Below you can read the interview that the melodic black/death metallers Verilun gave to Rock Overdose and to Konstantinos Sotirelis.
Rock Overdose: Hi guys, welcome to Rock Overdose. How are you?
Verilun: Hi there, thank you for the question, we are doing well!
Rock Overdose: How it’s going on the band’s side these days?
Verilun: After a few months of rest after the release of our last album in May, we feel the urge to start working on some new stuff, so the first steps of a new record has been officially made in September.
Rock Overdose: A few months ago, you released your second full length album, called “Through Fire…in The Sun”. How do you feel about this release? Are you satisfied or would you change something?
Verilun: Fundamentally we are completely satisfied with this album. Of course, there are always some minor things we would change, but there will be always some, and we have to be able to live with them otherwise we could never release anything. There was no specific aim with the album, we just wanted to make something we like, and record our ideas on a way that may lead us to find a style, a sound which could be considered as Verilun’s own. I know, it’s not so easy, because almost everything has been already “invented” in metal music, but I think, there are still a lot of possibilities, and there are some interesting ideas in my head as well.
Rock Overdose: What are the differences from the first album?
Verilun: The first album, “Home for the Dead” has been written by Krisztian and I too, but it was just about to find some directions of music we could all live with. There were even less expectations towards that stuff, we just collected some of our ideas from the past – there were some really old, even more than 10 years old themes -, tried to form them in order to make some coherency and a solid sound. The second album consists of some old ideas too from the side of Krisztian, but the stuff brought by me is almost brand new, getting born as the songs were evolving.
While the previous album was quite simple, straight forward and not so melodic, the new one is more sophisticated with a lot of hidden details, subtleties, so it requires some more listening to reveal and realize them. And, of course, there are much more melodic parts in the new songs, and the epic atmosphere is more significant too.
Rock Overdose: Between your debut album and the sophomore, there is a five year gap. Why did that happen?
Verilun: There are some more reasons of that. It was not the plan to do so, life brought that situation. On one hand there were some personal issues, like my move to the completely opposite site of Hungary, so it was very difficult to arrange the rehearsals, and when we had a rehearsal we focused on the practice of the existing songs for the coming gigs rather than writing new stuff. Unfortunately there were some line-up changes too, we’ve tried to invite more second guitarists to the band, but sooner or later it turned out that we could not co-operate with each other.
There was even a short period of time when I was the one and only member of the band, and it was already the end of 2016 when we could fix the line-up again and had the chance to start working on the new album. Unfortunately it went very slow at the beginning due to the stance of the drummer, and the situation got better only when he quitted and only Krisztian and I remained in the band. Furthermore there was a plan to make a cover album with some non-metal songs put in the style of Verilun, but due to the difficulties I described above we could manage to prepare it. We could record only one song (“Where the wild roses grow” by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds) and make an official video to it.
Rock Overdose: Do you have any plans for live shows in the future?
Verilun: No plans, only wishes. Unfortunately due to the current situation with the line-up we cannot perform live, but we are continuously looking for the appropriate drummer and as soon as we can find him, and we are prepared for the gigs, we’ll play wherever we can. We have a quite big routine, since we both made a lot of gigs with Verilun, but even more with our previous bands, like Sear Bliss, Art Of Butchery from Krisztian’s side and Dalriada from my side, so we really miss the stage.
Rock Overdose: Do you prefer the studio or the live shows and why?
Verilun: I, personally do not have any preference, I like both. It’s very exciting to work on a new album and follow how something gets born, how it evolves (sometimes it seems by itself), gets formed, how the new ideas come up. The recording session is a little bit tiring, but that’s something to get over in order to have the prize at the end: a copy of your own CD in your hand. I like live shows too, because the energy that’s locked in our music could be only released during playing live. We can feel it even on rehearsals, but a live show is much more powerful: the audience receives the stream of energy, amplifies it and returns it to us. It may cause addiction.
Rock Overdose: How did the cooperation with Sliptrick occur? Are you satisfied?
Verilun: I do not want to spend too many words on this topic. We released both our albums at Sliptrick Records, we have a good personal relationship with them, but the promotional activities they’ve made so far with the new album are far beneath our expectations.
Rock Overdose: What are your next plans? Do you write material for a new release?
Verilun: After the release of the second album in May, there were two options in front of us: either to find a drummer, prepare for live shows and make some gigs with the new songs or – in case of no success with the first option – to start working on a new stuff. Since we could not find any drummer yet, we have just started to work on the next album, and our intention is to get it released in 2020 when Verilun will be 10 years old.
With the upcoming album (like with the previous ones) there is only one thing that matters: do we like it or not? We give a shit to all other opinions, expectations, expert reviews coming from anybody. We’ll do what we like. So far there are only some theoretical directions in my mind, we’ll follow them on a high level, and the ideas, details will come by themselves. Music composes itself.
Rock Overodse: Thank you very much for this interview. The last word is yours.
Verilun: We thank you for the possibility! It is a great honor to be presented on Rock Overdose, and even a bigger pleasure to read about ourselves among the enormous number of great articles.
For Rock Overdose,
Konstantinos Sotirelis
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