France's Atavisma have been covered on Contaminated Tones before. On a previous Monthly Blast feature, I covered their recent 7" EP, On The Ruins of a Fallen Empire. Way before that back in 2014, I gave similar praise to their debut demo, Where Wolves Once Dwelled. Additional releases, such as a 7" Split with Maur as well as some compilation appearances and positive press have preceded their new full length album, The Chthonic Rituals. The album mostly continues where Atavisma previously left off: destructive and murky death metal that is often doomy, commonly blistering, but always old school death metal in it's bones. The Chthonic Rituals is merely the natural progression of their purpose. Also remaining is the lyrical content which focuses on an almost tribal elementalism. On The Chthonic Ritual, this is symbolized through the cumulative connotations associated with Lovecraft and his descriptive manner of realizing the unknown and the ancient. Atavisma seek what their moniker hints at - the lost connections of primitive man with nature.
Being a fan of the band for a long time, and being in occasional contact with G, I proposed an interview to explore the band further and elaborate on some of these concepts which I found fascinating and interesting. Phenomenal band and amazing people, G. Presents Atavisma not only as a top-tier Death Metal band but in subtle ways which match my own perspectives and philosophies. This connection endears me to them more than before: "All of us are individuals with their own way of thinking and we value that a lot, and that's what made the strength of the band."
CT: How did Atavisma come into being? Tell me about the band's early history prior to the Where Wolves Once Dwelled demo in 2014. How did you decide on the band's name?
G: Hey Jon, first of all, thank you for taking some time to do this interview with us. I'm from a small city in the South-West of France, and finding people to play extreme music was very hard there. Things got easier when I moved to Paris, but I still had to find the right people. I played in two different bands that weren't heading anywhere before meeting L. We shared a common taste in music and other interests so it clicked right away. I remember asking L. about doing vocals on some demo recordings that I had after he got refused by another band for which he auditioned. He agreed and we decided to record our first demo a month after L. found our moniker "Atavisma" after some discussion between us and the themes we wanted to structure our songs around. He came up with the name quite easily and fast, and it sounds great to the ears aswell.
CT: Your logo was drawn up by Christoph Szpajdel. At what point did you decide to have him do the logo, and was he easy to work with? I never realized how many bands that I'm familiar with have used him as their logo designer.
G: Well that's quite a funny story. Actually, our first logo was done by a nice person from the US who volounteered for doing our logo. It really looked like the Dismember one, but way more raw. The reason why Christoph made the logo is linked to my origins. I'm actually from the country of Georgia in the Caucasus region. And it happens that Christoph is really passionate about Caucasian (Georgian, Chechen, Ingush, etc) culture and music and I stumbled upon his youtube profile under some georgian folk songs that I was listening to. So I decided to contact him since I had some recordings I've done on my own where I mixed metal and georgian folk songs for my own pleasure, and asked him if he would like to listen to them since he liked both of them. That's how it all began, and it was before I moved to Paris and formed Atavisma. When we had half of the demo written down I've sent the tracks to him and he kindly agreed to do a new logo for us, which we accepted with great pleasure and he did exactly what we had in mind with great ease. We didn't even needed to do corrections to the logo and I think that's why he's such a great artist and why a lot of bands use his skills for their logos.
CT: Were there specific bands which you decided to sound like? I hear Asphyx as well as Grave but occasionally also some more subtle influences from doomer entites like Disembowelment or Evoken. Did the style of Death Metal which you are playing come naturally or did you set out to create the band with the intention of playing within such a framework?
G: The genre that we decided upon at the begining for the band was old school Death Metal, specially in the Swedish way. So fast and brutal stuff. The first Death Metal band that I heard when I was young was Unleashed, followed by the other Swedish bands of course, and that's when I knew that this was the kind of music I wanted to play. My taste evolved of course, and you're right about quoting Asphyx. The Last One on Earth was one of the first Death Metal albums that I bought with Unleashed's Where No Life Dwells and Across the Open Sea, so naturally I went into doomier and slower stuff. Obviously I found out Incantation and that was the game changer for me. Disembowelment and Evoken are also two bands that I really like, and although we didn't went for really slow and long songs with the demo, it still was influential. The first song that we recorded was "Forsaken" and prior to that, I have never heard L.'s vocal skills so I didn't knew what to expect. So after recording him for the first time, and having my mind blowed out, I knew that his voice would perfectly fit slow paced rhythms, and that's when we slowed things down tempo wise.
