Novembers Doom – interview met Paul Kuhr (vocals)
Paul Kuhr: “I felt it was time for everything that I have, to put it into this, because of the last six years of my life.“
We hebben er zes jaar op moeten wachten, maar het was absoluut ons geduld waard, want met ‘Major Arcana’ heeft Novembers Doom de essentie van pure emoties in vloeiende en sterke doom/death metal eens te meer gevat. Het inmiddels twaalfde studioalbum van deze uit Chicago afkomstige, unieke band gaat diep, maar is tevens een toonbeeld van meeslepende toegankelijkheid. Op een herfstige avond spreken we met zanger en tekstdichter Paul Kihr over de pijnlijke totstandkoming van dit volgende meesterwerk.
Vera Matthijssens Ι 20 oktober 2025
The previous album ‘Nephilim Grove’ came out six years ago, in 2019. We had the covid-19 era of course, but what happened next with Novembers Doom since then?
Well, at the time the pandemic hit, ‘Nephilim Grove’ had just come out, a few weeks prior and we had announced an Australian and New Zealand tour and one week later we cancelled the tour, because that was when the world shut down. At that moment – I mean we had a brand new album that just came out – we were not able to go out and promote and tour, even T-shirts were made, everything was crazy up into the air at that time. We were just pissed that we had a brand new album and we could not do anything. That pulled us off for a while. We did not want to start writing a new album when we had a brand new one that we didn’t know that we would to be able to get out in a month or six month or… we had no idea. So we waited a while. We waited a couple of years and then after a couple of years things were returning to normal, but things weren’t quite normal. We were not ready yet. We started writing probably three years into the pandemic. All of that time it blocked us for a while.
The first time I remember that Novembers Doom was back on the stage, was at Prophecy Fest 2023…
Yes. That was an amazing show. What a fantastic place to have a concert! Incredible!
In some way it was a kind of reliving again the EU tour from 2006 I guess, because we had Agalloch, we had Saturnus and we had Novembers Doom… What are your memories on the EU tour in 2006?
I have a lot of very fine memories on that. I became very, very close friends with Thomas from Saturnus on that tour. We are like brothers now because of that tour. It was a lot of new things for me. I had never been in Europe before, so there were certain things that were a bit of a culture shock for me, which I was not used to. I loved it! We had a great bus driver, Igor, I sat in the front as much as I could and I talked to Igor. I was asking him about different places and landscapes and seas. I had a blast on that first tour! It was one of the most fun and memorable tours for us. It is definitely monumental for us.
When the time was right and you were ready to do something new, I guess the guys came up with some music. How did you approach that and what was happening next?
Over that time, I was struggling very hard with mental illness. There was a point in time when I even ended up going to a psychiatrist. So I was really, really in a bad spot mentally. I did all the therapies to remove myself from dwelling in negativity and dark places. And I need that spark to write lyrics. I have to go there. What was difficult, is that I spent years walking away, learning how to not go to that place and then throw that away to go right back to it, so I can write lyrics for the record. When I was first hearing music from the guys, they were sending me the demos with the music, I was not mentally in state to accept anything, so I hated it. I listened to basically what you are hearing, the album on demo and I listened to it from start to finish and I went: ‘this is crap! This is some of the worse stuff this band has ever written. This is awful and I am no part of this’ and that wasn’t true. I mean, clearly, that was no true. The thing was that I wasn’t ready for it, I was not ready to go to that place. I needed permission from my family, because I know what I go through. When I finally accepted the fact that I was going to continue with this, I heard it in a whole new way. I started listening and I was… the first time I was able to finally accept it and get back into my listen through, I had to admit ‘okay, I missed that song, that song is really good’ and I went to the next one and said ‘okay, that is really good’. So I got to a point where I totally had to turn around. The very first thing is: there is a lot of emotion on this record, because of a lot of the things I dealt with and I needed to take walls down and I gave everybody a vocal style that no one knew that I knew how to do, not even my band. It was just… I felt it was time for everything that I have, to put it into this, because of the last six years of my life. So the very first thing that I demoed and sent Larry, was the chorus for the song ‘Mercy’. That is the first thing I wrote for the record and the first thing I did melodies for. I sent it Larry and said: ‘Larry, you tell me man… what do you think of this?’ and he listened to it and he immediately responded with: ‘dude, go for it!’ So that opened up the barricades and here we go! ‘Major Arcana’ was the next one that I wrote. It opened the floodgates for me for the record, then I knew exactly what to do.
