Interview with Ancient Cult

Ancient Cult is one of those bands that you find accidently and start immediately googling all around the web to find out from where did they arrive all of a sudden. So i had a chat with two of the members, vocalist Dave and Claudio the bassist to find out exactly what Ancient Cult are up to these days.

Ciao e benvenuti a Metal Invader!Let’s start our interview by talking to us about how Ancient Cult came to life…

Dave (vox): I can hardly remember the exact moment, but I think that around Fall 2012 Claudio and me were talking about forming a 70s rock band, in order to indulge our primordial love to the best decade of rock (and finally have a record listenable by our parents, hehe).
Our first choice as a guitar player went to Frank.
In the beginning, we actually wanted to play cover songs only and reach kind of a 3-hour setlist in order to sell us as wedding and party band!
After a couple of inconclusive rehearsals with two drummers we had put this project on hold for many months before asking our longtime friend Marzia if she was in the right mood to play some retro-rock with us. It was almost a joke back in the days, but the cover band idea went to be trashed and so we became Ancient Cult…
Claudio (bass): Ancient Cult came to life with no rush. Our ultimate goal was (and still is) just to play a kind of music we love, in a loud way.

This whole occult 70’s heavy rock is really very in “fashion”, especially in Sweden. Why do you think the sudden booming of this rock genre?

Dave: It’s obviously the trend of the last 6-7 years; still, it’s far better than italo disco! Anyway, sooner or later the wheel of fashion will turn again and we will rise to the status of cult band!
Seriously, we know that once in a while a musical genre becomes hype rather than another one. There‘s nothing left to invent in rock music, it’s all revival now. We don’t really care, if we had started playing 70s rock just to follow the wave we would have been a bit late to catch the train, I guess… Why Sweden? Because they’re skinny, they have beautiful hair and they play better than anyone else, thanks to the government funding and the worst alcohol ever! They deserve it, to be frank… Hail to Sweden!
Claudio: Fashion comes and goes, and then comes back to disappear again and so on… I’m not very interested in analyzing which kind of factors lead towards a trend rather than another. All I can say is that there’s a bunch of great Swedish bands, from hard rock to death/black metal, including hardcore/punk/crust. Bands that get through it… They know how to make good music, that’s what I’m into.

“Goddess of Solitude” (EP) was highly praised by the music press and by the rock community. How does that affect you?

Dave: Considering that despite of our personal age we are a quite new band and we haven’t done that much promotion of our record yet, we’re 666% enthusiastic of the general feedback. We all come from different realities (not speaking about lysergic trips…), and we were a ‘bit afraid of the external response in the beginning, but things ended up with a small entourage of supporters, so we can only be proud of the work done.
Claudio: We put all of ourselves in what we do, and we’re obviously very glad to know that “Goddess of Solitude” is having positive feedbacks.

Which artists or bands influenced your work?

Dave: I hope that everyone who listens to us will recognize by himself our main influences… But sometimes we have been compared to bands such as Witchfinder General or Pagan Altar, which are surely not on top of our inspiration, even if I like them personally, so it seems that the flow goes to shores you perhaps have ignored before.
I guess nobody can avoid mentioning Black Sabbath, Thin Lizzy, early Scorpions, early Pentagram, Deep Purple and even some Candlemass in our tunes so far…
Claudio: Our inspiration comes from classics as Black Sabbath, Thin Lizzy, UFO, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, etc… but also from the thousands of bands from the 70’s, often obscure, which helped create a unique sound and a unique musical era. We don’t like to hide our influences: everything is on our songs and in our lyrics… they only need to be discovered. Quoting, citing, rephrasing is our cup of tea. It’s in our nature.
We all listen to a lot of different music and we also try to put our personal influences. For example Frank and Marzia are very influenced by 80s’ NWOBHM.
I’m personally crazy with old music from the 20th century: from the first bluesmen (Robert Johnson above all), to Heavy/Psych, Progressive (UK, Germany, Italy, Japan…), Rock/Blues in general. Sometimes I search for obscure bands and I’m often surprised to hear how much great stuff there was around in the 60s and the 70s but my reference points come from the golden era like Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath (of course), The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Hawkwind, Cream, Atomic Rooster, Motörhead, Led Zeppelin, King Crimson, Rory Gallagher, Goblin, early Tangerine Dream, early Bowie records (great basslines!), Ennio Morricone soundtracks, The Ventures, etc…

“Goddess of Solitude” is self-released. How difficult is for a band to exist and moreover to stand out in this time of plethora of bands and the current economic crisis?

