Interview with "Stormblasts Magazine", issue 2/3 Evening! How is life there in the south of the Netherlands? Hail & Honour Geert! Life is nice and quiet here in the south of the Netherlands, especially because I'm living in a little village just near Roemond. This is perfect to avoid the biggest strain of every day life and to live a retreated life. Probably there are only a few people who know Cirith Gorgor. Could you first give us a short introduction to introduce yourself to our readers? Cirith Gorgor was formed at the end of '93 by Astaroth Daemonum and Asmoday, they are both responsible for the guitar work. Half a year later a suitable drummer was found in the individual known as Levithmong. The best way of learning to play together was covering some songs of Mayhem, Slayer and Darkthrone. After a while creativity struck and our first songs were composed. At that time the band was completed by Lord Mystic who took the bass guitar parts for his account. At the end of '95 we kicked our former singer out of Cirith Gorgor because he no longer appeared suitable for us as a band. Personally I'm still in contact with him once and a while. Cirith Gorgor just went on rehearsing and after a few auditions Nimroth appeared to be most suitable for taking the vocals for his account. One week we rehearse with Nimroth and the next week without him, and so on, because he lives in Breda so he has to travel a lot. Because we don't write new songs every rehearsal-session it isn't necessary to have him here every week. This, I think, works best for him and also for us. I know your bandname is taken from the book "The lord of the Rings". Could you, for those who haven't read this book, explain what Cirith Gorgor means? It stands for "The spectre defile leading to Gorgoroth, the Valley of Death". Where does Cirith Gorgor stand for as a band? Cirith Gorgor stands for pure metal, raw and aggressive, as it is meant to be and it's a pure hobby band consisting of 5 real metal-hearted and pagan-hearted individuals. Hobby of course based on the fact that musicians like us never can own a decent living of selling our music, because it's just meant to be there for a select crowd/audience as you of course know and understand! (And to earn money with Black Metal is absolutely Jewish and absolutely NOT a wise thing to do!!!- ED) Every bandmember has of course his own ideas and tries to express this within our music. The things we all have in common are: -the hatred we share towards organised religions. True spirituality one finds within himself/herself and not within an organisation or group. -interests in darkness and mythology (especially Astaroth Daemonum and Nimroth). I think you're all round 18 or 19 years old. Are you listening to B.M. for a long time now, or were you a part of the Death Metal scene in the past, because I think you can hear some Death Metal influences on your demo? The ages of the bandmembers vary from 17 up to 22. We all listen to Metal for years now and of course B.M. because this style of music fits best to our thought-patterns. I'm not conscious of having woven some Death-Metal influenced riffs into our songs. It even looks cold to me because if we are influenced (not purposely/consciously) by any band this definitely must have been a Black one. You recorded your demo "Mystic Legends..." at the end of 1997, and it's released thus for some months now. How were the responses from other magazines/fanzines, friends, distro's and maybe even record labels? How do you look upon the final result, and are there particular things you would like to change next time? Up to now all reactions were positive except the originality of our music. I don't give a fuck about that, what's original these days? I'll try and explain to the few among you that still don't understand what Cirith Gorgor is about: Cirith Gorgor was formed with the aim to create music with a few friends, primary just for ourselves to get rid of a lot frustrations and in the way we are making music now we're having the biggest satisfaction. You won't hear us complain. Being original these days means you have to change your music drastic, having other musicians playing other instruments and that just wasn't our choice. There are only two options; you like Cirith Gorgor's music or not. Which one of the options fits one best, I don't care because primary I make music for myself. Of course it's nice receiving good reactions instead of bad ones. I'm very satisfied with the final result of "Mystic Legends...". In my eyes we created a bit of a masterpiece, paying attention to the fact that this is only our first demo. The production is also very good (thanks to Erwin Hermsen, the brain behind Mangled, who made this all possible for us). The cover looks polished too and the tape is professionally recorded. Exact how we wanted to release our first opus on mankind. I don't know if we really want to change certain things the next time we record something, because we haven't changed our style, we will just continue to thundering forth with speeds up to 150 km pro hour and keep spitting our gall on everything that is a thorn in our side. A thing I would like to do more on our next demo are double vocal parts, like you can hear on "Shadows over Isengard". Something about the sales: It sells above all expectations quick. We have limited "Mystic Legends..." to 250 copies and right now there are only 80 copies left and I'm afraid we'll have to print some copies more, because we're expecting a few reviews from some foreign magazines bringing forth a few reactions/orders. If we, by then, already sold all our copies, people from foreign countries won't be able to take notice of Cirith Gorgor's art. If we decide to print more, these tapes will have other cover-artwork and be limited again in a much