I don’t know how is that, but Sunday always brings the darkest and most disturbing music that land in my hands. This Belgian sludge / post metal / black metal / drone act contacted me after my recent interview with their pals from THE TRAGEDY WE LIVE IN. I’m pretty impressed by their 2-song EP “Acceptance / Rebuild” filled with experimental shoegazing sounds and creepy, yet melancholic atmosphere. Here’s my attempt to bring you more about DEUIL. Read below.
Hey, guys! Thanks for reaching out. Tell me how you found me [smiles].
Hey Karol, we found your great website because you did an interview for our Belgian friends in THE TRAGEDY WE LIVE IN. I read it and then I tried my chance with the first email I sent you. It’s really nice from you to let us talk about our stuff on your website.
What’s your relationship with THE TRAGEDY WE LIVE IN?
It’s weird because we’ve never shared a bill with them but some of them helped my previous band with shows in the north part of Belgium some years ago.
Now we try to set something up together, at first we had to leave with them for a small weekend tour but finally we can’t because of work and daily routine but I hope (and I’m sure) we’ll do it together soon.
Cool. Let’s find out a bit about your foundations. How did DEUIL form?
We started DEUIL 1 year ago, at the beginning there were Romain on the drums, Oli for the bass guitar and me with the guitar. We directly started to write riffs for our Acceptance/Rebuild release but unfortunately Oli left us some months later because his work took too much place in his personal life. So Romain and me played and wrote the end of the release together and then we asked to a good friend of us to sing and to help us with the samples. It’s at this time that Renaud joined us in November 2012. We played a bunch of shows and recorded Acceptance/Rebuild as a three pieces bands and in March 2013 our friend Lio joined us to play the bass in the band.
Is „Acceptance / Rebuild” the only record you’ve recorded so far?
Yes it’s the first one we have recorded. Through this record we tried to express our feelings about mourning (which is translated by Deuil in French) and especially the two last levels you live during the loss of someone. Some people don’t understand why we try to stick to a massive sound without clean parts or something. To those people I reply that for us there is nothing beautiful or even happy in our idea of what the mourning process is.
The feedback must have been great, right? I mean, you’ve run out of free downloads on bandcamp. Come on you’re famous! [smiles]
[laughs] No we’re not famous (the proof is I’m still looking for a show during our upcoming spring euro tour) but yes we ran out of free downloads on bandcamp. I didn’t know but you can buy new credits to get more free download directly to bandcamp but we really don’t want to do that. We’re sorry but we’re not into this commercial thing and we won’t never pay to let people download our stuff for free or with a donation.
We preferred to upload our release on mediafire and to copy the link on our bandcamp and facebook pages. For us nobody has to pay to get a release for free, we don’t want to make profit with it (thanks anyway to the nice persons who send us money via our bandcamp page but it’s definitely not our goal). We just want to share something we did for us and by us with people who could be interested into it without a commercial intention or something like that.
Who’s responsible for the artwork you print on your shirts and use for covers?
For the t-shirts,we asked to a good friend of us who play in PARAMNESIA (FR) the band we’ll tour with in the end of April and May. Check them out, they sound really great.
This guy is incredible and he is behind the Business for Satan art project.
You really have to ask him if you want awesome artworks or tattoos (yes he is also tattooist)
For the cd-r our good friend Ianok from Strasbourg (FR) who is in the screen-printing project called « Les presses ambulatoires » did something for us by himself. We really appreciate this gift so Renaud and me went to Strasbourg to help him with the scree prints.
You can check out his work here.
What’s the inspiration behind it?
The insert of our cd-r is a picture that Ianok has shot during the last and long winter. He thought the picture was representative enough of our music and the emotions we try to express through it then yes we trusted him and we have chosen to keep it.
For the t-shirt design Pierre business for Satan has drawn something that remind the mourning.
The communication with him was really easy and he directly understood what we wanted to show with our music. That’s really important for us to work with people who understand us and who want to help us out in a sincere way.
I often see bands on the internet and at shows who asked to some famous designers some artworks for t-shirts or cd’s but in the end these artworks looks all the same and all these bands lost a part of their personality and ideas. That’s sad but for some people selling lot of merch is more important than get sincere with their opinions.
What is your ultimate goal or mission when it comes to music and art you create?
We don’t think about it as a mission or goal, we just want the audience to enter into our universe with any doubt or resistance.
