Akouphenom Interview

1.For those that have never heard of you before, can you tell us a little bit about the band?
Akoúphenom is a Black Death Metal Act formed during 2015 in Galicia, Spain, with the aim of evoke the darkness, the unknown, the morbid and the beyond within their music. From us, you will hear dissonant and chaos-inspired riffs between a massive wall of sounds and ambients.

2.How would you describe the musical sound that is presented on the recordings?
From a Black Death Metal basis, we play avant garde ideas on our music, always avoiding the common rules in extreme metal, but looking also for a musicality in every song. It's important for us take the listener to every state we want through a song. All the different ideas did in the rehearsal room were selfr ecorded and sel fproduced in the EP Flesh Sublimation between August and November of 2015.

3.What are some of the lyrical topics and subjects the band explores with the music?
The leitmotif in Akoúphenom lyrics is the main force that dominates all, which is the Chaos. Above our existence, above all our understanding, there is the chaos that leads everything up in a endless stream of different beings where mankind is just a stain, a mistake. Essentially, the lyrics describes the fascination in the facts that proves the upper force the chaos is: our death, our rottenness, our final destiny as stardusts, getting lost in the emptiness. A proper statement to conceive our lyrics would be say that our rotten guts and skulls are so real as the stars and infinite space.

4.What is the meaning and inspiration behind the name 'Akouphenom'?
The essence behind is describing the wall of sound that makes the listener suffer from tinnitus, which in Spanish is translated as "Acúfeno", and there you can get our name. Also, the writting of Akoúphenom is incorrect, it actually has a symbol "phi" in the place of -ph-. The symbol "phi" is the representation of the perfection in classical arts, because there's a real musical order behind all the chaos we display.

5.What are some of the best shows that the band has played so far and also how would you describe your stage performance?
Recently we have played as headliners at the SWR Barroselas Warm Up celebrated in Vigo, Spain, and we have to say we were truly satisfied with the live we did. What people saw was 4 devotees of the Black Death displaying his passion for the morbid and unknown, stained in dark and making a huge chaos over the stage. But you can prove for yourself looking at our live photos in our FB page. Works better an image than thousand of words.

6.Do you have any touring or show plans for the future?
No, the plans for now is preparing ourselves to start the recording sessions for our first LP, so we take a break on touring and playing live until next year.

7.Recently you where a part of a split with 'La Hija del Carronero', what are your thoughts on the other band that had participated on the recording?
La Hija Del Carroñero are great friends of us, and we shared many concerts together and supported between us more than with others band. They play an obsessive and sick death grind, in the vein of Machetazo, and after the first gig we played together, we unite forces to make an split after a very long party and worst hangover in the aparament of the bassist, Patillas, who also runs the label that owns the split, ChristFuckingChrist Records. We feel eternal gratitude with Patillas and CFC Records.

8.On a worldwide level how has the feedback been to your music by fans of black and death metal?
The real feedback was in the local scene, making us play a lot around here and taking a place for ourselves in the Galician Scene, which is taking a good evolution giving more good bands than before.

9.Where do you see the band heading into musically during the future?
Once we publish the LP, plans are to expand ourselves and spread away our music outside our country. After that, and talking about musical future, our new songs will become more complex in everything, from harmonies to lyrics, from drumming to riffing. But actually we are open to collaborate with bands to unite forces and work together in new publications.

10.What are some of the bands or musical styles that have had an influence on your music and also what are you listening to nowadays?
Our influences are even open to non-metal influences, but we can point to some scenes that were important for us, like the French Black and Death metal scenes, with bands like Deathspell Omega or Arkhon Infaustus, the Polish Black Death Metal scene, specially Behemoth and Infernal War, the Australian Black Death Metal scene with Portal and Impetuous Ritual, Dead Congregation were also a very notorious influence for us, and in our national scene we have some bands from which we have learned some important things like Balmog, The Last Twilight, Andhord and Altarage. Nowadays we like so much the EP from Aversio Humanitatis that we have been talking about it in the rehearsals.

11.What are some of your non musical interests?
Prgich is illustrator and graphic designer, Pandemia is a sound technician and is playing guitars in the almighty Empty, Silvara is a surfer and Dragon only pays attention with the worst and bizarre. All this help in some way to make the group truly independent and with a real DIY philosophy.

12.Before we wrap up this interview, do you have any final words or thoughts?
We would like to thank formerly OccultBlackMetalZine for this great interview, thank also to all the bands who played with us live, all the crew who stares us in every concert and all the people who experienced us, live or at home. For those who still doesn't know us, there are our links:
https://akouphenom.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/akouphenom/
See you all.
Ak.