1. First i want to congratulate to your debut album achievement!
It seems like it did go quite fast from your demo to this full album. Where there more labels than Iron Bonehead Productions that were after you?
- Thanks and I don't really think things were going very fast. We started rehearsing in 2011 and at that time I had already made more than half the tracks. The idea of the band had been there for some years and I had talked with Sod and Undeity about it while they were playing session in Sadomator for live gigs. So when we started out we were already quite far in the process and after first rehearsal Necronuntius joined and added his lead guitar. After a few rehersals we decided to make a promo tape to spread to friends and bands we were in contact with, we dubbed the tape in 50 copies and it was soon gone. After some time we ere getting more and more people asking if they could get a copy of the promo, so after our debut gig (playing support for Blodfest and Vulcano) we decided to make another promo tape out of the live recording. The recording was not the best, but it showed the direction of the band and was good enough to spread.
We dubbed around 250 copies and brought them at Ogdru Jahad and Sadomator live gigs to spread for free, trade for beer or we traded with other bands for their tapes. Non of the tapes ere actual demos, it was a rehearsal tape and a live tape spread for promotional reasons and non of them were ever up for sale.
Early on in the process I contacted Iron Bonehead and asked if they ere interested in releasing Ogdru Jahad, since they were already releasing my other band Sadomator and the relation to the label has always been great. Patrick said they would be happy to release the LP and as such there were no reason to seek anywhere else and also no other labels have shown interst, but I don't know if that is because no other label is interested, maybe they were not aware, since we mostly spread the tapes direct to the fans we met and not sending to labels, also we made deal pretty quick with Iron Bonehead.
After the LP deal with Iron Bonehead we took contact to Ancient Darkness to hear if they were interested in doing a CD version and they showed interest right away. This was done because all members of Ogdru Jahad have dealt with Ancient Darkness with other bands and that has always worked out well. I know I have been playing for years with Sadogoat/Sadomator and never wanted to do CD, but Ogdru Jahad is a completely new band and I wanted to see if this approach could help us out and maybe give us some chances for better gigs or such. I don't know, but at least people will be able to hear the album in their car, if they have a car.
2. Can you tell us about this Album "I" as its called.And what is your aim with this new force?
- Yeah, we were thinking about different titles for some time, but non of them really seemed to fit and then we began thinking of just doing the classic self named debut, but that didn't really feel right either. So in the end we decided on "I", this can be understood to ways, it can be just number one, because it is first album, but it can also be I as in ME, which should be the focus in the satanic message of anti God and be your own god instead. So the title is a bit symbolic in that way, but it will be harder to explain if our second album gets to be called II, hahaha.
At first the aim of the band was simply to re-record the old Sadogoat songs from the EP, I always felt they did not really fit in with the rest of the Sadogoat songs and not really would fit to re-record with Sadomator and they needed to be re-recorded since the old recording didn't really sound that good and had lot of different problems. Also I was working on a couple more songs in the same vein. So we wanted to record just these few songs and see if we could get the chance to play some gigs. But as we were rehearsing we made more and more songs and at that point Sadomator was resting and so was Blodfest, so in the end it seemed like a good idea to get more serious with Ogdru Jahad and so we decided to record a full album and see how far e could go with the band.
3. For the people that have heard or will hear your official demo "26th April 2012" will
they feel right at home with "I" or?
- Well as mentioned before I don't think either of our tapes are official demos, they are promos spread to get people to know the band. They were not recorded as demos or such. But I think if people liked the tapes they will probably like the LP too. The tapes are rough and both are full of errors and bad production, but they show what path we were going at the time and I think it is easy to get into the LP after that. After all half of the songs on the LP is on the tapes too.
So I don't know, I can't really not see any reason why anyone would not prefer the LP to any of the tapes, but you never know.
4. As i understand you guys have been active with other bands under the past say ten years, are you still active with some of them and see Ogdru Jahad as a sideproject or is Ogdru your current main band now?
