Valarauk is an Ultra Tenebrous Doom/Death Metal band form Sweden, their demo debut “Black Winters Eternal Embrace” is a travel through the depths of hell. This band starts as an Ambient project, but then turns into this macabre entity. Despite of their short time in the scene, “Black Winters Eternal Embrace” is one of the most impressive Doom Metal demos of the year, because of their heaviness and the extreme darkness created in this piece of Black Art…

BB: First I would like to thank you for giving us this interview. Can you tell us about Valarauk’s beginnings?

We transformed from the ashes of a dark ambient-project in April 2004. Lord Geryon had started this ambient-project, but wanted to play drums and metal instead. Natt & Lord Geryon talked about it and later got the strong will of forging the darkest doom ever made. Aldinach joined two weeks later on guitars and vocals. Valafar came in March 2005, after the demo was recorded. That way we could play live.

LG laid down his soul in the newstarted band to make it serious and on this road we continued... For a full biography, check our webiste: http://valarauk.cjb.net

BB: What is Valarauk doing nowadays?

We had a small brake after releasing the demo because of recordings with our other band – Nagrim (www.nagrim.se). We play blackmetal, all of us except Valafar.

But, now in the end of the summer we shall continue rehearse new songs and plan for coming gigs and maybe a coming demo late 2005.

BB: By the way… What’s meaning of the name Valarauk?

It comes from the world of Tolkien as many other names. Read the “Silmarillion” for a correct explanation. It means “balrog” or “demon of hell”, you know the flaming demon in the caves of Moria if you read the books? The one Gandalf is fighting with when he falls to the depths...

BB: Can you tell us about the recording and composition processes of “Black Winters Eternal Embrace”?

The recording was very primitive, just recorded live at our rehearsal-place. Therefore the sound may be a little dull... Next time we will have a thicker and more powerful sound, yet very dark though. But we guess the sound is OK for a first demo.

As a matter of fact we composed one song each on the demo + LG made the intro. We wrote them separately as usual, then when they’re almost finito we present them to the rest of the band and all of us finalize them eventually.

BB: The album art is pretty good (and blurry jeje). Can you tell us abut the concept behind it? It seems to be pretty explicit, with inverted crosses and pentagrams…

Yeah, it’s a very nice and fitting artwork made by Aldinach. Blurry? Ok...

The concept is just that it’s a dark crypt or a cave-hall where you might step into a Valarauk-lord at the end you see there.

Aldinach is very influenced by the world of blackmetal with all what that means...

BB: Have you (as Valarauk) some special ideology or belief?

No, nothing shared by all in the band. Maybe that we all are against christianity as anti-christ’s, but nothing more. Aldinach are somewhat dedicated to satanism/occultism, but that’s his ideology, it will course affect the band a little and that’s also what he wants. But the rest in the band just want to concentrate on the music as much as possible.

BB: What is your favourite song of this demo? Why?

Don’t ask such questions! Haha, it’s very hard to choose, the three pieces on the demo are good in different ways. “Dissolve” are a little thrashy and more to deathmetal, “Through” are the most funeral doom metal song of them all. “Black winters” got very long, repetitive and make the listeners fall in deep trance.

BB: Have you planed to make a different version of “Black winters eternal embrace”? I mean, the version in the demo said “1.0”…

Yes, we already have a version 2.0, so we had to write 1.0 on the demo!

Aldinach crushed the song a month after the recording (to the rest of the bands great fear hehe) and built it up again in a completely new form with a couple of new riffs. Now it isn’t that repetitive any more. People can judge if it’s better than the other version, we think so. We have a sample from version 2.0 on the website by the way...

BB: Did this song take the name of the demo of was the demo entitled by this song?

The demo was entitled by the song. We thought it was a fitting name.

BB: We are used to hear about the Swedish Black Metal scene, but what about the Doom Metal scene in Sweden?

Hm, umm...haha.. (silence) No, but we have a few wellknown at least. Doom metal aren’t exactly the most popular music to start playing by young metalheads.

But of course we must mention our doom metal kings Candlemass who are still active and up for a new album! LG’s personal favs are Runemagick who are simply great and play death/doom, they have some very good albums out now. Also Katatonia, but they aren’t that much doom any more, we just liked the first albums. That’s about it. But in the underground there’s probably plenty of new bands emerging, but we haven’t heard many good ones yet.

BB: Does the Swedish Black Metal influence you in some way?

Yes, to some degree because 3/4 of the members of Valarauk play blackmetal in our other band Nagrim and those members also listens to very much black- and deathmetal all the time. But, we will try to separate the bands as much as possible and focusing on doom metal only.

BB: Do you think Doom Metal could someday be as massive as Death or Black Metal?

Do you mean musically or massive like “popular” and grow big like those styles?

Musically is can be massive, at least our kind of doom that are flavoured with some deathmetal and more brutal vocals.

Doom metal are a little more complex style and the very opposite to easy-listening music. So, I don’t think it will grow big, it will stay at a resonable size like now. Just because most people seems to find it boring compared to other styles.

BB: What are your principal influences?

Hm, another tough question. We don’t know exactly, we just get dark and brutal riffs in our mind and write it down. It isn’t any particular band that have influenced us, we listen to a various styles of music and especially metal of all kinds. Aldinach doesn’t know exactly what’s influencing him with the lyrics. He just writes down what comes into his sick mind and what Diabolus tells him to during hours of darkness...

BB: The video of your live show is very good. Where was recorded your live show? How was the reception of the audience?

Cool that you liked it, it turned out pretty good, especially the visual quality was great. The video on the demo is a little compressed so, we have it in DVD-format.

It was recorded during the “TT-12 festival” in our town Kiruna in Sweden. We had almost 15 bands playing, many demobands, but it was fun because there was several metalbands this year. Before the place have been drenched with commie-influenced punkrock and such shit haha. The youth start learning about good music now!

We don’t have many metalheads in our town, so the response was awful. Doom metal aren’t appreciated at all. Everyone just stood like ligthed candles watching us, without banging anything. The thing is that we didn’t headbang anything on stage haha, like you see. Then it wasn’t very strange if the audience was lame. Of course the band must “live” their music on stage. It was our first gig so… Gig #2 will probably be a 100 times better.

BB: Why you decide to play without Valafar in your first gig? According with your info he was recording the show…

Hehe no, he was recording it while he was playing the bass! He put the camera on record and went on stage, another guy was just watching it while we played the gig. It worked out very good, Valafar is some kind of director and work with movies a lot, so he knows that stuff.

BB: When can we expect new material of Valarauk?

We don’t know exacly, let’s see late 2005 if we release another demo or something. We have a few new songs we’re gonna rehearse and more is on the move. Just keep an eye at our website for latest news: http://valarauk.cjb.net

At least LG wants to develop our sound towards funeral doom. Darker, slower and more crushing, but also with a little melody added.

BB: Thanks again for your words and your time. Is there anything else you want to add to this interview?

Nope, but thanks for your support and keep the flame burning! Hails!!

/VALARAUK