Winterfylleth: A Growing Darkness Looms Afar
Since their arrival on the scene in 2007, Manchester’s WINTERFYLLETH have become a household name in the world of black metal. Revered for their consistency and ability to continue evolving rather than growing in complacency, frontman and founding member Chris Naughton explains his inspiration between the narrative of eighth full-length album The Imperious Horizon.
“There’s always been an underlying principle with how we’ve gone about our albums and I think that’s developed as we’ve grown in ability. The premise of our work is, in a sense, a helicopter view of society. I don’t consider myself to be very political, more a neutral bystander who has tried to see across all of what has been going on in the world,” he explains. “It’s been a strange time since the release of our last album, The Reckoning Dawn. The world feels like a more dangerous place at the moment, it feels like there is a lot of tension and that has been displayed in the recent events in major cities in the UK.”
“People being pitted against each other based on their beliefs, religions, identities. Without being too much of a conspiracist it feels like there is some scheming going on behind the scenes and someone pulling the strings. The governments around the world have shown us that they don’t have the best interests of the population at heart and they’re abusing their positions of authority to benefit their friends and families. The thought process behind The Imperious Horizon is that there is something ominous lurking in the distance and the artwork reflects that with the utilisation of the mist and cloud, almost masking what might be hiding behind it.”
As a band progresses deeper into their career it can be difficult for them to continue to develop musically without alienating their already established fanbase. Chris is confident that WINTERFYLLETH have provided significant expansion to their core sound with The Imperious Horizon whilst still sticking to their core values.
“I think it’s hard for bands to keep introducing new things all the time into their music. You either find yourself in a situation where you have different eras like OPETH where they had their brilliant run of albums with the likes of Still Life, Deliverance, Damnation, Ghost Reveries and then went into that weird transitional phase or you can introduce things incrementally, experiment with different tempos and time signatures. The Imperious Horizon has a lot more of a keyboard presence and surrounding harmonies on it. I think that what has helped us as a band, although we probably didn’t want it at the time was that we’ve had a few different people in the lead guitar role and their input and influences have helped shape our sound.”
“Mark, our keyboard player who has been with the band since 2013/2014 has only really started playing live with us in the last few years due to other commitments in his life and as he’s had a lot more time to commit to music he’s become a lot more confident in bringing ideas to the table. Russell and I both play the guitar in very different ways too and that has helped bring some really nice ideas into this album. Simon loves spending time with other drummers while out on tour and I think that has been very inspiring for him to challenge himself and absorb their knowledge. I don’t think we have veered off too far from what WINTERFYLLETH is and has been in the past but we definitely feel like there is an upward trajectory and organic growth into new areas.”
The music industry suffered greatly at the hands of the pandemic, leaving a lot of musicians wondering whether their future laid elsewhere. WINTERFYLLETH released Reckoning Dawn in the May of 2020 with no opportunities to tour that material. Rather than grow too concerned about this obstacle, they chose to see the positives by taking this period to prepare for the future. “We got into a routine of releasing an album every couple of years as that gave us chance to tour it for around a year and give people the chance to digest the album properly over that period” discusses Chris.
“With COVID it felt like the market got completely flooded with albums and if you’re hyper interested and can spend 12 hours a day listening to music, great for you but with people who have a family, a job, a commute it’s hard to have the time to get through all the releases coming through. Despite the fact we couldn’t tour for The Reckoning Dawn, in some ways it gave us time to breathe and take our time with this release and we’ve actually written quite a lot of material which could be used in the next album. Even though you shouldn’t have to think about it in a sense of worrying about being in the grind of the industry and people wondering why you haven’t released anything in a while there is a pace which you feel you have to adhere to. It’ll be interesting to see what happens and to see if we can recapture everyone’s attention.”
WINTERFYLLETH chose to stick by the capable hands of esteemed producer Chris Fielding for this release. Their longstanding relationship has provided stability and instilled confidence, so why break what isn’t broken?
“I’ve said it a million times about Chris and I’ll probably say it forever unless he throws an absolute clanger in there, he is one of my closest friends and we’ve worked with him since about 2009 but I’ve known him since we were both playing in doom bands years before. There is just this knowledgeable calm about him that is just what you need when you’re in the studio,” declares Chris. “Particularly in this modern world most people don’t write songs together as a band anymore, they’re all recorded at home and piecing things together as you go along. They only really become coherent when you get into the studio and Chris just knows what the band sounds like and he’s that voice of encouragement that helps you get through the long days of recording to help steer you through it and give you pointers. He makes us challenge ourselves and he is a source of great ideas. Having a producer is way beyond just someone who mics things up and hits record. He has unlimited patience and definitely wanted to kill me at some point on this album as we ended up doing about 25 different mixes.”
“Without going too much into the boring technical analysis we had a lot of instruments in that mid-range so we revisited things several times to make sure everything didn’t get muddled up in that narrow part of the spectrum. It helped bring a warmness to it and made it more like black metal with keyboards rather than keyboard black metal which it had a danger of becoming. As well as Chris we worked with Dr Mark Mynett who also does lectures at the University of Huddersfield and he brought a really interesting perspective. I’m sure he’s been seconded onto a research grant project where he goes around the best engineers and does ‘deep dives’ with them. The project is called Heaviness in Metal Music Production. He’s learned so much about mixing and mastering from these guys and he was super interested in working with us. He’s very technically proficient and he’s a musician as well so he gets it.”
Being put on a pedestal in terms of your accomplishments can be a blessing and a curse. In terms of WINTERFYLLETH, Chris continues to remain humble and pleased that he has been able to experience such a long, storied career so far. “I’m super happy that people have put us in that role and consider us to be important,” admits Chris. “You want to have an impact with what you make and it’s pleasing that people are moved by our music but at the end of the day you’re writing music to impress each other and to push yourselves forward as a collective. The fact that other people get on board with that and are following us on our journey is brilliant. I feel like we’ve always been consistent and always pushed ourselves to make great albums where there are no moments which particularly feel like filler just to pad an album out. I’m happy we’ve got this far and we’re still able to do it and do it well.”
The Imperious Horizon is out now via Candlelight Records.
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