Akral Necrosis is a name that resonates deeply within the black metal scene, known for their relentless and intricate approach to the genre. After over a decade of stirring the Romanian metal scene with their dark, foreboding soundscapes, they continue to push the boundaries of their art. With a reputation for intense live performances and a discography that has carved its place in the hearts of fans, the band shows no signs of slowing down as they prepare for their upcoming appearance at Spears of Wallachia Festival.
Before catching the band on stage at the aforementioned festival, we caught up with Octav and Victor for an exclusive interview where they shared their thoughts on their music, the underground scene both in Romania and abroad, and what lies ahead for Akral Necrosis.
The official logo of the band
© Akral Necrosis
DinÎntunerec: Hails! Let’s start on a strong note: what would you consider a key moment for Akral Necrosis?
Octav: Tough one for starters! Temporal proximity is also a factor, but I will choose the release of “The Greater Absence” which took place in 2020. It is a very important album for us, a monstrous slab of intricate black metal which goes over one hour with a special narrative and concept that is featured in the lyrics, music and artwork. More so, we didn’t allow the pandemic to prevent us from releasing it and we even did a live show.
DinÎntunerec: If Akral Necrosis had to describe its music using only three words, what would they be?
Octav: Ah, but this conundrum is meant to confuse and reduce everything to a few words, which is absurd to the point of trivialization. But you know what? I want to change the rules of the game and deny your “generosity” because I only need two words. I offer the third as a gift to bands who need an extra. Insolence and fierceness!
Octav, Victor and SoYoS on stage,
Impaled Nazarene Exclusive Romanian Show, 3.02.2024
© Gheorghe Paraschiv
DinÎntunerec: Now, let’s talk about your releases! “Pandemic Dominion” was a pivotal release for Akral Necrosis back in 2012. Looking back, how do you feel the album contributed to shaping the band’s sound and identity?
Octav: Well, it showcased our vision and execution of black metal. I think our sound was already there and the songwriting is at a very good level for a debut album. A lot of people tagged us as raw black metal based on our looks, but the music is far from the early sounds of the ‘90s. There’s aggression, there’s thrash influences, a ton of guitar solos and I think one can already spot an affinity for progressive parts. It features a full narrative concept which can be analysed and interpreted on three different levels.
The downside is we were very young and unexperienced, so the production itself is far from perfect. Still, we pushed through a lot of technical limitations and problems. We ended up handling the mix ourselves. Well, Victor did, to be more precise.
DinÎntunerec: Alright, but how was the writing and recording process for “Pandemic Dominion” —were there any significant challenges or memorable moments that stood out during its creation?
Octav: Victor wrote most of the music for the album and I handled the lyrics and concept. The concept came to me one night and I furthered it by reading bible parts about seraphim angels, but also a short story by Gabriel García Márquez. When researching the bible, I decided to go for the actual book I had in the house at that time. I knew the passages I wanted from the internet. From that entire book, there were only two pages which were not printed, but blank. The exact ones that contained the passages I was looking for.
DinÎntunerec: The apocalyptic vision painted in the lyrics of the title track is powerful. What kind of imagery or historical context helped shape the song’s intense atmosphere, particularly in lines like “Magnificent collection of horrors/ Reign of death/ Blood flooded times”?
Octav: The whole piece goes like this:
“Gallery of human deeds,
Magnificent collection of horrors
Reign of death
Blood flooded times – over and over
… a never-ending murder”
This is not describing the apocalypse, just parts of human history which repeats itself. I wasn’t thinking about a particular part, just looking at the whole.
All verses are from the perspective of the Devil who is introducing humanity to the main character, a naive Seraphim angel.
DinÎntunerec: With “Pandemic Dominion” being over a decade old now, how do you think the album has aged?
Octav: Great if talking about composition, very bad when it comes to production. We managed to fully re-record it but have stagnated with the mix and master for some time due to various problems. We plan to put it out as a double CD/special edition in the very near future since it’s been out of print for a lot of years and people still ask for it. Don’t worry, you’ll get the original version, too, in this release. We are not trying to bury the past, but those songs deserve a better sound and execution.
Victor: From a production point of view it has aged badly, we are working on rectifying this and doing it justice.
Victor on stage,
Impaled Nazarene Exclusive Romanian Show, 3.02.2024
© Gheorghe Paraschiv
DinÎntunerec: Do you still feel a strong connection to its themes when performing tracks from it live?
Octav: Yes, it is our music which was created with the same passion and sincerity that still burns in us. The flames of creation have only gotten stronger over the years and we never compromised. We don’t factor in if a new song will be popular or well received. We create music for ourselves first and foremost. So, the answer is yes. I believe the words I am screaming when performing those songs.
