Avatar Of Hate is a Romanian Death Metal symphonic band. Their guitarist Dan has given me his time for this interview.
How did you started Avatar Of Hate?
Avatar of Hate was already there in a way. It’s just that the year 2019 had to come to make this possible. Only now I had the right logistic, experience and also the budget to write and produce music by myself and be free to collaborate with the musicians of choice. There is also a longer version of the story starting around 1994 when I was writing dm songs with a lot of key parts for Avatar (Ro). Things changed in time with that band but in my heart I was always a fan of dramatic metal music with symphonic orchestrations. After more than 20 years, I am back at this first passion, but this time, I have the possibility to do it right.
What are your most influential bands?
Obviously the 2 bands that gave me courage to start AVOH are Septic Flesh and Fleshgod Apocalypse, 2 uniquie bands in the world of metal. But naming all bands that influenced me is really hard. There are so many bands, composers and music styles that influenced me over time and shaped my musical preferences. But the most important influences for AVOH comes not from metal, but from symphonic music (preclassical, classical and modern) and movies/games music, some of the songs even being written as stand alone orchestrals at first, the metal parts being added later.
Tell me about your other projects Obscurum Noctis and Avatar. I really enjoyed Obscurum Noctis demo “Liber Damnatus”,its a pity the band split up.
Obscurum Noctis was a black metal, 4 songs project from my youth. We had 3-4 concerts, recorded a demo and at one point the members of ON became Avatar members and that’s not really much else to be said.
I know you’re playing in Adastia, which is quite different from the other projects you’ve been involved with.How do you feel about playing with Adastia?
Adastia is a female fronted melodic metal band. It was quite a challenge to write such music after 20 years of extreme metal and I am very proud of how it came out to be in the end. We have a good team and right now the band is working to release a new EP.
Is there any chance of setting up Obscurum Noctis?
AVOH incorporates now all my musical fantasies with cookie monster vocals and dramatic and complex orchestrations; there is nothing else left to express outside AVOH. Talking about black metal, the fourth song from AVOH EP “To Kill a God” has a deep black metal-ish feel.
How do you see the underground scene nowadays?
I guess you are referring to the romanian underground. With one or two (kind of ) exceptions, I think the romanian metal scene is 100% underground. There are indeed a lot of talented and experienced bands out there but the overall status of romanian metal bands is that of “hobby bands”. And from my part, there is nothing to be blamed here. Life challenges in Romania are real and when it’s time to choose between investing more time/money/energy into music or into family, job, career, the decision is kind of obvious. Still, a lot of respect for the bands that keep doing both and not giving up.
Any last statements for your fans?
AVOH is a very new band, it still has to gain some fans before adressing words to them. J Entertaining the idea that AVOH gained some hearts in this short time, I would say ony that:
Keep Calm and listen to Avatar of Hate and don’t forget: Muie PSD!
