An in depth and long interview about Archimage's past, present and future.
Go and read it here:

http://www.metal-revolution.com/plugins/content/content.php?content.1456

In case the link doesn't work, just read below:

The original interview can be found at the Metal Dragon Promotions blog:
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=22650275&blogID=348146764

Archimage Interview by Nocturna

Archimage Interview
With Evil (solo artist)
Finland based Black Metal
www.myspace.com/archimagehorde

Nocturna: Hi how are you ? You must be terribly busy working on the plans for your first full length album, how is that going for you ?
Evil: Hello, I'm just fine, thanks for asking! I truly am busy these days and not only because of the first full length album lurking in the future but I'm also planning a split album with some as yet undecided band, and setting up my own firm/label too. So it's pretty hectic at the moment but I can't really complain. The material for the full length is pretty much composed and the lyrics are partly written too so if all goes well there might be three Archimage releases within 2008! First the EP very soon and then the split and finally a full length.

Nocturna: Many are eagerly awaiting the release of your debut ep, hopefully to be out later this month, with pre-orders nearly being sold out ! What can your fans expect from this album ?
Evil: The idea of this EP was to show to the world that Archimage is a real band making real music, because before this EP there wasn't really any material to show to people even if the band has existed for about four years. I could have started with the full length album right away, but I want to release my songs in a certain order, showing the history of Archimage through time instead of just forgetting the older songs. So this EP is kind of a "top four" of the material I wrote between 2004 and 2006.

Nocturna: The band originally started as a full line up but with so many exterior pressures and other commitments members have come and gone, you have always been the driving force behind the band and now it is your solo project, this must be very demanding for you, how do you balance all the roles within the music?
Evil: Making the band a solo project again has had its good and bad sides. Now I don't have to wait for others to learn the songs and the schedules don't create any problems, but then again it completely fills my own schedule since I have to do four peoples work within the band. When I turned Archimage into my solo project in summer 2007 I just had had enough with the delays of recording material, that were caused by problems that weren't anyway related to music or me. I wanted to finally make this EP, then I could concentrate on the newer material, because I had already began to have too many songs completed that I wanted to record. I still do though, that's what gave me the idea of making a split album too. Four years of writing songs without recording anything has filled my home with paper piles containing hundreds of songs that I want to record someday. But in general since I really want to compose all the parts of the songs myself, the creative freedom of doing it all alone suites me really well.

Nocturna: At the moment you are appealing for a new drummer, what are you looking for in applicants and what prompted this decision ?
Evil: Well I'm looking for someone with ultimate speed, diversity and personality within drumming. I really liked my ex-drummers work, but he moved to far away from my hometown and is currently in the military too so I saw that it would be impossible to work with him anymore, specially when his other projects took a lot of time away from Archimage. I have talked with a few applicants abroad and one of them seems promising but in the perfect world the drummer would live in my hometown or somewhere pretty near so we could do live rehearsals and maybe even some live gigs one day.

Nocturna: With the unique insight you have from your experiences as a band and a solo artist, which form of musicianship (ie band or solo artist) do you prefer and why ?
Evil: That is a pretty hard question. Maybe a band, where everyone obeys everything I ask them to do. Hehehe..!! But seriously, I truly enjoy the freedom of creating music alone, though I prefer to have people around me playing it for the potential gigs.

Nocturna: The debut ep shows the initial progression of Archimage, which direction are you intending to take the full length album as you have developed greatly in these last few years ?
Evil: For the full length albumI am trying to use the songs that I find to be the most defining Archimage material created to date. The EP has some rather clear thrash/death metal influences, whilst the full length shall be pure melodic black metal. And by "melodic" I don't mean any crappy power metal ego-boost-soloing, but atmospheric riffs in the spirit of bands like Emperor and Taake (without synths). The EP doesn't really even give that good a picture of what's to come since the newer material has so much more diversity in it but I am glad that the songs I write now don't sound the same as the material written three years ago. So in a nutshell, the album shall be very dark and brutal, yet really atmospheric and majestic.