Fortunately it ended up this way, because it started with a kind of self-punishment almost…
Every album I have written is self-punishment. Unfortunately. Unfortunately and I say this not proud. I say this not likely, but I cannot remember a Novembers Doom record that I wrote lyrics for that I was not absolutely drunk. Every time I write, to a point where I wake up the next morning and then have to sit back and go back and reread everything I wrote. Then I think ‘this is crap’ or ‘this is really good’ and then I have to be able to go down into that dungeon, to be able to go through that door and go down all those stairs and relive all the horrible things, again and again and again… I need the key to open that door with alcohol and I hate to admit that, but it was part of the process.
And it still is today?
Unfortunately, yes. I had to for this last record, even though now I accepted it and I knew what I needed to do to write the lyrics, I still needed that. It is my key to open that door. I hate to say that, I mean it, it is such a weak term, but it gets me there.
Alcohol can free your mind from thoughts that prevent you from handling things… restrictions get hazy…
I struggle with demons and depression so badly that it is constant noise in my head. I am always hearing sounds and I cannot concentrate. So the alcohol helps calm that noise down. It allows me to focus on where I need to go. So it is a horrible excuse, unfortunately.
The album has an interesting theme, almost esoteric because the major arcane has to do with the 22 cards of tarot. Can you tell something about that and what your vision is about all these tarot things?
Absolutely. It kind of ties in to the last story. So when I had a discussion with my family about writing another album and knowing I am going to be in that dark place again for a while, they all agreed to it. Then I started telling my wife what I was going to write about and it was all mental illness. Every song on this record deals with a different part of my mental state. I call this: it is a map to my broken brain, and when I started to explain to my wife what each song was going to be about, she’s the one who said ‘oh that sounds a lot like the tarot card the tower’ and I thought ‘interesting’. And I told her about another song and she said ‘that sounds a lot like this tarot card’ and she was connecting my stories to these different cards and I know nothing about tarot, but she does. We kind of formulated this idea together and it was so cool. I could keep my theme but could tie it in with the tarot and that is exactly what we did. So we kind of combined it. In the major arcane there are 21 cards, because it starts with the zero. We created card no 22 which is the doom card. Every card in the tarot deck has double meaning. It can be positive or negative, depending on how it is pulled. Not with the doom card. However you pulled it, it is doom. We just wanted to have fun with it. We created an entire tarot deck and it has the different characters from all of our album covers, a few alcohol tarot decks. It is really a neat thing.
Do they appear at the merchandise as well? Is tarot cards used for it?
The deck, the full tarot deck itself is 78 or 80 cards. The 21 cards of the major arcane is only like the top of the deck. The rest of it is the minor arcana. So we actually planned on doing a double record. We were going to release ‘Major Arcana’ and ‘Minor Arcana’. We decided when we were writing to focus on ‘Major Arcana’. We have other songs that just did not make it, because we did not know where it would lead us. We decided at one point ‘let’s forget the double album idea and just focus on making one and make it the best one we possibly can.’
Maybe it is an idea for the next album?
Possibly.
Novembers Doom has always been superb in fragile moments with reflection in addition to harsh songs. Can you tell a bit more about the fragile songs this time?
‘Mercy’ is probably one of the most personal songs that I have ever written. That one was so important to me. I think that Larry’s solo in that song in my opinion might be one of the best solos he has committed to recording. It is so perfect in that song. My wife, my wife now, she is sixteen years younger than I am and that really weighs heavy on my head and my heart, because I know I am gone before her. And I know I am going to leave her behind. That is really very, very difficult for me to process. So that song is about I don’t want to go, I don’t want to leave her behind. I don’t want to go, so hold me until I am gone. It is an important song for me, it really is. It is one that is just pure emotion. On the other hand ‘Bleed Static’ is about a mental illness. It is inside. It is about depression, it is a monstrous form of that, that constant static sound in your head. I gave life to that sound and it turned into a monster and that is basically what the song is about. In the other way instead of a static sound, it can also be voices, telling you what to do and it is not the best advice in the world. There are a lot of different aspects to the record.
