Part II of the interview conducted between Sonny Stark from Age of Woe and Ufuk Demir from Walk Through Fire.
Blastbeat or d-beat?
Ufuk: Blastbeat.
Swedish death metal or Norwegian black metal?
Ufuk: Norwegian black metal.
Pacifism or armed revolution?
Ufuk: I dont believe in weapons and I don’t believe in pacifism. I believe in organizing people to bring about social change at the workplace, at home, in our community in general. And violence is sometimes necessary, although never my first choice.
A hike to the mountains or booze at a dirty pub?
Ufuk: Booze at a dirty pub up in the mountains.
Pirating music – good or bad?
Ufuk: It should be a right to listen to music, not a privilege. It’s the industry who’s losing money – not us. We are forced now to evolve the whole concept around making music and spreading it ourselves, and more and more bands cut out the middle man, which is a great result of said “pirating”.
Furthest from Heaven, which was released last year, is your debut album. Personally I think it’s one of the best albums released last year and you’ve received a lot of good reviews. How do you feel about the album?
Ufuk: For us the songs are quite old and we had to struggle really hard to finally record it and eventually release it. Three years ago my closest friend and would-be-singer of Walk Through Fire passed away in a heroin overdose. The circumstances before that resulted in our first EP “Walk Through Fire” being instrumental, and finding someone else to do the job seemed impossible. Then when he passed away we realized that the only thing to do was to sing ourselves. And the learning process was fucking tearing us apart but we walked through that fire as well, so to speak. So the answer to
that is that we’re proud of our debut album and we’re glad that people seem to enjoy it.
Gothenburg has since long spawned quite a few internationally known bands in the melodic death metal genre, that’s a fact. But how has that influenced Walk Through Fire to chose a more angst-ridden sludge metal?
Ufuk: We all listen to as much classical, hip hop, funk or jazz music as we listen to black metal, death metal, doom, sludge, crust punk and so on. One could say we have more in common with artists like Gangstarr, Tom Waits or Arvo Pärt than with those specific melodic death metal bands – not saying they’re not good. At The Gate’s “The Red In The Sky Is Ours” is a masterpiece! But we were mainly brought together by one influence: ABANDON – also based in Gothenburg. They are the main reason why we play this kind of music.
If I’m not mistaken, Walk Through Fire are currently working on a new album, right? What can you say about the process so far and what we can expect?
Ufuk: We are working on some new stuff – in what format or length, we don’t know yet. The biggest difference in the writing process is that we all are part of writing the music now and are therefore more dynamic in our sound. Mainly though it’s more aggressive and more inspired by sludge bands than doom. We call it “mollkross” which translates very badly to “crushing in minor”. The minor note is very present in all the riffs, so it’s not aggressive in the sense that we are big dudes with muscles, rather it’s the force of inner rage and suffering. Nothing is more painful than the minor chord.
What are you aiming for lyrically and how important are the lyrics in your songs?
Ufuk: The lyrics are as important as any other part of our music. What I aim for lyrically now is capturing that state of mind where I feel completely lost and isolated, times of depression when there’s a threat around every corner and you constantly fill your mind with negative thoughts. I’m trying to alleviate these said feelings and thoughts through expressing them in music, art and words. I never write lyrics because I promote negative thoughts or self destructiveness, I write them to search my way out of it.
Finally, if you were to decide the fate of Walk Through Fire, what would happen for you guys during the next two years?
Ufuk: I’ve stopped hoping for the future in that way. We are here now and we try to focus on just that.
Walk Through Fire
www.walkthroughfire.se
walkthroughfire.bandcamp.com
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