Harakiri For The Sky – Interview met J.J. (vocals)
J.J.: “Everything used to be better in the past, but the older you get, the more frustrating feelings you have and the more you lose and that is something what this band is about. There were always times in the history of mankind when everything looked very bad and then there came better times.”
Het Oostenrijkse Harakiri For The Sky is erin geslaagd om een heel aparte niche te creëren binnen de post metal. Er zijn weliswaar nog wat zwartgeblakerde en hardcore elementen in de muziek van J.J. (zang) en M.S. (instrumenten), maar depressie en de zoektocht naar verlichting wordt telkens als een ware catharsis van emoties over ons uitgeschreeuwd, op elk album. Daar is het nieuwe (zesde) studioalbum ‘Scorched Earth’ weer een intense illustratie van. Gelukkig blijkt zanger J.J. toch minder zwartgallig dan de vorige keer, al is er natuurlijk in de wereld nog genoeg kommer en kwel om eens flink uit de bol te gaan als remedie.
Vera Matthijssens Ι 27 januari 2025
It is exactly four years ago that we had a conversation for the former album ‘Mære’… At least I think it is going a bit better now, bands can tour again. However, it is not going better with the world, because after the pandemic we had several wars. So I think there is always inspiration for Harakiri For The Sky…
Yeah, totally, but I think that is something you can relate to every artist. It always influences you what surrounds you, what’s happening in the world and things like that. It should be a little bit strange if it does not affect your mood.
This time it took four years before you had this new album ‘Scorched Earth’. Can you go a little bit deeper into the reasons why that happened?
There should not be a standard time that a band should need for an album. Seven or eight years would maybe be a bit long, but after five albums I think it is quite a logical consequence when it takes some time longer. To us, even if we had a lot of time, these corona years weren’t really that inspiring. I mean, if you want to have a cool output, then you also need to have an input. You don’t get an input from sitting around and not meeting people and stay home. After five albums, you don’t have lack on inspiration, but you already had so many ideas, you worked with so many possibilities of these ideas that you need a little bit longer, just to find new ways to express. This combination of things was the reason why we needed a bit longer than usually I think.
I can understand. It also took a while before you could go out on tour again. When did that happen?
I don’t really remember. I know that we were able to play a handful of festivals in the Summer of 2020. We also had the chance to play a few of these sitting concerts. I don’t know for sure how they are called in English, we had a special word for those concerts ‘abstandsconcerten’. A distance concert or something like that, where you always had one and a half metres or two metres to the next group of people. It was at least cool to play a few concerts every year and I think we started with it, we did it first. Our album release was delayed or re-scheduled to January 2023, but that doesn’t mean that we did not play shows in these two years before, but everything was mostly cancelled. Bigger tours through different countries made no sense, because every country had different rules. We could play a concert in Turkey in early 2022 and everything was closed for the fifth time or something because they had different rules for everything. So we never had a very long pause between one concert to the next, but it was not something you could make a living of. It was different, but I think we played more concerts than most bands these days.
And in the meantime you have travelled around the world. I remember that was still unreachable and a dream when we talked for previous album…
Yeah the last two years were pretty exhausting, but in a good way. We played our first tour in South America at the end of 2022. Then we did a European tour with Schammasch and Groza in early 2023. Then we went to some unusual places like Kirgistan, we played in Kazachstan and Romania. It was a kick to visit those places. We also had a more than five weeks US tour, which was a little bit hard for me, because I got married like two weeks before and then I had to leave for more than a month, but it was cool. Yeah we had a very busy year. We played more than eighty shows in 2023 and I think this year (2024) it was a little less, but also quite a bit. We did Australia three weeks ago, a very long journey for four concerts. We tried to play a concert on the way down and a concert at the way up, but most of the cities where you usually play before you go to Australia or on our way back home, like Singapore or Tokyo, we played in September. So yeah, after trying to book something for a few weeks, life in Australia got more and more expensive, so we said ‘let us just go to Australia; book the flights’ and that’s what happened in the end, but it was still cool. We had two days off. We saw a kangaroo, we saw a coala; not much but anyways (laughs). I am always wandering around when we play some new cities. I always take a few hours off, that’s the good thing when you are just the singer. They don’t need you for the soundcheck or at least they need you when everything is already set up. So you got a little more time off. I really liked walking around in Melbourne and they have great street art. This is always something I am very interested in when I visit cities. It is more than just the usual graffiti, it is really art.
When we go to the new album ‘Scorched Earth’, is it referring to the general state of the earth and nature?
Not generally. The title is a metaphor for more different things, also for relationships. When a person who was very important to you leaves, you can also say ‘when she left, she just left scorched earth’. So it can also be a metaphor for that one, but for sure yeah, it also relates to the state of the world. I often get asked if this album or the title is political. I would not say it is political, but what happened the last two and a half years, since the war in Ukraine or 7th October 2023, I recognize that I am in a different and way more heavy mood than I have been in the years before. So I would not say it is a political thing, but it is the mood I get in to when I read all this tragical, dramatical news. It has pretty much an impact. Even if I am generally lucky, I have a very cool band, I have a very cool wife and all that, but in the meantime all that is happening in the world, gets me in a state of mind where I should not be and it may be the answer if people ask how I get into this sad mood to write those lyrics.