CT: Similarly, the lyrical content has remained consistent in themes across the releases you've put out. Was this also something decided upon or just a natural direction based on personal philosophies and interest?
G: Well, with a name like ours, we had to have something close to it, lyric wise. L. and myself are interested in themes revolving around Nature, the Humankind and so on, but since the demo we expanded a bit our lyrical themes, even though they're still connected somehow. Our philosophies and interests, as humans, evolve, so obviously what we have written about five years ago isn't the same as today. We try to not limit ourselves as much as before.
CT: L and yourself both handle writing the lyrics for Atavisma. Explain the process you go through in writing the lyrics. Do you both work on a song together or individually?
G: We both have different approaches to lyrics. I tend to write down lyrics based on the songs or the riffs, so it influences the way that they are sung/pronounced. L. on the other hand writes them based more on instinct that the music. Writting the lyrics together gives us the opportunity to mix both ways and create diversity in the vocal lines aswell. There are some songs on which either L. or myself didn't write, such as "The Savage One" or "Ashen Ascetic" were written by me, "Invocation.." or "Extraneous.." were solely written by L.
CT: With your demo, Where Wolves Once Dwelled, you handled all the instrumentation on the demo. Why did you decide to not wait til you had put together a full lineup? What was the recording process like for that album for you?
G: As I said earlier, I moved from my small town to Paris. I was basically a nobody and I didn't knew people from the scene or interested in the genre that I wanted to play. So L. and I decided to write down and record a demo in order to find people interested into playing with us more easily. But it didn't help that much since it was still a struggle to find a drummer and a bassist. It took almost more thant a year to have a stable line-up. As for the recording, I did everything on the demo, from the recording to mixing and mastering. It was all done in my small flat with very bad gear, a budget of zero and poor skills. It was my second recording ever and I was limited by the gear, specially the computer which is ridiculously old (Windows XP with 2gigs of ram and a single core processor for those interested..). Added to that, I really had bad knowledge about recording and all of that. Of course, at this day, I have improved a lot and our demo recordings sound thousand times better than what we did on WWOD. But I don't regret recording it the way it was. The composition phase was wery quick and instinctive, it took me like a day or two by song to finish them, and I didn't wan't to wait for a long period before releasing the songs, and that added the raw and primitive feel to the demo that we were actually looking to achieve considering the fact that I didn't have good skills at the time regarding the recording/mixing.
CT: "The Savage One" and "Nature's Warfare" are represent the iconic Atavisma sound. It mixes the faster and slower parts all with the thick Swedish Death Metal tone. The lyrics are exemplary of the band's seeming theme of a return to primitivism and the enduring inevitability of nature outlasting humans. When you think back to the debut demo, how do you view it now in relation to where you are at as a band?
G: Well, the composition and recording quality became better, but we still tried to keep that primitive feel you spoke about, of course it will also depend on the track and the subject it is about. The desire of writing how nature overcame of humans came from the fact of how the life in the city alienated me. In my home town, I lived in the suburbs and the longer we lived there, the city's officials tried to push us further away from the downtown by raising the rent and living costs (the suburbs are actually were people with low/poor income live in France, contrary to the US if I'm not mistaken). The same thing happens here in Paris, plus the fact that there are more and more people living in small neighborhoods and smaller spaces, which is really suffocating, and during my first months here it was a very difficult experience. In the end you get used to it but you still have the desire to "breathe" and somehow channel that frustration which we do with our music. The one thing that didn't changed that much from the demo years and today are our live performances. The goal from the very begining was to deliver pure sonic violence and savagery, even during our slower parts, and during the years, I think, it has gone more and more brutal during our shows.
CT: I first was introduced to Atavisma through Gabriel from Nihilistic Holocaust. How did you first come in contact with Gabriel and what it was like working with him to get the demo officially out on cassette. Will you be working with him more?
G: I think he contacted us by mail and asked us if he could produce the demo on tape. Since it was the original format on which we wanted to release it - it was released first on MCD format on Dead Center Productions - we agreed to do that with him. He did a great job and has spread our music all around the world, and we're really grateful for that. Although there are no future plans for working with him again, and he already invested a lot in the band so I don't really know what the future will tell us about a new collaboration with Nihilistic Holocaust.
CT: You did a split with Maur, an Indonesian band, a year after the demo and submitted a single song for that split. How did that combination come together?
G: I was composing the track, A Subterranean Life, and the band contacted us and were interested into doing a split with us. As simple as that. We liked their music so we agreed to do two single tracks for each band around 10 minutes and that's how the split came to life. We never heard of them after that so I guess the band is no longer active anymore, maybe I'm wrong.
CT: The next release afterwards was a 7" EP titled On The Ruins of a Fallen Empire. This release features a full lineup. How did you meet the rest of the members at this time? Was there a reason why L and yourself decided it was time to get a full lineup?
G: It was really difficult to find the two other members for the band. At first we recruited our first drummer, C., after around 6 months of searching for someone. And afterwards it took us around 6 months again to find W. who joined us on bass. Our main goal with the band was to play live shows, it is a practice that we're very passionate about. Having a demo, that had a rather nice success in the underground, and not finding members to play live was extremely frustrating so at some point L. tried to do the vocals and play bass at the same time, we thought about playing without a bass player, and so on. But patience is the mother of all virtues so once the full line-up was set up, we were ready to unleash hell on stage whenever we could.
CT: The most noticeable effect this seems to have had was that the drummer improved significantly. Were there other subtle changes in how you wrote songs or lyrics when you got the full band lined up? Was it integral that the incoming members had similar thoughts and philosophies that fit with the overall themes and content that L and yourself had focused on.
G: When C. joined us, it was his first real band and he didn't have a lot of experience, but as I said before, we were patient and he has progressed very quickly in a short laps of time. W. was already a high skilled bass player, although not that familiar with the style since he was more into black metal. But we all progressed together as a band and a live act and that was really a great experience. When it comes to themes and philosophies around the band, both of them were more or less familiar and everything went smoothly. All of us are individuals with their own way of thinking and we value that a lot, and that's what made the strength of the band. There are things on which we don't always agree, even L. and myself, but it has never created any problem among us. If we'd agreed on everything I think our music wouldn't be as interesting as it is today.
CT: Your new album, The Chthonic Rituals, is now out. You used the same recording studio as the EP - Mannaz Records. Was this out of convenience or simply because you liked the way the EP came out?
G: The EP was recorded partially in Mannaz Records actually; we only did vocals, guitars and bass over there, the drums were recorded in another studio and the reamping, mixing and mastering were done at Worship Studio. At the time, Johan, the sound engineer at Mannaz was only doing basic home studio recordings. Now he has a bigger studio with more space and possibilities, so for the album we recorded all the instruments, drums included, and did the mixing. He was a live soundman basically and he did a gig or two for us, and later on he evolved into studio recordings. The good thing with him is that he isn't that much familiar with our sound, he's used to recordings and working on the sound of very modern sounding bands. That allows us to push him out of his comfort zone and find ways of working with the sound which he's not used to, and he also does the same with us, to summarize it, we're breaking our boundaries mutually. We came back to him because of convenience but also that we wanted to do better than the EP with which we were not that satisfied soundwise.
CT: What was the writing process like for the new songs on the record?
G: I've recorded everything by myself at my home, basically demos that we took afterwards to rehearsals and then played on our shows. So gradually we were adding a new song to our gigs and saw how the public reacted to them. All the songs were written during the last four and a half years, and I'm quite glad to say that there were no "leftovers" that didn't make to the album.
