Interview

An Interview With Guitarist Eternal From Epitaph Of Seikolos

Montana based black metal act Epitaph of Seikolos released their debut demo "Comes The Angel Of Death" in November of 2008. Samples from the demo can be heard on the Epitaph of Seikolos MySpace page. Guitarist and founder Eternal (Ryan Denzer-King) filled me in on the band's history and the existential themes present in their music.

xFiruath: Who are the members of Epitaph of Seikolos and how did the band originally form?

Eternal: I started working on music for the band back in January of 2008 because I had been wanting for a while to do a black metal project. The band started out mostly as a caricature of black metal, similar to what Metalocalypse and Dethklok did for death metal. I just wanted to do something as black and grim as possible, without much reference to the artistic value of the music. As I got more into the project, though, I realized I really liked what was coming out of it, and I started relying less on standard black metal tropes and more on what I felt true black metal should sound like. In the beginning I was doing all the parts, but realized I couldn’t do very good black metal vocals. To supplement the instrumental parts I had written I contacted my friend Lee Mickelson (Woad), who was living in France at the time. I knew Lee from school, as we were both studying linguistics at the University of Montana, and he turned out to be not only a good black metal vocalist, but a brilliant lyricist. Being heavily influenced by Wolves in the Throne Room, as well as several progressive metal bands with female singers, such as Aghora, I also wanted some female vocals in the music, so I asked my wife Amanda Denzer-King (Verbeia), who added some parts after Lee and I had done all the basic tracks. We also enlist the help of Arthur Koch for visual media.

xFiruath: When did you first get started in music and what got you interested in heavier music?

Eternal: My first contact with music was piano lessons when I was about five years old, and I haven’t stopped playing since. I started playing guitar in high school, and played around Atlanta with my band The Chaos Orb, later known as Oneiros and ultimately Vailala Madness. My friend Micah Martin, now playing with Ascended Masters, introduced me to a lot of heavy bands when we were in middle school and high school, starting with classics like Metallica and Pantera, and later more underground bands like Cynic, Meshuggah, and Neurosis. I started listening to more black metal in college, when I was a DJ at the Vanderbilt University radio station. During my training at the station I studied under “Metal” Mike Meacham, who had a metal show on WRVU and later went on to form the band Loss. His show was mostly black metal, and I found a lot of bands through him. More recently I’ve started to get more into the progressive or post-black metal scene with bands like Wolves in the Throne Room, Enslaved, and Alcest.

xFiruath: Are you currently involved in any other musical projects besides Epitaph of Seikolos?

Eternal: My main project besides Epitaph is an instrumental progressive metal band called The Kolios Project, which I started in college as a creative outlet for some material I had been working for years. I write music for the band and play guitars and keyboards, and we have Manfred Dikkers (At War with Self) on drums and Pablo Carrascosa (Tekne) on bass. Over the years we’ve collaborated with some great musicians who did some guest spots for us, including Santiago Dobles and Alan Goldstein from Aghora and Tymon Kruidenier from Cynic. We’ve released two demos, available on our web site, and are currently working on our first full-length, which will hopefully be released this year.

xFiruath: Tell me about the name of the band and its connection to the music. I’ve read that the Seikolos Epitaph is supposedly one of the oldest known works of music in the world.

Eternal: I first heard about the Seikilos or Seikolos Epitaph while studying music in college, and I’ve always thought it would make a great name for a metal band. It is indeed the oldest written piece of music yet found. The themes we work with in the band are simple and naturalistic; we don’t have songs about modern life or technology. Because of this, I think the band name, which calls to mind the long distant past, is an appropriate moniker.

xFiruath: How would you describe the sound of Epitaph of Seikolos?

Eternal: In terms of comparisons to other bands, I think we’re most influenced by and most sound like the more progressive black metal bands like Wolves in the Throne Room and Alcest. We try to balance heavy distorted blast beat passages with more lyrical minimalist themes. Besides black metal, I also draw a lot of influence from Philip Glass and modern classical music. The overall sound of the band is meant to inspire what you might label existential angst. We’re big on confronting the world as it is, without hope or fear, rather than despairing or attributing negative events to some larger benevolent plan. We take a great deal of influence from writers such as Sartre and Camus, and I think that existential feel seeps into the music.

xFiruath: What do the lyrics in your music generally deal with?

Eternal: Woad writes pretty much all of our lyrics. In the earlier songs, I usually came up with a concept for the song, and he would write the lyrics, often taking influence from some of the classical black metal bands like Emperor and Immortal. In later songs, he has been building songs from the ground up. His lyrics tend to incorporate natural themes which I find comparable to Yves Bonnefoy, including wind, night, forest, stone. The songs also tend to focus loss, despair, and eschatology. When I do contribute lyrical content, I am heavily influenced by Pentti Saarikoski, Yves Bonnefoy, and existentialist writers such as Sarte, Camus, Beauvoir, and Marcel, in addition to my own writing, which includes fiction and poetry.

xFiruath: Has Epitaph of Seikolos played any live shows or have you only recorded music at this point?

Eternal: We have only recorded music at this point, and, though Woad and I knew each other before starting the project, we have not met since we’ve been working on the music, since he was living in France and I have since moved away from Montana. I am currently living in New Jersey near New York City, and I may see about putting together a live band for the Epitaph. However, given the beneficial and productive relationship I have had with Woad, any live band would probably be just that: a collection of musicians for performing the music live, rather than a new official lineup for the band. That being said, I definitely would like to have the chance to perform this music live at some point.

xFiruath: What’s up on the horizon for the band? Are there any future recordings planned?

Eternal: Much more so than other bands I have been involved in, Epitaph of Seikolos is a concept band, and revolves around the themes we all pursue in our everyday lives. Because this concept, the meeting of modern black metal and existentialism, is so well-defined for us and so ever-present, recording ideas present themselves at every turn. I have a list of no fewer than a dozen future recordings already planned, though very little music has actually been written for them. In terms of the immediate future, we’ve started writing and recording for our self-titled full-length album, which will hopefully be finished next year.

xFiruath: Apart from your own music, what bands or albums do you listen to most frequently that you’d recommend to our readers?

Eternal: With due respect to all the classic black metal bands, in my own opinion Wolves in the Throne Room and Deathspell Omega are everything I think black metal should be. I think they are phenomenal forces in the metal community. Alcest and Amesoeurs are good examples of the so-called “post” black metal style. I would say three of my favorite albums, as well as ones that most influence me, are “The Mantle” by Agalloch, “Chaining the Katechon” by Deathspell Omega, and “Two Hunters” by Wolves in the Throne Room. “The Mantle” is quite possibly my favorite album of all time, and I would highly recommend it to anyone, not just people who listen to metal.

xFiruath: That’s all my questions, is there anything else at all you’d like to discuss, either about metal or anything topic?

Eternal: First of all I want to thank you and Metal Underground for doing this interview. It’s satisfying to be able to talk about the vision of the band and what we’re trying to do with our music. In a world where popular music often just circles around in the same directions, black metal is an exciting and vibrant genre, and I’m always interested to hear the new directions bands are taking it in. Thanks again, and stay metal.