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Of Shadowed Paths

Internation act Sojourner have returned with a follow up to their epic debut “Empires of Ash” with even more epicness. “The Shadowed Road” continues to see them hone their sound while adding more parts to their core style. Equally heavy and melodic, the new album sees them including a new member to the ranks which will propel them even further down the road. All of the members added some comments to the questions thrown their way which included the writing and recording the new album, the new member, playing live and a few other things…..check it out……

Expansion

Congrats on your 2nd full length album “The Shadowed Path”…..what has the feedback been regarding it so far?
Mike L.: “Thank you! We really appreciate it. The reception so far has been extremely positive, which genuinely surprised us. We knew that with this album there was a bit of an expansion to the sound, and that we could potentially get a bit of flak for it from the elitists, so we kind of expected a bit of kickback…but to our surprise it’s been almost universally really positive so far! We’re all incredibly proud of this album, and we feel it’s 100% an expansion on what we were doing with ‘Empires’ rather than any drastic change, but the boost in production quality meant we could finally start doing more of what we always wanted to do with the sound.

Of course, there’s the odd person that doesn’t like one aspect or another, but that’s always going to be the case because you can’t please everybody. On the whole though, it’s just been so positive and we thank everybody for their support because it’s blown us away.”

When did songs start coming together for the album? Are any of these tracks that could have been on “Empires Of Ash” and didn’t make it for one reason or another?
Mike L.: ‘Empires’ was basically completely finished on our end at the start of 2016, January or so I think it was. So we took the better part of the year to chill out and just get on with the whole release process and any other projects we might have been working on, but in maybe November or December of 2016 I was playing around in Open B tuning and wrote the first riff of ‘Titan’, the second track on the new album, and that felt like the spark that kicked off the writing process for ‘The Shadowed Road’. Chloe and I then just spent most of 2017 writing and recording, until we had what you hear on the new album. The only piece of music on ‘The Shadowed Road’ that was left over from the ‘Empires’ days was the chorus of ‘Our Bones Among the Ruins’ (the bit at 1:07-1:49 or so), which was originally written for a track that was supposed to be included on ‘Empires’ but we felt it was too ‘metal’ sounding to be on that album and instead we wrote ‘Trails of the Earth’ as a replacement (which, in retrospect, seems a bit strange as the two songs aren’t hugely different in tone). I hadn’t wanted to scrap that song, so I kept it aside, and it turns out that the direction of that track was exactly where we wanted to go on the new album so we exhumed it and put it to use here. Everything else is 100% new material written entirely for this album.”

Dynamics and Flow

How has the songwriting process changed if at all for “The Shadowed Path” from “Empires….”? Was there emphasis on trying some new ideas or styles this time around? Does everyone contribute to the process?
Chloe: “We were really interested in refining our style this time around, and keeping the songs dynamic. There’s a tendency in a lot of the genres we border on to go as long as possible with songs, and while that can work well for heavily atmospheric bands I sometimes feel that these sections turn into background noise. We wanted to move away from that and make every song full of attention-grabbing riffs and transitions.”

Mike L.: “Yeah, we really wanted to work on the dynamics and flow of this album as well as keeping track lengths more manageable. ‘Empires’ was great for what it was, but I feel like we fell into the trap of too many long piano and tin whistle intros and middle sections, and ‘Empires’ feels a bit formulaic to me now. I think the album flows nicely and I’m still really proud of it, but I can see the glaring flaws in where we fell down in terms of being more creative and diverse with dynamics. Whereas on ‘The Shadowed Road’ we didn’t want any two songs to start too similarly, and we wanted a constantly morphing and shifting set of dynamics that doesn’t fall into the trap of becoming monotonous. I personally think we succeeded, and the album is exactly what I wanted it to be, which is probably the first time I’ve ever been able to genuinely say that. I also knew that on this album I wanted more of Chloe’s vocals, as she was underused last time and the band is, in my eyes, a dual vocal band rather than just having clean vocals as backup. In terms of contributions, when it comes to songwriting and the overall direction of the sound, Chloe and I do all of it. Right from the start the sound has been the natural outcome of both of our styles gelling together, and that’s what the core sound of Sojourner is I guess. On the new album however, Mike Wilson (our bassist) contributed a few riffs to the song ‘Our Bones Among the Ruins’, particularly in the intro and verses, which worked really well and helped bring that more aggressive feel that we were looking for on that track. Of course Mike writes all of his own bass parts to all of the songs, so he’s been contributing in that respect since ‘Empires’, and Riccardo really brought a lot to the table this album by expanding the drums massively from the demo ones that I had in there. A large part of what makes ‘The Shadowed Road’ work so well is having Riccardo playing on the album, the real drums have been invaluable.”