Dave: Actually this is the first time that the members of my band and I have not made too many sacrifices to record… Thanks to a casual good score with the dice…
It’s quite easy nowadays to form a band, record and even play some shows. What is really hard is to expand its audience and have a continuity. Not everyone who has something to say more than the others survives, and not necessarily commitment, perseverance and coherence pay. Sometimes it’s just a matter of luck. Certainly, knowing what you’re doing is something imperative, and having some money to invest would be the next step…
Claudio: We don’t have any deal with any label and so it’s been natural for us to self-release our debut EP. I believe that sometimes DIY could work better than some labels which make no promotion or even worst when labels asks money to the band to release their own record: there’s really something going wrong if you have to pay to see your record released.

Your debut EP was released back on May, are you working on any new material?

Dave: Yes indeed, but quite slowly, since everyone of us, beside our personal jobs, is involved in several bands (Bland Vargar, Gravesite, Kontatto, Horror Vacui, Wormhole, Tryas, Montenegro, Doxie, The Mountain Moon) and this inevitably steals time to the Cult.
However, we already play a brand new song on stage, and we’re currently working on a couple of new tracks, we’ll see what happens this year.
Claudio: Our EP was digitally released on bandcamp in May 2015 and physically self-released on CD in January 2016 so we’re focusing our 2016 activity on some concerts but we’re also slowly working on our full-length. We haven’t planned any recording session yet and we’ll do it when we’re 100% ready.

Are you considering a video clip? I mean, suddenly, I saw at my facebook timeline about 15 simultaneous sharing of your song from different people that made quite an impression on me. Maybe you should…?

Dave: Hahaha, thanks for the advice! By the way, I really want to do a videoclip, but we have not even talked seriously about it. I’d love to shoot a videoclip of “Vagabonds of the Ancient World in Prague”, ’cause it is where the embryo of this song was born…
Claudio: Why not?

Who would be, let’s say, the five most important occult/ 70’s heavy rock records?

Dave: That’s a hard question. I can’t really answer, so I might quote 5 records which are probably not as popular as other releases of their times (leaving out the always quoted Coven and Black Widow), although you can’t really call them “occult”:
High Tide “Sea Shanties”
Janus “Gravedigger”
Message “From Books and Dreams”
Atomic Rooster “Death Walks Behind You”
Indian Summer “Indian Summer”
Anyway, I must admit that nobody has ever touched my soul as the masters did. Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Cream, King Crimson… The apexes of rock touched by these and a few other bands between ’67 and ’79 are still unmatched.
The list should continue from the early blues to the NWOBHM, passing by Italian Prog and Krautrock, I could go on for days… But I‘ve already gone off topic…
Claudio: Black Sabbath “Black Sabbath” and “Paranoid” because they simply established Heavy Rock.
High Tide “Sea Shanties” since it’s the heaviest record released before Sabbath I’ve ever listened.
Pentagram “First Daze Here” because in my opinion it’s the most underrated band of all the 70s and we’re very lucky that these songs were released, even if it happened almost 30 years after they were recorded.
Jacula “In Cauda Semper Stat Venenum”: 100% occult music.

Dave: Not yet, but future is unwritten, you know. We love being on stage, I think it is where we give our best, and we’ll blow up other countries for sure in the next future!
Claudio: That would be great, we’re always interested in playing live and if there is a chance to organize some gigs outside Italy we’ll be ready.

Thank you so much for your time. The last words are yours…

Dave: I must pay pledge since I did not say anything about Iron Maiden… Steve Harris is coming to get me…
Anyway, thanks a lot for the interview, and I want to dedicate my last words to the latest departed ones: Lemmy and Jimmy Bain.
Claudio: Long live the cult!