Hi Chris, the last time we spoke was for ‘The Reckoning Dawn’. That is four years ago and we were in the middle of the pandemic. These are a little bit better times, although the world is not going in the right direction, I know…
It definitely isn’t.

And I think the new album ‘The Imperious Horizon’ has also traces and maybe some thoughts about this ongoing problem with how the world is going or not?
Yes, I think so. We called it ‘The Imperious Horizon’ and it is a little bit of a cryptic title I think, but something that is imperious, is kind of arrogant or sneering, I guess it has an agenda of power. So we had this kind of idea… the world has become a kind of dangerous place the last years I think. That is not just in the UK, but in many countries. There are lots of things and lots of different levels that are affecting people, so we had this idea that there is always this ongoing agenda, this ongoing ideology, this ongoing force that sits behind the horizon that is always plotting some things, that is kind of stripping away people’s freedom in some way. I think that the idea of the title is something that is behind the horizon, behind the clouds, that is all over the horizon there is this steaming, sneering, political, social business or agenda that’s not making people’s lives anymore free and probably is making the world a lot more dangerous I think.

That is true. When I was a kid, the world seemed to do its best to make everything better. Better cars, better wages for common people, more holidays and now we are going in exactly the other direction… that is rather painful for next generations…
Even simple things! You hear of energy companies making record profits and yet telling people: ‘oh we have to charge more for this’, ‘you have to pay more for gas or electricity or the water’, how do you make record profits then? Five hundred billion or whatever stupid number it is! And yet most people cannot afford to build their lives on it. Bills like that, that is by design, not by accident.

And you do your best to not making it trouble your life, but you are confronted with it anyways daily, even in the supermarket…
Yes everything is getting so expensive. My view on it – and I think it is not a shelter view – is that lots of people feel that. It is coming from all angles, it is market rates, it is food prices, it is energy prices, it is fuel, it is digital currency. The government in the UK is mentioning fuel and in a few interviews they are talking about national service. Why would you be talking about national service, if you are not thinking about war? All these things going on with Ukraine and Russia, they always make the existence of and friendship with Europe more complex. It feels like it won’t take much to bring the rest of the world into it and it feels like there is a design to that. I don’t want to do too much with conspiracies, but I also think that some of these things just become quite obvious and you even hear it from people you don’t expect to hear those things from. My parents – the older generations – they are also feeling this tension in the world and I guess that this album tries to be a moment in time for where we are in the world and where we are as a band, so with lyrics that are similar written as older albums, trying to bring older and ancient things into the modern world and they try to put some colour into these stories I think. The new single we did, ‘To The Edge Of Tyranny’, is probably the most direct lyric we have ever written. It is obvious, it is quite clear that it says: how far can you push people before they start pushing back against tyranny? It is a very, very direct lyric. Normally I write metaphor lyrics or quite distant, but that was almost like a punk song in a way. Very direct.

I have also the impression that the album is harsh, you are angry…
I think so. Yes, I think you are correct. I think I tried to not let that hang out too obvious. I think there is a style to it, there is an elegance or a stylishness in the words that I like to keep in it because I think it fits with this music very well. So I like to tell the stories in a way that feels as good as the music is. I want the lyrics to kind of match that and I think that the previously mentioned ‘To The Edge Of Tyranny’ has got very direct lyrics. I think it is also the most direct, very rock-‘n-roll song that we have written with Winterfylleth in years. So it felt like a match, but there is a difference with making black metal music in my view. It is organic and it is atmospheric and it needs to be evocative and I think it covers all those things in the right way. And so I try to write about those things in a way that also it belongs to the music, not just a punk song with black metal music around it.  .

