CANTATA SANGUI

Songs of blood

If you are looking for some really fresh and unique metal acts, this Finnish band may be an option. Prepare yourself for something interesting, mysterious and intriguing but first- just try to imagine the most original metal sound you can think of. How about metal without guitars? Yesss, real metal music played without fucking six-string electric guitars traditionally tuned to G. Doesn't make any sense to you? OK, so just give it a try, listen to CANTATA SANGUI's killing debut release entitled „On Rituals And Correspondence In Constructed Realities“ and don't say I didn't warn you.

-Hello Anna! Hope that everything is going OK with you. I'm really thankful for giving me the opportunity to talk to you. This is the first interview with CANTATA SANGUI for Metal Portal, so let's start our talk from the scratch. Let me ask some personal questions first. How did you start your musical journey? What did your interest of art in general come from?
Hi Darek, thanks for taking interest to our band. :) My musical journey started at a very early age. Even though I wasn't born into a musical family, my parents decided to put me into music pre-school, followed by the local conservatory. However, as it soon became evident, my motor skills were so poor that I couldn't really learn to play anything properly. Thus, I concentrated mainly in music theory. After graduating from secondary school I went to study musicology (as well as computer science) at the University of Helsinki and got my MA in 2003 if I remember correctly. I guess one could say that my life has very much been saturated with music already from early on. Music, as well as arts in general have always been my way to escape this hectic world. Even though my family was never too interested in arts, they nevertheless encouraged this black sheep to wander its own path.

-Who inspired you in the music world? Could you name here your favorite bands and artists (metal or not) that helped you decide what you want to do with your life?
Music has always been kind of a necessity for me. Thus, I cannot really say if there ever was a specific band or bands that encouraged me to make the decision to become a (part time) musician. My favourite bands have more likely guided me towards the style of music I like to make myself. To name a few bands that have influenced me during these years, I'd pick The Beatles (my definite childhood favourite), The Stone Roses (who encouraged me to found a band with my friend as a teenager), Samael (their gig in Finland in 1996 had a massive effect on my preferences in music) and Akercocke (whom I find endlessly inspiring).

-I suppose that you grew up listening to quite different kind of music like you do today. What turned your attention on darker side of music, I mean black, doom, gothic and some other relative genres?
It all boils down to a guy, not so surprisingly. When I moved in with my nowadays husband, I had never listened to heavier music that much. Melancholic and dark, certainly, but not heavy. Somehow he managed to infiltrate my listening habits though. Props for him.

-Listening to you vocal parts I have a feeling that you are a professional, well-educated singer. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean anything bad by calling you „a professional”. I'm seriously impressed with both technical and emotional aspects of your singing. Had you got any professional lessons before you started singing in a band? Or maybe you are self- taugh?
Firstly, thank you for your kind words. I took classical singing classes at secondary school but hated every minute of it. So I doubt that I learned much on them. In that sense I think I can be called self-taught when it comes to singing. There are two major factors (people or bands) that have affected my singing, shaping it towards what it is nowadays. The first is System of a Down, or Serj Tankian to be more specific. Before I heard their album Toxicity I didn't have enough courage to truly use my voice, since to me it sounded weird and too "eastern" in a way. However, listening to SoaD changed my attitude - I realised that there's nothing wrong with having your personal sound, however unusual it might be. The other is having had the possibility to work with Ola Sonmark (engineer, mixer and co-producer of our album). Before this album and our earlier Aletheia promo (engineered and mixed by him as well), I had made a couple of songs with him for other purposes. The guy is a genius when it comes to guiding a vocalist. He has taught me all I know about expression and phrasing.

-Is CANTATA SANGUI your first band ever? Had you been involved in any other bands or projects before you joined CS?
I founded my first band with my friend when we were 13 or so. Since then I've been in a folk music band and a couple of pop bands. At the moment I have one therapy project going on, but Cantata Sangui is my first priority of course.

-CANTATA SANGUI means „song of blood” (or something like that). How did you come up with this strange name and what does that name represent to you?
We chose the name for several reasons. First of all, it combines the two worlds of sacral songs (cantates) and the vulgar manifestations of the physical world (blood) together. This marriage of the sacred and the profane, or the spiritual and the brutally physical is what we aim for in all that we do: our lyrics reflect the various polarities that arise from this distinction, and the same division is also present in our music, which combines the female vocals with a brutal, kick-ass bass assault. Blood is also a commonly used metaphor for life, and in this respect our chants of blood can be seen as chants of life, or chants that praise life, or the will to live, or energy, generally speaking. There are tons of literature written about the subject, but one of our main things is to encourage people to make their own interpretations of just about everything.

-Band's name definition makes me think about other things you are strongly associated with. I mean occultism, mysticism and satanism (in some way). Could you tell me something more about all psychological aspects of CANTATA SANGUI? How serious is your attitude to it?
Since I joined Cantata Sangui (they had made a demo meanwhile trying to lure me in as their keyboarder - I managed to resist for a couple of months but finally gave in), the band has had a special meaning to me. It is totally different from the other bands I've been in. Cantata Sangui is more than just a couple of guys playing in the same band - it somehow slowly starts to define your whole existence in a way. It's probably partly because of the themes we handle, and especially our tendency to ask questions instead of giving answers, but mostly because of the music itself. It does have something ritualistic in that sense, that you find it harder and harder to resist. I probably couldn't leave this music behind me even if I wanted to (which I don't).

-You sing a lot about magic, exploring in your lyrics darkest corners of mind and soul. If it's not a secret, are you personally involved in any school of occult science or any other mysterious association?
There are members in Cantata Sangui that are way more knowledgeable in occult than I am - I'm more of a mad scientist myself. So, I guess the answer depends on if you find "Finnish Union of University Researchers and Teachers" as one. ;)

-The track called “De Profundis” is more like a invocation or rather part of a ritual caught on a tape. Could you tell me something more about that particular track? Follow with that I guess there's much more to discover on that album...
De Profundis started as an outro for Lazarus - and became as an outro for the whole album. It does have a strong link with Lazarus and can thus be explained using the same imagery with Lazarus (please see our website for the further explanation considering the Lazarus lyrics), that is, Jesus with black robes standing on broken bones and skulls while resurrecting already decomposing Lazarus. There's gotta be something invocational going on, don't you think? There are definitely lots of things happening on this album - some out in the open, some hidden. In the lyrics you will find references to books and paintings, even to theatrical plays. On the other hand, there are several sonic references and clues, as well.

-CANTATA SANGUI was formed in 1997. It means that your first full length album was recorded after twelve years of band's existence. Why did it take so long?
There's a time and place for everything, and for this record the right time just happened to be now. We have had most of the material ready for quite some time, but it wasn't until a few years ago that things really started clicking into place. Before 2007 when we started tracking this album, we had never seriously considered making an album - of course we had been talking about making one some day but the time never felt right. I guess we subconsciously knew that the songs still needed to find their final form. In January 2007 when we were supposed to track only a couple of songs with Ola Sonmark, he suggested that we could spend the studio time a bit more efficiently tracking drums for a whole album instead. One could say that this suggestion worked as a trigger - we quite instantly knew what songs there would be and how we would like to approach them.