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To Post Black Metal or to not Post Black Metal… that seems to be the question! But fortunately you don’t have to commit yourself. That’s what CONVICTIVE think, too! At Helmfest they tore up the stage pretty good and so it’s no wonder that I had to ask a few questions right away. So read how they see themselves and get ready for some teasers of the new album!
Huge thanks to lightinmirror.de for the amazing pictures!
Shieldmaiden’s Voice: Describe your musical style in three words!
Seppl: Post Black Metal!
Nova: „Black Metal for people who usually don’t listen to Black Metal“ is a bit too long, I guess…
SV: Yes, those are more than three words.
Ben: It’s hard to pinpoint, but „Post Black Metal“ is quite accurate.
SV: Where did the name CONVICTIVE come from?
Ben: From the bunker in Oberhausen-Schergrat!
Phil: Yes, Ben and I are the last founding members, so to speak, and in the beginning it wasn’t clear which musical direction we would take. We just gathered some band members together because we wanted to make music no matter what…
Ben: …and our first singer then dropped CONVICTIVE at one point, which we also liked very much! After we had played the first concerts, we also stuck to the name. Until now, we couldn’t think of a better name and so we kept it.
SV: What makes you unique?
Ben: That we don’t play Black Metal. [everyone laughs]
SV: That was a good example on how to contradict yourself!
Ben: That’s the thing! If you ask five people what kind of music we make, you get six different answers. That’s also the aspect that makes us unique from my point of view. I don’t know any other band that resembles us. Not because we are particularly great, but because we simply have a different style.
Phil: We have influences from Hard Rock and, in part, from Jazz…
Seppl: … and from DSBM…
Phil: Yes, exactly, we’re influenced by a lot of things, we just developed towards our particular direction. You can find influences from almost every genre in our music.
Ben: We don’t model us after anyone either, we just do what we feel like doing.
Phil: Our album Konvergenz was also more rooted in Melodic Death Metal and the material we’re currently working on will be more Black Metal like and thus be going back to our roots.
SV: Are there bands, albums or songs of which you’d say that you were influenced by them?
[all simultaneously somehow]: No!
Phil: For us as individuals for sure, but not as a band.
Ben: That’s true, we all have different favorite bands, but if we start with that now, we won’t be done until tomorrow morning!
Nova: But that’s also the good thing about us! Everyone has their own thing and everyone takes their individual influences into the music. That also gives us a lot of uniqueness, because everyone has their job in the band and can bring in their influences. Although we are so different, there is always a good result and it is very coherent.
SV: Let me as differently then: What inspires your songs the most? Is there something you want to capture with your music?
Phil: I usually write the songs and thus also provide an idea, which usually arises from the mood. I then send that to our group and they can then give their feedback on it. It always depends on how I was emotionally inclined.
SV: Are there any messages you want to convey to the audience?
Ben: We are more the storytellers. We like to tell stories with different content, depending on which phase we are in. Currently we are working on a kind of concept album, but the idea has nothing to do with what we did before.
Nova: Since I joined, I have been writing all the lyrics. Right now we’re following a certain concept, but that will change if we don’t work on a concept album. There are no particular themes that we’re stuck on. The upcoming album won’t be about death and doom or anything like you hear with a lot of other Black Metal bands. I find that theme boring and pretty overused. You can write very well about the things that move you, that excite you or that generally trigger something in you.
Ben: It’s more about the atmosphere and the mood than the message.
SV: If you say it’s more about the atmosphere and the mood, what would be something that the audience ideally takes away from your music?
Phil: We once had an audience member at a gig who came up to us afterwards and said that she had landed in her own world with our music and had flown through the world in a totally spherical way and that we had always brought her back down to earth. That is of course totally crazy, but that’s exactly what we want!
Ben: She even got our band logo tattooed later on!
Phil: It’s very cool when people come up to us and say that we got to them in their own little world.
Seppl: We leave enough room for interpretation for things like that in our music!
SV: Your last album Konvergenz was made in collaboration with KRÄHENFELD. How did that happen?
Ben: We share the rehearsal room and over time the band members have exchanged a bit, so now 3 out of 5 are in both bands. Both bands had some new material, but not enough for a whole album. It was more self-contained and more of an EP, so we decided to combine both EPs. The whole thing was also due to Covid, because the cost of a split ep is not insignificant. Dividing the total by two was just better to implement.
SV: Which goals do you want to realize with your music?
Phil: We would like to be on stage. There was a time when we were on stage with CONVICTIVE almost every weekend and we would like to go back there. So to speak the pre-Covid level. The next album is almost finished and we want to really take off with it next year! With it we want to play as much as possible on festivals to get back to the old status.
Nova: The new album will also be very good. It’s very spherical. Lyrically, it’s a challenge for me because it’s a concept album, which means I have to get involved with certain topics. The topics discussed are also relevant to everyone and I want to create a certain fascination in the listeners in relation to the topics I’m writing about as well. Something should move mentally with the people!
SV: What is the best way to support you in that?
Ben: Recommend us wherever you are!
Nova: In the world of algorithms it’s important to share everything!
Marius: You can come to our concerts.
Seppl: Support the (local) underground!
SV: Noted! Final question: If there was something you could wish for for your band’s future, what would it be?
Phil: More concerts!
Seppl: Playing Ragnarok Open Air and Dong Open Air is still on my bucket list.
Ben: Asia Tour…
Nova: I’m happy as long as we have evenings like these!
No matter if Black Metal or not, listen to CONVICTIVE, give them lots of love and support them as much as possible!
It’s time for a bit of a break here! My vacation is calling! We will continue in September with a completely new kind of report. So be curious!
Shieldmaiden's Voice 