interview with Gambanteinn

Have any of you played in other bands? I’ve been playing in various bands since my teenager years. Currently there is only one active project besides Gambanteinn; death metal band Sepulchral Curse. Any other projects and bands belong to the past, and thus writing about them is irrelevant.

How is it that you started playing music? I needed a constructive way to deal with my anger, hate and frustration. Nowadays my meanings are more sophisticated.

What are your names? / Who plays what? / How old are you? In Gambanteinn I work as Þjazi. If you have any idea about Gambanteinn you should know that this is a one-man project which means that I play everything. Though I’ve had some help with the guitar tracks during recordings.

Have you had other previous members? Take a wild guess.

Did you make music even when you were young? If I remember correctly I made my first songs when I was 15 or 16. When I started playing guitar my main goal was to compose. I’ve never felt any urge to learn and play songs from other bands. It is much more useful to make your own music since the beginning than learning Master of Puppets or Number of the Beast.

Where are you from? Turku, a city residing on the west coast of Finland.

What year did the band form? 2010.

What's your style of genre? Black Metal.

What inspires you? Occult/mystic/satanic arts in their various forms, nature, psychological and philosophical writings, dreams and nightmares, visions and hallucinations, sex and violence, the manifold ways how thursian-powers manifest in everyday life.

How have you developed since you started with the music? Well, of course I am much better player with any instrument, especially with drums since they are my main instrument. As a composer I’m able to do much varied and better music than as a teenager. It is kind of hard to evaluate yourself and your progression objectively.

Do you have other interests of work outside the band? For me, points of interests and inspiration walk together as one.

Are you looking for a booking agency, and what are your thoughts around that? I’m not actively looking for anything, considering booking agencies or labels et cetera. Gambanteinn is a one-man protest, and something so personal that I would do this in any case, even if there were no single person interested in my music. In a way, I do not need a booking agency or label to back me up but if someone wants to publish my music or do something for me it is cool for me. If someone offers me a good deal we can talk about it, but if it harms or restricts me and my music in any way I’d tell them to fuck off.

Are you looking for a label, and what are your thoughts around that? Read the answer above.

What made you decide to make this music? I didn’t choose Black Metal, it chose me.

What are your songs about? Gambanteinn is a thursian-gospel, an ode to Chaos-Ginnungagap, a hymn to Death.

Do you start with the music or the lyrics? With the music, but I often write lyrics even I don’t have any single riff made. When I have a new complete song, I check if I have any lyrics that would fit the song. If not then I start to write totally new lyrics.

Do you compose in a certain inviroment? Not really, I just need an instrument and that’s it.

What language do you sing in? Any language I feel comfortable with, mainly in Finnish or English. There are couples of songs written in Swedish I’ve made in the past though. It would be nice to learn a language to write with, like Icelandic.

What do you think about people downloading music instead of buying records now a days? If you pay for what you download it’s ok for me. If you take it for free without permission you are practically a thief, and if you steal from me, that would make you my enemy.

How do you think the music industry have changed because of this? Maybe the biggest change is that people are making more just singles, and don’t focus on albums as a whole thus creating a stream of one-hit wonders and piles of shitty music without any heart or soul. Of course this has been a problem long before the internet, but I think that downloading is just making it bigger. The artists are seen as objects, which can be thrown away when they are not making enough money. Which really is fine by me, since usually these “artists” are so bad that shooting myself in the head feels a good idea.

How do you think and know that this interview will help you in the music business? Maybe I’ll have a new like in Facebook, hah!

Is it easier to find inspiration from older bands, or bands that are more active today? If the music is good enough I don’t give a crap about the fact how old or new the group is.

What have been your biggest obstacles? To find people to work with who aren’t totally spineless wimps. The lack of weapons of mass destruction.

Do you have any new material? I have some new songs I’m working with. I hope that I could release a new ep next year. We will see.

What are your web sites? The following few; gambanteinn.bandcamp.com/ and facebook.com/gambanteinn.

How can people reach you? Through the websites I mentioned or via [email protected].

What are your plans for the future? To see this world burn.

Do you have something to add? Fuck everything.

Kommentera här: