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Nordschlacht

Schmoun: There is no definite procedure. Sometimes Arnte starts to make some basics and I do additional melodies or arrangements. Sometimes we both start from the beginning together, or sometimes I start alone to make a melody or a harmonic structure and Arnte works on the basses and drums. We mostly work together.

Your new album is called Silence, Beauty and Cruelty. How do those three concepts relate to one another? How do you feel they are expressed in the songs on the album?

Schmoun: Silence, Beauty and Cruelty is taken from the song 'Collapsing Centuries.' Imagine a nuclear war, warm wind, a rose sky—silence, beauty and cruelty fused forever. The centuries of our creation are collapsing in a moment while the skies are falling down. Silence, Beauty and Cruelty is also an expression of what we feel while we listening to our music. Take time to listen it, to feel it and hear it. I think our music is nothing for the moment. Although the music has nice and warm harmonic moments, it's also cruel and has some silence in it.

The songs on the album are more melancholy than purely aggressive, and seem at least as geared for listening to alone as for dancing in clubs. What is the ideal experience for listening to your music, and what sort of experience are you trying to create for the listener?

Schmoun: We've never composed music for listeners, because we had never the aim to release our stuff. It makes us happy that we were asked by Klangdynamik Records if we would like to release an album, and we are very thankful for that chance. We make music because we want to create our own music which we like, especially dark and complex electronic sounds. Maybe that's the reason why we sound so melancholy and dark. It's important for us to create a symbiosis of what we hear and what we feel when we listen to our stuff. Music should touch the audience, make them more observant for the shit that happens every day in the world.

Arnte: You are right. In these times, it would be difficult to establish our songs in a club, because the audience is accustomed to very simple four to the floor beats, but in my opinion most of our tracks are also danceable! And we have seen that, for example, 'Existence' really works in clubs full of open-minded guys who are able to move their bodies to a little bit more complex beats without becoming unbalanced.

Although your music has an old school sound to it, it's not at all minimal, and you seem to have put a lot of attention towards melodies and harmonies, not just the rhythm section. Was this a conscious choice?

Schmoun: Yes, melodies and harmonies are very important in our music. It's a good contrast between the dark elements of our music and the beauty in it. Life isn't all beer and skittles. It's sometimes very cruel, hard and dark. That's what Nordschlacht expresses: silence, beauty and cruelty.

Arnte: In my opinion, melodies are the most important thing to transport emotions and messages with music. Often, especially in our scene, you can hear music with very cool sounds and beats, while melodies are missing. The effect is that this music is always only superficial, but we wanted to create music that touches your heart. That's why we pay a lot of attention to the harmonic structure of our songs.

While we're talking about the old school sound, who are your biggest musical inspirations?

Schmoun: Jihad, Mentallo, Front Line Assembly, Skinny Puppy.

Arnte: X Marks the Pedwalk, Lassigue Bendthaus, Index and many more.

What is your opinion of the current dark electronic music scene? Are there any new artists you're particularly excited about?

Schmoun: There are some new influences in Germany called 'hellektro.' We prefer more the old school style, and also ambient, complex electronic music or intelligent music. We don't like the four/four beat electro 'bum bum' that's all preset sound. There are many hopeful German artists we love, like Object, MC1R, Fix8:Sed8, and Individual Totem. Also, there are great artists in the USA like Holocaust Humanity, Red+Test, and Displacer, or European stuff like Brain Leisure, Terror Punk Syndicate, Necro Facility, Disharmony...

Arnte: It's mostly a shame! There are so many young bands who pay the most attention to looking bad, and their 'music' is only composed very simple four to the floor beats, totally distorted voices with totally stupid lyrics—'I'm so daaaaaaark / I want to be a vaaaaampire'—and the melodies seems to be put out of a nursery rhyme. This is so mediocre! And these bands sounds all equal because they all do exactly the same, use the same stolen software, the same presets, and so on. But as Schmoun says, thank god there are also a lot of really good bands which make very good music. Unfortunately, they are often not very popular, because their music is out of time.

Have you played live yet? Do you plan to? Do you have any other plans you're working on at the moment, now that the album has been released?

Schmoun: We played live with our side project UGH...! last year. At the moment, we are working on new stuff. We also finished two new exclusive songs for Old School Electrology, Vol. 1, a compilation which will be released on Vendetta in some months with interesting artists. At the moment there are no live gigs planned.

Arnte: But I hope that we will get the chance to play live soon. It would be great to present our music to an interested audience and to see the reactions to our music live.