Interview With Welicoruss
By Keith Clement
Greetings from Metalheads Forever Magazine, I’m Keith from the Scorching Heat of India and pleasure to meet you guys of the coldest icy depth of Siberia, tell me how are you doing?
Hi, at the moment everything is great! We are in creative stream and we have a certain feeling of ecstasy of what we do with the new album. At the moment we have a short break of touring but literally in a few days we will again jump into our tourbus and go to conquer the next areas!
Welicoruss might be new for our readers around the world, can you tell us how it all started for you?
One-man band project Welicoruss was founded by me in earlier 2002 while being a student at the Architectural Academy in Novosibirsk (Western Siberia, Russia) I desided to do experiments in different styles of music. That time I didn’t even think about band or the tours or something like that. In the same year I released the first demo “Wintermoon Symphony“, which was spreaded very quickly in underground scene of Novosibirsk. Band was made in 2005 and in 2008 major metal label CD MAXIMUM released our debut album “Wintermoon Symphony“ in Russia and CIS countries. At that moment, we were very active in the Siberian region and Russia, and subsequently it led to releasing of the second mini-album „Apeiron“ in 2009 by the same label. Then there was a big break, but in 2011 and 2013 the singles „Kharnha“ and „Sons of the North“ (together with video clips) came out, which showed that Welicoruss had changed the sound but by that time I had problems with lineup and a certain internal crisis (mostly becouse Welicoruss could not develop more in Siberia) so because of that I desided change band location to Prague, Czech Republic.
How did you all got together, and what made you come up to the genre of Symphonic Black Metal?
After a short time after my moving to Prague, I met there our guitarist Gojko Maric, drummer Ilya Tabachnik and bass player Dmitry Zhikharevich, and in that line-up we continued touring and making music. In 2015 we released the third album “Az Esm” by our own which have got great marks in most of metal webzines in the world. Of couse new members greatly influenced the sound of Welicoruss and because of that band looked like really mature and serious, we already had something to offer the listener and we favorably and definitely differed on the stage from everything that happened before. At the beginning of our activity in Russia, many critics characterized our style as symphonic pagan metal, but perhaps that was not quite true, because it actually was and remains symphonic metal with strong influence of black and progressive metal. At this moment, it is black metal that gives us a strong inspiration and ideas, and that is what you will hear on the upcoming album.
You guys have toured quite extensively around Europe, what are the other continents you want to step in 2019?
Yes, the basis of our activity is constant concerts, moving, meeting new people – we live and breathe it, it gives us the strength and ideas to move forward! New opportunities are pouring constantly from different sides and it is difficult to tell where we will play next. Last year, for example, we played a lot of concerts in central and eastern Europe, Balkans and even in Cyprus, this year it`s quite possible that you will see us on the stages of Asia and the Middle East. We will not run into before.
Tell us about the release of Siberian Heathen Horde, What is the songs all about in this album?
Like all our previous albums, „Siberian Heathen Horde“ is transcendent, mystical and occult. The visible part shows fantasy and fairy tales, a lot of abstract images, but this is just a veil for those who do not see the essence. Welicoruss for me, first of all, is a diary of my life, in which I record my spiritual and internal feelings, so the album on the one hand turned out to be very tough and intense, from the other side surprisingly airy, melodious and colorful (which is not typical for black metal bands) . All songs are different in their conceptions and sound, so the listener obviously will not be bored 🙂 I cannot tell you more about the songs but just check out some titles and I think you will understand everything – „Siberian Heat Horde“, „Spellcaster“, „Path Of Seductions“, „Metaphysical“, „Tree Of Nations“, „Frostbounded“.
Tell us how is your experience working with Alpha Omega Management?
I know Alex the founder Alpha Omega Management for a long time, when we met each other on Facebook in 2009, at that time he came several times to my hometown Novosibirsk, but we have no opportunity to meet personally. But in the end of 2018 we met in Prague and he introduced his company, which did a service that was very interesting for us. Not so many time passed by but even now we have some first results in the form of opportunities to go to rather exotic countries and perform at large stages and festivals!
What are the future plans for the band?
Now we are putting the final touches to our new album and we are looking actively for a label in order to publish it, then the following tours begin, during the breaks between concerts we are planning to film 3-4 video clips, and we are already working on our first DVD (we told about that a lot of times but there were no possibility to do that before ). In fact, this summer we want to start working on the next album (I mean after “Siberian Heathen Horde”) because we already had enough songs for that!
What is the most greatest moment in the life of Welicoruss?
I think it was our show at Hellfest in France – a huge stage, lots of amazing bands, great light and sound, amazing organization of the whole event, 200,000 metalheads from all over the world and of course lots of new contacts!
Would you like to share a message for the fans and readers who are going to be your fan soon?
Friends, you probably haven`t even heard about our band until now, but very soon “Siberian Heathen Horde” will rush into your house with breathtakingly sinister and dazzling songs and bring for a moment a frosty and snowy tale to your life! See you at concerts!
MHF Magazine/Keith Clement
