>Hi ! To begin this interview in the traditional way, would you like to explain us where/when/why Ahab has been founded ? A kind of history of the band would be appreciated, in fact.It was in 2004, I entered our bassists recording studio. My only intention at that time was to compose something on my own. I always was a big fan of slow and heavy music so I decided to compose a song in that style. A few weeks later and without knowing about my recordings, Chris told me that he wanted to found a funeral-doom band. He already had the idea about writing a record about Herman Melvilles 'Moby Dick'. I was overwhelmed by that, he liked my song so we just decided to join forces and AHAB was born. During the recording sessions of our demo-cd The Oath, our present bassist who produced us joined the band and the newer line-up was completed.
>Ahab plays doom-metal the funeral way : really slow & dark kind of metal with massive riffs, deep growling voice & somber melodies. Personnaly i find this kind of metal even more extreme than some other thrashier bands. There are also some strong connections between extreme-doom & death-metal. Are you agree, what do you think about it ?
I absolutely agree with your statement. When I started listening to extreme music like death-metal and grindcore I thought that aggressive music has to be damn fast. Funeral-doom is in my opinion a very intensive and pictural style of metal, like a vast beast. For me it is a medium to express feelings in a very intense way. Of course there are also influences of death-metal in funeral doom, but these death-metal basics are worked up in another way, darker and with more atmosphere I think thats e
xactly what excited me to play this kind of music.>Which kind of band did influence your sound ? Do you take inspiration from cult bands like Black Sabbath, Pentagram, St Vitus or do you prefer bands who play the same kind of doom like you : Shape of Despair, Pantheist ?
Our main source of inspiration to compose The Call Of The Wretched Sea was Melvilles novel of course. We just tried to set the words to music to compose our own dark soundtrack to the story. The Call is a concept album which is lyrically based on Moby Dick. We didnt want to retell the story our aim was to use some chapters of the book to set the words to music and to deliver this dark and gloomy atmosphere of the story that we experienced during reading it. Of course there are also some bands which inspired me a lot. Especially My Dying Bride and old Anathema influenced me a lot and their cds are still among my all time favourites today.
>Would you like to tell us why did you choose the name of Ahab ?
Well first of all its the fascination for this story of course. The tragedy of Melvilles novel and the dark moods of the book are very similar to stylistic devices of funeral-doom in my opinion so that we thought the name Ahab would be the best solution to express our music in one word (NDR : this is the neame of the captain in 'Moby Dick').
>Your first album will be soon out on Napalm records. Where did you record it ? Did you spend good time in the studio ?
Like our demo-cd, 'The Call Of The Wretched Sea was recorded at Stephans recording studio here in southern Germany. This studio is just 10min awa
y from my place so I could go there whenever I wanted to record the ideas I / we had. Because of that we also never had a band rehearsal before. Every song was composed by recording riffs and ideas immediately. We didnt need much time to record the tracks because there were so many ideas we had
we just had to put the riffs together. By that we had the possibility to concentrate on the mixing process, for searching reverb effects and stuff
and we really spend a lot of time on that. I think we had at least 6 different mix-downs, we spent weeks just for listening sessions to be sure that every song has feeling and this period really was a hard piece of work. In the end were all very satisfied with the result and sure that we tried our best to shape this cd in the sound that ever wanted.>Dont you afraid about criticisms from people who will probably make comparisons with Mastodons 'Leviathan' ?
No, definitely not. There are so many bands which are using J.R. Tolkiens lyric, most black-metal bands are still singing about satan, hell the bible and stuff like that and with Mastodon theres just one band I know besides Ahab which composed a whole cd on Moby Dick in a very different way like we did so Do you really think I should be afraid of that?
>Will you tour outside Germany these next months in order to promote your album ? Last words are yours, thanx a lot for your time.
Well Chris and me are now busy with writing new song material for Midnattsol. We also decided to start the song writing for new Ahab stuff in december but as soon as we have the possibility well get back on stage to perform The Call Of The Wretched Sea live.
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Interview done by dj-in-extremis
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