Interview: Descenery

Recently the Russian metallers of Descenery released their 2018 edition of their 2017 debut called Stillborn Monolith. DutchMetalManiac’s Tim van Velthuysen recently spoke with Descenery’s Slava “Hadfes Oblivion”.

Hey, how are you?

Hey, I’m pretty fine, thanks!

For people not knowing Descenery (yet), can you tell something about the band’s history?

Descenery was founded in 2014 when I felt I was ready for recording my first full-length album. Of course, I wasn’t actually ready yet, but that’s how a start had been made. The end of the story.

How would you describe Descenery’s music yourself?

Well, just imagine noisy and unmelodic porno-grindcore with some influences of early years of Madonna’s career. Got it? Good! That’s absolutely not what our style is all about.

Honestly, it’s one of the hardest questions I’ve ever dealt with. I tend to say the style of our debut album is something between heavy metal and melodic death metal. But it’s not Descenery’s style in general. And I’m not even sure if my description is correct. Just check it out and let me know.

On Stillborn Monolith, your debut, you had quite a few guests, how was working with them?

It was a great experience and I actually enjoyed working with all of them more or less but dealing with someone remotely almost always makes you wait for something. For a reply, for a take to be recorded or rerecorded and all that jazz. Even deadlines don’t always help you. But it’s just a dark side of collaborating by the internet, working this way also allows you to get in touch with people from all over the world. And it’s the most important thing I think.

Which collaboration are you most proud of?

The guitar solo by Ragnar is one of my favorite things on this album. And collaborating with Dag Swano is my dream come true. I’m a big fan of Nightingale where he’s been playing. Even typing this I’m listening to the latest NG’s live-album Hard Rock Live. Also, talking about the bands influenced the sound of Descenery’s debut album, I definitely should mention Nightingale.

Stillborn Monolith was digitally released on July 1st, 2017 and was followed by a limited edition physical release. Now you have a new, 2018, edition of the CD including a re-designed booklet and two exclusive bonus tracks. What made you decide to do a new batch of CD’s?

Since we sold out our first bunch of Stillborn Monolith CDs I had been asked time by time by different people if there’s still a chance to get a physical embodiment of our album. I had to say «no, sorry» since there were no CDs left. But then I decided to come up with something to satisfy our listeners’ needs to have our CDs in their collections. I didn’t want to use the same old design for the new CDs’ booklets so I made the new. And adding a couple of bonuses made this new CD-edition even more unique.

Can you tell something about the two bonus tracks, Inearthed Chronicles and A Man, Anew (Instrumental V)? What can we expect from those two tracks?

Initially, Inearthed Chronicles was planned to be an intro for our debut album, but when the track was recorded & mixed I decided to replace it with a shorter piano-oriented intro. That’s how Season Falls was born.

The second one is just an instrumental version of one of the album tracks. Oh, and yes, you can expect the lack of any singing from both bonuses.

Stillborn Monolith is already released for a while and you already announced that you’re working on a second full-length album. Can you already tell something about how it’s going to be?

Yeah, I’ve been writing the songs for our second full-length album for a couple of years or so. Earlier this year I already had 11 songs for this album written, but then I decided to get rid of almost half of them. They weren’t good enough, so, now I just keep writing the stuff.

Will the second album also include guests or will it only be Descenery?

There will be guests again for sure! And one of them has already written his parts for one of our tracks. At this moment I can’t reveal this dude’s name, but he’s quite known on YouTube. Some of his videos have millions of watches. Of course, it wasn’t the reason I wanted him on board. I really like his playing.

You’re also part of two other bands, Ode Sakura and The World Within. While writing music, when do you decide for which band it’s going to be?

First of all, let’s talk about these bands in the past tense since I’m not sure that they have future. As for Ode Sakura, I wasn’t really involved in a songwriting process there. Running out of Time was initially written for Ode Sakura. It’s more Leon’s song, only the solo and lyrics are mine there writing-wise. Our OS-mates didn’t like this song and that’s why it ended up on Descenery’s album.

Some of The World Within’s songs are based on the drafts I initially had written for Descenery. Those songs are The Candles, Emberland and Flags of Self-Destruction.

Where do you get your inspiration from?

I can’t point out something certain. Anything and anyone I deal with may inspire me more or less.

Earlier this year you played two very special shows, since you are mostly a studio-only band. How did those shows go?

Haha, «two special shows» sounds like we’re finally as big as Metallica is! Nothing really special, honestly. A couple of gigs, four-songs setlist and me and my friends from Ode Sakura and TimeVendor sharing the same stage during Descenery’s shows.

Can we expect some more Descenery shows in the near future? Maybe coming to The Netherlands?

Oh, man, coming to your country someday would be amazing! Once upon a time, I had a pleasure of working with my Dutch mate Jurre Timmer on one of his songs and Joni Teppo was also involved. That one is To Wake In Dreams by Algos. Give it a listen!

You hail from Vladivostok. How is the metal scene there?

Our local metal scene is in decline nowadays. There are just a few active metal bands whose music sounds good. Big bands still visit us time by time and I want to thank our local concert agency Fusion for that. We had Eluveitie, Korpiklaani, Rage, Limp Bizkit, Vader, Sabaton, Cavalera brothers & Viscera Trail playing here in the few last years, for example. Amorphis will play in Vladivostok next year and I’m really excited about this one.

Any Vladivostok-based bands you’ll recommend to check out?

My favorite local band is Zerokarma. They started in the 90s as a doom/gothic metal band and then changed their style to industrial metal. Their latest album The 7th Dimension may be compared to Pain from Sweden.

Todesgeist may offer you some cool death/doom metal releases straight from the 90s.

Solo albums by Sergey Atroschenko should sound great to the fans of Joe Satriani and good guitar-oriented music in general. My favorite one is Burning Heart released in 2011.

If you’re into thrash & groove metal, TimeVendor, Catapultah and Greyder have something great for you. Well, TimeVendor is currently recording their debut album, but I’ve been at their shows four times and every time it was fucking cool! I’m actually looking forward to their debut release.

Acid Coma, Mohraang, Morphugoria have awesome music for the ones who like doom/death/sludge.

And don’t forget about Пионер (Pioneer) if hard’n’heavy is what you love.

As for non-metal bands and artists, I think Starcardigan, Mescheryakova and Gospel Tramp are really good.

Give them all a chance!

How do you think your life would be without music?

Hard to imagine, but I’m sure my life would be different without music.

Thanks for your answers! Is there anything you would like to say to DutchMetalManiac’s readers?

We’ve gone through the fire and flames to make our music video for No Way and I want to thank my friends Arthur Lesnitsky and Andrey Bulgakov for producing this video.

If you reading this, I want to thank you, dear reader and thanks for your questions, Tim!

See ya!

You can check the No Way video below:

Descenery Facebook
Descenery Bandcamp

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