International

Since you are truly an international group, how does the recording process work? Is file sharing a big part of the track building?
Mike L.: Not as much as you would probably think. Basically all of the songs are written and recorded by Chloe and myself at my home studio, and once they’re ready to go we send the tracks out to Mike Wilson for bass, Riccardo for final drums, and Emilio for vocals. Everything aside from bass, drums, and Emilio’s vocals are done by Chloe and I in person so it keeps it fairly straightforward.

Prior to the album you released a cover of the epic track “South Away” by Summoning….. how did this come about and what about this track in particular made you decide on it for a cover?
Mike L.: “Wolfspell Records contacted us asking if we could contribute a bonus track to the vinyl and cassette versions of the ‘In Mordor Where the Shadows Are…’ compilation, so it seemed like a good opportunity to get in front of some potential new fans. It was also a good one-off song to give to Øystein to mix, as I had already made contact with him and we’d decided to use him for the next album by that stage. It was a fun cover to do! In the future I’d probably shy away from doing covers of other metal bands, but it was a good one-off opportunity to do something like that. We decided on ‘South Away’ because ‘Land of the Dead’ was already taken haha and I always liked ‘South Away’ as a song, I felt it would suit our more riffy approach.”
Mike W.: “This was the first Summoning song I ever heard and has remained a favourite since so it was very cool to do our own version of it!”

Italian Drums

You have incorporated a new member in Riccardo on drums from Italian act Atlas Pain…. how did you arrive on him being your drummer? Was there an audition stage with other drummers being considered?
Riccardo: “I had the chance to get into Sojourner back in Summer 2016. During that time I was in studio recording Atlas Pain’s debut album “What the Oak Left”, when a close friend of mine gave me a DVD full of bands, in which Sojourner were there, and after some proper listening I really got to love the band, and I decided to gave my contribution by buying the album on Bandcamp. After that I added Mike on Facebook and started to talk with him; Then in March 2017 Atlas Pain’s album got out and Mike wrote me that he was impressed by the job we did and he asked me if I was interested in working at the drum tracks of the new album and after some weeks of working together and getting to know each other better, he offered me the opportunity to join on board as a full member!”
Mike L.: “We knew that one of the big weaknesses on ‘Empires’ was the lack of real drums and the fact that I’m not a drummer, so the drums I write aren’t always how a drummer would approach them. I always try to keep them realistic and tasteful, but I could never match a proper drummer’s approach. Riccardo is one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met, and his drumming is fantastic, so it all just fell into place really. Once we had spoken about it, it was as good as done. We’re honored to have Riccardo in the band!”

How did having a live drummer possibly change the songs for the album as opposed to having programmed drums on “Empires…..”?
Riccardo: “All of the drums tracks were originally written by Mike by the time I joined the band and I started co-working with him for the arrangements of the drum parts, we tried to focus more on developing a style of drumming that could perfectly fit a live performance; Mike has a prefect understanding of what he wanted to deliver with the drum, I basically adapt all of the song to be doable live. We also spent sometimes readapting some songs of the “Empire of Ash” album, there are going to be just a few changes, nothing that will adversely affect the overall experience of the previous record.”

“I guess whatever you listen to shapes how you write in one way or another”

Vocalbilities

Vocally, the juxtaposition of Chloe’s and Emilio’s vocals in the tracks creates tons of possibilities…..were there numerous ideas on how each of their vocal parts would fit into the tracks? Were vocal lines improvised or planned in advance?
Emilio: “Actually, there were lots of ideas. Chloe and I would discuss would could fit and what didn’t. Sometimes we had to redo entire parts because one idea turned out to be better than the other. That said, I do sometimes improvise. I just step in front of the mic and do some takes on the fly and I end up really liking them. It all depends, really.”
Chloe: “Generally Emilio will write the lyrics and record his parts, and we’ll talk on Skype about combining parts. I write my vocal lines and shift around the lyrics that Emilio sends if I need to fit them in a slightly different shape. For the song “The Shadowed Road“ we did this in reverse – I knew the song would start with my vocals and I had an idea of what it should be about lyrically while I was writing the song, so I wrote the lyrics and recorded my parts first and then Emilio and I talked about where the doubled parts would go. We’re both big fans of a lot of bands which incorporate clean and heavy vocals so it was fun to think about how we could utilise this more in Sojourner.”

