5to1: 5 Q&A with Hungarian black metal perfectionists 'de profundis'

Finally a brand new edition of 5 Q&A interview series.
[of violence] sincerely hopes you would enjoy this one. Hungarian duo is back in 'action' after their quite long hiatus.
By the mean time before you move on to read the rest, maybe you'd like to hear the tracks from the EP. www.myspace.com/deprofundishu

1 Let's start with the 7 year hiatus and getting back together. What were the reasons to give that kind of a break? And what you guys missed most in that period of time?

- The main reason was that I finished a long relationship and I wanted to change my life. I got a job opportunity in London, so I made the move and left Hungary. I was going to stay for a year, maximum, but at the end it turned out to be 7 long years. Meanwhile, Yzokras was focusing on his studies, got diplomas in Hungarian and German languages and literature.
Well, I think what we missed the most was the lost oppurtunity of creation, but on the other hand we got time for developing our style and the band became more sophisticated.
So, basicly after I came back we immediately started to work on de profundis, again. We were full of ideas, I managed to put together a small home studio, so there was nothing in the world at this time that could have stopped us.

2 Haunted By Ill Angels Only. That is the title of the demo EP which is the sole reason that we are doing this short interview. How would you define your sound, approach to the listeners out there who are willing to discover some fine raw and grim stuff ? And please do give us some info about how to purchase the EP.
- We define our sound as raw, melodic black metal. It means that we are willing to keep the rawness of early 90’s, mostly Norwegian black metal, but we are also try to create some tones that you can remember longer than half a minute. We don’t want to be the 1000th black metal group with no personality and hind the lack of creativity behind shitty, noisy sound. Within our influences we can mention early Ulver, Summoning and early Darkthrone, but it gives just the basic of our style, we hope that our music has its own personality and by using synths and choirs making it more exciting.

You can purchase our debut demo EP directly from us. You can find all the details soon on our myspace page: myspace.com/deprofundishu . It will be available from February, hence we had a bit of a delay in printing and stuff like that.

3 The involvement of synths and ambient bits makes one to think de profundis may also be counted in among the more progressive area of black metal. What are your thoughts about it? And this whole new breed of avant-garde bands emerging?
- Well, I wouldn’t say that de profundis is a progressive black metal band. In a sort of way we are quite regressive. I mean our main intention is to countinue black metal from where it lost its way somewhere in 1994. Somehow at that time most of the bands turned away from their origins and started to do something completely different. Personaly, we love albums like Nattens Madrigal, Transylvanian Hunger or Filosofem. And now we can connect the second part of your questions here. For me avant-garde black metal is Solefald or Arcturus. They were truly innovators. Of course, there are couple of good new bands out there, like Code, Vulture Industries or Ava Inferi, but I think they don’t even define themselves as black metal. I got to mention here that though we are musically connected with the early black metal scene, but our lyrics are personal, they got nothing to do with religion, satan or occultism.

4 What are the ups and downs, advantages and disadvantages of being a black metal band in Hungary? Tell us a bit about the scene and how a band with no intentions of composing commercial music survives in Hungarian territories?
- I guess it’s not much of a difference to be in a black metal band in Hungary or somewhere else in the world. With the digital revolution there are millions of bands out there promoting their music and looking for contract. It’s really hard to find the way to success. And under success I don’t mean financial success, but more like emotional success that people are actually listening to your music and appreciate it and they are willing to buy it to on CD enjoying the whole package with the cover and lyrics. Instead of this, they give you 5-10 seconds on myspace and if you are lucky, than your music will be downloaded in shitty quality, will be listened to couple of times and after that it will be forgotten. The whole situation is completely different than back in the 80’s or 90’s.

Anyway, the Hungarian black metal scene is as big as it’s possible. You can see the world tendency here, as well. Couple of good bands and lots of noisy, primitive bands playing black metal, just because it’s „easy” to play.

We have to mention Sear Bliss, which is the most famous Hungarian black metal band and they are managed to achieve international success, as well. Other good bands, not in order: Forest Silence, Dohmring, I Divine, Teurgia, etc.

5 What is next for de profundis? What are the plans for the year 2010 and beyond? No intentions of taking a new break i hope?
- As I mentioned before, the actual demo CD will be out in February, so we will promote our music by sending the CDs to record companies, magazines, radios, fanzines, webzines, etc. We are hoping to get a deal with a record company and than we can start recording our full-length debut album, which will contain 11 songs, including 3 ambient and 8 raw, melodic black metal songs.
We don’t plan any live shows, de profundis is working as a two-member studio project at the moment and I don’t think it will change in the near future. Regarding to your question, we don’t want to take a break now, finally de profundis is on its way to success. (Fingers crossed.)