Interview: Irdorath

In May the Austrian black/thrash metallers from Irdorath released their new album, titled The Final Sin, which DutchMetalManiac’s René Müller reviewed here. Now, he also interviewed Irdorath’s guitarist/vocalist Markus Leitner.

Grüß euch Jungs 🙂
Das Interview machen wir in Englisch, aber vorab herzliche Grüße aus Graz!

Hi, alles klar, auch von mir / uns herzliche Grüße 😊!

Hey guys. Thanks for taking the time for the interview. How are you doing, especially in light of the current pandemic?

Hi, you are welcome! Thank you very much for that interview and your awesome feedback in your review! Special thanks from my side for the vocal-analyses, haha.

All in all, we are doing fine. But of course, we as a band suffer the same as every other from that pandemic. All our release shows and further gigs had to be cancelled and it looks like, that shows in the next months won’t take place too. That is very frustrating but it is, how it is.

But we are not inactive, right now we are preparing some pro-footages from our rehearsals where we recorded three songs (two from The Final Sin, one from I am Risen) anew. The videos will be released in the next weeks one after another.

What is especially a frustrating thing is, that, without live shows, it is hard to promote a new record for a band with our quite little awareness. But we will definitely catch up on that next year.

Meanwhile check out our full album stream:

I can still remember when I got myself an Irdorath hoodie from Mario back in 2011(ish), so I have known Irdorath for a while. For all the uninitiated, how would you describe your music?

Cool, that is quite long ago. Thank you for keeping up with us all the time!

Due to the fact, that we do not play a straight or concrete genre and do not think too much in borders, I would describe it as mixture of mainly black and thrash metal, but you will find also some inspirations of death or heavy metal.

We developed our style from record to record and did not follow any trends or tried to copy from bigger bands, so it is somehow hard to describe!

If you listen to our music over the time, especially starting with I Am Risen, you will definitely see and hear that progress!

Normally I would say: come to a show and check out, what we do and how we perform, but that is not possible right now.

But as mentioned above, give us a try, check out our profiles and music on the web and you will find out! Here is the official video to the song Debaptized:

I want to congratulate you on The Final Sin. In my humble opinion, it’s your best record yet. How satisfied are you with it?

Thank you very much, we appreciate that!

Now that the record is finished for a while, I definitely can say, that I am still very satisfied. I agree with you, that this is our best music until now.

Of course, you will always find some parts of a full length record, that you would change afterwards, but overall I am really proud of The Final Sin.

Also the whole composition of the CD, including the artwork and the videos, are a well-rounded output, I would say.

How did the writing and recording to The Final Sin go, what was your experience? Walk us through your progress a bit.

Alright, the main songwriting (I would say 99 percent) is done by Thomas, our drummer, and me. Normally I write complete songs including ideas of drums and bass guitar and Thomas works it out on the drums. Then it goes back and forth until we are both satisfied. When the vocals come in, we again work through the whole song. So most of the time it is a lot of work until we are finished.

This time we also tried another thing: Thomas “wrote” a song on the drums and I jammed to them, it was a totally different and exciting experience. The outcome of this experiment is the song Redeemer Of The Heretics, and for my opinion, it worked very well, maybe we will do that again in the future.

As soon as we have finished some songs, we always do a pre-production on our own and still continue working on some parts. On The Final Sin we did a lot of it to get the best outcome, because sometimes a little change in tempo for example can optimize a lot!

Then we entered some local studios that we trust and recorded all the instruments and vocals. After that we again travelled to the Hertz Studio in Poland (especially known for their work with Vader, old Behemoth, Hate…) to mix and master the record.

We stayed there for about a week and it was a very productive but also funny time there. You can get an impression in our official studio video to the song Chains Of Virtue:

Craig has joined Irdorath (comparatively) recently, in 2016. I assume you have not come to regret that yet. How much influence do you see him bring into the band?

You are right, we do not regret that at all. Craig is a very great guitarist and fits perfectly on a personal level. That is also very important to us.

For the music Craig does not have any influence yet, because he is and was not included in songwriting until now. But let us see, what the future releases will bring!

Speaking of band members: Thomas seems to have quite a long list of bands that he is currently active in. How does he manage to get all of that done? Does it affect planning for Irdorath?

Yes, Thomas is a very good and active drummer, that’s why he gets a lot of offers and requests. Good drummers are very rare, as you might know, haha.

Until now it worked very well, because he has his priorities. If a gig with one of his main bands takes place (Irdorath, Groteskh and Vargsriket), they have the priority. And because we are all in full-time jobs, we have to plan gigs long ahead, so normally there is no problem at all.

For us as a band it has a lot of good aspects too, because he learns or experiences different things on drums, what comes in handy for us in the variety of the drum-songwriting, I think.

As I have written in my review, I feel that you are continuously maturing and – well, getting better as a band, from record to record. Would you agree? If so, what fuels this progression from your point of view?

Again, thank you very much.

That is what I experience when I look back on our last 15 years and records too. It is nice to know, that you also recognize that. So yes, I totally agree.

This progression may come from the fact, that we do not try to change our style with trends, but try to evolve our own music. I do not listen to any record and say “I have to play that riff too” or whatever. That is not the way I want to create art.

Another aspect is, that we always critically look back on the last record and try to erase weaknesses and evolve what we like. That is our way to stay focused on our music but do not write the same record again.

What’s your impression on Irdorath’s position in the Austrian metal scene and the international metal scene? You had a gig planned with Rotting Christ before the pandemic hit – that’s quite a big name, if you ask me.

That is very hard to answer, but I’ll try.

I think that we are a really little player in the metal scene, but could reach some people over the last years. We also recognized that during live shows, that the audience starts to know songs, are more interested in our CDs and merch and so on. But it is a hard and slow progress. Generally, I think it is hard to reach more people without investing a lot of money nowadays. But we are patient and are working on it.

Overall, I am happy with our progress and I hope it will continue quite well after the Covid – 19 crises. We will definitely not vanish because of that hard times right now.

We invited Rotting Christ to our release shows in Graz and Klagenfurt, also as a little gift to us, because we really respect them and their music. The goal was to give the audience two great nights of good music and to celebrate The Final Sin with that events.

Unfortunately, the pandemic destroyed that plan…

Did you have many other live gigs planned for the release, and what is the situation now with the pandemic? Any updated plans already?

As said before, we had a lot of shows planned and already fixed to promote The Final Sin. All of them had to be cancelled or delayed. Also touring plans had to be cancelled.

Right now, it seems like the rest of the year will be the same. So, it is hard to plan, but we continue working on it and prepare some other stuff. Stay updated on our web appearances via Facebook and our website.

Thanks a lot for taking the time for the interview. I wish you guys lots of success with The Final Sin, and everything after that! Is there something you would like to say to our readers?

We again want to thank you for your interest and questions! That is what keeps the scene up and alive right now!

I want to thank the readers for their time as well and want to invite you to listen to our music and of course to visit our shop, haha!

Don’t give up your favourite music scene right now, it will come back as soon as possible. We are also very exctited to hit the stage again!

Horns up and don’t forget to reject all false believes, stay critically against corrupted authorities and take care of yourself!

Irdorath Official Website
Irdorath Facebook
Irdorath Instagram