When you write something whether lyrics or music, do you know that it is something that will work for being a Sojourner track? Even if not initially, is it something you try to make work?
Emilio: “I have certain themes that are for Sojourner only. I am open of course to expand upon the lyrical content with a broader umbrella but within the same themes. I actually did that for this album. It was definitely a bit more emotional storytelling on some of the tracks rather than your classic fantasy or nature themes. Due to this way of working I know exactly what I want to bring to the table and 95% of the time not much needs to be changed, maybe some words and stuff for tempo purposes. The rest of the band are confident in what I write and that’s awesome.”
Chloe: “With a second album there’s always a concern that you’ve done something too different, so there were some parts where we were concerned that a development of our sound went too far in some direction. But in the end we’ve always liked combining influences from all the genres we listen to, and if we write a part we love we’ll make it work into the wider sound.”
Mike L.: “When it comes to the music side of things, I don’t ever want to suffocate the growth of the band’s sound by self-censoring too much. We self-edit a lot of course, we throw out a LOT of stuff that we don’t deem to be up to the standard we expect of ourselves, but self-censoring is something I don’t see the point in doing. We decided that we weren’t worried about whether there is enough of X or Y influence, instead we wrote stuff that we enjoyed and just stayed true to what we want Sojourner to be. In the same way, the next album will expand up and move outward from ‘The Shadowed Road’, rather than move backwards towards the sound on ‘Empires’. I feel like there’s a core sound to the music we make as Sojourner which will always be there, and we just continually push forward with that.”

Influences

Are there some bands that you fashion yourselves after on some level? If not, what bands are your biggest influences?
Chloe: “We always struggle to clearly define ourselves in any one genre, so it’s hard to pick a particular band that we could fashion ourselves after. But for me in terms of influences, I wanted to introduce more Rotting Christ-style energy to this album, as well as dreamy Alcest vibes and cinematic elements in the vein of My Dying Bride’s ‘Evinta’.”
Mike L.: “I feel like this album we had the sound fairly well worked out from ‘Empires’, so we just used that as a springboard to move forward with the new stuff. We try to not to use other bands as comparison points too often, because every time you do that you sort of start to paint yourself into a corner and accidentally mimic stylistic points or even outright borrow ideas without realizing. We listen to a lot of black metal,¬ folk metal, doom metal, melodic death metal, atmospheric metal, progressive metal etc. so that all factors into it. Big influences on our writing style (even if they’re not directly what you might hear in our sound) are bands like Agalloch, Borknagar, Moonsorrow, Windir, Draconian, Saor, Mgła, Dissection, Rotting Christ, Primordial, Autumnblaze, Be’lakor, Insomnium, Equilibrium, Wintersun, Winterfylleth, Horn, Elvenking, Eluveitie, My Dying Bride, Alcest… I could keep listing stuff off, but it eventually just becomes an arbitrary list of our favorite bands. There a lot of non-metal influences as well, I guess whatever you listen to shapes how you write in one way or another.

How has your relationship with Avantgarde been to this point? Have they had a hands off policy to allow you to do what you want musically?
Emilio: “We have an amazing relationship with the label. Rob is a fantastic person that cares for his bands and gives full freedom. I have come across labels that wanted to alter artwork or have something to say about whatever but it isn’t the case with Avantgarde at all. When you begin to work with him it’s because he believes in the band and everything they will bring to the table. This is something we value tremendously. You can bet that the next album will also be released through Avantgarde. We work so well together that it doesn’t even cross our minds to shop around.”
Mike L.: “Yeah, Rob is very hands-off but very caring and supportive. We basically finished and delivered the album, no label meddling or telling us what we could or couldn’t do. He’s an absolutely top guy, and we couldn’t be happier!”

