1. Can you tell us a little bit about the band for those that have never heard of you before?
We are a post-black metal band from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I started the band as a solo-project because I didn’t know anyone who wanted to play black metal at the time, and I wanted to have full control over the music.
Now it’s more of a group-project, and we try to draw from musical styles outside of black metal, while still maintaining that core sound.
2. How would you describe your musical sound?
The sound of the band has changed a lot over time, from folk/ambient/black metal, gradually into the post-metal/post-rock/ black metal hybrid we play today. The sound has always been fairly minimalist, focusing more on creating an atmosphere than showcasing technical skill. I believe that music should be more about displaying emotion than showing what you can do, and I think this transfers over into Moradin’s sound.
3.What are some of the lyrical topics and subjects the band explores with
the music?
We seem to change our lyrical ideas with each release. Every release is sort of concept-based, and so each track is related. Our latest release, Awakening, was a huge turning point both musically and lyrically for us. I feel that both the music and lyrics are now more serious in nature than they used to be. Awakening deals very much with the cyclical nature of life and death, and how we all belong to Earth. It also deals with the idea that reflecting inward on one’s self can help us achieve peace and happiness. The newer material deals more with the fact that man is altering Earth in a negative way, and it will ultimately lead to our own destruction if action isn’t taken soon.
4. I know that the band name was taken from a Dungeons and Dragons
character, can you tell us a little bit more about your interest in this role playing game?
I started Moradin when I was 15 years old, and so I was pretty incapable of writing about anything truly meaningful. I grew up on the works of R.A. Salvatore, who largely writes about the Forgotten Realms, which is a D&D based universe. Moradin is a god mentioned often in these books, and it seemed like a good name, so I used it. I still think it’s a cool name, and as a band, we don’t want to deal with restarting from a name change. To this day, I love Dungeons and Dragons, because it allows you to escape into a different world, and forget about the horrible things going on in
this one, for a time, and it remains a large part of my life. So I think Moradin is still a fitting title for the music.
5. What are some of the best shows that the band has played so far and how
would you describe your stage performance?
I think the most fun we’ve had live was on three occasions. First, when we played Dark Forest’s CD release for their album Land of the Evening Star.
It was awesome to play alongside a great and like-minded local band, who are good friends as well. Secondly, we played two identical shows with some local post-metal and post-rock bands, Chasing Cygnus, Jung People, and La Chorrera. They’re all great people and incredible musicians, and we had tons of fun playing with them. The third show was this year’s Calgary Metalfest. We were put on at last minute, and I’m really glad we got that chance. I feel like it was our best performance to date, and we played alongside a lot of awesome bands.
Our stage performance, I feel, is very meditative. We try to make the songs blend together into a single, atmospheric experience, so there’s no stage banter between songs or anything. We’re going more and more in that
direction, trying to put people in a very primal, ethereal place. We also want to start burning incense when we’re playing, and maybe having a projector going, but those are just ideas right now.
6. Do you have any touring or show plans for the future?
We’ll be leaving town for the first time in August, when we are supporting Trollband, from Vancouver, BC, on the Alberta leg of their tour. We’ll be playing the Calgary and Edmonton dates with them, and we’re really excited! There’s also a tour in the works for early 2014, most likely, but I don’t really have any details yet. That tour will hopefully be across
Canada, or at least Western Canada.
7.Currently you are unsigned, are you looking for a label or received any
interest?
We’ve received interest from a couple of labels, that we would have really liked to work beside, but things always seem to fall through for one reason or another. A friend who works for Pest Productions has offered to help us find a label to release future material. We’d like to work with a label, but we have also started to adopt a DIY kind of mindset, as far as
CD and merch production goes. I guess we will wait and see what happens, if we get some interest from a good label, there’s a good chance we’d work with them, but I’m not going to go out of my way to search for one.
8.On a worldwide level how has the feedback been to your music by fans of
black metal?
The feedback from people abroad has been surprisingly great! Our fans are really supportive, especially considering that black metal is filled with a lot of harsh, overly-critical people. I’ve seen links to our stuff in Japanese and European forums, which was really cool, and we’ve had orders from all over Europe, Japan, South America, Mexico and the US. We actually seem to get way more interest from outside of Canada than we do in it.
9. What is going on with the other musical projects these days?
David: I currently play live drums in Dark Forest and am the drummer in a band called Sigil with our guitar player Peter. Both of those projects have been at a bit of a standstill the past while, but that’s given me more time to devote to Moradin, which I’ve enjoyed. For Sigil, we’re about to release our first full-length, called Mutagen.Grant: I do my own project called Sub-Atomic Chaos. We play technical death metal, and we’re working on our first full-length right now.
10. What direction do you see your music heading into on future releases?
I think that Moradin is going to become more of a group project in the future. Up until now, I’ve written all of the music, and almost all of the lyrics, but I think if everyone in the band is putting in ideas it will become more personal to us all and we’ll be able to advance. I think we’re going to go in a doomy direction, with a lot of ambient, instrumental sections, but still with the aggressive and chordy influence of black metal.
11.What are some bands or musical styles that have influenced your music and also what are you listening to nowadays?
Earlier Moradin was hugely influenced by bands like Moonsorrow, Emperor, Agalloch, Drudkh, Winterfylleth and Wodensthrone. Around the time I wrote Awakening, I started listening to a lot of Alcest, Lantlôs (.neon), Sigur Rós, and Mogwai. I was still listening to a lot of Agalloch as well. For our second full-length, Sonnenanbeter, which we’re currently recording, alot of influence was from those bands as well, but I was listening to a LOT of Lantlôs’ Agape, as well as Altar of Plagues, Amesoeurs, This Will Destroy You, Isis, Deafheaven, and Neurosis.
David: Recently, some bands I’ve discovered that I really like are Year of No Light, Whirr, Chelsea Wolfe, Pallbearer, and surprisingly the Deftones. I’d strongly recommend Year of No Light to any fan of post-metal, black
metal, or anything in between.
Jeremy: I’ve been listening to lots of Agalloch, Sigur Rós, Matt Good, and
Mogwai. Grant: Lately I’ve been listening to Mastodon, Periphery, Intronaut, etc.
12.Outside of music what are some of your interests?
David: I study geography and environmental sciences here in Calgary, and I’ve come to really love it. Aside from that, I enjoy hiking, gaming (mainly D&D), biking, and just hanging out with good people.
Jeremy: I do lots of hiking, biking, just enjoying the outdoors and the
wilderness.
Grant: I’m really interested in quantum physics, and I study economics in
Calgary
13.Any final words or thoughts before we wrap up this interview?
Just a huge thank you to you for this interview, and for everyone to stay tuned for our second full-length, Sonnenanbeter, which should be out later this year. Cheers!
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