After the show, I had the occasion to interview Dodo, the vocalist and bass player of the Slovakian Dak metal band, Galadriel. The show took place at Barock Petrosani on 18th of September.
Hi Dodo, welcome back to Romania, great concert, how do you feel?
Thank you very much! The gig in Petrosani was absolutely amazing as usual, we are third time here in Petrosani and everytime it was a blast but today it was really, really nice event. Yesterday we played in Bucharest and it was also good, really good, today was crazier, we will see how it would be in Timisoara.
To start with, tell me when Galadriel was founded?
We started back in 1995, we are celebrating 20 years this year, it was a long journey, many line-up changes but we recorded seven albums, a new EP, so had many shows in many countries.
Until now you have released seven albums , the last release was in 2012. What can you tell me about all these releases?
So the first one was kind of a demo recording and we were lucky that somebody wanted to release it so the first album was not so professional stuff but who cares, we were young then. The second one called ‘’ The Mirror Of Ages’’ was more professional I think, we were still young musicians, it was a mirror of time that we were writing songs like bom-bom-bom it was so easy because we were all day in the rehearsals room, everyday we were playing togheter so it was easy for us to write music. That was a great a time, that was the real start for the band, the second album was a start for us. The third release called “Oblivion” was little bit difficult to record it because we were trying to put more music and we were not so good musicians to do arrangements as we wanted, it’s not a bad album but it is not recorded so good as we wanted, we were not able because we were not so experienced that time. The fourth album, ‘’From Ashes and Dust’’ was a real kick ass album, that was the break through album for us, we changed the label and the new label started to promote it more than the label we had before so we had better promotion, possibilities to sell it in more countries and also the sound of the album was new, a better one as before and we had really good responses for this album and is a best selling album because the truth is was released in 2002 where the CD’s were selling more as today.
As are more releases, tell me now about the last release from 2012.
It is ‘’The 7th Queen Enthroned’’ and maybe we were working 2 or 3 years on this album, of course not continuously, then we also had line-up changes, we changed the label and thw studio, it was a good album at that time, we are pretty satisfied with the results also of the selling of this album. There is also as singer guest Sakis Tolis of Rotting Christ.
Are you going to release new materials soon?
We released the new EP called ‘’Lost In The Ryhope Wood’’, we recorded this in Athens-Greece, the studio of George Bokos the former guitarist of Rotting Christ and we decided to re-record three old songs togheter with new songs, the new songs are based on true Doom metal and the third one is like a new move to a new position in our music.
What are the lyrical themes and who mainly writes the music in the band?
If we are talking about lyrics, the most are written by me or by Sona Witch (the female vocalist) and usually we’re inspired by real life, we try to tell our pains, our sorrows, are more like an atmospheric mood. It’s something like, for example, when I am angry from some basic situations I write about it and not trying make it as a punk rock band haha, but trying to make it more lyrical. And about music, the most of the themes are coming from out guitarist, Tomax, then we are working togheter on his ideas and making the songs and the music.
Are there any influences?
In the beginning, it was bands like Amorphis, Theater Of Tragedy and today, I don’t know, we want our style and maybe there are still some influences, we aren’t working like ‘’Oh, let’s hear this music and let’s do something like this’’, we want to write the music our own music.
After this mini Romanian tour, are there any more shows confirmed for this or for the next year?
Before this Romanian tour we had shows in Bulgaria, Austria, Slovenia and until the end of the year we will have shows in Slovakia, our country and this will be all for this year.
Do you have a message for the Galadriel fans?
Keep your horns up! It was a pleasure for us to play in Romania and listen to our music, enjoy your lives!
Thank you for the answers, cheers and hope to see you again very soon!
I hope so. Thank you too!
https://www.facebook.com/GaladrielSK
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