CANTATA SANGUI

Songs of blood

-Before the album you recorded at least four demo tapes (according to The Metal Archives). Could you tell me a few words about each of those tapes? How do you see your musical progression throughout the years?
The first Cantata Sangui demo ever contained two tracks and was released as a C-cassette. The musical style was somewhat different in comparison to the current one, being more doom-oriented. More material manifested as the next demo CD, A Brief Essay On Being, was recorded around the end of 1999. The two tracks on the demo combined experimental music with a bit more traditional gothic approach. Next occasion of released material was in 2001 under an evocative and esoteric title Behind The Masks Of Life containing five songs altogether. The demo presented a non-compromising execution of the arrangements mixing experimental metal and funk influences with a more traditional rock approach. After 2001 Cantata Sangui went to sleep for a while until the year of 2005 when we started tracking the promo version of Aletheia, which was published in 2006. This promo again presented something we hadn't done before - the totally new sound and approach to our material. On Rituals and Correspondence in Constructed Realities follows quite nicely this path laid out by Aletheia.

-What were the biggest obstacles you faced in becoming one of the most mysterious and original musical acts coming from Finland?
We often joke about our bad karma - for some reason there really have been quite a few obstacles in our way. It's difficult to point out the biggest one, but I guess one at least has been trying to find a line-up that truly works when it comes to both chemistry and musical matters. Also, only a few labels are open-minded enough to see the possibilities in our approach - thus, I'm very happy that our paths crossed with Season of Mist.

-CANTATA SANGUI is definitely one of the most original metal bands, especially when it comes to the way you sound. Actually, I don't remember any metal hordes playing their music without guitars. How did you come up with that crazy idea? How have you realized that six string guitar sound is for wimps and the only way to unleash hell is to use double bass guitar?
The band originated as a two-bass band, and we have never used guitars in our line-up. At first, this was probably nothing but a crazy idea: hey, let’s try this out! This type of creative and instinctive approach to music has always been important for us: we’re willing to try just about everything, and if it works, we'll include it in our music. Later the use of basses and the lack of guitars have grown into a larger role, as it has profound effects on both our sound and the way we compose music. Actually these two are quite interconnected: the sound affects the way you play and your playing style affects the sound.

-Personally, I was quite sceptical about the idea of playing metal without real guitar shredding. You know, to me guitar riffs and solos have always been heart and soul of metal sound. After a few listenings of your debut album my doubts vanished. You sound very heavy and aggressive. How do you achieve such a powerful sound?
Even though the songs are composed and recorded mostly with 4- and 5-string basses, we also make use of piccolo and 12-string basses, which expands the role of the bass even further and helps to make the sound richer and more melodic - not exactly like a guitar but sometimes quite close.

-Go back to your new album and let's pick up where we left off. What is the most important element of CANTATA SANGUI's debut release? What are you proud of the most concerning „On Rituals And Correspondence In Constructed Realities” content?
I'm definitely most proud of the fact that there are no fillers on this album - each and every song does have a specific reason to be on it. Therefore it was quite difficult to choose the song for the promotional use, each and every song had promotional potential. Finally we ended up choosing "We'll Have It on Us" because we felt that it introduces the most prominent styles and themes present on this album. The other thing I feel proud of is that we managed to catch the soul of each song on the record. Funnily, "We'll Have It on Us" was the last song to find its true self. We kept coming back to it between finishing the other songs and always felt that it still needed something, until we came up with the beduin choirs for the chorus - and with them came the idea of using the cimbalom as well.

-„On Rituals And Correspondence In Constructed Realities” features intro plus eleven songs moving towards melodic doom, gothic, horror and black metal territories. Some songs (and your vocal parts as well) on that album make me think of great yet still quite unknown Italian horror gothic act MANDRAGORA SCREAM, in some other tracks there can be heard distant echoes of early CRADLE OF FILTH, FIELDS OF THE NEPHILIM, DIMMU BORGIR, SAMAEL and many others. Nevertheless your music still sounds very fresh and original. Can you agree with this?
Many of the bands mentioned have definitely affected us on at least some level – all music you listen to tends to leave a mark on you and the way you make music yourself, even though not necessarily on a conscious level. In this sense I very much agree with you on this.