CT: To me, Lovecraftian symbolism is apparent on the record. Tell me about the usage of these metaphors? Was it you or L. that this inspiration stems from?
G: Both of us are great fans of Lovecraft's works, but we never wanted to write songs about it because there are already a lot of bands doing it, some really well, and others very badly. We prefer to develop our own themes and subjects rather than to write on someone else's, not that it is a bad thing, it's just that we didn't wanted to fall into the cliché of being a death metal band that writes about Lovectaftian mythos. Of course alot of the characteristics of our sound may fall in the Lovecraftian inspiration, because we listen to bands inspired by him, but it was never intentional. It's just that dissonant, downtuned death metal suits the theme well so people will automatically hear the ressemblence, specially since Lovecraft has inspired and had such a big impact in the metal sound and imagery.
CT: "Sacrifice Unto Babalon" was the first track that gripped me musically - the final riff that ends the song is wicked -, and then lyrically, I felt it was very representative of Atavisma thematically, offering submission to what I interpreted as the natural world. What are your thoughts on this track musically and lyrically?
G: It's a track that I personally love to play live, it has a lot of punch and the final riff always kicks the crowd in the guts when I play it, so glad that you like it ! You're right when it comes to the theme of the song. Babalon, the Mother of All Abominations, can be interpreted as Mother Nature.
CT: "Invocation of Archaic Deities" is the second longest of the tracks on the album and is quite musically involved, with it's slow opening dirge, twisted unpredictable shift prior to the faster parts, screeching feedback and noise, and funeralesque outro. How did you envision this during composition?
G: It's simple, the track had to be a depiction of a ritual. The slow begining and the rise until the climax that unleashes the fast and unrelenting trance, the entrance in the world of the Deities, unknown and incomprehensible, and the slow and soulcrushing comeback to the world of mortals.
CT: Who do those at the top of the monoliths symbolize, if anyone?
G: Those that are devoured by their own greed, always wanting more which leads them to their own demise, and eventually leads to the fall of all Humanity because of their position and choices that impact everyone. To put it more simply, all those that have power and money.
CT: "Ashen Ascetic" is the most Swedish of the tracks I feel. Any thoughts on this track?
The album ends with two older tracks. How did you decide which of these previously recorded and released tracks to revisit for The Chthonic Rituals? Did you make changes to these older tracks for the album versions?
G: Ashen was written under influence of mind altering substances during a boring day. The lyrics came to me out of nowhere and I have written them down on paper and haven't modified them at all. It was like a mystique moment when angels, demons, deities or whatever spoke to people whom they have chosen to spread their message. As for "Amid.." and "Subterranean Life", the reason was simple. We wanted to record "Subterranean.." with a better production, and "Amid" was the song that almost always preceeded "Subterranean.." during our live gigs, creating like a huge, neverending and crushing track of almost 20 minutes. And since we wanted to create a "live" feel to this album, the choice was evident.
CT: Now that you've had the album out, what is your level of satisfaction with the record? I think it's a deep, dark, dank slab of heinous death metal. The atmosphere is very suffocating and hellish.
G: Personally I'm very satisfied with it, and the others do feel the same I think. A lot of effort was put to write lyrics, compose music, and finally recorded them in a real studio. There are somethings, soundwise, that I would have treated a bit differently, but nothing too important so overall it is a highly satisfying album for us as musicians. The overall feeling that you described is what we were aiming for, so I'm very glad that you felt that way when you listened to it. It is that kind of atmosphere that we were creating and still do during our liveshows and I'm very satisfied that we have done the same for the album.
CT: What upcoming projects are planned for Atavisma? Live shows?
CT: Would you like to add anything to end the interview? Thanks again for your in depth and thoughtful responses.
G: Thank you very much for this interview and your support, it was a pleasure to answer to your questions. A huge thanks to all the people who have supported us until this day and still continue so.
ONLY RUINS REMAIN
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