Hails and thank you for according the time to do this interview. How are things over there?
Hello. Well we are pretty busy at the moment. We are making preparations for the tour in april which will be different than former tours because we won’t be alone on the stage this time, we are rehearsing, writing some new material, we will also hit the studio at the end of march, beside that we both have other bands, and stuff to do in professional and private life, so as I said, pretty busy.
Firstly I would like to ask you how did Snogg came to existence and what does it mean to you?
Well Snøgg started as a Ulv’s one-man project in 2013, called Black Trail. He soon wanted to put the band on stage and started searching for people who could join him. In the first place he needed drummer that would suit into black metal band. Local legendary metal drummer and drum teacher Dado told him that Mørke could be the guy for the job. So after one concert in local club Ulv and Mørke started talking about a band and the next day they had their first rehearsals, and Køzhl, Ulv’s bandmate from Entheogen joint on bass. At the beginning Ulv played only keyboards, and the group was still searching for members on other instruments. After a few months, Køzhl left the band due to lack to time. The remaining members than decided to continue as a duo, and Ulv added guitars and vocals to his duties. Soon the first concerts with very experimental approach to black metal of Snøgg started.
At the beginning Snøgg was experimental side project for me, as I was still playing with Entheogen, which was, lets say my number one band at the moment. Then, when Entheogen dissolved and I focused more on Snøgg and all of a sudden, it became the most playing band that I had in all times and that is still true at the moment. So at the moment Snøgg is the most important band in my life not just because of its success, but also because it allows my to completely be myself and experiment in the ways that I want to.
Your music isn’t everyone’s cup of tea to be honest, how did you end up to this strange mix?
As I said before, Snøgg is very experimental band and we like to play a lot with mixing genres, and doing things that most people find weird. We like to explore different soundscapes, so we don’t box ourself with some genre rules or anything like that. I remember one report from one of our shows, where the reporter said:’’.. I went to the show, not knowing what to expect, because with Snøgg it is always somethinng different.’’ And that is exactly what I want people to thing about our shows.
What are your biggest influences concerning the musical process?
Well, through time a lot of bands influenced my taste of music. I like a lot of different kinds of music, for me there are no good or bad genres and in my music there is always a mixture or an influence, that you might find unusual. Like remake of Benni Bennasi song ‘Love is gonna save us’ into ‘Black metal is gonna save us’ or Mother as it is called on the demo. Mørke also listens to a lot of different music, so we have a lot of fun on the rehearsals. If we focus on Qivitoq, which was created solely on the jams on rehearsals I guess it’s a good mix of what we were living through at the moment. There’s a lot of noise present, because at the time Qivitoq was fresh, we got invited to ZNFI Noise fest in Trbovlje and we premiered it there, so we made it a bit more noisey than it would be otherways. It was late spring early summer, so hotter, faster crust riffs got their way on our repertoire and then of course some of classical black metal elements and a few newer riffs too. We started playing a part and Mørke says: ‘’ Hey that sounds like Gojira’’, ok, so we have Gojira like part. Then for one new song, the base is in heavy and powermetal bands like Manowar and Rhapsody, but in the end they sound like Bathory. And we don’t care. We just like to do what we like the sound of. So there is whole arsenal of bands that both of us listen to, that come out as influential in the creative process.
Since you come from the Slovenian scene, how is the metal scene in general over there?
Metal music has one of the strongest scenes in Slovenia. There are a lot of shows, almost all the big names come to Ljubljana, Nova Gorica, even our hometown Velenje and if not elsewhere, to MetalDays festival in Tolmin. Beside that, we have a lot of alternative clubs in the smaller towns where the scene is alive, and you have around 10 locations where metal concerts are organised on regular bases. We have quite a lot quality metal bands with names like Cvinger, Within Destruction, Noctiferia being the most recognisable abroad. Other alternative scenes in Slovenia like alter rock, hip hop and alternative electronic are nicely developed too and I quite like the alter music scene in my county. The only problem is that our country is too small and you quickly come around all the places.
By the way since on your latest tour you visited Romania, how did you felt about the country in general and especially about the concerts?
Its was totally amazing, I must admit. We didn’t quite know what to expect. People were warning us about the bad roads, it was winter so we also didn’t know how the conditions are gonna be, especially because we had to drive through Karpati to Iasi. But in the end the roads are not bad at all, we actually went through Karpati in snow blizzard, but we drove 30 kph and it was all good. And it was an amazing scenery:). And the people are very nice too. Special thanks go to Titus Constantinescu who really helped us with the booking of the tour, march selling, organising concerts himself, providing us with the best hotels and being the best friend and supporter. And all other people we met were awesome, the fans, the organizers… Everyone was treating us with respect and hospitality. On the concerts we felt loved, there was not a lot of visitors per show, except in Iasi, but those who came, stayed to talk with us, were very supportive, and really bought a-lot of merch.
To wrap up this interview what do you plan further to do with Snogg?
Well at the moment we are preparing for the the spring tour we have coming up in few weeks. We are also preparing to go to studio soon, to record new EP called Abeloth. Also we have plans to record video for Qivitoq so we have a lot to do. 🙂 Beside that, we are both busy with other project and things in personal life so things are taking more time to get done that we initially planed. But there is no rush 🙂 We’ll take it on slowly, one step at the time 🙂
Well thank you, do you have any last words to the fans?
Stay black! 🙂 Hope to see you soon on some show 🙂
FB page: https://www.facebook.com/Snoggband/
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/i-i-38