But some of the songs, like ‘Without You I Am Just A Sad Song’ and ‘I Was Just Another Promise’ have a more personal touch in the lyrics, isn’t it?
Yeah they all have a personal touch, because I am not the guy who writes political things or scientific stuff, I cannot write about stuff I did not experience. I have to be moved by the lyrics and 100% autobiographic and for sure these are all personal stories I went through in my life or maybe the last year. They are all personal, that’s my thing to write about (chuckles). You can call it self-therapy or catharsis but it helps me to find more inner peace.
In the past you told me that you are more a poet than a musician, so it makes sense that words are your tools to be creative…
Yeah totally. You are completely right, I feel more a poet than a musician. That is stil a fact, also four years later.
Usually you invite several guests. This time I was wondering about Tim Yatras from Austere and other bands. How did you meet him? How did this cooperation come into being?
Austere is a band I was really in love with when they started. I bought their first album directly after it was released in 2007 or something and it was obviously the array where all these suicidal depressive black metal bands like Lifelover and eventually Austere started and to me it was the time – everybody has a time in his life when you try to be a little bit edgy, to just listen to underground stuff and all that was around that time – so it was the right time for me for this depressive black metal stuff. This subgenre within a subgenre became some kind of religion, especially Austere. As I am a huge fan of them, it was just a logical consequence that we asked him, because, the reason is I did not know that he is also a fan of Harakiri For The Sky. Then I met him about a year ago and we had this Great Britain tour. I was a little bit starstruck when I met him, because he had such a huge influence on my music career and he turned out to be a fan of HFTS! We met and a minute later we were talking about having guests on the new album or not having guests and if we had guests then who? I told Mattias that I liked to ask him and he said yes and said: ‘okay we can record it the next days’ and so this was pretty uncomplicated and the good thing is, Tim is a good singer and a good shouter, so we had parts of both dimensions.
And what about Serena Cherry, because she is from the UK I think…
Yes, Svalbard is originally from Bristol, but I think some of them live in London now. It was also a band that was very influential for me. I saw them live for the first time during their first European tour in 2015. They played in Vienna. We were laughing with the vocals, because she could scream so heavily and it was not that common ten years ago for female vocals to sound like this, but since this time I always wanted to work with her. Female vocals were shouting vocals and not this beautiful singing part as usual when women or girls do a guest thing on an album. I met her in person first time about two years ago and she is a really lovely person. That’s how things came together and she was also totally in the song and I think it is a really good feature in the song ‘Too Late For Goodbyes’. She perfectly fits in it, also with the clean vocals.
The music of Harakiri For The Sky always reflects a strong feeling of longing for the past when everything was better, that ultimate melancholy…
Everything was better then, but the older you get, the more frustrating feelings you have and the more you lose and that is something what this band is about. There were always times in the history of mankind when everything looked very bad and then there came better times. I think that everybody has these melancholic feelings when he thinks back on his first real love or something like that or some relationships he had that are gone today. You are totally right that this feeling is always been a part of the lyrics and also the music of HFTS.
As the band is gathering more and more success, there were in the meantime five nominations for Austria’s Amadeus Music Awards. Is that something which touches you or is important to you?
(laughs) We never win it haha. The nominations were there, but this Award is not an objective thing. Mostly the labels of the winning bands paid the organisation and all that. It is not something where you can say: okay this band should get the Award because they had the biggest international success. They played in countries where an Austrian band never played before. So it is a paid thing, we didn’t even show up there. Maybe if we win it one day, but it is not an important thing. It is just funny that we were like nominated four or five times and we never won it (chuckles). It reads nice on the Wikipedia site haha or in the bio.
What is your favourite season?
I am a totally Autumn/Winter guy. I also like Spring, but it is not that it is inspiring. It sounds like a cliché, but when it is getting colder, when nature dies and gets born again a few months later in Spring, there always happens something important. I mean, so many albums or music refers to the four seasons because it is an inspiring thing. I personally prefer the colder times. I am from the mountainside, so I was always in love with snow and ice.
You often have a cover on the albums. What is the story behind ‘Street Spirit’ from Radiohead?
From the very beginning we did a cover version of a song for every album, always for the special vinyl as bonus track and from the very start we had this concept to interpret and cover a song. It should always be a song from a different genre, not from black metal or post metal or hardcore or something, because a cover version should not be a typical version. It should be a new interpretation, like the original song in the glove of our band so to speak. For us, we have always been huge fans of these bands like Placebo or Radiohead. For the last two albums, it totally made sense. I mean, last time, for Placebo, it was my choice which song we are playing. This time it was Mattias’ choice. For sure Radiohead does not sound like Harakiri and the other way around, but I think, the way the song starts, could also have been HFTS. So I think this is a song that totally suits us. Petter from Groza does a really good job performing the clean vocals. I couldn’t have done it this way. He did justice, I am really glad with this version.
To occlude the plans for the near future… Three release shows I see and next?
First we are doing the three release shows, then we are doing a three weeks US tour again. Then we are at home for two weeks and then we have few weeks around Europe with E-L-R from Switzerland as an opening act and a special guest which is still to be announced in early January (Dödsrit and later (15 to 20/04) Karg – Vera). We will have a busy year again. Hopefully we can play some festivals around Europe and let us see what’s happening after the Summer. I am pretty sure it’s getting busy once more, that’s also a good thing.