Feel sometimes uncomfortable, forget about what’s around them. We try to create melancholy wrapped in heavy and deep sound.
As we’re at it, what are some of your biggest inspirations, besides WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM? [laughs]
I don’t know if WITTR is a big influence for us, really.
I would rather say that I’m more influenced by bands like EARTH or AGALLOCH or for the slow parts even if we don’t sound like them (too bad [laughs]) and for the fast parts I really don’t know we write and we keep what it comes out during the rehearsals nothing more nothing less.
Now it’s true that we all listen to bands who plays WITTR or old ALTAR OF PLAGUES stuff but we would never listen to a song from those bands and then try to copy them to try to sound like them.
What originally inspired you to get into this kind of music?
I think we wanted to do something less nice than we did before. Something more ambient, but still with loud and aggressive parts. I don’t know maybe when I started the band with Romain we were in this mood you can get in winter and which makes you feel a lil bit pessimistic.
It’s true that the feelings that inspired us are not the happiest ones (but be sure that we’re not sad people [laughs]), it’s just something that comes out from us, maybe something we need to express I don’t know.
Anyway last year was for us the perfect moment to start the band since we decided to stop our previous band to start something else and we did it without any reflection.
Alright. How come you decided to create such long compositions instead of putting out regular songs? How important is this form in terms of song writing and then performing?
We don’t like short songs, it’s important for us to build an atmosphere, something really repetitive that hit you till you almost get bored of it. We want to create something that makes you feel into our music with us, something you can feel and almost touch, something we can share together .
I think you can’t create this feeling with short songs that contains 14 riffs played in only 2 minutes that’s why we have just 2 songs for a 30 minutes release.
You’ll be hitting the road very soon. Shoot us some details about your upcoming trek.
Yep and that’s cool for us to be able to do it even if some of us have already played in the most of countries we’ll pass through it’s always different.
So yes we’ll hit Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary, Serbia, Croatia during only 8 days.
I think it’s gonna be really intense because of the long distance between some towns but I’m already sure it will be awesome and really rich for everyone in a human way.
We’ll leave with our friends of PARAMNESIA from France (we already mentioned it before but you really have to check the song on their bandcamp).
You mentioned National Socialist Black Metal in a note that goes along with the record. Why did you decide to blow the whistle on NSBM? Is there a problem regarding radical right wing bands in Belgium?
Nope there is no problem about NSBM bands in Belgium even if some stupid people try to start right wing organisations.
As a band and individuals we will never support that kind of ideas that oppress people.
We don’t understand how some stupid people can still believe in these ideas that have killed and oppress millions of people just for some ideologies, racial or religious point of views.Even if we describe us as an apolitical band it was important for us to mention that we don’t want to have something to do with people who are into NSBM.
Tell me more about your local scene. Any events, festivals, bands or other initiatives you’d like to shout out to?
Our local scene is not that important and almost dead in Liège even if some people and friends play in a lot of crust punk bands, or try to set up shows it’s always sad and boring to see that the audience don’t follow what is happening and prefer to go to discos.
It’s a pity because some guys are trying to make something for the scene here. For example our singer is writing a DIY paper zine with a show agenda in our area, releases and movies reviews, …
That’s like that everywhere in the south part (the French one) in Belgium.
If you move around Brussels or Vlanderen it’s getting more interesting for shows and bands because their local government helps them with money and cool places to set up events.
I hope it’ll change one day but I’m really not sure about that.
Finally, what does the future hold for DEUIL?
I hope we will have the opportunities to tour, meet new cool people and share our ideas as much as we can. We are writing new material for a split with a band we really like so it’s already a great achievement and we plan to record again the Acceptance/Rebuild songs for a Vinyl release.
We are still looking for labels who could be interested into this plan so if someone read it and want to help just drop us a line.
Anything you’d like to add, gentlemen?
A really big THANK YOU to you Karol to let us the chance to write some line on your website (I didn’t know it before but be sure i’ll often check it).
It was pretty cool to meet you by mail and I hope that if one day we have the chance to play in Poland and especially in Warsaw we’ll meet in real and take the time to talk together. It would be really nice.
Thanks again for the interview and see you soon.
Deuil.
DEUIL Facebook
DEUIL Bandcamp
DEUIL e-mail
Live photos by Shoot Me Again Photography.
