Pantheïst - Funereal doom metal After discovering the greatness of doom metal I found a website called doom-metal.com, there I read about a band called Pantheïst. So I looked them up, and well, what can I say... Excellent music with a great atmosphere! By email I had contact with Kostas. I sent my first question to him 14th of July, last answer got here 30th of August. Hi Kostas. I'm really glad that you wanted to do this interview, as your music is something that I find really interesting and quite moving. Could you start by just presenting the band so the readers know who you are...? Hailz Phuling, it’s a pleasure doing this interview! Pantheist started out in early 2000 as an one-man project. At that time I was playing some kind of dark synth music because I didn’t own a guitar (although the seed of my musical concept was already firmly rooted in my brain). Around that time I met Nicolas, our guitar player, in the university and we started jamming together. However what we did was nothing special and it wasn’t until I bought a guitar, equipment and an 8-track recorded that the birth of Pantheist in its current form took place. I recorded some songs on my own with the 8-track, Nicolas liked them and so we started rehearsing tracks. In November/December 2001 we recorded a first demo called `1000 years` which we mainly promoted through doom-metal.com and mp3.com. This brought us not only to the attention of many doom fans, but it also helped us to a label deal with Firebox and two new members (Oscar on drums and Frederic on bass). With this line-up we recorded our first album `o solitude` which was released by Firebox in April of this year. It was just a couple of months ago that I stumbled upon the website of Mourning Beloveth. I never liked doom metal before until I downloaded a couple of tunes with them. I later discovered the doom-metal.com website and read about You. After the first listening of the tunes I could find to download I was stuck. Your music has got a real atmosphere and is perfect for one of those nights when your feeling really depressed. To be honest I don't own any of your records yet, but I've downloaded 1000 Years and 'O Solitude and can't stop listening to it. How do you go about when you compose your songs, and what inspires you? With your music comes a great feeling of darkness and sadness, I think. Is that something that you try to get across with your music? Composing my songs is a very personal experience and this process can take up to months and even years. It is for me very important that there is a concept behind what I do for Pantheist. I’m trying to create songs with their own essence and emotional power in the first place, I’m not satisfied with a random collection of cool riffs. Music and lyrics need to support each other in such a way that the essence of the track is not only felt when one listens to the whole song paying full attention to the lyrics, but also when one only reads the lyrics or listens to the music only without paying attention to the words behind it. Darkness and sadness are two dimensions which are represented to a great extent in my music; I guess the key words which could describe the compositions of both our demo and `O solitude` are solitude, isolation and despair. When starting out back in 2000, did you have plans to make Pantheïst into a full setting? Have you done a lot of gigs since getting a full line up? Not really, Pantheist started out like a one-man project until I started co-operating with Nicolas, our current lead guitar player. My original intention was to just record my music with Nicolas with the means that we had at our disposal, the idea to have a full band and play live didn’t even occur to us, but it evolved gradually as we realized that we could get more out of it when new members joined the band. We have played 11 gigs thus far, all in the period between October 2002 and April 2003. This period also includes our Funeral Procession Tour with Skepticism and Until Death Overtakes Me in April. What made you decide to put all despair into music, and why did you choose doom metal? Music is for me a very powerful form of expression. I suppose all of us need a way to vent our negative emotions and for me music is the most appropriate way to do so. Some people are into boxing, others paint, some others dance...those are all means of expression, and my own way is my music. I can’t really answer why I decided to put despair into music, perhaps it is a particularly nasty emotion from which I really wanted to get rid off. And let’s face it, there is no other musical genre devoted as much to despair and pain as doom. Do you have any new material in the works? Are you planning a new release? I have plenty of material for at least 3-4 albums, although I’m not sure if all of them are going to be used for Pantheist. We are planning to start rehearsing tracks for our next album soon. The new tracks are going to be darker, slower and heavier and there is going to be a concept behind the new album! Oh. Do you have other bands/side projects too? Since you said that all the new stuff might not be used for Pantheïst. And what about the rest of the members, do they have any other bands? 'Cause it seems to me that you, Kostas, are the one composing basically everything. I have a few side projects, but they are not that active at the moment. However, I do plan to experiment a lot under the guise of other projects in the future, as everything seems to fall slowly into its place and I start having a clearer idea of what kind of music I would like to compose in the future and how to do it. Our bass player Frederic was involved in many musical projects/bands in the past, among others Rhymes of Destruction (pagan metal). He and I used to play for another now defunct Belgian band called Bellator. Our new guitar player Arne has been involved in various underground metal projects as well. Ahh. Really looking forward to hearing your new tracks. Will you continue to use the mixture of growls and clean vocals as you've done before? Any "development" we're gonna notice? Except that it's going to be darker, slower and heavier? :) Have you decided what the concept for the album will be? Concept albums can be really cool. I can tell you that the clean vocals shall decrease dramatically on the next album and they shall be replaced by deeper grunts and spoken parts. All in all, as I said before, the tracks shall be darker and heavier and there will be less classical influences. Most of the new tracks shall be shorter and more compact. I don’t think we’ll ever compose a track with the length of `Curse the morning light` again, although I guess never say never... The concept is about a man who commits the seven cardinal sins to challenge God into punishing him, in order to prove his existence. What are your beliefs about ‘God’ or a form or higher being? The name Pantheïst gives you a quite clear reflection of your beliefs in this matter, but I think that most people have no idea what exactly pantheism is. Could you just give us a small explanation of your (I assume pantheism is your) philosophy? My beliefs about God can be summed up easily: I don’t believe that there is a need for a `supernatural` being to explain the world, I think that the natural world is already miraculous (and complicated) enough. About pantheism I must say that because I use that name for my band, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m a pantheist. I just find it a very attractive philosophy and in my opinion, seeing the whole world as a big mystery, the goal in itself rather than a tool used by God or chance, is the only logical and natural way to look at things. As I’ve said earlier your music has got a really powerful atmosphere of sadness, and you also say that solitude, despair, sadness, solitude (and so on) are different dimensions of your music. For that type of music to be attractive to create I suppose those are feelings you’ve dealt with personally. Have you struggled with depressions during your life, or maybe you’re still dealing with some personal demons? If this is not something you want to talk about, I totally respect that! I have struggled with many negative emotions during my life, including strong feelings of inferiority, frustration and loneliness, but all in all, I think I can safely say that I’m not a depressed person. I believe in myself, in humour and that eventually there is enough beauty in this life, despite the darkness and daily disappointments. If you ever attend a Pantheist rehearsal, you’ll be very surprised to find 4-5 guys making lots of fun and in the meanwhile playing the most depressive music ever. I guess it’s this combination that makes one a complete person, you must be able to laugh and to cry -as long as you do it when it’s appropriate. Hmm... Well, I think it's a good thing to being able to surpass all of the negative feelings you might be experiencing. But yeah, it does surprise me that fully "sane" guys play depressive music like this. Ok, to be honest I actually can't come up with any new questions. I think I've asked the ones I was really wondering about. But you've been an interesting person to interview, and I'd have to thank you for your time. I wish you guys all the best with Pantheïst in the future, and I wish you, Kostas, good luck with your other projects. Anything you'd like to say as an ending? Mmm not really, I'm not a man of many words. I would like to thank you for this interesting interview and wish you good luck with your zine. Related links: Pantheïst doom-metal.com