INTERVIEW: Andreas Bjulver – Cabal

Despite the dodgy phone line and a thick Danish accent, Andreas Bjulver, vocalist of the awesome, upcoming Danish deathcore band CABAL, is discernibly pleased with the bands efforts on their full-length debut, Mark of Rot. It’s an album Distorted Sound put under the microscope upon its release, finding a trove of bruising breakdowns and apocalyptic heaviness. Quite simply, it’s brilliant and we were fortunate enough to get Andreas‘ insiders look on the all-important debut, it’s place in the scene and what the future holds for CABAL.

It’s been two weeks since the release of Mark Of Rot, how’s the reaction been on your end?

Andreas: It’s been kind of overwhelming. A lot of people from bands that we all look up to, contacted us and said it was really cool. We take a look around our site and see some big names liking our stuff and sharing it, it’s really cool.

It’s also a big step up in terms of the operation and people working with you as oppose to previous releases…

Andreas: Yeah it is, having Long Branch as a label partner has been really good. We’ve really felt it, especially PR-wise, we’ve had a lot of attention.

Has the experience with writing and putting out this record been different from previous releases?

Andreas: Not really actually, we’ve done it the same way. Our guitarist Chris is a producer in his real life so, as with the EP, we went about it the same way. He writes the songs, sends us what he’s got and we’ll comment on it and change certain things. We’ll keep re-writing it until we’re satisfied with the result. That’s how we’ve always been doing it.

It’s a debated term at the moment, do you see this as a deathcore release?

Andreas: It is a deathcore release, no doubt but it’s also so much more than that. We’ve made it so that we know which specific parts have been influenced by what. At it’s core it is obviously a deathcore release but there’s so much more to it.

With deathcore being a slightly strange place at the moment with SUICIDE SILENCE and THY ART IS MURDER particularly going different ways with it, is it a tag you embrace? What do you make of the scene right now?

Andreas: I think we need to embrace the tag because it fits us so there’s kind of no discussing that, but then again the deathcore tag is a really broad one. We’ll sound totally different from another deathcore band so it’s not a bad thing in my head to be tagged as that sort of band. I think with the scene right now, we need somebody to step up the game and try something new. You mentioned SUICIDE SILENCE, they tried something new and people didn’t like it. It’s kind of nu metal, whereas the newer THEY ART IS MURDER stuff sounds like something BEHEMOTH would write. We need somebody to try something new and try to evolve the genre.

You’ve got CJ from THY ART IS MURDER and Fillip from HUMANITY’S LAST BREATH on the album and there’s obviously hints of djent and hardcore in there. What are the main influences in CABAL and Mark of Rot, even outside of music. What went into shaping the album?

Andreas: There’s been a lot of different things, we wanted to expand the sound we did on the EP and continue the story and the concept from the EP. We kinda wanted to make a Purge 2.0 in some kind of way. Musically, Chris who’s the main writer, he’s very inspired by stuff like MESHUGGAH and all that kind of stuff which is something you notice when you listen to it. BLACK TONGUE as well, all those kind of bands. They’re the kind of things he fuses together and then all the other guys add stuff as well. For the visuals and the lyrics, I think watching the horror movies is something that really inspires me. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen The Ritual? The new one? You should definitely watch it, it’s like CABAL the movie! which is really funny because, when we were making the album, The Ritual wasn’t out yet so we hadn’t seen it but seeing it when it came out gave us some last minute inspiration for new creepy stuff.

What essentially is the lyrical narrative on Mark of Rot that continues from the EP?

Andreas: The story-line is about this cult that worships nothing. They worship nothingness, death, the end of the world. What we’ve done on the EP and the record as well is that we’ll write about these things from different angles. One song will be from who’s convinced the world needs the world needs to be brought to an end. Another will be from a person being sacrificed, what’s going through their mind, how they’re experiencing this thing. That’s how I went about trying to create some kind of variation in it while keeping it in the same universe. It’s kind of a loose conceptual album.

Is it based upon the stuff you see happening around you in the world?

Andreas: Yeah, it’s my way way to vent my aggression towards the world, the state that the world is in and how the humankind are acting. I’m a firm believer that the humankind, if you look at the earth as an organism, is a cancer. That’s why I like writing about this stuff and getting it out because that’s a way to get my point across. Obviously, it’s masked in all this cult stuff, but really, there’s kind of an environmental angle on it, in a weird kind of way.

It’s definitely something important that’s got to be said…

Andreas: Yeah, I think so. It’s an unpleasant conversation. It’s an uncomfortable thing to say so I think it quite suits the music.

Do you all contribute to the music and lyrics?

Andreas: I’ll mostly write the lyrics. I always walk around with my phone on the notepad function. Every time I have an idea I write it down and eventually it’ll become a full text that I can show the other guys and we’ll put it onto the music and work with it together. I’ll do the main body of text in the same way that Chris will do the main body of the song. From there we can all work on it together which I think is a really nice way to do it because when I’m doing the lyrics, it allows me to do it without being distracted and then I can show the other guys and we can work on it afterwards. We’ve tried also in writing, sitting as five people together in a room and it doesn’t work out. People start talking about shit and it’ll ruin your concentration.

How has your experience been as a new band? Especially a new band from Denmark, has it been difficult for CABAL to get this far?

Andreas: I think we’ve been really lucky. We’ve got a lot of people and a lot of buzz around us which is really cool. I think it’s hard on us being a band from Denmark because the metal scene in general is not very big here. The kind of metal people listen to is more of the old school approach to metal, you know, the kind of long-haired dudes with the vests. That’s kind of what we have here. For some reason they’ve been really accepting of us, which I didn’t think they would be when we started doing this band which is really cool. Actually, everybody has been responding to our stuff in a really positive way, much more than we actually thought. It’s been a positive experience. We’ve accomplished more than we thought and had better reactions so it’s great [laughs].

Do you get people in JUDAS PRIEST shirts at your shows?

Andreas: Oh yeah, we do [laughs]. It’s really cool, I thought they would hate us at first because we’re basically a  band that plays breakdowns for half an hour but for some reason they’ve been really accepting of us. I think it might be because the imagery is pretty metal in some sort of way.

Where do you want Mark of Rot to take CABAL?

Andreas: I’d love if it could take us to somewhere where we could go out and play with some cool bands and play some cool shows. That’s all we wanna do. We have no plans of making this a livelihood. We’re just really good friends making music together and all we actually want is to go out and have some cool experiences for life with our best friends. Obviously it would be great if we could start earning some money from this at some point because you have to put your life on standby for some periods of time to do tours and recording and all this sort of stuff. It also kind of takes a toll on your personal life sometimes as well so obviously it would be great for some kind of compensation in some sort of way.

Lastly, what does the rest of the year hold for CABAL?

Andreas: I’m not actually sure how much I’m allowed to tell you [laughs].

It’s a always a good sign when bands say that…

Andreas: Yeah it is. Stuff is happening, there’s some tours in the work. The one thing I can tell you is we’re playing Roskilde Festival which is a really big deal for us because it’s all of our favourite festival. All of us have been going for years and years and years and it’s the place you want to play. It’s a childhood dream come true.

And you’ve just come off Complexity Fest right?

Andreas: Yeah that was really, really cool as well. We did this live radio and TV thing afterwards…

Yeah, for False Light right?

Andreas: Yeah, exactly [laughs]. We didn’t know we were going to be filmed so we had smoked some joints and drunk some beer before and they just shoved some big-ass cameras in our faces (laughs). It was really fun, it was a nice experience.

Mark of Rot is out now via Long Branch Records.

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