Andrew's interview with Kovacs Gergely
(HUNGARY)
July 2004
Could you – just shortly – introduce Paramaecium
to the readers?
Well, Paramaecium has been playing doom death metal in Australia since
1991, so we've been around for a long time. We've released three full
length albums and are just now releasing our long-awaited fourth album
'Echoes from the Ground.'
As I understand it's a concept album. When and how did you come
up
with the concept and how much time did you work on it till you finally
had the lyrics for the album?
I wrote pretty much all the music before I came up with the storyline.
And it's almost as if the music inspired the story. The storyline deals
with a young man in the nineteenth century who travels from England
to Palestine to visit Biblical sites with the hope of proving his faith.
Each song is set in a different location and I've visited all of these
places myself years ago.
As I read on your website the new album will be your heaviest
by far.
What led you to this musical path? Was it a conscious decision to write
more aggressive music, or did things just happen that way naturally?
Not really a conscious decision. When I start writing, I just come
up with tunes in my head and in fact, as well as being an aggressive
album, it's probably also the catchiest music we've produced. We still
have the long songs with an operatic style, courtesy of our soprano
and violinist, but these songs are quite moving and memorable too.
On the album we can welcome back old Paramaecium guitarist Jason
DeRon (who has departed once again since then). How much did Jason
contribute to the songwriting?
I wrote all of the music and lyrics myself on this one. Jason worked
out some overdubbed guitar parts for the beginnings of the first two
songs on the album which have definitely added colour. But more than
anything else it was just great to work with him again, even in that
small capacity, and we have hopes of working together on Paramaecium
and another band in the future. We just have a natural ability to work
with each other creatively, and our skills complement each other.
Who plays the drums on the new release?
Once again, it's my cousin Mark Orr. The difference is that this time
I didn't restrict him as much but rather told him to be as creative
as possible and to experiment. The results are truly amazing.
Do you like classical music? (I ask this because classical instrumentation
played an important role on all Paramaecium albums.)
Yes, I love a lot of classical music. I don't listen to as much these
days but I was basically trained in music in a boys' choir and we sang
a lot of Elgar which can be grand at times but also sombre. And we also
sang a lot of Hungarian songs in Hungarian such as those of Zoltan Kodaly.
So that's where my musical training comes from.
How did you find the people for the classical musical elements
(soprano,
flute, etc.)?
I actually started with the phone book. Rang a violinist, asked him
if he could recommend a flautist and soprano and he did. And the rest
is history. We did that for the third album and for this album I had
lost track of the players and happened to bump into our violinist at
exactly the right time. Then I tracked down our soprano on the web.
Got them into the studio and that was it.
'Echoes from the Ground' is released by Veridon Music. Is Veridon
Music
your own label?
Yes, I've been thinking of starting a label for ages, mainly to handle
Paramaecium but also to work with some newer metal bands who could benefit
from the doors that Paramaecium opens. I've been running Veridon.com
for many years as a website development business - this new label just
brings the Veridon brand to my music interests.
What do you spend your time with besides Paramaecium?
Apart from my website business, I'm also involved in running some other
businesses, and working on my writing.
Well, I'm basically out of questions. Is there anything you would
like to
add?
You can visit our website paramaecium.com for latest news and ordering
info on the new album. There are also heaps of mp3s and an active forum
community with myself and Jason De Ron and about 100 other fans actively
involved, so check it out. We'd love to have more Europeans on board.
Thanks a lot! God bless you!
Cool. God bless you too!
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