smaller amount. The demo is limited to 250 copies only. You told me that you prefer a small edition, and I immediately thought it would be a kind of rehearsal tape to be honest (which I personally prefer most). Instead of a rotten tape with a rotten sound and a copied booklet (done for 10 cent at the supermarket) I received a professionally done tape and booklet, with a sound better than the average. I must thank you for the compliment. We indeed have chosen to release a professional tape. The professional tape, the excellent production and the cover quality are all a gesture to the buyers of it to give them as much as possible for their money. The costs for our demo were nearly the same as it yields. Because making music is our hobby and we don't have to live of it we're trying to present it as good and professional as possible. Have you also chosen to release it this way with the hope on a record-deal? Personally I'm not interested in a record-deal right now, this creates often too many obligations. First of all let us record a worthy succession after "Mystic Legends..." at the end of this year! We will strike again!! You seem to be inspired by "The Lord of the Rings" when I take a look at your bandname or the lyric of "Shadows over Isengard". Can you tell us something more about the lyrics? Cirith Gorgor is indeed inspired for a big part by the mighty Tolkien, but you must not forget the Goetia, the mighty Shemhamphorash-part inspired us a lot as well. The rest of the lyrics are all extracts from the brains of Astaroth Daemonum, Nimroth and Lord Mystic. Someone told me that you are anti-racist/fascist, and that you don't like the thought of bands such as Graveland. In the B.M./pagan scene are nevertheless a lot of nationalistic/racistic/fascistic/N.S. bands such as Graveland, Veles and Osculum Infame... Well, I'm not that anti-racism as you may think, look for instance to Holland's criminals in jail, most of them are foreign. That's stuff to think about. Behave or die!! I'm definitely not a fascist, mostly because I'm not a nationalist and I will never be one. Fact is I was born and raised in Holland but I have no affection at all for The Netherlands, except it's drugpolicy. I really don't like being among a lot of people, that's why I'm leading a bit of a retreated existence. When it comes to the point I can have as much respect for a foreigner as for an inhabitor of the Netherlands, only if they also show respect for me. I know that there are some bands active in the scene, which stand for fascism/racism, that's their choice and I respect that as long as they won't try to convince me of their opinion. I look sceptic towards bands like Graveland and Veles. As far as I know they're both from Poland, the Slavish people, so if Hitler would have been in power Poland would have been the lowest grade in society!! This image seems thoughtless and foolish to me!! What do you actually think of the Dutch scene? From which country, do you think, are hailing the best B.M. bands? The Dutch scene is becoming better and better, I really appreciate the music of Tartaros (a brotherband) here in Limburg, Deinonychus and Ordo Draconis. Apart from that I'm in contact with a few interesting people. At this moment, and that's my opinion, I think the best bands still have their origin in Norway, Sweden and Finland but that's not going to last much longer because there are a lot of quality-bands active right now that don't have their origin in one of the three mentioned "leading" countries. By which bands/music is Cirith Gorgor influenced? What are your favourite bands? Are you open-minded to other music? Consciously influenced by any band? Inspired yes, but not influenced! The favourite bands/music differs from person to person. I listen to old heavy metal ( Sodom, Slayer, Judas Priest) up to the darkest Black up to the darkest Gothic/Wave, but also bands like Pink Floyd + The Doors. What do you think of the fact that everything has turned in a complete trendy circus and the fact that bands as Cradle of Bucks and Dimmu Boring are polluting the whole scene with their poppy music? Since they've played on the Dynamo festival you see 14-years old kids wearing their shirts, while they're wearing a Biohazard shirt the next day! Labels like Century Money and Commercial Blast didn't want to have anything to do with B.M. years ago, and now they are filling their bank accounts with Black Metal! Fucking moneygrubbers! The bands that you mention have consciously chosen to play for a much bigger public and they probably adjusted their music in order to achieve this. And that's what I find much more unacceptable! I'm not so worried about the real underground, it will always be underground, I think, because the people we are calling trendies will always march from trend to trend, and what's so characteristic about a trend? A trend always lasts for a relative short period. Cirith gorgor will never sign to a major label nor will we play on the Dynamo Open Air festival, or they'll have to find a session-drummer (hahaha!!). No bullshit, just worthy music! Probably all members in Cirith Gorgor are strongly anti-christianity/judeo-christianity/moslim, because these two religions are both responsible for the drive-out of the Pagan/Heathen cultures in North-Europe but also in our country... We are all completely anti-religious, this in order to achieve the highest level of personal evolution, this with some useful expedients like magic, mysticism, mythology and a few directives from classic Satanism (absolutely not LaVey crap). The only god I'm offering for is Bacchus! Finally, what are Cirith Gorgor's goals and what about the future plans? To play together until the eternity opens, with the same strength, pleasure and satisfaction and we'll see what the future will bring!