You had the talents of Øystein G Brun (Borknagar, Cronian) and Dan Swanö (Edge Of Sanity, Nightingale plus others) with mixing and mastering respectively. How was the experience working with them? Did they give you any advice or direction on how the album would or could sound?
Mike L.: “The experience of working with both Øystein and Dan was one of the best experiences ever. I was in constant contact with Øystein during the whole mixing process, and he went above and beyond in every respect. He’s the epitome of a professional and I could not possibly praise him highly enough. Dan was very professional, as you’d expect, and had a very fast and effective turnaround for the mastering process. Neither of them tried to influence or direct the sound at all other than just making it as polished as possible, Øystein and I were very much on the same page and just worked towards making the album sound huge. Anybody thinking of getting their future productions done should get in touch with Øystein at Crosound. This is the level of production we had always wanted, so we couldn’t be more thankful for Øystein and Dan’s time and effort.”
Mike W.: “Øystein and Dan have both been involved in so many albums that have been heavily influential to us, so to have their input has been a great experience and they truly lifted the album to the next level sonically.”

Live

You have your first live show coming up in April at the epic North Of The Wall in Glasgow, Scotland with the mighty Saor and black metallers Uir. How did this come about and how have you been able to practice for this event?
Mike L.: “Practice for it is… interesting. Not ideal, but we make it work. Basically the three guitars, piano, and flute all practice together in Dundee to drum and vocal tracks. Emilio practices to the songs themselves in Sweden, as does Mike Wilson and Riccardo in New Zealand and Italy. We’re all converging in Dundee a week before the gig to put it all together, but luckily we’re all tight players and experienced with live playing so it won’t be an issue. We’re incredibly honored to be playing with Saor, who we’ve been long-time fans of, and we’re really thankful to Joe (one of the promoters) for giving us the opportunity to get this off the ground live finally.”
Mike W.: “All I can really do in preparation for the show is play bass! New Zealand is a long way from Glasgow but it is going to be truly rewarding once we’re all in the same place and can perform this music we’ve made together, it will be a very special occasion!”

Are there thoughts about any sort of tour to support the album? How difficult would it be to do and is it practical?
Mike L.: “It would definitely be doable, but nothing about our setup is practical haha though we could definitely make it work. We’ve actually already got a gig at Dark Troll Festival in Germany this May! So it’s definitely something we’re wanting to do more. Not an album support tour though, I think we’ll focus more on festivals and one-off shows where and when it’s possible for us to do so.”

Favorite music from 2017 and music most looking forward to in 2018?
Emilio: “Last year, Wolves in the Throne Room took the cake. This year it is Ison with their new EP “Andromeda Skyline”. That EP is just magic and I don’t even need to wait for other albums to release to know that that is a fact for me.”
Chloe: “If I could only pick two off the top of my head then Wormwood’s ‘Ghostlands: Wounds from a Bleeding Earth’ for 2017, and Amorphis’ ‘Queen of Time’ for 2018. There are far too many to list here, but it’s been a good few years for metal.”
Mike L.: “My favourite albums from 2017 were probably Xanthochroid’s ‘Of Erthe & Axen’ albums, Walpyrgus’ ‘Walpyrgus Nights’, Unleash the Archers’ ‘Apex’, Wormwood’s ‘Ghostlands’, Pillorian’s ‘Obsidian Arc’, Soen’s ‘Lykaia’, Horn’s ‘Turm am Hang’, Elvenking’s ‘Secrets of the Magick Grimoire’, The Black Dahlia Murder’s ‘Nightbringers’, Akercocke’s ‘Renaissance in Extremis’, Leprous’ ‘Malina’…but there were many more alongside those; and for 2018 we’ve already had new Tribulation, Visigoth, The Atlas Moth, Harakiri for the Sky, and ISON which have been a few of my favourites in a long time! All amazing albums. There are plenty of others coming up that I’m excited for as well, it’s going to be a good year.”
Mike W.: “Favourite music from 2017 – Ulver ‘The Assassination of Julius Caesar’, Varmia ‘Z Mar Twych’, Ironflame ‘Lightning Strikes the Crown’. Most Anticipated music 2018 – Primoridal ‘Exile Amongst the Ruins’, Aura Noir ‘Aura Noire’, Yob ‘Our Raw Heart’.”