Another thing is that also your daughter Rhiannon was involved in singing on the record, even growls it seems…
It is just growls this time. My daughter has been on so many records of ours, from literally the time when she was born. For the song ‘Through A Child’s Eyes’ we brought her as an infant and she was just crawling and giggling, she was having a good time and we used that in the beginning of that song. And then years later she started developing her voice. She started singing a lot better and better, so I let her do some back-up stuff and later she did more. She backs me up beautifully. But this time – because she lived through all of that with me – for so many years. My anger is also her anger, so she went through it all with me. This time around she said: ‘I want to growl. I want you to teach me how to growl’ and I said ‘let’s go to the studio, let’s go for it’. And she nailed it. It is great. She did all the higher, more black metal growls, screeching in the background. She did that right on the spot, it was fantastic.
At the moment we have three video clips. One for the title track, one for ‘Ravenous’ and then a lyric video for ‘Mercy’. Can you tell something about the visual approach of that?
We are planning on doing more videos throughout the course of this album run. We would like to do a video for every song on the record. It is a bit ambitious, but we are going to try. We got all the time, we are going to try to tell the story completely. We just came up with these ideas. We wanted it to be linked to each other in some way. I am not sure where we are going to go with the next stuff. We are talking about some ideas that sound pretty cool, so we will see about the plans with time and budget. We had more time and more budget for ‘Ravenous’. For ‘Mercy’ we did not, for ‘Mercy’ we just did some simple film footage with the lyrics. I think that worked out very well, because that song is important for the words. So I like that the words are highlighted in that video. And I think it captures the emotion I was hoping for. ‘Major Arcana’ was the first video. We just wanted it interesting enough to draw you in.
Remaining with visual presentation we go to the artwork. The theme is also projected in the artwork. Can you tell something more about that?
The artwork was difficult. It was a huge undertaking, because now for the cover and the layout and everything, I needed a tarot deck designed and that is looking for ninety images. It is a huge undertaking. We had this record completed; mixed and mastered and handed in in December of last year and what took so long was the artwork. I had two artists accepting the job, waited two months and then telling me they could not do it. It happened to me twice, so I got downtime when I needed to hand this record in and I did not had any art yet. It came in full panic and then finally it was done by a gentleman from Italy and I think it was worth it.
I see that you always work with Chris Djuricic and Dan Swanö. It must be familiar, but what about this experience this time?
We love the way our end product sounds, so we just feel ‘why fix it up it is not broken’ and what works really well is that Dan and Chris know us. Chris was in the band for a while, he was our bass player for a few years. These guys know us and what we want and what we do so well that we really don’t need to say much. Everybody already knows how to set up and what we do, you know what I mean…. Dan says ‘do you have any references how you want to sound like’ and I say ‘just do your thing, it is right every time’. It is an easy process.
At least something that is easier!
It is definitely easier. I am not going to say ‘easy’, but easier. It is much easier than it could be. When you get into a studio and working with people that you don’t know and you have to learn them, it takes away the focus from that creative process and what you could be doing in the studio, so it is always better to feel comfortable right from the start.
In three days you have a release show, isn’t it?
Yes, in Chicago, in our hometown this Friday night we play live. We have only debuted the three songs of the videos live at ProgPower USA a couple of weeks ago. So this next Friday, everyone who comes out is going to hear almost the whole album. We got other songs mixed in the set, but I think we are doing everything from the new record except two of the songs.
Too bad it is so far…
Yeah it is a bit far (laughs) I’d rather come to you anyway.
Let us hope. Are there plans to come over to Europe again?
We are trying, we are trying.
It is not that simple it seems
Not anymore, indeed.
The Maryland Death Fest in the US is also confirmed I think…
Yes. We are playing on Thursday night. We love Maryland Death Fest, so we cannot wait to get back there and play that again. It is always such a fun time. It is one of the best festivals that the US has.
I wish you a nice time at the release show and later the Fest…
Thank you. October 10th and 11th we are playing in Brooklyn New York. We are doing a couple of shows. A record release show and a ‘Pale Haunt Departure’ show, because that is twenty years old, so it is going to be a long set.
Update: the two shows in October in New York are postponed.