-We have all been playing in different bands for a long time. Sod is playing in Ligfard. Undeity and Necronuntius is playing in Blodfest and has also been active in some of the most important underground bands in Denmark since the early 1990s. I have mainly been playing with Sadogoat/Sadomator since 1998, but have also been active with other less important bands. Sadomator is still active, but it has been some time since we recorded anything, hopefully we will record new material later this year, but it might be 2014 before anything happens.
I don't think any of us see Ogdru Jahad as our main bands, but I would not really call it a side project either. It is hard to explain, but for me Ogdru Jahad is my main active band at the moment since we rehearse, record and play live, but Sadomator will always be my main band even though it is not very activefor the moment. I am not 100% sure how the other band members think. On the first album I have made most of the music and lyrics, so I guess they might feel that it is more side project to them, but since Blodfest is not active right now it seems Necronuntius and Undeity is not having other bands which are more active right now. Maybe Ogdru Jahad is our main side project, hahaha, I don't know, fuck that.
5. You have an interesting bandlogo, can you tell us abit of its symbols aside from the obvious satanic statement & Who did it?
- Ehm, this guy from Grigorien did the logo, he has also been working on covers for Ligfaerd and such. I told him the concept of the band and he gave me a few sketches to choose from, at that point I must admit it was a bit hard to see where he was going with everything but after that it took form and ended like this. There is lot of different symbolism in the logo which incorporate some of my different interests, also some which has not been really part of the band so much yet, but we will see what the future brings. There is the antichristian/satanic stuff, which is very representative of the lyrics and concept of the band so far, we have a goat which would probably be more part of my other band, but since we are taking some old songs and re-record that fit in well too and then there is the Elder Sign which is part of the Lovecraft mythos, which again is more of my personal interest and more used in Sadomator, but since it links in good with the Ogdru Jahad and general cosmic horror I think it fit in well with the band and also the mix of mythology we have in the first album cover and probably will mix more intro the lyrics of the coming songs.
6. How did you come in contact with the splendid artist Alexander L. Brown of BNB Illustration & Design?
And did he has free hands or did you have a "plan" for it already? ...by the look of the great cover it seems like you had a clear vision, fits the bandname good & it would look cool as a giant backpatch.
- Early in the process of the album I was beginning to have ideas for the cover and I contacted Patrick of Iron Bonehead to hear if he knew anyone who would be good to work with. He had a few suggestions and one of them where Alex and I already knew some of his work and I thought his style would fit my ideas. I made contact to Alex and told him my ideas and he agreed to do it.
I don't know if I had a clear vision of how the cover would end up but I knew most of the things I wanted to have included on the cover and such. Alex added soe of his own ideas and sketched up everything and after that the final cover took form. Alex also did the layout for the rest of the LP and CD, so the complete packages just ended up awesome. The cover includes a great deal of mixing different mythology and lot of symbolism, so everything might not be completely clear right away, but I think that is one of the great things about it, there is always more to everything you see and in the end it ended up being one of the best album covers I have ever seen and I really hope Alex will ork with us again in the future.
7. Speaking of patches is there some nice merchs on its way?
- There will be two different shirts, one from Iron Bonehead which will have a design by Alex and one from Ancient Darkness which will have a completely unrelated design. There will also be a patch from Ancient Darkness, it will probably only be available as a free bonus to everyone who orders the CD direct, but I guess that depends if the patch is ready for the CD release. In the future we might get more merchendise, but nothing is planned right now.
8. How does the plans for gigs look like this year?
- Not many so far. We are going to play at Killtown in Copenhagen and we might play some warm up gigs for Morbosidad if their European tour gets to happen. Things are a bit hard right now, there is lot of things in the way of rehearsal and we have been laying low for some time, waiting for the LP to get out.
9. A big thanks for doing the interview! Best of luck to you!
Any final earth shattering words?
- Thanks for the support. Cthulhu fhtagn
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