First thing I want to cover, because touring is something rare these days. In December you did a long tour in the US with Swallow The Sun and Abigail. Please tell us about this adventure…
We were lucky to be able to make this tour actually happen. You may or you may not know that we had a few tours cancelled and so the other bands did. We had I think four different tours planned over the course of 2020 and 2021 that were cancelled. One of them was in Europe. Those were cancelled. Anyways it was a rough couple of years, especially since we were just getting signed by Century Media and released ‘Veil Of Imagination’ for which we still did not play too many shows in support of. So it was a rough time for us, disappointing overall. Luckily this one tour with Swallow The Sun was able to happen. Doing tours in the US seems to be more possible than anything international, Swallow The Sun were lucky enough to be able to make it successfully with coming over here. Century Media helped including us on that tour, for which we are very grateful. It just came out lined-up. They just got a new record coming out right before the tour. We have a new record that was going to come out. It was really good. Swallow The Sun and Abigail are both great bands. It was a little bit strange, for sure, we were a little bit apprehensive at first. A little bit nervous about the whole situation obviously, but we were as careful as it could be. We took our precautions, just trying to be smart. It was fun. There were a lot of great shows, I think overall it was a success. After almost two years without gigs, it was amazing to be on stage.

In the meantime the new album ‘Epigone’ has hit the shops. Let us start at the beginning: the writing process. I think you approached that in a different way than earlier for ‘Veil Of Imagination’, isn’t it?
Yes, it was a little different in the sense that more material was taken from earlier days, a different writing period for me. Some material I had saved for a few years now. Some of it was written before ‘Veil Of Imagination’ and some of it I had even written for a different project before Wilderun, A lot of it had to do with the fact that Wilderun has changed over time. When we first released our album ‘Olden Trails & DeathlyTales’ back in 2012, we were definitely a different band. We were much more straight forward folk metal and we stayed with that genre for a while, but when we made three albums, things definitely changed. We kind of realized that we wanted to get a little more creative and adventurous with our song-writing and our style overall. We just wanted to try more things, we just wanted to experiment a bit more. So after ‘Veil Of Imagination’ was released, definitely the most difficult record of the three, we kind of realized that the possibilities for what a Wilderun album could sound like were just greater than we originally thought. There were more sonic opportunities and changes we could take with the song-writing. Anyways, because of that, a lot of these old songs that I kept in the back, these old melodies, these old riffs, sounded different, a different atmosphere and feel. Suddenly I realized that they could be used in the Wilderun context. The new album is more a combination of these old things and some new things that I wrote. I fused them together to create this record. Overall I think the album has a good flow. Maybe it is a bit more experimental in nature and that is because it is. It is trying to fuse together some different worlds and different ways of writing. We try to do some new things to not sound exactly like the last record. That is what I hope we did.

There is a saying that claims that every record happens to be a product of the time you created it. Do you agree with that?
Yes, definitely. I think that simply the fact that this record was put together, arranged and recorded during the pandemic, influenced the sound and the feeling of it undoubtedly. Even though – like I said – the material was taken from a previous time, I think the way it was arranged, the way we approached the lyrical content, some of the orchestrations and the synth work that we put on it, I think a lot of that was influenced by the times and how we were feeling. Even if it is subconscious, even if it was not intentional I think it is impossible to deny that the way that we were feeling during the preparation time and being in the studio was affected by the time. Not surprisingly it is more of a sombre record. There is definitely more darkness on this record. Even on ‘Veil Of Imagination’ there were dark parts, but overall it was certainly a brighter record. It was definitely more eccentric overall and I think that ‘Epigone’ is a little bit more personal, it is more introspective in a lot of ways and that was inevitable, because so much time was spent alone, so much time all of us were just feeling isolated. We were just confused, worried and anxious about our future and I think, because of that, ‘Epigone’ has a feel of that on the record. This sense of uncertainty, I am sure that has found its way on the record.

In general, don’t you compose alone, on your own? Or was it too much this time?
I have always written a lot of music alone, so it is not anything entirely new, being isolated when writing music. For Wilderun I take care of most of the song-writing and do the core, fundamental song-writing for the band and the rest of the band flashes everything out with arrangements and orchestrations and all the other instruments and everything. The core song-writing on one single instrument is usually an isolated process anyways, so in that sense it was not anything new, but it is one of those things that felt different. Even though I normally write alone, the feeling of isolation regardless of the band started to affect me even if normally I had been writing alone as well. I have more opportunities in my daily life to get out and see other people and do normal things and that was sort of bounced the isolation of song-writing. When isolation is complete, it is even harder to write music, because you don’t have other normal things to balance that out, when you take a break from being alone. Even though we don’t meet for the core song-writing and only collaborate for the arrangements and recording process, it is still very valuable to get together and talk about things and see each other, mess around as a band in person, not being able to do that made the song writing even more difficult, even though song-writing is usually an isolated process – if that makes sense…

Yes, it makes a difference when you are obliged to be isolated or when you choose for it…
Yeah that is a good way to put it. We had no choice at that point. That is the biggest part of the difficulty.

