Summoning, Continued...

HG: What’s the idea behind the Lost Tales release? Both songs are from side projects that members of Summoning did?

Silenius: Both songs are unreleased demo tracks from the time between Dol Guldur and Nightshade Forests . We released them because first there was a huge demand about unreleased songs, and second, we thought these songs were worth releasing because of having them just stored on tape we could not add any guitars or vocals, but this absolutely was not the point of this release. These songs simply have been treasures from the past worth to be presented to a larger audience.

Protector: Only one song of both is not originally meant for Summoning. "Arkenstone" was composed for another project of Silenius called Mirkwood, whereas "Saruman" was a pure Summoning song.

HG: With Stronghold and Let Mortal Heroes Sing Your Fame you used movie samples and other authors for inspiration. What movies, which authors, and why the sudden change?

Silenius: Well, the basic concept of making a musical translation of the realms of Tolkien never changed; we just included different influences, and combined this with our concept. For example, we used lyrics from Michael Moorcock and from unknown English writers about mythology. We also used war poetry, and we added some poetry of our own. Everything was combined very carefully, and the same goes for the word samples we used for our music. Most of them have a direct link to Tolkien because they are taken from several audio broadcasts about the books of this man, but we also used samples from different fantasy films which we think could strengthen this Middle Earth feeling.

HG: What is the band’s connection with Die Verbannten Kinder Evas?

Protector: On the first Die Verbannten Kinder Evas the music was done by Silenius and me. With the second release, Come Heavy Sleep, I started to make the music totally alone, made all songs and did the male vocals accompanied by a female singer. Meanwhile, I released three CDs and the next one is close to being released.

HG: According to your website, “Dol Guldur” and “Nightshade Forest” are from the same sessions, or more accurately, are called “missing songs.” What led to them being left off Dol Guldur and subsequently released?

Silenius: To be honest, not all of the four songs have remained from the Dol Guldur session, only two of them, but I cannot remember which ones. The other two have been made a short time after Dol Guldur was released, and in that time we wanted to do a long mini CD but again, I cannot remember why we decided to make a mini CD and not work on the full-length one. Mini CDs are a fixed part of our releasing policy; I think the release of mini CDs is very important for us, because in this case we [give] ourselves more freedom to make different experiments in sound and song structures, and that is very important to hold our creativity besides working on different musical bands in which we can totally flee from the musical boundaries we have created with our Summoning style.

HG: There was a two year gap between Stronghold and Let Mortal Heroes... .What changed in the band that would lead you to call Let Mortal Heroes... “The new era of Summoning?”

Silenius: First of all, we never sit down and think hard about how we can progress our sound, or which news we can include with our music. For example, with Let Mortal Heroes... we had no fixed plan; we just wanted to go a little bit back to the roots, but in the end after we heard the comments of our fans and the critics--it seemed that the complete opposite was true. And, in contrary, with our new release, Oath Bound, we had no plans at all to go back to our roots as so many fans always proclaimed, and so we have been totally surprised as many of the responses declared our new album to be similar to the old style. All in all, we just make music we like to listen to on our own, and other people have to judge if we have done a good job or not.

HG: Will we ever see the release of Mirkwood?

Silenius: The project Mirkwood is dead and gone since many years by now, and won’t be reactivated. From the four songs done for this project, one was released on Lost Tales and the other three songs are circulating somewhere in the underground, so maybe you will find them somewhere on the internet.

HG: Can you tell me a bit about Amestigon, Greifenstein, and Ice Ages?

Protector: Ice Ages is dark slow electronic music that is composed by me. It consist von slow harsh noises as rhythms and electronic sound for the tunes. I sing with a distorted voice to the songs. I already released 2 albums and have all basic versions finished for the third release.

HG: Is there a chance we’ll see Summoning come to America to play?

Protector: Sorry, but there is no chance for any live concert of us. Performing live is something for people who like to present themselves on stage. They like to make special body movements, face expressions or whatever, to present the audience not only their music but also show them the personality behind the music. This is something we are definitely not interested in. Actually, during all the years with Summoning, we did rather the total opposite of presenting our person to the fans--we did the best on each release to hide it as much as possible. This is why we never showed our faces, for example. The music of Summoning is creating a world full of fantasy creatures, but as we are not fantasy creatures but normal humans, it would surely not suit to the images we created in the minds of the fans to see some normal, mortal, sweating humans, with normal electric guitars in their hands, etc. X

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