Ελληνικά
Last Updated on 12:58 AM by Giorgos Tsekas
Mantar, the two-piece sludge/black metal act from Germany released one of the coolest albums of the year entitled Ode To The Flame. Here AstralKannibal tries to steal a little of their as it seems extremely precious time somewhere between their live performances across European metal festivals…
Congratulations on the second record. Is the flame you are praising on the title the one that remained after the “Death By Burning”? Are those titles somehow connected, are you pyromaniacs or you just thought it was a cool title?
First of all a very cool title of course. But our main motivation is just the beauty of the destructive extasy we feel when we play. Just like fire. The title Ode To The Flame is a reference to the first record as we wanted to keep up the universal and cleansing power of the guiding theme “fire”. Fire is eternal. It has the power to reset everything to zero and wipe out any kind of plague. The flame furthermore is a symbol of your own iron will. Passion so to speak. And I am not talking about the passion of an „artist“ or any other trivial things. The fire we are refering to is about the will to survive. Or the will to destroy forever. As mentioned before: primitive rage.
The artwork of the first album was depicting the title, whereas in the second album the title is only in scripted in the cover and the depiction is in the gatefold vinyl. Is there any special reason for that and how important is artwork for you and the image you want to give out as a band?
We wanted to let the music speak for itself. Plus we thought it´s cool to make the record look very simple, just like an old “forbidden” mysterious book. A lot of people try to put so much meaning in their cover, which is fine, but at this time we thought the music is simple, raw and straight forward, we wanted the whole record to look that way. I like this arrogant plain look. We didn´t even put our band name or logo on it. When you gonna open the gatefold vinyl though you will find a very cool picture drawn by a close friend of ours of our hometown Bremen completely in flames. Like an old medieval painting. Pretty epic. That´s another thing I liked, that you have to open it to see something that actually refers to the title. Basically we wanted nothing that deviates from the content of the record. If a record is dark and sinister it should look like it.
It seems that without changing much in your sound, you try to implement more elements in your music. Are those keyboard like melodies in “The Hint” and “Oz” made by pedals?
Yes. We never use any other instruments than drums, guitars and my voice. I just wanted to offer new sounds, but of course we wanted to make sure to be able to reproduce these sound son stage too. So we didn’t use any other instruments. Or samples.
Since you are based in Hamburg but both have origins in Bremen (if I am correct), would you say there is something inherently Hanseatic in your music in any sense and do you feel a part of a certain scene that was or is emerging there?
WE never have been part of any scene. No matter where. We wanted to stay away from all this on purpose as I think a scene just makes all bands sound the same. Plus I like being alone. Growing up in Bremen in the 90’s where we had a very healthy underground and DIY culture was way more important for us than Hamburg ever could be. Hamburg is nice but doesn´t influenced in any way. Furthermore I don’t live there anymore (moved away 18 months ago) and spend most of my time in Florida anyways.
When I first listened to Mantar and wanted to describe your music to friends I said that it is heavy as shit rock and roll without the need of a bass player. How big is the influence of AC/DC and Motorhead in your music? Is “Era Borealis” with the anthemic chorus the “Highway to Hell” of our times?
AD/DC is the most important band of my life for me. My dad gave me Highway To Hell and If you want blood… on tape when I was 6 years old. The love of my life. Hands down. Everything I do is somehow related to AC/DC even though you wouldnt hear it nowadays. I grew up on Punk Rock and Thrash Metal. Just all dirty forms of simple Rock And Roll. That influences MANTAR way more than whatever so called “Sludge” band or whatever you wanna call all that. Era Borealis is just a hymn. Its up to the people what it means to them. It´s about the lesson not to mess with death. You won´t get out alive. “Life is a tumor….”… Death is forever.
How is it to live in a world without Lemmy? Do you think that new generations will need a living example to show them what rock and roll is all about?
Well, fun dude. But he would probably feel a liitle weird knowing that everybody is making such a big thing out of his death. Lemmy is awesome. No doubt about that. But I think he is mainly awesome for playing in even more awesome Motorhead.
