Interview by Kris Peters
The true essence of music is enjoyment.
Whether that be personal or in a larger environment, music has always been a commodity with the ability to spread joy as far as the ear can hear.
Somewhere along the way bands can get lost in the day to day grind and the competitive nature of the industry and lose touch with that one uniting factor. And when they do their career as a musician suddenly becomes much closer to the end than the beginning of a journey.
Sure, the nature of the beast is that most musicians out there wouldn't be averse to some public recognition - both financially and critically - but when, as a band or artist, you can let go of those restraints and allow the actual music to be your guiding force, well... anything is possible.
For some reason Australian bands tend to hold onto such ideals for longer than others around the world. Call it the Aussie spirit. Call it the beer. Call it something in the water.
Call it whatever you want, but to me that's one of the things that makes Aussie music the best in the world.
Twenty seconds into talking with blackened doom outfit Wildeornes and you can just tell they come from this old school mentality where they write and release music for themselves first and foremost before putting it out there for public consumption.
The band - effectively a duo with the potential for growth (any drummers out there looking for skins to hit take note) will release their new album On The Earth, Under The Sky on April 30, scheduled to venture out into the world to celebrate the 2023 southern hemisphere Samhain.
In the bands own words "this album is the harvest, with the coming winter a time for Wildeornes to work on the next batch of songs."
Effectively a double concept album, the two combined bodies of work form a conceptual whole that continues the band’s lyrical exploration of eastern and western existential philosophy, deep ecology, and Celtic, Anglo Saxon, and Norse mythologies.
HEAVY caught up with Damo (guitar/vocals) and Richie (guitar) to explore further.
"Pumped," Damo replied simply when asked how they were feeling about the release date looming large. "We've sat on it for ages, it's the golden egg (laughs), and it's just about to hatch. I was two or three years of... I wouldn't say hard... but there were challenges that we faced while recording it and in pre-production with things going wrong and all that kind of stuff and learning how to do it off the cuff and getting advice off people who know what they're doing. It was getting it to a semi-final product then having people listening to t and saying no it needs this. And we're, like, whaaaat? I think it's just good timing now that we've been able to incubate it for so long."
"It was hard for us," added Richie, "for sure. Damo and I are rash, impetuous fools. With the last couple of albums, as we've learned to do a bit of pre-production and demo stuff ourselves it was always a case of smack it on the ass and send it out. Whereas with this one there was something like... I guess the songcraft on this one we paid a lot more attention to, so when other people said you need to scoop a bit of this out of the bass or do this we just sat back and listened this time and got over ourselves a little bit, which is sometimes hard to do when you've been doing it for so long (laughs). For me - and Damo and I have been playing together since probably 1996 and we have a string of 7" and tapes and everything behind us - this, for me, at 47 years of age to me is musically the most solid, profound, best sounding everything I've been involved with. It's been a real honour to work with Damo through all the years, and particularly bringing this thing to life."
In the full interview, the boys run us through the album musically and lyrically, discuss the concept in greater detail, why it is being released to celebrate Samhain, shaping their sound, keeping fun in your music, the possibility of recruiting a drummer and more.