DinÎntunerec: Shifting our focus to your 2016 release entitled “Underlight”… Can you share a memorable experience from the writing or recording process of the album?
Octav: I recall a particular feeling. I never felt we were going into the sophomore album slump, but I was extremely excited with how the songs were turning up as you could tell Victor’s writing was becoming even better. At this point SoYoS also started to write music for Akral Necrosis and the results were also great. The album showcases a clear evolution and each song brings something different, no fillers included.
SoYoS on stage,
Impaled Nazarene Exclusive Romanian Show, 3.02.2024
© Gheorghe Paraschiv
Victor: I personally was pleasantly surprised when I got to the recording of “Blackthrone“, I had made an intro on clean guitars with delays, which sounded good enough, but during the mixing phase Marius Costache, the guy we worked with, played with them a lot and changed them into how they sound right now on the album, which in my opinion is way better.
DinÎntunerec: “King in Yellow” from the aforementioned album feels both mysterious and intense. Could you talk about the inspiration behind this track and how “The Yellow Sign” and the King are woven into the album’s overarching theme?
Octav: I was reading Robert W. Chambers in that period and was fascinated by the King in Yellow short stories which are basically a precursor to Lovecraft’s Cthulhu cycle. This song is very special and one of my favourites. We went to the rehearsal place and we created it on the spot, lyrics included. “Underlight” doesn’t have a narrative concept, but more like a theme. All songs deal with death from various points of view. I won’t go into details about the Yellow Sign and the King in Yellow, I hope if YOU read this interview, you will go and read those 4 short stories. The song itself is a tribute to them.
Victor: I will not humbly take credit for this song, I just played it out of the blue during some rehearsal, the main riff was great and catchy and I just built from that on what inspiration I had then and there.
DinÎntunerec: Onwards to your 2020 album “The Greater Absence”. What’s the story behind the title?
Octav: It reflects the afterlife found by our main character. An infinite field of plains covered in dust and lost souls. Whatever divinity ruled over it died a long time ago, so these souls have no revelation waiting for them. They simply wait for the end of time or look for means of escaping back to the world of the living, just like the 3 spirits who end up inhabiting the body of the main character.
“Damnatio Memoriae” is the song that describes this afterlife. Read the lyrics and find out about the endless caverns where one can attempt a loss of self/consciousness to deal with infinity.
Another meaning was the absence of live shows for us leading up to the album release, since we didn’t have a drummer in the line-up. We recorded the album with the highly talented drummer Krzysztof Klingbein.
History repeats itself and now, as we start to focus on finishing our fourth album, we are again without a drummer.
DinÎntunerec: Which tracks from the aforementioned album hold a special meaning for you?
Octav: A lot of them. “I See the Bright Lights” and “Damnatio Memoriae” are some of my favourite tracks because they showcase the different sounds and styles that create the Akral Necrosis sound, but I also feel a special connection with the 3 ones that feature the poem from David Topala: “Silent Altar”, “Oldd Mirror” and “Third Curse” which are different from one another, but have a common sense of gloom and damnation waiting to happen. I will stop here because I will probably end up listing the whole album. We really worked our asses off for all these songs, everyone bringing their best to them. Another favourite of mine, “Man in the Cauldron”! Listen to those bass lines and check out the vocals as well. This is the most I spent working on vocal lines and lyrics on a song. Not due to lack of inspiration, quite the opposite. I wanted to make it as special as possible. And, yes, this one is created initially on bass, by SoYoS.
Victor: For me, first of all, “Intonation”, probably one of the few songs that were thought and planned, not simply felt, as one day I was studying some of Behemoth’s songs (a band which I sadly no longer enjoy) and wanted to figure out what makes a song go into the earworm category. I think we managed to find out. “Revamping the Insides” was also a piece where I experimented with various different atmospheres in the context of the same song, it has some really interesting parts. With “Silent Altar” I just wanted to make a fast, brutal and heavy song, and lastly “Damnatio Memoriae” was also an interesting one, the story behind it was that SoYoS came up with the whole structure on bass and I just added the guitars and drums on top of the bass line that he sent me – I enjoyed orchestrating it and the structure itself was dynamic enough to allow a great degree of freedom for the other instruments.
DinÎntunerec: “I See the Bright Lights” from “The Greater Absence” is one of my personal favourite tracks. There’s something hypnotic yet brutal about its structure. What was the creative spark that ignited it?
Octav: This is all about Victor when it comes to the music part. He wrote this after “Pandemic Dominion” came out, but we shelved it as too different at the time being. I know he had the final vision for it at that time, too. I guess the rest of us didn’t or the demo for it didn’t manage to make us “get it”.
