Rockezine.com interview with Penumbra on Jun 04, 2002

with Agone on Jun 04, 2002


		First of all: congratulations on the new album. Did it turn out the way you had envisioned it? Thank you: well, we are really satisfied by The Last Bewitchment, it is even better than what we had imagined in some ways, especially the orchestration and different musical universes that we go through…
		How are the reactions so far towards “The Last Bewitchment”? We had lots of good reactions, from all over Europe (and even further), and it seems likes sales are going pretty well. It’s very encouraging to be supported like this; this morning, for instance, we received congratulations from a Serbian guy and from a Mexican one, it means that our music has no frontier, and that’s exactly what we wanted to do.
		According to the biography, it’s a small miracle that “The Last Bewitchment” was released. I mean, breaking up with your label and losing half your band isn’t something you easily cope with.
		What were your motives to continue with Penumbra after all those setbacks? The motives to continue were the same as the ones to start. And you see, it’s a passion, so you can’t decide just to stop one day, even if you encounter many difficulties. “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger”, I think that’s a good quote for Penumbra.
		What are your goals with Penumbra? Simply having a good time making music, world domination or something in between? First of all, our goal is to enjoy playing together, to transmit our music to the public and to share moments together. Of course, if we could make a living of Penumbra, be famous all over the world and play in stadiums for 100 000 people, it would be great, but we keep our feet on the earth, we do our best in all the things we do, and we’ll get what we deserve, not more, not less… Time is always on my side!
		Now that you’ve found new members, did they have an influence on the sound of Penumbra? The influence comes now, in the arrangement of the songs when played on stage. As far as the writing of new material, we can’t say that the new members of Penumbra had a strong influence on “The Last Bewitchment”, except on some backing vocals and very little things like this. For the third album, it is clear that their influence is present, and it widens the musical horizon of our music even more, as they have different musical influences in some ways.
		Speaking of influences, by which classical composers is Penumbra influenced? It goes from Mozart to Vivaldi, from Bach to Charpentier, from Marin Marais to Ravel… And we are also influenced by some original soundtracks like Gladiator (Lisa Gerrard and Hans Zimmer), The Name of the Rose (James Horner). Most Penumbra members have a classical education, which helps a little… ;-)
		Could you tell us a bit more about the lyrical concept of “The Last Bewitchment”? The concept is the love between an angel and a woman, and to live his love, the angel decides to fall from heaven: after this decision, many things happen, and each one of the great events of this story is a song. This album is the first chapter of a trilogy, and our next album will be the continuation of this story.
		Does any one of you have any other bands and/or projects we should know of? Yes, Neo (guitars) also plays in another band called Catharsis, Kyrsten (lyric soprano) plays in classical formation, Zoltan (keyboards) plays in a band called Everest, and I (Agone, bass guitar and backing vocals) play in a band called Lux Incerta. And some members of the band have common side projects about which you should have news soon…
		“The Last Bewitchment” was mixed by Terje Renes who also did Tristania and The Sins of Thy Beloved. Did you or your label choose him? Our label Season Of Mist chose him: they used to work with him, and we are very satisfied with the result as we benefited from all his experience and his knowledge. He really helped us to get the sound we needed, and he is very kind: we really hope to work with him again, one day…
		You left your old label Serenades Records because they couldn’t fulfil their engagements. What exactly was the problem? The problem is that we sold almost 7000 copies of “Emanate”, our first album, and they never paid us a single cent, whereas we should have been paid at least €10.000. We had invested some money from ourselves, expecting to be paid back by the label, so that got us in a very very bad situation, financially and morally: we were disgusted by the music business at that time, but we finally decided to go on and here we are!
		Are you satisfied with Season of Mist, or is there still room for improvement? We are very satisfied with Season of Mist; they believe in us, we believe in them. They gave us the means to do what we wanted to, they are honest, passionate and lawful; it’s a real pleasure for us to work with them.
		Playing with so many people on stage must be difficult sometimes, how do you overcome these problems, especially when touring? It is true that sometimes we don’t have much room on stage, but we deal with it. It’s hard to keep eight people in the same mood all the time, the hardest thing to control is relationships between people. Anyway, it’s always funny for us to play in new venues, people see us arriving at 10 or 11 (with our sound engineer and friends who help us with luggage); we are a kind of herd!
		Are you planning on playing in Holland again, because I’m curious to see how you perform on stage? Oh yes! We really enjoyed very much to play in Holland with We, The Gods and Dying Tears, it was wonderful; the crowds were amazing, the catering was always excellent, Dutch people are very kind, the first place where we want to play is, without any doubt, Holland!
		Well, thanks for your time and good luck in the future. In the old tradition of metalzine’s the last words are yours... Thanks for this interview, I enjoyed doing it; I hope that our music will touch you as much as it touched us creating it, we really hope to play in Holland soon, and if we come, don’t miss us ! ! !
(Roy van den Brink)