Where does ‘Epigone’ stand for on this record?
Epigone is basically a word that defines like a sort of follower, a disciple, usually in the context of art or philosophy or just some sort of more esoteric thing. All my lyrics are very personal. Every time I write lyrics it is me, looking into words and just juggling with my own mind and my own state of feelings. I usually don’t extrapolate to the greater world or even not to the band as a whole, for me it is just really personal, but that is what I always used to do: keeping it personal. So epigone is basically just a reflection of how I deal with my anxiety and insecurities and self-doubt about myself and my life   not even necessary having exclusively to do with the band and music. It started out as a personal look into my own self-doubts and insecurities and this time I think they are a little bit more upfront, everything I have ever been insecure about when it comes to being an artist and being a musician, not even only the insecurities, but just the day to day frustrations with choosing this as the thing I want to do with my life, the doubts that I have whether this is the right way of living my life. I think more than on other records, this theme of feeling like an imitator or a follower of other people, uncertainty, genuine or not, I think you can extrapolate a lot of other things and not just the musician or an artist, I think that can have a meaning in many people’s lives. Maybe you are following other people’s footsteps a little bit too much. I think that is quite a universal theme, a feeling that a lot of people recognize, although usually the word is used for an artist, that’s why most of the lyrics on the record have to do with some of play of an artiest, why an artist chooses to pursuit that life and everything it involves.

It is a mission I think, something you have the need to do…
Yeah, I think so. Sometimes it is like a reluctant calling in some way. Sometimes it is absolutely rewarding, sometimes it is a blessing and a beautiful thing. When things are going right, it can be the best thing ever, but there’s a lot of times where you can feel it a bit like a curse, you can feel like you have no choice but to follow, even if sometimes you don’t really want to feel like, that’s what you have to do. So it is a mix.

I notice it in the titles that you are struggling: ‘Identifier’, ‘Ambition’ on the other hand. These emotions may fight within you…
Absolutely and I think the song ‘Identifier’ is maybe the most ‘on the nose’ song in terms of some of the things I was trying to get out, the self-identification you have, defining yourself as an artist. I think a lot of times this can be really difficult, because you can lose yourself in that, you can lose yourself in this self-identification, I am an artist and this is the only thing I am now, this is who I am and if I don’t have this, then I am nothing. That sort of feeling. When the inspiration does not hit, when maybe you are not getting into the flow of art as well as other times. Then you may think: if I don’t do this, I am nothing. It is easy to forget all the other important things in life besides art and music. There are so many other important things in life that artists probably forget about a lot of times and lose sight on. I guess they are too focused on the self-identification of an artist. There is a real trap there. It is good to try to avoid it.

I can understand that urge in my writings. I put everything aside and maybe I hurt people. On the other hand, the result is something to cheer up people’s day…
Exactly, you have to focus on the positive things. Sometimes you have to stop thinking about you as an artist and you have to just think about what you bring to other people and realize that is ultimately the most important thing.

Let us make things clear about the changing of the guards on the guitar. I found out that Joe Gettler is still playing on the album, but now we have Wayne Ingram…
Yes, it was a little bit confusing for some people, because we made this transition within the new album cycle. So yes, Joe Gettler was our former lead guitarist, but he did indeed play all the lead guitars on ‘Epigone’. So he deserves all the credits. On the tour we did with Swallow The Sun, Wayne toured with us and he played all those leads live. He is also a great guitarist, so it was a pretty easy switch, but Joe certainly gets all the credits for the ‘Epigone’ lead guitar parts. Luckily it was a pretty easy transition, because Wayne was the original lead guitarist back on our first record and he was not really able to focus for a few years because of his personal life and his job, he pretty much only hadn’t enough time to do the orchestrations, the biggest contribution to Wilderun overall is the orchestration. He didn’t have time to do that for a few years, which is why Joe joined the band, but Joe’s life also had some changes and his full time career is actually as a tattoo artist. He is a phenomenal artist, he needed to focus on his career. He couldn’t find the time anymore which is totally understandable. We are still great friends. He is an amazing guy, he is a great artist and a great person, so it was very amicably and luckily it was easy, because Wayne was able to step right in again, it had worked out with his personal life too, he was able to step back in as guitarist. So now we are officially back as a four piece band.

‘Distraction’ is the longest track on the album, divided in four parts. What can you tell about that composition?
It was written as one song pretty much. There seems to be a current tendency for Wilderun writing a long, four piece song, because actually we had exactly the same thing on our second album ‘Sleep At The Edge Of The Earth’ (2018), a song called ‘Ash Memory’. It was about twenty minutes long and got cut into four parts. So we decided to do it again with ‘Distraction’. It is something about my song writing style. I seem to divide things into fours. We made the decision ultimately to split the song up, because we think the four pieces are really distinct and they really each have their own character, they are really distinct chapters in that one story. We just wanted to make sure that people notice those changes. It is definitely the song with the most dramatic shifts and dynamics overall. We wanted each part to live in its own world. They are all ending up in one big piece ‘Distraction’. One is centred around the vocals and the lyrics, the second part is surely the heaviest moment on the whole record, we wanted to have a moment focused on the guitars; the riffs and the heaviness. The third part is the longest part we have with pure orchestra on a record. Wayne put a lot of time into the orchestrations for this track, a sombre atmosphere kind of piece and ‘Distraction III’ is a bit of a climax. A sort of typical Wilderun epic climax, but because ‘Epigone’ as a whole is a very anxious and uncertain album, we could not end the record with that, because I think the atmosphere, the mood of the record is just too uncertain to occlude with that positive vibe. It had to end with the fourth part and it kinds of sums up the angst and the uncertainty we were all feeling. This is why the record is ending in such a dissonant, messed-up way. It is hard to explain, but we felt like that was the feeling needed to end this record.