interview with Nethirium
How is it that you started playing music? I come from a musical family, my father has been working with music for his entire life, first as a teacher and later on a principal of the music department of a school. My mother has been playing with marching bands for many many years so it was only natural for me to be interested in music. I started taking guitar lessons when I was 10 or 11 and was using my fathers piano at home from an early age.
What are your names? / Who plays what? / How old are you? My name is Andreas Henke, I do all the vocals and writes all the lyrics. Martin Pettersson is doing all of the music for the band. I am 30 years old and Martin is 30+ :)
Have you had other previous members? We have not had any other members as of yet.
Did you make music even when you were young? I was creating music in one of those crappy DJ programs on my computer when I was young, later in my teens I started playing with a rockband and made a couple of songs and it escalated from there.
Where are you from? From Sweden, sort of in the middle of it. I'm from a town called Norrköping and Martin is from a town next to it called Linköping.
What year did the band form? I'd say 2015 would be the official year we formed the band though Martin started creating some of the music before we formed but with no vocals. Since we were both playing in Minerva, Martin asked me if I'd be interested in doing some vocals and writing some lyrics for one of his songs and from there we continued working together and formed Nethirium.
What's your style of genre? This is a tough one. We're somewhere between melodic death and black metal with some twists :)
What inspires you? I take alot of inspiration from my own experiances, both past and present. Sometimes I just use my wild imagination to make stories.
How often and where do you reherse? Actually we never rehearse...yet.
How have you developed since you started with the music? Oh there's been alot of development. When I first started growling I had no idea what I was doing and really hurt my throat each time. I managed to find a guy that gave me lessons so I learned to do it properly but it's a never ending learning experiance, every year I feel I evolve more and more.
Do you have other interests of work outside the band? Well, I work with kids at a preschool and outside work and music I play videogames.
Are you looking for a booking agency, and what are your thoughts around that? We are not currently looking for a booking agency because we haven't started doing live shows with this band yet.
Are you looking for a label, and what are your thoughts around that? At the moment we're pretty satisfied with producing the music ourselves, it does take alot of pressure away from us and we can create music when we feel like it not when someone tells us we have to do it. Sure if a label would show interest and contact us about it we would have to consider the pros and cons for it but it's definately not something we're actively loking for ourselves.
What made you decide to make this music? For me it's about expressing myself and I feel like I can do that with this music.
What are your songs about? There's alot of variation to the meaning of the songs. For example 'We are Sick' is about how society and the media is turning us to hate ourselves if we don't fit into the perfect model we're supposed to be and how vanity rule our lives.
'The Prey of God' is an alternate story about the fall of Lucifer and his vengeance upon God and 'Enticed' is pretty much a ghost story.
I write alot of lyrics about my own battle with depression and anxiety and 'The Final Sin' is a good example of that. The lyrics for this song came to me while I was having an anxiety attack and the urge for selfmutilation is growing stronger. The chorus part 'rivers run deep with its crimson waters' is me looking at my body when the blood is running in "rivers". The next part: 'New branches emerge with the birth of my thoughts' is of course that the more I think the more "rivers" I make. I also mention violent streams that covers white shores which is what it would look like if you look real close. 'A dash of pain to run across' is when the "rivers" are crossing my tattoos. As seen in alot of the songs I like to write lyrics that can have alot of different meanings, most prominent examples would be that of 'We are Sick' and 'The Final Sin'
Who does the composing and writes the lyrics? Martin composes all the music and I write all the lyrics.
Do you start with the music or the lyrics? We always start with the music.
What language do you sing in? All lyrics are currently in english with some exceptions of latin.
What was your first gig like? We haven't done any live performances with Nethirium yet but the first one with Minerva was in a small club with not alof of people in the audience, but that did not stop us from giving it 100%.
Have you had to cancel a gig? We had to cancel a gig with Minerva after I had to take my tonsils out and I got a nasty infection after the operation. I couldn't really use my throat for a couple of months.
Where do you plan to gig the comming year? We have no upcoming shows. Since there's only two of us in the band we haven't had the possibility to play live. As the release of 'Unleashed' drew closer we started thinking about getting some live performers to play with us and we have most of the lineup ready. Hopefully this will be the year we do the first Nethium live performance.
Where can people buy your merchandise? We don't have any merchandise for sale except for the CD which can be ordered by contacting us on our facebook page. Since we're still a new band which haven't established a big fanbase yet we haven't felt like merchandise can be a priority for us yet. However if alot of people starts asking for clothes and such that might be something to consider.
What do you think about people downloading music instead of buying records now a days? We have to face the fact that the music industry has gone from buying CDs to streaming online and downloading albums. My personal thoughts on this is that it's sort of fine, I don't mind that much. Sure it's fun if people would actually pay me for CD's or if we get revenue from Spotify but in the end of the day we like our music to be heard by people.
What do you think of my work? I think it's great that people take their time and devote it to spread the joy of music. It's great that it's not only the big magazines that only interview the big and famous bands to be able to sell more issues or advertisment. A big plus to you for discovering more of the unknown bands and get their voices heard.
How do you think and know that this interview will help you in the music business? I know this will spread knowledge of the band and hopefully we'll reach more people and get some new awesome fans.
Do you have any role models or idols? My biggest musical idols would be Dave and Mick who are Anaal Nathrakh, one of my favourite bands in the world and they also happens to be only two people in the band. The have evolved tremendously over the years and I hope to be able to do the same. Another idol is Dani from Cradle of Filth. His creative lyrics and songstyle has been a great inspiration to me.
Is it easier to find inspiration from older bands, or bands that are more active today? I tend to find more inspiration from bands I've listened to while growing up, though most of those are still active today as well.
What have been your biggest obstacles? My own mental health. There's alot of times that it's hindered me from composing, performing or simply get out of bed and at the same time it gives me inspiration for new songs so it's kind of a double edged sword.
What advice would you give other bands or artists? Create music for your own, don't let others tell you what to do. All music isn't for all people, if you make it for yourself there's someone else in the world that will like it just as much as you do.
Do you have any new material? Our album has just been released and we haven't started on the new songs yet, but will be more coming.
What are your web sites?
We use facebook as our website, the adress is:
https://www.facebook.com/Nethirium/
How can people reach you? Easily done on facebook, usually respond within a day.
What are your plans for the future? More songs and hopefully some live shows
Do you have something to add? I would just like to thank you for choosing me for an interview and wish you the best in your continuous work with artists.