Victor: This is rather funny and interesting, but at the point in time I wrote “I See the Bright Lights” I had both listened to Meshuggah more in depth and also discovered another Romanian band, Apa Simbetii, and exchanged various musical ideas with Mihai, the composer of that band. This song was more or less exploring those new territories subconsciously (I say subconsciously because the “writing” process just with a lot of the other songs was simply plug in the guitar, record and after 7-8 minutes of straight recording you have the whole structure already). We delayed it though because it was considered way too alien and different from the whole band’s perspective at that point in time at least. When it came to “The Greater Absence” I felt like we were ready for it and I presented it once more.
DinÎntunerec: Another track of interest is “Man in the Cauldron”. Is there a particular line or verse in the song that you feel is especially powerful?
Octav: “The dweller is darkness and nightmares he’s too.” The entity is not just a manifestation of darkness, it also inhabits it in a tormenting way. The main character doesn’t just feel a presence, he instantly knows and understands what he is dealing with.
But I would also like to mention the ending of the song which has a very fast and aggressive delivery: “Everlasting darkness lies inside this pit of sin/ Dare not gaze inside it as his lust will pull you in.”
DinÎntunerec: During your performance at Hidden – The Social Space in Bucharest, this year, you debuted two new tracks: “Winds of Ruin” and “Midnight”. Let us talk, firstly, about “Winds of Ruin”. What emotions or concepts inspired the creation of the song?
Octav: As usual, I always allow the music to dictate the topic of the lyrics. I think “Winds of Ruin” is the heaviest and slowest song we have in our discography. I started to listen to it on repeat until it “spoke” to me about a land which no longer sustains life. “…the shovels barely dig and the dirt won’t give way to bury the remains of our dead.”
DinÎntunerec: In what ways does “Winds of Ruin” reflect the current state of Akral Necrosis, both musically and thematically?
Octav: I think it shows a progression of our sound and the fact that we don’t want to create the same music twice, so we try new things, we add new elements. We are very aware of how we sound when we do fast songs. Maybe we wanted to see how we deal with slower numbers, too. Of course, this doesn’t mean the 4th album will be a doom one.
Victor: I don’t believe it reflects the current state of our sound. It is a one-off experiment rooted more in death metal and was created as part 1 of two connected songs.
DinÎntunerec: As for the song “Midnight”, what was the journey of its creation like, and how did it evolve from initial ideas to the final track?
Octav: This one started with a lot of riffs from Damian who returned to the fold after 7 years. Right away he wanted to contribute to the songwriting. It went back and forth a few times since he was reconnecting with the Akral Necrosis sound until he delivered most of the riffs for “Midnight”. We worked through several iterations until we found the best structure for the song, but it turned out great. I enjoy playing it and I think it manages to showcase Damian as a songwriter in the Akral Necrosis context. He got the sound, but also left his personal touch.
Damian on stage,
Impaled Nazarene Exclusive Romanian Show, 3.02.2024
© Gheorghe Paraschiv
DinÎntunerec: Your next show at Spears of Wallachia, a festival set for November 8 and 9 at Quantic Club is highly anticipated. Can you give us a glimpse into the setlist for this show?
Octav: A glimpse? Sure. We are doing the new songs, but also swapped an older one we kept playing recently for another song which we haven’t performed in quite some time. We were really in the mood to bring back another piece from “The Greater Absence”.
Spears of Wallachia Festival
© Cavalleria Events
DinÎntunerec: Are there any specific tracks you’re particularly excited to play?
Octav: Always a fan of doing “I See the Bright Lights” or “Hounds of Plague”, but this time, I am looking forward to doing the new entry. It’s fast, aggressive, but also goes into progressive parts and we haven’t played it since 2021, I think.
DinÎntunerec: What significance does this show hold for Akral Necrosis?
Octav: It’s a mix of positive and negative. This looks like our last show in Bucharest with Philip. He is departing Romania for good, early next year, so we will stop playing together. We are looking for a replacement drummer that has the balls to take over since playing with us is not an easy ride. On the more positive side, this means we will stop doing shows for a while and focusing on finishing the songs for the new album. Rehearsing for shows slows us down from working on new material.
This means, don’t miss the show, you might not see us on stage for some time and trust me, we will take no prisoners since it’s such an occasion.
We are also somewhat the host band of this festival. Everything started in connection to the fact we really wanted to invite Necrowretch here and do a show together, like we had the occasion to do so 9 years ago in Craiova. Traian from RTMC invited us to play there since he was doing that show and we were touring in support of “Underlight”. I didn’t know Necrowretch at that point, but loved their music when I experienced it live. Bought all their albums since then and I am a big fan of the latest one, which came out this year. So, Spears of Wallachia Festival started from this wish and Mihnea and Olivia from Cavalleria Events made it happen. From there we kept adding bands in the line-up.
