Interviews

Cellar Darling Interview

Hello hello, I’m Zsuzsanna Muszka from Kronos Mortus! It’s nice to talk to you! How’s Cellar Darling doing now? Has the year started well for the band?

We’re doing busy, actually. We’re in the middle of rehearsals for the tour. We finally finished the album and all we have to learn to play the songs live.

You tore up with Eluveitie and I suppose everybody got to know Cellar Darling’s name this way. How was the band’s start? Did it helped you in the early days that you all are from an already famous band? And you all know each other, I suppose that was a grat advantage also.

What I think it definitely helped us, many fans of Eluveitie times are also listened to our album and came to our shows, which we were, of course, very happy about. So that was definitely very nice to experience that. I think it’s also sometimes difficult because we make different music now. So sometimes it’s hard when people think, you know because of the ex-Eluveitie members that it’s folk metal band. It’s sometimes hard to present our music in its own right.

What does the difference mean for you between playing in Cellar Darling or playing in Eluveitie? How do you feel about it?

I think it’s very different because in Cellar Darling all three of us write the music together. So we go to the studio and we have some songs but also some songs we write in the studio completely. It’s very much a teamwork whereas in Eluveitie it was always a different process. We knew exactly what it would sound like, we’re go ahead the song idea and then we would worked that out. And I think both was very nice music and it both was fun to play but they’re very different in terms of how music is written and let.

How much your first album was succeeded? Has this type of music been awaited from you? 🙂

It’s difficult to say because when we write new music, the only rule that we said is that there is no rules. So we didn’t want to write metal, we didn’t want to not write metal, we didn’t want to write folk metal but it’s also okay for us to play folk metal. Basically, we’re going to the studio, we just do whatever we feel like. So we didn’t know ourselves what kind of music was to be expected from this album. We’re kind of found out while we’re playing.

I think Cellar Darling and Eluveitie’s music is very-very different. Surely there are still people who don’t know you but would be interested in Cellar Darling folk-ish, progressive like rock music. Please tell me about Cellar Darling’s art and magic! Who can love Cellar Darling? 🙂

Oh, that is a very big question! (laughs) I hope many very different people because it’s the same for us. Our influences are very different. Anna grew up with a lot of classical music, both of her parents are opera singers, so that is a big influence for her. Ivo loves black metal. All of us played in a metal band of course for many years. And we love a lot of rock bands like Queen or Black Sabbath. I think all of this has somehow found a little bit of space in our music. And I think it’s the combination of those very different influences that make the music. I hope that many different fans might like to listen to it.

After your debut album in 2017 (seventeen), here is the continuation. As we know, on the 22(twenty-seco)nd of March, your next album called „The Spell” is due to release. So there was already a path before you and there were some expectations also… What part of Cellar Darling did you furbish further? What’s the diffrence between the first album and this one?

Well, as you might know our first album was called This Is The Sound and we named that because we thought we had found our sound. So then to a big surprise we found out that there was still some new music for us to be discovered. So I think that stylistically the new album is very different from the first one. I think we have grown a lot and it has grown to be more progressive and more complex than our last album, perhaps. And I think also so many influences like Anna’s classical input including her playing the classical suit is being used much stronger on the new album.

You surely are satisfied with this new disc. When do you use to say that ’Ok., that song is completely finished’? How much picky are you as for music writing? Do you usually agree with each other in these issues?

Okay, that’s a bit complicated to answer. I think maybe we’re not very picky but our problem as artists is that we will always work on it as long as we can. So we always run out of time in the studio in the end because we could work on new music for probably forever. But I think that we’re usually in agreement with each other. What we did this time we made as a very natural process. I mentioned before that we wrote a lot of music in the studio. So we played together and that’s what ended up on the album. We actually didn’t like many bands today: work at home and they work on the computer and they take a lot of time to perfect the songs and I think that’s great. But we did something very different this time which is we played what we felt like and then we tried to leave it like that on the album.

Your story is about a girl who falls in love with Death. How did this idea come to your mind? Why did you choose right that one?

Right. The idea came from Anna and she was inspired by the motive of ’Death and the Maiden’ which was used already in Renaissance times, it was used in painting and in classical music and in poetry. She found it a fascinating image so she wanted to write her own story around it. So one day she came to Ivo and myself and said that she had that idea for this story. She had the whole concept basically already in her head. So we decided that this is actually a very interesting idea so that’s how it ended up making that concept album.

What are your expectations about the reception of „The Spell”?

Ah, I don’t know if we have any expectations. I think we have hopes and that is that many different people will give it a chance and will give it a listen. I believe that if they do, we will hopefully find some people that will come to our shows and stick with us for the coming years.

You all live in a beautiful country. What does the high peaks and mountains of Switzerland mean for you? Are you interested in being in the nature, hiking and so on?

Nature and hiking and all of these means a lot to all of us actually and in fact Anna had the idea for the whole story for the album while she was hiking in the mountains with her father. That has happened before, actually: Avalanche is the song that was written basically in Anna’s head while on a hike. When the band came into existence, we went into the mountains to talk about what we wanted to do and to take some photos. All of us personally liked to spend as much time as possible in nature whenever it could make the time. So I think it’s a big part of Cellar Darling.

In your opinion, why could play the music a main role in one’s life? Why it can be so important for somebody?

It’s difficult to put in words I think because it’s a question of feeling make for all of us. It just feels right, this is what we want to do, we want to play and listen to music. And I think it’s a matter of energy that’s while playing live. It’s one of my favourite things about playing music because we get to share energy that is created between us and the fans and we also receive the same energy back. So it’s a process where everybody is involved, not just the musicians.

Apart from playing music, what are you interested in the most? What are your hobbies?

Personally, I like traveling. That’s very lucky because with music we get to travel a lot. Whenever we are on tour, I try to stay a little longer or go a little earlier. Between tours I like to stay in the country when the tour started or ended. That’s really what I try to spend my time with, when we are not in the studio or on the stage is to travel and see as much of the world and of nature as possible.

What are your expectations from this year?

This year, so far is looking very good, actually. We get to start our tour in England and Scotland and Ireland in just a few weeks. After that, we get to play a few dates with Katatonia in Europe which is great cause that’s a band that all of us love. We are working right now on our tour. So I hope that we get to go South America, visit more places in Europe, hopefully go to America and really we try to go to all the places where there are people that listen to our music. That will be our goal for this year and the next one.

Ok., it was nice to talk to you! I’m waiting curiously for the band’s next movements and I wish you great success in that! Thank you for your time!

Thank you very much and I hope to see you in Hungary soon!

Thank you! Bye-bye!

Take care! Bye!

The interview was taken with Merlin Sutter on 06.03.2019.


Contributed by: Zsuzsanna Muszka

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