Psychosounds Fest 2024 took place on September 20th at Quantic Club, bringing together both local and international bands. Ildaruni, hailing from Armenia was no stranger to the stage at Quantic as they played there last year also. We didn’t catch them a year ago, but we have this time and we sat down for a long chat about metal music, their album, storytelling through music, national identity and many other interesting topics.
DinIntunerec: Hello, thank you for getting on board with this interview. Let’s start from the very beginning… If you were to describe Ildaruni to somebody who has never listened to your songs how would you define yourself and your music style?
Arthur Poghosyan: Hi, it’s a pleasure to be here and also to have this conversation. We are Ildaruni, from Armenia. We would define ourselves as a black metal band who is trying to combine folk elements in the music and bring up the ancient mysterious and occult traditions before Christianity that were spread in Armenian highlands. Actually in Armenia and connecting neighbors, also.
Robert Meliksetyan: Yeah, we are focused on a more intense and a more aggressive style, especially considering the occult atmosphere and all the stuff. We use folk instruments and chants, so we’re trying to build that atmosphere. It’s basically black metal, but we’re trying to combine, some folk elements and melodies to make it more interesting and powerful for the audience. Maybe something like for example Romanian bands Dordeduh, Sur Austru.
DinIntunerec: How did the band come about? What inspired and motivated you to start this project?
Robert Meliksetyan: At the beginning, we had a vision to combine folk elements with aggressive music, I mean black metal. Also, we had some references in terms of bands like Nocturnal, Negura Bunget, and Rotting Christ which used a lot of acoustic instruments to make their music sound better. To make their music sound more attractive. So, this vision impacted on us and made us create something not similar, but alike. Which is combining Armenian traditional music with black metal. The funny thing is that me and Robert had the same vision, separately.
Arthur Poghosyan: We were playing in different bands before and if I’m not mistaken one day I shared something on Facebook, and said I wish there was a similar band in Armenia. I don’t exactly remember what I shared. However this is when I started chatting with Robert. We realized we had the same vision. So, we decided to try to form a band, and started to look for new members. Then, we started doing rehearsals and that was it.
DinIntunerec: What can you tell us about your background as musicians and earlier projects? You’ve already mentioned playing in another bands…
Robert Meliksetyan: I used to play in a death metal band. Also, in a thrash metal band before. However, these projects didn’t have future plans I would say. We were just doing gigs and playing live shows, but we didn’t reach any popularity in Armenia. We didn’t release anything either. Ildaruni is like a driving force and it’s totally different. My previous projects weren’t serious. Also, they didn’t have so much potential and didn’t have vision. Or plans to go forward… With Ildaruni, we know what we want to achieve, we already have a vision and there are a lot of ambitions, a lot of plans to achieve.
Arthur Poghosyan: Before Ildaruni, I used to play in a folk band… not metal at all. We were playing pure folk, Armenian and European folk music. We had a couple of small tours and besides that I used to play in two black metal bands. So, as you can see, I’m a lot into black metal. About those two black metal bands… In one of them, I was a session drummer. With the another one, we were trying to do something, but we split up and that’ was it.
DinIntunerec: Why black metal? What inspires you about black metal?
Arthur Poghosyan: I could talk about black metal for eternity. For me, it was love at first sight, when I discovered bands like Dimmu Borgir, and Behemoth. Black metal has so much energy, the subgenres are so wide and it is so flexible that you can express absolutely anything with black metal. Any emotion, any thought, any idea… anything! It’s not about like how difficult this music is, it’s more about how deep is atmospheric black metal. Out of all metal genres, for me black metal is the most atmospheric one!
Robert Meliksetyan: I agree with Arthur! What inspires me about black metal is that there are no limits, no boundaries regarding composing music. Black metal has some kind of strong vision and I would say strong agenda. A lot of energy that you may throw to the audience! Black metal is not only just music, but also a way of living. A way of expressing the energy burning in you! Something you want to spread, and share with the audience.
DinIntunerec: Ildaruni is an ancient name of an Armenian river. Why did you choose this name for the band?
Robert Meliksetyan: Well, our first album was dedicated to the Kingdom of Urartu which was the name of the river. In Urartian language… Also, the name Ildaruni sounds good, so we talked about it and concluded that it’s the best fitting and the best sounding option, related to the topic of our songs. I need to mention that, in Armenian language there are a lot of difficult words. So, another reason for choosing the name Ildaruni was that it is not difficult to pronounce.
Arthur Poghosyan: The other alternative of name for our band sounded more brutal, but it didn’t have nice prehistory. So, we decided: “Okay, river… Let our music flow with the river. Why not?”. There are a lot of other examples… There is a band Akherontas… it’s a name of a river, the pagan name, and they play black metal… That’s just an example of how the name of a location can be a fitting name for the band…
DinIntunerec: Speaking about Armenian legacy, thematically most of Ildaruni songs are inspired by Armenian history and mythology. Could you go a bit deeper into the themes you approach in your music?