So, yes, in a way, with Philip departing, we reach an end, but with this new festival, it’s also a beginning.
Philip on stage,
Impaled Nazarene Exclusive Romanian Show, 3.02.2024
© Gheorghe Paraschiv
DinÎntunerec: With your extensive experience in the genre, how do you perceive the current state of black metal both locally and internationally?
Octav: I fucking hate the state of it. Mentally, I am in a constant state of either loving the genre or hating its guts due to current abhorrent manifestations. I think this is still a very successful genre, creatively speaking, while also having appeal to the public. As a direct effect outsiders try to castrate it and turn it into easy to digest fodder for the masses, so you have industry lab bands churning out pseudo-black metal. It also seems more and more infested with activists from all sides and I really hope it doesn’t get turned into culture war bullshit in the process. I saw it happening with other mediums where artistry or expression went directly to the trash when the art was not reflecting the messages of one of these sides. I’ll stop here, my blood easily starts to boil when I talk about this.
On the other side, you still have amazing music coming out which is still pushing boundaries, still adding to the genre, you just need to follow the correct labels and bands. And one should always dig in the underground for new bands, new albums and so on. Never become trapped in the past. Anyway, it will endure.
DinÎntunerec: How has the black metal scene in Romania evolved since Akral Necrosis was formed in 2006, and what changes have you noticed in terms of acceptance and visibility?
Octav: Fuck acceptance, there is no place for it in black metal. Accepted by who and why? We never looked for consent or the superficial aspects of being in a band. Do you like our music? Great! You don’t? Also, great!
Sure, the scene evolved and is way better nowadays. I wonder if some changes happened too late or at the right speed. Are we “there” yet as a scene? No and I think some people need to educate themselves on the ideology of this genre and gain better understanding. I also see new “players” in the scene which seem determined to contribute and take things further.
DinÎntunerec: In your view, what role does Akral Necrosis play in shaping the perception of black metal in this country, and how do you hope to influence the local scene?
Octav: I hope we can spearhead the idea of pushing for your own sound and identity. Create your path, add to the genre, avoid shortcuts, say no to compromise, suffer not complacency. For too many years, way too many bands went for the cloning of the Negura Bunget sound, look and themes. There’s a newer generation now finding its footing, but for the moment a lot of them dwell as one-man bands and just emulate the early ‘90s sound which is again stale. They are young, so I am sure they can evolve past this. I also noticed people starting black metal projects and bands while they appear disgusted by the most basic elements of the genre. Their output almost has nothing to do with the genre, so I don’t understand why they feel the need to mention it when describing their style.
Still, I very much prefer this overall progress, cause pre-pandemic there were way, way fewer black metal bands or projects.
DinÎntunerec: I know you like to discover new bands, and last time we spoke you were quite impressed by the debut album of “Hexerei” entitled “Ancient Evil Spirits”. What new local or international bands have caught your attention recently?
Octav: By all means, when it comes to the local scene, make sure you subscribe to the yt channel Romanian Black Metal Elite. You’ll find old bands, but also new projects that either me or Robert from Grohot enjoyed. Of course, there are others which are not featured there and are good or even great. I am looking forward to some new Faunul din Smidă.
For international, I will mention some bands that put out great releases this year. Some are older, some are younger: right now, I am struggling to wait until my LP copy arrives for the new DHG project “Doedsmaghird”. I can just play it online, but I refuse to do so. Meanwhile I am obsessively spinning the new Death Like Mass, it will be on my AOTY list for sure. You should also check out the new albums from Inconcessus Lux Lucis, Sotherion (see them live next year at Underground for the Masses II), Verbis, Funeral Oration, Necrowretch (see them live at Spears of Wallachia Festival), Departure Chandelier, but also Thantifaxath, Malokarpatan and Thy Darkened Shade from 2023. And of course, the latest Abigor album is a masterpiece (also 2023). You should know it by now!
DinÎntunerec: And… what is your all-time favourite band?
Octav: Either Abigor or Voivod. Difficult choice, but one can spot a common thread. Both bands sound different from album to album, reinvent themselves, break boundaries and are visionaries within their genre.
Victor: I don’t think I have a favourite band, but what I have been listening to most in the last years is the music of Jeremy Soule.
DinÎntunerec: As you look ahead, what are your aspirations for Akral Necrosis in the coming years, both creatively and in terms of live performances?
Octav: New album, new label, new formats for our music, new merchandise, an updated show, playing more shows in the country, but also outside Romania. We also have special plans for our 20th anniversary which is drawing nearer and nearer.
DinÎntunerec: Before we conclude, what message would you like to leave for your fans who continue to support Akral Necrosis?
Octav: See you in November in the front lines and beyond!
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