn’t matter if there a 15 or 150 people when you got that special feeling you just „do your thing“ and this feels amazing.

Do you have any new material? Our new record, THE TAKEOVER drops in September. This will be a split release with our friends from „Mortal Hatred“. You can expect three brand new songs. In August we will release a lyric video to promote the record - so stay tuned, and watch out for that!

What are your web sites?

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/callofcharon

Bandcamp: https://callofcharon.bandcamp.com

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/callofcharon

What are your plans for the future? When things will work out fine, we hopefully start to work on our first full length record in 2016. This would be great, Call of Charon exist since 2006 and we have an EP and two split releases - the time is right for an album.

Do you have something to add? We want to thank you for the possibility to make this interview and wish you all the best with your project!