Closing thoughts?
Mike L.: “Thank you to everybody that has supported us along the way, and thank you to you guys for hosting this interview!”

By: Jeff

Interview with Sojourner : On Melancholy and hype trains

Epic black metal entourage Sojourner, after having released their well-received second album The Shadowed Road (2018), have decided to muster their internationally spread out troupe and join Harakiri for the Sky and Draconian for a tour of live concerts across Europe. After their concert on the 26th of January in Rotterdam, I got the rare opportunity to have chat with almost the full band, and lest I forget, their Scottish live bass player for this tour, Scotty Lodge. Read what he and Mike Lamb (Scotland/New Zealand), Chloe Bray (Scotland/New Zealand), Emilio Crespo (Sweden) and Riccardo Floridia (Italy) had to say about their live shows, art, melancholy and getting ‘hype trained’.

Thanks for having the interview, I appreciate you taking the time. So you seem to like touring?

Mike Lamb (guitars, ML): Yeah, we love it!

Riccardo Floridia (drums, RF): It’s awesome!

Even the smelly bus and all?

RF: The smelly guys also !(laughs)

Chloe Bray (guitars & vocals, CB): It’s part of the experience, exhausting, but fun.

ML: We were lucky that our tour is with two other bands that get along amazingly.

Anything weird that has come up?

ML: The kind of stuff you would imagine, people get tired and drunk and its kinda funny, but nothing major.

RF: I think nothing major.

You didn’t loose somebody at the airport or something like that?

CB: Well, I got nearly stuck on a boat. So it was the middle of the night and we were on the ferry going from Copenhagen back to Germany and I was in a bathroom when the 5 minute call came. I was brushing my teeth. As it’s very hard to come across a sink when on a tour, I was thinking: yes, a sink and trying to clean my teeth! So I got down late, almost missing the tour bus that was about to leave. No one had realized I wasn’t on it!

So, a bit about more on the music. [I have been] listening to the albums ever since Empires of Ash was released, and for me much of the magic comes from the two guitars playing with and against each other. Can you elaborate on how you go about that?

ML: When we started writing it, we wanted it to be more guitar focused than a lot of the atmospheric black metal. So it almost got a melodic death or sort of classic metal guitar interaction, making it less washed-out than a lot of black metal.

CB: It’s kind of like why we like playing live, cause people say atmospheric black metal is not well suited to playing live, but for us it’s always been more guitar focused. So we feel like its working well, as its always been about riffs being the driving focus of the songs.

When I look at your covers and album art, it reminds me of the Romantic painters like Caspar Friedrich, Dahl and Turner. Is that something you also take inspiration from?

Emilio Crespo (vocals, EC): I mean, essentially our lyrics tend to be either fantasy or nature based. So in the end, what we decide to do is to portray that on the art. Generally, Mike will have a conversation with the artist who will do the album cover and talk about the direction is should be going to. We want it to be based on what the lyrics tells and what the music gives off, feeling wise. Which Chloe and Mike do very well and I write the lyrics to match the music that they are making.

Any literary, books or specific sources or is it more a feeling you’re conveying?

EC: It can be personal to me, in the sense that I write what I know. But at the same time it can be things that inspire me, like gaming, or things I might have read, or movies or stuff like that. It can basically be anything. Or when I am outside in Nature, get inspired and write lyrics to the song. Anything can strike it. But mainly, when I get the songs they have written, that sparks it immediately. That happens with every album, that I don’t need the sparks from other sources, because I get it from what they write.

And you get the music without any lyrics, I guess? With a description maybe?

CB: Well sometimes, will say that we were going with a kind of ‘feel’, but not a topic. Well as you mentioned those particular painters, they are from a Romantic period. We are generally going for a something melancholic, that feeling that nature being something immense, which is difficult to convey in any other way than poetry or music. That’s the emotion we want to get across. So we’ll sort of describe this to Emilio and he will do that what he takes from the music.

And you [Emilio] live in Sweden, right?

EC: Yes.

I assume living in Sweden has influenced your music and inspiration?

EC: Most definitely, yes. Sweden has some very beautiful aspects of nature, in it’s own way of course. It’s not mountainous or anything, its a very flat land. But between the forest and ocean, and (the very rare) lakes. That definitely triggers a lot of things for me.

