Interview with "Frost magazine" Hail Lord Mystic! How is the life nowadays? Is the disgusting sun of fuckin spring still shining there!? I hate this season… HAILS! Luckily I am not living in southern Europe. Here in Holland it is quite okay actually – not too warm, so I couldn’t be better. Please let the readers know much about the Cirith Gorgor history and releases! The band started in 1993 and has had several line up changes throughout the years. Drummer Levithmong and myself are the long-time members of the band, the others came later: first Nimroth (vocals) and then Marchosias (guitar) and Inferno (guitar) replacing Asmoday and Astaroth D. respectively. In 1997 we released our first demo, titled “Mystic Legends…”, which sold 350 copies. After that we were quite soon signed to Osmose Productions and for that label we did 2 albums: first “Onwards to the Spectral Defile” in 1999 and “Unveiling the Essence” in 2002. After the release of “Unveiling…” we released a self-financed promo (“Demonic Incarnation”) and a 7”EP (“Through Woods of Darkness and Evil”). And Latest line up… Nimroth – vox Marchosias – guitars Inferno – guitars Mystic – bass guitar Levithmong - drums You were working with the French Osmose productions, but I think your deal is over by now (correct me if I m wrong), what is your label at the moment? Meantime what was the problem with Osmose? I think they lost the strength of the past days… We have indeed left Osmose and we were informed that the main reason for stopping the cooperation was that we didn’t sell enough albums – to Osmose standards. We are currently signed (for one album) to Ketzer Records from Germany, who have also (co-)released our latest release “Through Woods…”. The contract has only just been signed and we hope that our new album will be released within a few weeks from now, especially because we are waiting for the release for a hell of a long time already, mainly due to problems with another label that were initially going to release the new album. Being a black metal band from the Netherlands, what can you say about the scene of your country? Enough support for extreme music? There are quite a few bands around in the Netherlands and also at concerts there are always plenty of people so I think it is correct to assume that the extreme scene is fairly well supported. What kind of topics you are dealing with while composing the lyrics? A lot inspiration from Tolkien I think? The topics dealt with in the lyrics vary a lot because three members write lyrics. One thing that is common between all members’ lyrics is the hate towards organised religion, although not in every lyric this is explicitly there. It is best to treat every lyric separately and thus I won’t get any further into this for the moment. With the departure of guitarist Astaroth the Tolkien-related topics vanished as well since he was the person who wrote those lyrics. Only the band name Cirith Gorgor refers to Tolkien nowadays. I m listening the song 'Ephel Duath A warriors Tale' at the moment, ‘Onwards to the Spectral Defile’ is my favourite, do you think that did the views about Cirith Gorgor change in a positive way after this legendary release? It is not really clear to me what you mean with this question, however, if you ask if our views on the band changed after the release of “Onwards…” the answer is no. We have remained the same and so has our view as well as our intention with the band. After the release of our debut album the only thing that changed was the line up. Our intention was, and still is, to play the music we prefer most – and that so happens to be the style we play with CG. Any changes in musical style would be a betrayal to ourselves, which means that we will never conform to trends in the scene. I think you may give me some clues about the coming album ‘Firestorm Apocalypse’? What kind of Cirith Gorgor songs should listeners wait for this time? Personally I believe we have produced the best work so far on our new album. Every aspect turned out better: the music is much better composed and structured, the overall sound of the new album is much better than all of our other releases put together, and still we have consolidate our own style, it has not changed but become better. You have played with bands like Enthroned, Sinister, Behemoth so far, can you tell us a good memory from these gigs? Which one was the killer? There are many gigs that were memorable to me, especially our cd presentation with Enthroned and Dead Head, the gig we did with Hades Almighty and the shows on our tour with Mor Dagor. There are many more of corpse but I won’t bore you any longer with activities from the past. On the other hand, is a new tour planned? There are no concrete plans for a tour, only some shows here and there. We hope to do a small tour at the end of this year but nothing can be confirmed as yet. Can you recommend some new mindfucking bands from your motherland? Fluisterwoud, Funeral Winds, Tartaros, Occult, Severe Torture, Inhume, Walpurgisnacht, UR, Infinity and Sauron are in my opinion the best bands in Holland. As far as I know, you are releasing a self-financed shirt, do you like D.I.Y works? Be it in shirt or on demo tape or fanzine, flyer etc; its taste is so different man! It is good to have control over the designs etc when you are doing everything yourself, however, we wouldn’t be able to release a new album ourselves because so much time is needed for proper distribution that we prefer a label to do for us. For the rest we do everything ourselves: interviews, designs of shirts, flyers, cd-booklets etc. Say your favourite Dark Throne album!? Mine is ‘A Blaze in Northern Sky!’ pure black metal lesson… I have to agree with you, although I think it is difficult to choose between “A blaze…”, “Transilvanian Hunger” and “Under a Funeral Moon”! Thanx for being the Castle of Frost guest, Your Highness Lord Mystic, close this episode please! Thanks a lot for the interview and the support. For those interested in Cirith Gorgor, take a look at our website (cirithgorgor.tk)… news about the upcoming album will be posted there as it arrives… Beware of the Firestorm apocalypse! 666