1.For those that have never heard of you before, can you tell us a little bit about the musical project?
Tide Harvester is a black metal album with themes drawn from a setting I made for my Pathfinder game (For those unfamiliar, Pathfinder is a tabletop RPG similar to Dungeons and Dragons).
I've been running games in this world for a while and in the time I've been doing it, lots of lore has been created and expressing it in a medium outside of a standard RPG setting was something I thought would be interesting. There's plenty of present imagery in the lore of the world that fits the black metal aesthetic, I think.
2.In April you have a full length coming out, can you tell us a little bit more about the musical style that you went for on the recording?
This is my first foray into creating black metal, but I tried to capture a lot of different important world events while still keeping the roots of the music in black metal. Songs about tragedies and loss were made to sound dark, melancholic, and dejected while songs about heroes and victories were made to sound more bright and triumphant. Including short instrumental tracks between a lot of the main songs was meant to serve as a transition between the short stories presented by the songs themselves.
3.A lot of your lyrics cover fantasy themes, can you tell us a little bit more about your interest in this topic?
I've been playing tabletop RGPs, board games, and trading card games for the better part of 10 years now, I've always been very fond of fantasy. Creating new worlds with vastly different rules of nature and ecosystems is an incredible thing to experience, and so is exploring worlds created by others with vastly different imaginations than your own.
4.What is the meaning and inspiration behind the name 'Tide Harvester'?
In all honesty, originally I just picked it because it was a name that sounded cool in my head. I started this project before I created a lot of the lore for my Pathfinder setting, so this project influenced some of the events of the Pathfinder world. In the setting, Tide Harvester was a title given to a dwarven scion after he led an expedition to rescue thousands of refugees from a land destroyed by a demon lord.
5.Can you tell us a little bit more about the artwork that is presented on the new album cover?
It's a composite image of a forest in south Missouri and a blood moon that happened last year that I managed to get a good picture of. It of course draws heavy inspiration from early 2nd wave black metal albums in terms of how it's presented, I've always greatly enjoyed Darkthrone's early cover art, especially A Blaze in the Northern Sky.
6.With most of your musical projects you record everything by yourself, are you open to working with other musicians or do you prefer to work solo?
Corvus Corone, my funeral doom metal project, is something that is extremely personal to me so that's likely to remain a solo project (though I'm not opposed to hiring a mix/master engineer if it ever becomes something I can reasonably do). Generally speaking I really like collaborating with other musicians, I've done so in the past and I'll continue to do so in the future as long as I can find people to work with.
7.A couple of your musical projects are signed to 'Syrup Moose Records'. are you happy with the support that they have given you so far?
Syrup Moose has been incredible, it's a passion project spearheaded by one dude from Canada who cares a lot about the artists he signs and has been incredibly supportive throughout my few months working with him.
8.On a worldwide level, how has the reaction been to your music by fans of black metal?
This will be my first full-length black metal album, so we'll see. Hopefully people won't take it too seriously, writing high fantasy black metal is inherently cheesy on its own so I leaned all the way into it.
9.What is going on with your other musical projects these days?
I'm working on album #5 for Corvus Corone and the fist full-length for my death/doom project Cult of Orion. I'm not sure when I'll return to Tide Harvester again but it's definitely something I'm going to do. I have a couple of other projects on the backburner and some collaborations going on, so I'll definitely be busy for a while
10.Where do you see yourself heading into as a musician during the future?
I'll keep making music and hopefully continue to grow into new audiences. I don't ever plan on making it to "mainstream" audiences, but if I can keep a good core audience I'll be pretty damn happy with it
11.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?
I drew some inspiration from early 90s black metal, but most of it comes from atmospheric black metal bands like Eldamar and Hermóðr. Tide Harvester is a bit more lyrics-focused, but the instrumentals are a blend of influences that I tried to make my own.
12.Before we wrap up this interview, do you have any final words or thoughts?
Trans rights are human rights, keep nazis out of metal
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