-My favorite track on that album is probably the one called „Exaltata”. I love its enormous heaviness blended in a perfect way with some beautiful melodic vocal parts and disturbing atmosphere. But the other tracks are great as well. There are no fillers, just killers! What does that ability to write only good songs come from? Were you selecting this material 'til death to increase the album quality or it just came that way very naturally?
We spent about an hour or even less on choosing the songs for the album - as mentioned earlier, we were actually supposed to track only a couple of songs and only a day before we went to the studio we decided that we'll make an album instead. I think it's partly about songwriting and partly about production - the songs found their final forms when already tracking them and having a co-producer who's not in the band helped us to see and overcome some blind spots in songwriting.

-Could you tell me some more about writing process in CANTATA SANGUI? Is there any specific way of writing songs for this band?
Most of our songs are built on bass riffs, but everyone is involved in the writing process. Some of the songs however are built on keyboard melodies or bass lines composed with keyboards. We usually just start jamming on the riffs until we find which parts go with which, trying out different ideas quite freely. The songs tend to change quite a bit at this stage, but after the songs get some sort of structure, we bring the drums, the keyboards and finally the vocals in. Often we need to go back and change the original bass lines a number of times, which in turn may have an effect on other instruments, and so on. It's a state of constant fluctuation, and often the songs keep changing all the way to the studio doors.

-Some people see CANTATA SANGUI as one of the most original bands on metal scene these days. Does it encourage you in some way, or just the opposite?
Our style is a combination of various things and has got a life of its own in a way. We don't aim at originality consciously, we just make music that speaks to us. Of course it's encouraging to hear that we are not perceived as "yet another" as a band, but originality does not hold too big an importance to us as such.

-Oops, talking about various influences appearing in your music I almost forgot about classical music. Now I'm listening to „Sidecast” with that great piano interludium and some famous classic composers are coming to my mind. Which classic musical composer do you like the most and consider the best?
I personally mostly like western art music composed in the 20th and 21st centuries. One of my personal favourites is definitely Dmitri Shostakovitsh. On the other hand, since I work with Finnish contemporary composers, I cannot really leave a couple of them, like Kaija Saariaho, Jukka Tiensuu, and Lotta Wennäkoski just to name a few, unmentioned.

-In a track called „For The Forgotten One” appears a great saxophone solo. Who's responsible for that piece? Is there any guest appearance on that album?
Even though the song as such is composed by Mika A. A. Hyytinen, both the brass and saxophone parts are arranged/composed by Fredrik and Maggan Plumppu, who are friends of Ola Sonmark. The other guests on this album were Bruno Andersen (cimbalom and hurdy-gurdy) and Antti Litmanen (kang ling).

-The whole album is pretty complex and multi- layered. How much time did you have to spend to record this album?
We started tracking this album in January 2007. The drums took two days, the basses around 6 days (in two separate sessions) and the keys approximately a day. The vocals were also tracked in two separate sessions which took 8 days altogether. The guest appearances by the Plumppu family and Bruno Andersen took a couple of days and were tracked in Sweden later in summer 2007. The time spent on vocals might sound quite excessive but there is a good reason for that. Ola Sonmark builds the vocal sound using loads of overdubs - most of the songs have around 40-50 vocal tracks in the mix. The absolute winner in that sense is The Seven Liers-in-Wait with the massive number of 78 separate vocal tracks used in the mix. When listening carefully, you can find short choral fragments all around the album, as well. Most of them contain approximately 4-5 harmony lines with 4-5 overdubs each. Thus, no wonder why we spent almost a day per each song when tracking vocals.