Why the name? Is it the friendlier version of ‘vanity’; only staying for so long on a life that is a long journey?

ML: Yeah, that’s exactly it with the name! It’s something that kind of works with the epic aspect of the music, and the sort of journey elements we try to weave into the sound.

So, a bit more general, you recently signed with Napalm Records, congrats! Can you elaborate a bit on that?

ML: We were on AvantGarde Music, and we were perfectly happy there. But earlier on, when the tour was announced, Sebastian from Napalm contacted us and said he’d checked us out and was interested in working with us. So we were in talks for a long time after that, hashing out the details, and we officially signed around December I think it was. So now we’re working on a new album for them, And here we are!

EC: We off course had conversations, if it was feasible and everything like that. In the end, they shared our vision and we feel comfortable with them. So we decided to go ahead and take that plunge and the next step.

And I guess become bigger?

ML: Yeah, exactly.

Since you are an international band, I guess you guys travel a lot? How do you manage?

RF: It’s kind of hard, to manage that. But we always managed to do that. Even if we don’t have time to rehearse. We have to rely on our ability. So far on the tour, I think we are on the ninth [day of the tour]?

Lost count [laughs]?

RF: (laughs) So I think we are getting better and better, every show is like a new experience to us. But so far, so good and fucking amazing!

EC: Yeah, I definitely feel privileged to be in a band with so many talented musicians. Even though we don’t get to rehearse that much, or see each other that often, as much as we would like not. We still make it happen, and do our best to give great show and just show people that we love what we do.

Well, that was visible during the show.

ML: I’d like to give a shout out to Scotty here. Our bass player on the two albums [Mike Wilson] can’t often make it to shows and so Scotty here, who is a friend from work stepped in. You enjoy it, right?

Scotty Lodge (live bass, SL): Yeah! Its an awesome opportunity, I am very grateful to these guys for granting it to me. It’s been a life long dream to hit the road. And here we are, tearing it up!

CB: Scotty is our hype train!

RF: Mr. Hype train !

Hype train?

ML: He generally is like the one that gets ‘it’ first on stage. Every time I look at him, he also gets me into it.

SL: I like participation, any opportunity [I] get [to have] the crowd involved and interact with them, I take.

So you learn becoming a live band from him?

(all laugh), EC: Yeah, Scotty is the fucking man!

So you (Mike) are in Lysithea, any other bands that you are involved with?

ML: I’ve got Lysithea and outside of that, I do some sound track work and stuff. Nothing else yet, I’ve got another couple of things in the works at the moment, but that’s brand new. Haven’t really started them yet.

EC: I am in a funeral doom band, along with Peter Lausten of Nox Aurea and Where Nothing Remains, and we are soon going to release an album. That’s the only thing I am involved in, right now.

RF: I am in involved in another band, called Atlas Pain, which is kind of different from the Sojourner style. I am also the live drummer for other bands, which one I cannot say. I am involved in other projects.

Hmm, just unnamed?

RF: Well I can say that, the people [of that band] don’t want me to say that, so I can’t.

So, 2018 brought a lot of nice releases, could you name some of them? Your personal favorites?

EC: Oh yeah, for one, ISON, with Andromeda Skyline, which is a side project of Heike [Langhans] of Draconian, who we currently are on tour with. Fantastic release…there so many, that you blank out with [this question].

RF: I need to check spotify!

EC: For one, this might cause a little.. I love the recent Architects. Very powerful. A lot of emotion and passion to that album, something that I can really appreciate.

CB: I really loved the new Firtan release!

Yeah, that album was on our lists as well.

CB: And we saw the release show of them at Dark Troll, which was amazing, which makes me extra attached to them.

ML: I was a huge fan of the new Rivers of Nile. It’s a progressive metal band, you should check it out.

SL: A definite shout out to our tour mates, Harakiri for the Sky. Their 2018 Arson is a killer album!

RF: Off course, that goes without saying!

I guess you make also have some spare time to go to live concerts, every once in a while. What were the highlights for 2018?

EC: For me personally, a few weeks ago I saw Architects live. And that was one of the most insane shows that I’ve ever seen. Off course, when we go out gigging we’ve see bands that we share the bill with, Firtan was one of our highlights. I guess I can speak for all. Then as well Dool, for example.