Arthur Poghosyan: Well, besides music, we are by default very interested in Armenian heritage and we dig deep all the time doing our research to find historical and mythological stuff, related to Pre-Christian Armenia. We are huge fans of the culture of that time. There are a lot of pages in our history that are not widely popular. Mysterious, interesting stuff that is, to some extend, not accepted by society. Mostly, not accepted in terms of religious stuff. In our first album, you can find a lot of historical and mythological events that you will never be able to find in any books that are being taught in schools. We did, let’s say, somehow scientific work for each song lyrics. Some topics, related to the main theme of the album are based on hidden pages of Armenian history. It is very interesting for us and for the public, too.
DinIntunerec: How much of Beyond Unseen Gateways is conceptual and to what extent is it just storytelling?
Robert Meliksetyan: Actually, the album is extremely conceptual because each song tells a story related to a Pre-Christian kingdom. I wouldn’t say that all the themes of the songs are connected to each other but, they refer to the same period in history. The stories are different. For example, there is a song about some confrontation. Another song is about the king who made a resistance against Iranian (Persian) oppression. It’s a conceptual album, but every song has its separate story.
Arthur Poghosyan: Yeah, it’s not like one song continues the other. Each story is different than the others. There are different events, different topics, but referring to the same period of time of that kingdom.
DinIntunerec: Why did you choose this path of storytelling? Is it simply storytelling, identity or a source of pride?
Robert Meliksetyan: It’s more like a historical representation. Essentially, it’s storytelling, but there is no intention of promoting anything, Obviously, we are proud of our heritage, but the aim is not to push it as a source of pride. We simply wanted to share some stories with our music. To combine out love for metal with the storytelling.
DinIntunerec: At some point, you even used Armenian traditional instruments. Can you tell us more about that?
Robert Meliksetyan: On the first album, we used a bagpipe, which actually isn’t Armenian. It’s Scottish. We used Armenian flute and Armenian percussion, dub type of percussion. We tried to convey Armenian folk music with those instruments and to make our music more popular. So, that’s why we decided to asked our friends to contribute and play on the first album. It was difficult to record, because acoustic instruments, especially Armenian acoustic instruments are very limited in these terms. It was difficult to record the bagpipes, to find a good player and a good sound/recording engineer, to make it sound really good.
DinIntunerec: How is extreme music received in Armenia?
Arthur Poghosyan: That’s a difficult question to answer, to be honest… Extreme music is not something popular in Armenia. We are in extreme music for like… I don’t know… more than 15 years. In the beginning, as listeners then as musicians. Anyway, the same 300 people come to live shows. Changing generations, but the quantity is the same. You will never find any extreme music on radio or on TV, for example. If you compare it with Norway or Finland or Sweden… For them, it is a widely accepted thing, it’s their cultural heritage. Armenia is very far from accepting that music widely.
In the beginning, after the collapse of The Soviet Union, it was, let’s say, a forbidden kind of thing. People never enjoyed it and most people referred any extreme musician as a Satanist, or as a drug addict, or something stupid like that. As time passes, more people are learning about this kind of music. More people, even of those not listening to it, start accepting its existence.
DinÎntunerec: You have played in Romania before. How did the audience react to your music?
Robert Meliksetyan: Actually, we played last year in Romania. The first show Ildaruni played here was in a small club. There wasn’t a large audience because we’re not known in Romania… I guess we were good… Because the second gig was amazing. It was in a very small club, but there were a lot of people at the gig. It was a pleasure for us to play there. Then we played here, in Quantic, and that gig was spectacular, as well.
We’re looking forward to this gig, because we want to play our most popular songs. I think this is one of the best clubs in Romania because we saw many great bands played here. We were really eager to play exactly in this club and we’re very happy that we’re playing today. Actually, we truly want to say thanks to Dorel and the whole Psychosounds crew for giving us the chance to play here again.
DinÎntunerec: Any future plans that you might like to share with us?
Robert Meliksetyan: Yes! Actually… at present, we’re finishing the recordings for our upcoming album which I hope to be released in the near future.
Arthur Poghosyan: We’re extremely excited to share more information about it and to play songs from this new album in the future. I mean, this is the priority for the moment. Also, we’re going to have some shows this year, I guess in Erevan and in Georgia. But before that, we’re going to play in Sofia the next two days.
Robert Meliksetyan: The second album is also going to be a conceptual one, but we are not going to reveal what is it about. I’ll only tell you it is more intense, more extreme… Full of energy… full of crazy guitars, extreme vocals. It is going to be a big jump from the first to the second album… A huge difference! We’re very excited about that! Also, we decided to use again acoustic instruments, but as Arthur has already mentioned, it will be more aggressive, more chaotic.
DinIntunerec: Are you going to play anything from this new album tonight?
Robert Meliksetyan: Yes, yes! There are two songs from the upcoming album that we are going to play.
DinÎntunerec: Any message to the Romanian audience, prior to the show tonight?
Robert Meliksetyan: We’re very happy to play in Romania again!
Arthur Poghosyan: I’ll say we’re very excited to play here again and in the same club; some nostalgic emotions are coming tonight…
I would also like to add the following message: keep on rocking and doing amazing work! You’re keeping the metal scene alive! I know how difficult it is to organize shows for extreme music bands. So… I would like to express my gratitude to the guys who make this festival and who invited so many great bands today here! It’s a privilege to play here!
DinÎntunerec: Thank you for your time! See you on stage!
