interview with Jarl
Have any of you played in other bands? Some of us have played in other bands and some still do. Mightyraven, Aestus and Blutaxt played together in Black Unicorn. Mightyraven still plays Cajone in an accoustic Rockband. Aestus plays guitar in a Thrashmetal Band and an alternative Rock Band as well.
What are your names? / Who plays what? Mightyraven Bassguitar Blutaxt Vocals Hrimthur Drums Natt Kongen Guitar Aestus Guitar
Have you had other previous members? Nope!
Where are you from? Norther Germany, from the capital of all evil: Neumünster.
What year did the band form? Jarl was born in the early 2000s by Mightyraven and Blutaxt, who where part of Black Unicorn at this time. It was more or less a side-project until Black Unicorn came to an end in 2016. We teamed up with Natt Kongen, a friend of ours, to give Jarl a new form an shortly after this we united with a side-project from our him.
What's your style of genre? Black Metal with some voyages into other (extreme) Metal genres.
What inspires you? This could be a book on ist own. Novels like Fahrenheit 451 or Existentialism (Martin Heidegger) made a big impact on my view towards the world. Lots of philosophical and social-critic texts influenced our lyrics. Social movements like the unions and the fight of the working class. The whole dystopian theme is a real thing to my point of view.
Are you looking for a booking agency, and what are your thoughts around that? / Are you looking for a label, and what are your thoughts around that? All these professional and semi-professional things allways relate to some controll you lose about what you do and want to do. Some agencies and labels do better than others, but after all we dont want to give up our plan.
What are your songs about? Our songs evolve around nature and how we could help mother earth to claim back this planet. We have songs that cope with depression and loss of controll. All that involves religion and social problems.
Who does the composing and writes the lyrics? Composing is done by our two guitar players, they create big parts of the song and the rest is cooperation during rehearsal. Lyrics are done by Blutaxt.
Do you compose in a certain inviroment? As said before, we work together during rehearsal. That could be something between the last 10% or 50% of a song. Lyrics are done when a certain feeling or idea rises.
Have you done any covers live? Nope.
What are the least and most people to attend one of your gigs? Somewhere betwen 10 and 250.
What ages are most of your concert attendants? We dont track that, must be somewhere around 30 i think.
Do you always play the same songs live, or do you vary? Depends on our available time, but we vary as much as we could.
Do you have a regular place you play live often? Not right now and in general we try to play chaning locations. It could be really boring for people to see the same show every 2 months in the same location.
What was your first gig like? We made the opener at the „Mosh im Mai“ Festival in 2018. Time was runing so fast during that gig, we tried to put as much music into it to celebrate with our friends and fans. It was a total blast!
What was your latest gig? COVID-19 fucked everything up we hat planed for 2020, but we had a really good one at a small „Wacken-Alternativ-Festival“ that was well organized. Crowd was hungry for Metal and we fed them.
Where have you played live this year? Only two locations in northern Germany.
When did you start to sell merchandise, and what do you have for sale? Directly form our first gig on we had some shirts available. We have woven patches, backpatches, car-stickers, Shirts and CDs.
Where can people buy your merchandise? Just get in contact during our concerts or on facebook.
What do you think about people downloading music instead of buying records now a days? As long as they pay for the download or stream its okay. The kids today dont take this „physical copy thing“ so serious as older dudes like me do. That is perfectly okay.
How do you think the music industry have changed because of this? I dont care about the music industry most of the time. Nearly everything we do is DIY and as long as i can get hold of some CDs or LPs everythin is easy.
What do you think of my work? Music-Blogs are an important part in music. You can get infos about bands from all over the world and get to know them and theri work.
How do you think and know that this interview will help you in the music business? We can reach out to new people that have never known of us. „Business“ is such a ugly connoted word, we would like to see it more like the DIY-Community and all the underground bands, people who start concerts, a big shoutout to all of you!
Do you have any role models or idols? I think no one really deserves to be an idol. There are bands that had an impact on us, to be honest bands like Bathory or Immortal are undouptly important ones to us all. We all came from and still are big into the classic metal genre and coresponding bands like Iron Maiden or Testament mean a lot to us. I could start namedroping right now, but i think its clear what i mean.
Why do you think that they exist? They give you orientation in times whre you cant see a clear path in life.
Is it easier to find inspiration from older bands, or bands that are more active today? I think it depends on the kind of inspiration you are searching for. Most of the time we try not to search inspiration, it comes to us. We dont want to sound like the 9th rip-off Slayer-Cover-Band. We want to create our own world of music.
What have been your biggest obstacles? Right now it is this fucking pandemic. No concerts, no festivals. Everything is on hold for next year and everything is booked from this year.
What advice would you give other bands or artists? Try to figure out why you want to make music. If you want to make money, play music you can make money with. If you want to transport your views towards the world and be an artist by the meaning of this word, go for it.
Do you have any new material? Not out right now. We are working on the next record and have 3 songs done. New songs will be more in line with the lyrics of the song Wiedergänger. So dont hope for any happiness.
Do you have something to add? Dont fall to traitors and liars. Keep your head up an listen to your heart, be your own god and choose your own path. Trust in nature and pay respect to the land that feeds you. This is our way, be respectfull to everyone who has earnt it.