Yeah, we are proud of that [in the Netherlands].

EC: And Draconian, favourite band of all times, seeing them night after night is something amazing for me. And off course Harakiri for the Sky; it’s very cliché but very true.

CB: One of the highlights is seeing them over and over again. Me and Mike saw Wardruna in Edinburgh, and they were amazing. It’s just such an experience, completely different from going to a usual metal festival.

ML: It such an otherworldly show. One concert that probably isn’t going to go down easily, well here anyway, was Coheed and Cambria. I saw them this year in what, for the first time in 10 years? It was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.

RF: Personally, I have two; which were Audn, the Icelandic metal band. I saw them at Summerbreeze. And the other one was Tribulation with Insomnium.

Coming back to a more Sojourner related question; I guess you will at some point release a new album?

CB/RF/ML: Nah, we won’t… (All Laugh)

SL: Yep…This is our farewell tour!

ML: We’ve started on it, actually, we are about three songs in. One completed with vocals.

CB: Yes, we’re getting ready to send some demo’s to Napalm. So it’s [starting to] get a bit of shape. We can kind of see, roughly, where it’s going. But its always with two or three songs, hard to see in what the whole shape of the album is going to be.

ML: Shadowed road, but going in a darker, more epic, sad…

More melancholic?

CB: Always more melancholic.

ML: But at the same time, more epic duration.

EC: I love it when we are in the writing process, sometimes I get very impatient. But at the same time, not in a bad way, it’s just that I know they’re writing amazing music, and I just want to get my hands on it! So actually, being in Sojourner, when I first listen to it, I am actually a fan rather than a member. Because they are writing it and they only give it to you when it’s completely finished. And the feeling you get when you listen to it he first time…is just…it’s really amazing.

RF: I haven’t mentioned all of my favourite albums of 2018, which is also The Shadowed Road. If you get to see my lastFM charts, it’s like right on top!

You like hearing yourself?

RF: (laughs) I have, you know, after every year, you can see your Spotify charts. And that had Sojourner as top 1 of all the lists. I was like, okay, I cannot fucking share and post this!

[To ML/CB] So, you both live in Scotland at the moment?

CB/ML: Yes.

RF: Scotty too, by the way!

(That part I got (laughing).) So how has living in Scotland affected the inspiration part? I think you where inspired by the Isle of Skye? Other parts as well?

ML: Yes.

CB: Oh yes, we live on the east coast of Scotland, I am studying at the University of St. Andrews. It’s not too far to drive up to the Cairngorms, we go there quite often. There are some epic hikes, there is one that goes to a mountain called Lochnagar, a big epic circuit. It’s a different landscape around every corner. It’s always misty and dramatic. Yeah, that really inspiring, whenever I am trying to feel the atmosphere we want, I always look at photos we have of that.

And your academic studies, are they influencing the work?

CB: Yeah, I am studying Landscapes in ancient Greek tragedies. So the whole kind of epic landscapes, the dark sad, aspects of landscapes and landscape and memory and that sort of thing I am studying. Quite often, I find myself thinking about writing songs while I am doing research, or I think about my thesis while I am writing songs.

Final question: Any Spinal Tap moments this tour?

ML: Backstage labyrinths, that what I was just thinking of. It is just like that, every venue you go to seems to be built on some sort of just…maze. Trying to find your way around, your end up walking into dead ends, into laundries…

RF: That’s basically the first thing that you do, is getting used to the venue. So you don’t get lost inside.

CB: You’re wandering around all sleepy, thinking: where is the food? Where is the rest?

Ever wandered into old musicians from previous tours, that have turned up as zombies?

EC: I have to say, one for example. Was an amazing show with an amazing crowd. We had one of the best shows ever, in Leipzig. But that venue was a total maze, sometime you were were even a bit disoriented.

ML: The venue with al those doors?

ML/RF: The cold venue? With the prison showers?

Wait, what, prison showers?

ML: It was a shower, that you see in prisons. A simple divider, with these open stalls.

RF: Funny fact: there were four, but only one with warm water…

Well, have fun on the rest of your tour and good luck surviving the prison showers (don’t drop the soap)! Thanks a lot for the interview and hope to see you around!

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