Carnation are a death metal stalwarts from Belgium. On September 18 they are planning to release their second full length album “Where Death Lies”. It was a pleasure to share a few moments with the frontman Simon Duson.
The Band :
Simon Duson – Vocals
Jonathan Verstrepen – Guitars
Bert Vervoort – Guitars
Yarne Heylen – Bass
Vincent Verstrepen – Drums
Hello Simon, How are you today? I’m Keith from Metalheads Forever Magazine
Hey man, Good, how are you? My day was quite calm, not so busy as the last few weeks.
Where death lies is scheduled for Sep 18, can you tell me about the writing process and production behind it?
Yeah Sure, we wrote most of the album in second half of 2019, it was quite charging, we spend our debut album years working on it, like lot of time, until we were satisfied with the material, and in two years after the release of the first album we have done the second album, It was quite difficult to do this in such a short time in planning the material. It worked pretty well and came out good, we completed it in December 2019 and we started recording it in January 2020 and finished recording in April 2020. So it took about like 3 months to record everything.
What is the the theme or ideology kept behind this album?
Yeah actually the general thing that is in most of the songs, Lyrically its actually about reincarnation, Like the quest for reincarnation or the quest for immortality.
You released a video for this album track “Sepulcher of Alteration” what is it based on?
This song is about “Sepulcher” which means a burial place, one who go and take the ritual will change its physical appearance, Protagonist of the song is you are into loss of human body and into a spiritual life I would say, He would enter in to the Sepulcher of Alteration to set him free from the bounds and let him into highly spiritual being with an extended life.
Although the band started in early 2013, it was in 2018 you gave a full length album, what are the kind of struggles you were facing until then?
We just wanted to take the time to write a really good album, 2015 we brought out the EP and worked on writing more songs and we had a lot of songs, that we are not happy about, thought we were not good enough maybe, we kept on writing songs until we were really happy about the materials until then we said ok, we can record this and have a good debut album. Because the debut album is the most important one. It is the album people got to get you know about. It really took a lot of time, but it was yes a good one. We were not in a hurry to release or something so it was all good.
Can you tell us about you experience in 2019, 70000 tons of metal and Damnation Festival in UK?
Oh the Cruise 70,000 tons of Metal was pretty crazy, it went on the first week of February I think of 2019, when we were contacted it was like four days before the cruise, it was real last minute so we have to rush in, we were all planning to go on vacation then we had to change our plans, cancel everything that we were doing and booked flight and had to redo last minutes. If you are asked to do a tour like that, you won’t think about it, you will just say Yes, It was a super cool opportunity to play, theres a lot of really nice people to meet, and great play It’s a special experience so we have to act quickly and managed well, we went there from Berlin to states, we played two shows there in the cruise, all bands played two shows. I think it went really well, people enjoyed our shows, we got good responses, people came and talked to us and they liked ours, and we haven’t played before like this for a crowd. We were in Brazil and Japan and we were never in States. It was a good opportunity to reach out to new audiences. We really enjoyed it. The Damnation Festival is also a real good one in the UK, we had six shows there, I liked the UK tour, it was a real big festival, tickets got sold out and a real cool place to play, we started a bit early and people very early there and we put up a really good show. Both those festivals are a good opportunity for us,
What are some of the great moments for the band?
Oh we had a lot of real fun stuffs went on touring Japan twice already and Brazil also once and those are real special places to go to and play. There are lot of things you never expect to see really, it’s the other side of the world for us, First time in Japan we were really young in 2016, we didn’t get the time to enjoy the country but the second time went to see a lot of beautiful temples and lots of beautiful places to like real Japanese culture and then we were like we can go different countries and enjoy the different cultures when you play music, its just a surreal experience,
Next plans for the band?
It’s a really difficult situation we did like a live show in the past weekend, it’s the only thing that works out lately, it’s a bit difficult, because it’s a bit weird to perform without an audience, Like you get a lot of energy from the audience, it creates the atmosphere of the show when you perform in front of the audience and its just one person you are talking to becomes stale, you know what I mean. I think we tried our best and it went pretty well. I think this will go for a while with Covid 19, and the event management is pretty affected in the Western Europe because of the regulations out there. Really strict and not sure when we will be able to play again so its gonna be a lot of digital contents I’m afraid.
Any Livestreams that is on the pipeline?
Yes, I think we will be doing a lot of play through videos for time being through Seasons of Mist recording label, we have an album coming out in September, it would be cool to play live in September or October but I’m doubtful about it. Lets see how it goes.
Reception in your country?
When we announced in July about our debut they were surprised that an album is coming out after 3 years, there were a lot of good message, like we were waiting for months to hear some news from you guys, so its really awesome to see an album is coming out in September, Yeah the reception is overall very positive.
Thanks for bringing back the real Death Metal to the scene and thanks for putting up an amazing album this year
Thank you man, We really like to keep it like that, The first album we really strictly kept it like the old school, think this album most of them will be like that, and we kept some black metal here and there, still with the old school death metal vibe all over.
Message for the fans?
Yeah, Keep safe in this times, its really strange situation for everyone and for metalheads out there, its difficult for you without bands and the same for the bands, Music will make you let go of this situation.