Nocturna: To begin with you practiced covers and then started to work on your own material, can you talk us through the lyrical process you use, possibly in the context of your work for the full length album ?
Evil: The lyrical process has become harder for me during the passing of years. I had written poetry etc. for years before playing guitar at all and during the first years with the band the lyrics were pretty easy to write for me compared to writing music. These days as I feel like I have learnt to express the things I used to express through words by notes, and thus it is really hard to add anything verbal there. Typically I just collect the ideas that come to my mind (for example in a bus or at work) to my cell-phones calendar and then write those down at home. From those pieces of ideas, that can merely be a theme of some lyrics or few lines of text, I start to build complete lyrics when I get inspired at home. Sometimes I write the lyrics the same moment I invent some new riff, but that's pretty rare these days.

Nocturna: Obviously there are many influences within your work, and you have been influenced by many people, musicians and philosophies, how do you incorporate all of this into your atmospheric sound ?
Evil: I don't really know, it just.. happens? I don't really think about anything too consciously when I write new music. I mean, the current mood that I'm in when I play guitar naturally effects my work, but in general I just kind of sink to my own world when I play. I can basically do it for hours without noticing anything happening around me or the time passing at all. All the influences that are somewhere in my subconscious are just incorporate somehow in a very natural process and come out as new music. If I try to write something intentionally the outcome is usually pretty crappy. So if I want to make a new song that is anyway decent, I just need to wait for the inspiration to attack. Thus at times I can write three songs in a week or just one song within three months, the timeline between differs a lot with me.

Nocturna: Currently you have begun a long awaited project in the form of your personal memoirs and philosophies, you take the stance of an atheist, how are the initial plans for the book coming along and what can we expect from it ?
Evil: The book project is on a hiatus at the moment, but whenever I get new ideas for it I write them down just as I do the lyrical ideas for my songs. I'm so occupied with my music projects right now that I don't have time for the book, but I hope to get it ready one day. It might be 2010 or 2020 when I get it finished, but I want to do it because writing about philosophical matters makes you look at them from new angles that you haven't even thought of before. So to me, besides writing, that project is also a lot about learning and seeing things more clearly than before. The main idea of the book is to indicate the irrational madness and stupidity of religiousness with rational examples and to demonstrate more reasonable ways of thinking than believing in higher powers. Nothing new in general, but hopefully a fresh point of view on those matters.

Nocturna: Recently you decided that you latest album would not be produced in a studio, how did this come about and what are the advantages of where you are producing the album now?
Evil: This idea was closely related to turning Archimage into a solo-project. After we got the third cancellation of free studio times with the band still having more members than just myself, I just decided to do it all myself. Play all the instruments and produce the music at home so all the delays would be because of me and not because of any drunken producers breaking their bones only a few days before planned studio time. I also like the freedom of home recording since now I got endless time to work on the songs instead of rushing it somehow together within few hours. Many of the tracks on the EP are not being built from separate takes with any lame pro-tools mixing, but played once from the beginning until the end. It took damn many takes with some songs and there are some minor mistakes there (that I hope only I can hear heheheh) but this way I think it has a much more vivid sound, and shows that I am a really musician. Some of the tracks are mixed from two or three takes, but there is a huge difference between that and making a copy-paste song with perfect riffs on the computer screen.

Nocturna: As yet there are no current plans for Archimage to go on tour, in this new year 2008 do you see a possibility of bring your sound into live performances that so many of your fans are crying out for ?
Evil: Doing a live gig with Archimage is pretty unlikely to happen, but it's possible in theory. As I personally hate to do vocals and play guitar at the same time, I'd need to find some really talented session members for two guitars, and a bassist and a drummer too. So maybe not during this year but it could happen one day since the idea of a live performance has recently started to interest me a lot more than before.