Not only standing on the barricades, but also a kind of epicness… I have written down – it may be a contradiction – it is gracious black metal…
(laughs) yeah, maybe! I certainly think that there is a style to it. I really spent a long time mixing this album. It has got much more interesting sort of styles and we have a new guitar player Russell Dobson. Mark, our keyboard player, he has already been writing a little bit more of the songs, so there are quite some new influences. I think that is all coming together at the right time. Sometimes when you are making an album, it depends on where you are in your life as well, because everybody else has other things going on in their lives as well, not only music. So sometimes the album is a reflection of how much time you have in the studio, it depends on the life phase you are going through, what’s going on in your life. And I think this time it just felt as everything was good, everyone had enough space, the writing came out really quickly and easily. The mix was a challenge and the mastering was a challenge, we tried to put more keyboard in this time and things like that, but it very much felt like everything came together at the right time and I hope that reflects in what people hear and how they react to it. It feels like it is a really strong one to me and I hope that everyone agrees.

You had some issues to solve before the album. I was very surprised to hear that guitarist Dan Capp left, almost right after the release of former album ‘The Reckoning Dawn’. How come?
No sinister reason really. We live just outside of Manchester, most of us, and Mark lives in the northeast and Simon lives in Worcester. Most of the band lives towards Sheffield, on the outskirts of Manchester. Dan bought a pretty big house in north central Wales, he moved up there with his family and his mom and his kids and his wife, so it is going to be three or four hours away from us. He was focusing on his other projects as well. He joined that band Gràb from Germany. He is doing Solstice, a great classy band from the UK. So he is doing all those things. He’s got a T shirt printing company. He designed the artwork of the new album, so he has been quite involved still. It is just that he could not commit in doing writing and playing stuff anymore and so he decided to take a step away from doing it. It wasn’t that we broke up for any reason or anything like that.

Fortunately. You found another guy, Russell Dobson and he already did some writing for this new album…  (just as Dan did for the first time on the previous disc)…
That is right. This is the first album that Russell has written music for us. He has been in the band since 2020, just after covid-19, so he is almost four years, nearly five years in the band now. He is a close friend. He has his own project – which is also on Candlelight – called Necronautical. He is in that band too, but he is not the main writing member in that band. Winterfylleth took Necronautical on tour in Europe and the UK in 2017, so we got to know these guys quite well then. When time came that we had to find somebody new, we knew he was a great player and he lived in the area; so we asked him to join. He wasn’t too super busy at that time with Necronautical and it just felt like the right move. He is an interesting guy. He is a bit younger than me, so he has got a different energy and he is really stoked to make great music. He writes music, pretty different stuff over the years. The core members have always been me and Nick writing. He plays very different to me, he plays very different to Nick. He has a much more traditional style, he is very fast, he is very single stringed. He has much faster tempos in his band. We are a bit more sweeping and flowing and sort of evocative in the sound. It was interesting for us to tour with last record ‘The Reckoning Dawn’ with Russell being in the band, I think that was good for us, because he has learned how to play like Winterfylleth. When the time comes to write a new album, he kind of knew how to play now. So we did not have like a ‘clash between our styles’ as we had if we would have written straight away with him.

On recent albums you had more classical heavy metal influences in the guitar playing I think…
We made an acoustic album in 2018 with all acoustic instruments and that was good, because Nick, our bass player, is a great classical guitar player, Dan was obviously doing the Wolcensmen project exploring music in a similar style in his own band and then I was kind of doing similar things trying to write some acoustic material. So we did that as Winterfylleth and it felt like the right thing to do. It definitely had an influence and is translated on how we made ‘The Reckoning Dawn’ and I think this time it is good to have some new influences. Russell has a much different approach to the song writing in the sense that where me and Nick may have a similar kind of idea that goes one way, Russell does not think like that, because of his different mentality and it goes different ways. Sometimes we follow the path from Russell, which is a new option now. So we can explore some riffs and things down there. That has been good for the album. It is good for the variation. Of course Winterfylleth has its signature core sound, but whatever the guys add can be interesting. Mark Deeks is a super skilful player, but when he reaches out to the band, he is helping us with the vocals, helping us with lots of keyboards, helping us with the string player, the violin and cello parts, all those kinds of things and really arranging the stuff that is surrounding the music. He has come from being a guy that has added a layer of brilliance on top of what we already did to now being someone who is kind of bringing original riffs and material to that as well, which I think it is really great. To me it is not just one or two guys doing it, everyone is contributing to the songs.