Ater Ignis with Orthodoxy
Art: Fernando Rivas
I am involved in many different projects, all going through different phases. So the description of my music and its meaning to me keeps changing and allows for different readings. Today, Orthodox, for me, it’s about the concept of a metal band, how the band is more than the sum of its parts, and how, as a band, we try to master the craft necessary to continue making relevant metal music in 2023.
This record has been especially difficult for us. Considering we got back to the original trio line-up, we needed to feel we were taking a step forward. So at some point, we got very picky about the riffs, structures, etc. This has been the longest time we have had writing the stuff. Also, it was the first time we had a producer. In other albums, we listened to engineers’ opinions, but when we called Billy Anderson to work on this, we wanted his vision of our music to feel we were taking that step forward I mentioned.
I mix personal experiences for the lyrics, opinions, or political ideas with some epic narrative or poetry. I’m sticking to the metal tradition on that issue. Whatever I’m reading at the moment, a movie or even other songs. And, of course, personal experiences, including social events. The situation of the band itself has been an inspiration in some of the lyrics of ‘Proceed’. Also, for this álbum, I remember being inspired by movies like ‘Turin’s Horse’ by Bela Tarr or ‘Hard to be a god’ by Aleksey German. The kind of pedestrian mythology used by Bob Dylan in ‘The Wicked Messenger’ is an ideal model for me.
I need art in my life, but I’m not a spiritual person at all. We all need poetry to some degree to get through life. The good thing is that poetry is everywhere. We can have deep experiences with the most common and simple things in the way we look at things. In fact, death, love, joy or pain are in everyone’s life every day. Philosophically I could say Marxism, but I don’t buy all that postmodern revisionist stuff that has been going on since May ’68. But that’s personal because Ricardo or Borja has their view on that topic.
I remember watching Kiss on tv with three or four years old during the ‘Creatures of the Night’ era. I didn’t know what was happening, but Simmons’s image left an imprint in my mind somehow. Then, at nine years old, I remember watching Whitesnake’s ‘Still of the Night’ video and thinking it was the coolest thing ever. Not much later, I got into Maiden, Judas, Helloween, and Manowar but my main interest were comics until I got about 13, and I got into thrash metal; Metallica, Sacred Reich, Coroner and, of course, Black Sabbath and Motörhead. I got a bass at 14 and never stopped.
Music is inherent to the human being, and it arose in different places and at different times. It’s not that it’s important to the world; it’s that you can’t understand the world without music. It is part of us, like speaking. We need music for many things; for our rituals, to express ourselves, to dance, to fight, to manipulate, to relax, to torture… for me, it’s been a blessing and a condemnation.
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