Nocturna: With all that you have learnt from your experiences what advice would you give to others in a similar position to yourself ?
Evil: I start to sound like a broken record with this one, but all I can say is that you must never give up with your dreams. It doesn't really matter what some "experts" or anyone says about the music you make. When you are making the kind of music you'd personally like to listen too, nothing else really matters. It's very likely to be liked by some others then too, if the case is you aren't completely tone deaf.

Nocturna: Finally do you have a special message for the fans and new fans reading this ?
Evil: Well, the EP's printing has been delayed, but it's going to be printed as soon as possible when I have all the needed paperwork done for it. So the people who have pre-ordered it, please have some patience you will get your copy. And for everyone else, keep your ears open for the full length later this year and the possible split album too. The material on those two will astonish you all, I guarantee that!

You can read it also here:
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=239760421&blogID=335486405

INTERVIEWER OLA (AXBM)
EVIL -ARCHIMAGE - FROM TAMPERE FINLAND

- All instrumentation,created, writer of black metal music by
Evil himself.

1.) What do you think about the music which you you playing
right now, why black metal ?

-Well, it just came naturally when I started playing guitar some years ago. The black metal music just runs through my veins, it's atmosphere is very unique if you compare it with other music genres. In many other genres it often seems like the music is just about who can play the fastest guitarCsolos or some other technical ego boosting but in black metal it's all about the feeling and atmosphere, or at least for me it is.

2.) Beside your music, what kind of music do you love
to listen? And which bands do you like?

-Emperor has been my favorite band for a long time, their music made me grab the guitar in the first place. In general I can't really name any genres that I'd particularly listen 'cause I listen to everything that I find to be good. My heart beats for black metal but there are so many crappy bm bands and bands that people associate to be black metal that really aren't so I prefer to merely name bands instead of genres. So other than Emperor, I listen to bands like Darkthrone, Mercyful Fate, Behexen, Taake, 1349, Slayer, Type O Negative, System Of A Down, The Prodigy ..to name a few from different genres too. I also like some classical music a lot.

3.) How do you guys organize "you music, solo,creative, own
rhythms, and why black metal " in the
beginning?

-In the beginning when Archimage wasn't my solo project I was a bit of a tyrant in the band anyway. I have made all of the songs and lyrics pretty much always and thus I have taken the right to guide Archimage to the path that it's going at the moment.

4.) Let's talk about your upcoming release , what do you wanna
express through this EP?

-This debut EP of Archimage is about to be printed during this month or January 2008. It's going to be a hand-numbered limited edition and it's also pretty much sold out already with pre-orders (if I don't rise the amount of the copies a bit). The four songs on the EP are kind of "the best of the old days". The four best songs I wrote between 2004-2006 and thus some of the songs have more thrash influences, some are a bit death metal styled, but all are pure Archimage songs anyway. I was still searching my style when I wrote those but I thought that the songs were good enough to deserve to be recorded before I begin with recording the newer material. The goal with this EP is to let people know that a band called Archimage exists and to give a tiny glimpse of the upcoming glory of the full album.

5.) Would you tell us the Goal of your band near future?

-After the EP is printed I shall proceed with the first full album or with another EP or a split with some other band. For the full album I might want to have some really good session drummer to make it perfect. Then again I just went through some of my old riff books and discovered 3-5 old songs more that I had almost forgotten. Because I'd really like to record those too at some point, I might do an EP or a split with those songs if I won't find a suitable drummer for the album soon enough. Time shall tell that one.

6.) Would you tell us your Metal gear?

-Sure. My precious blasphemy axe is an old Peavey Predator that I have covered with pages torn from the xtian hymn book. My bass is a simple Washburn Taurus, but it's good enough for me at this point. Then I got some pedals from Zoom and Digitech, and Dunlop's Tortex guitar pics are the best for some serious tremolo picking!

7.) What kind of band you been influence by and why?

-When I started playing guitar bands like Emperor, Mercyful Fate and Slayer were really important to me and you could hear it from the very first songs that I wrote very well. Darkthrone influenced me a lot during those days too. But now that I have found my own sound the influences might not be as obvious anymore (I hope) but I assume that they will always be there in the background. My main goal is to write the kind of music I'd like to listen and I really like to listen the bands I mentioned before so I can't really avoid sounding a bit like them.

8.) Beside Uk, how do you think of Canadian Metal scene,
what do you think about Canadian Black metal?

-Well, I got to admit that the Canadian scene is a bit unfamiliar to me. I've heard a few bands that I remember to be Canadian and they had some rather atmospheric music but I can't recall the bands name now. I know that I got some serious lacks of knowledge on some parts of the world with their bm scene when the same time I know too much about some other countries scene. Hahahah.

9.) What do you think about American and European black
Metal Scene?
-To me the European black metal is the best one, like black metal from Norway, Finland, France etc. and I mostly listen to European black metal. The American scene has some amazing bands too, but there's also a lot of bullshit going on there. Like people main goal is to get money with it and that's pretty wrong place to start with black metal. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't make money with black metal, but that shouldn't be the point of it. But I guess these days it's pretty much all the same anywhere, people doing black metal for "fame" and money (and black metal is so wrong genre for that).

10.) What is your Hobbies, i see you are into writing book
about atheism and individualism can tell me more about
it !!!!

-Well I have planned about writing a book about my life philosophies and thoughts in general for many years and now I have finally started it for real. Since the music takes most of my time I can't write it too often but I try to keep the project alive all the time. I might get ready with it like 2010 or 2020 but anyway now than I have told people about it I feel that I really need to complete it one day and I'm pretty excited about that. Otherwise I don't really have time for hobbies if you don't count music as a hobby 'cause it takes all of my time when I'm not working, sleeping or boozing. *laughs*

11.) What do you think about Asia? For example: Japan,
Korea, China or Hong Kong.

-I think that Asia has some great potential in the metal music in general. There are many dedicated fans there and some rising bands too. I have also noticed that for some reason Finnish metal is very popular there and I can't complain about that one.

12.) Hey, say something to your fans from Italy, Uk,US or Canada or worldwide.

-I really appreciate all the support that I am getting worldwide these days and I just can't wait to introduce the full albums material to the audience one day. It will be something worth waiting, I can promise that already!

13) Are you planning in Touring or spreading you music
worldwide.

-Well I have pretty twisted attitude towards live gigs. I might want to play guitar with some other band or sing in some other band for live gigs, but since I'm doing both in Archimage it's not very likely to happen, not at least in near future. That's just 'cause I hate doing those simultaneously and can't see myself letting someone else to do vocals or lead guitars in Archimage. But I won't completely deny the idea either. And for the releases I hope that my music spreads as much as possible, it's great to get feedback from some places really far away, even if it's like "your music sucks ass" because even that is so much better than "it's ok, just fine". World is full of bands that are just "ok", neutral, blanco etc. so if someone hates your music, there is a good chance that someone will love it too. Unless the music sucks ass completely! *laughs*

14)What would you say, with your experience to all new
musicians coming in metal scene to help them out or to
get ready for what?

-I don't think that I am at any position to give advices to anyone, but I know that if you really want to make it you need to work really hard for it. Make sacrifices and get ready to be disappointed numerous time. Many give up, but I'm not going to end up being one of those bitter people who had a dream but didn't make it happen. You need to be very realistic too, and careful. If you are too naive, you will get ripped of before you even know it. I have had some serious struggles with Archimage but I've never even thought about giving up and finally now after the band has existed almost four years the first EP is recorded and ready to be printed. If you live for your art and got a huge longing for creating new music, you know that you can't stop.

Thank EVIL his solo band is called ARCHIMAGE. Thanks for accept our interview again. Wish you guys all the best in Tampere Finland and your upcoming new albums in 2008
Best wishes and success in your carreer and project now and future. Please keep supporting "AXBM PROMOTION DARKNESS PAGE" !!! INFERNALS HAILZ, TO YOU !

-Thanks for the interview and keep up with the good promotion work for the underground!