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By: Sander van den Driesche
At some stage during my doom discovery journey I stumbled upon the funeral death doom by German band AHAB, which immediately hit the right spark from the very first listen. They have released three full-length albums to date, with their last release The Giant back in 2012. A couple of weeks ago at Damnation Festival I had the opportunity to sit down with guitarist Cristian Hector, where we had a chat about influences, books and what it’s like to combine the dayjob with the band.
(((o))): Hi Cristian, how are you doing?
Cristian: I’m really fine. We arrived in the UK yesterday night around 8pm and some sips of whisky and now I’m pretty relaxed and feeling fine.
(((o))): Do you come over to play in the UK often?
Cristian: This will be actually our second show in the UK. A friend of mine, Paola Postali, she the organiser of Doom Over London and she got us over to the UK first in 2012. That was our first headliner slot as before that people used to book us in small venues. This is the second time and again the headliner slot, even though on the smaller stage at Damnation. But I was really surprised that we got booked at this slot. As far as I’m concerned Sólstafir are way bigger than us, but perhaps not in the UK.
(((o))): What I like about AHAB’s music is the dynamics, with the slower doom stuff mixed with the more death stuff and the variation in vocals. And your music also takes me on a journey. The Giant was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe and I believe books are a great source of inspiration for AHAB. How did that come about?
Cristian: Actually that was more of a coincidence, because I love to read and back then Daniel [Droste] and me were into doom metal stuff and discovered funeral doom and extreme doom. For example Esoteric was like “Wow what’s that!”. I really wanted to start a project and I just read the book Moby Dick and I was thinking how AHAB was a cool name for the project and the mood of the book fits perfectly to some extent to the music. Daniel showed me a song he was working on and I told him about the Moby Dick stuff and he thought it was cool and we just joined and since then we’ve been a project. I think two years later our drummer Cornelius [Althammer] and our old bass player Stephan [Adolf] joined and since then we’ve been AHAB.
(((o))): So, basically all your three albums are concept albums based on a book. With the last album being released in 2012 you must be working on new ideas and on a new album?
Cristian: Yes, but the problem is that we are not every day musicians. We have our regular jobs and for us the band is more like some kind of hobby, although it is a bit more than a hobby these days, but we don’t need to earn money with the band. We can do whatever, whenever we want. The problem with interpreting books, if you would do it all the time, putting books to music then it wouldn’t be to do with interpretation as much. So, it’s better to do this every 2 or 3 years and you also grow as a musician and you get different influences. I mean, I don’t listen to the same music anymore today as I listened to in 2012 for example. I still like the same music, but there are also other influences now and that’s good, because you can’t just do the same over and over again. You have to catch the mood of the book.
(((o))): But when I listen to the three albums then they still connect. They still have the same sound; it is still clearly AHAB on the three records. It is still the AHAB sound. Are you working on a new album then at the moment?
Cristian: Yes, we are just working on a new album. We have nearly finished two songs, the vocals are still missing, but I already wrote lyrics for two songs. And I’ve been marking the whole book, like parts I liked and parts I didn’t like. You can’t cover the whole book, but yeah we’ll be in the studio late March next year. We don’t know yet when the new album will be released, but hopefully around late summer/autumn.
(((o))): The Giant was the first album you actually recorded in a professional studio, or not?
Cristian: The first album, The Call Of The Wretched Sea, was recorded with our first bass player Stephan, he had a home recording studio. The second album, The Divinity Of Oceans, our drummer Conelius recorded the guitars and we did some mixing in another studio. The reason we worked like that was basically money as proper studios are pretty expensive. The we met Jens Siefert, who has a proper recording studio, he’s a bit of a weird guy who likes to experiment a lot and do stuff different and we recorded with him and it worked out really great. We will record the next album in his studio again.
(((o))): Can you tell us a bit about AHAB’s influences?
Cristian: Of course doom-wise the old stuff like Esoteric and Tyranny, a Finnish funeral doom band, influences our earlier stuff. But the last album was a lot more influenced by bands like Earth for example. Daniel also really likes the old Anathema, especially the guitar tone. I get my influences from so many different genres. At the moment I’m really into Chelsea Wolfe and Jex Thoth, I love the way they work and the mood they create. I also listen to Bon Iver and stuff like that. I’m not that keen to listen too much metal anymore. I love to go to concerts, but when I’m at home I listen more to the calmer stuff. The bass player and I have a real crush on Die Antwoord, they are so hilarious, which was obviously not an influence for AHAB (laughs)!
(((o))): It’s interesting though as a lot of people always assume that a metal band should listen to metal. But talking about doom, in the UK for example it’s been an explosive genre lately. There are a lot of good new bands and the genre is very popular right now. Even though it’s been a genre for decades, but recent bands like Conan have really raised the bar and got a lot of people interested in the genre.
Cristian: We actually played with Conan in Leipzig and we didn’t know them before that, but we immediately got along really well with them. When they got on stage in this really small club and they started playing, I was like “What the fuck?? This is loud!” We immediately bought their vinyl and I advised Napalm Records to sign them and they did. They’re really nice guys as well.
(Daniel finished another interview and joined us)
(((o))): What are your influences being the main song writer for AHAB?
Daniel: When I started writing music for AHAB I tried to avoid listening to similar music, because it is dangerous getting influenced by other bands. There were some doom bands I liked listening to, but they are a different style of doom.
(((o))): Okay, let’s go back to the new album, can you tell me what book this is based on?
(Daniel and Cristian give each other a long look)
Cristian: Probably not yet, it is too early at this stage.
(((o))): Will it have another sea based theme? Can you say something about that at least?
Cristian: Of course. We can tell you that it is not HP Lovecraft, but for it has a similar vibe.
(((o))): As I said earlier, I love the journey your music takes me on and you’re one of those bands that you just need to listen to from the first second till the very last. You can’t just pick out one song of an album to listen to and leave it at that.
Cristian: That would be cool if people do that, listen to AHAB like that, similar to like reading a book. You don’t just pick one chapter, but you read the whole book from beginning to the end.
(((o))): Since you’re all working full-time, how difficult is it to organise a tour? Do you guys go on big tours or only play to odd gig here and there?
Daniel: It’s not always easy, but we have nice colleagues at work.
Cristian: Stephan works as a social worker with school children and Cornelius is a drum teacher, so they have the normal summer holiday and I’m self-employed. The problem for us is for example when a big band we really love contacts us asking us to join them on a tour for 4 weeks; we have to say sorry we can’t do that. We still need to earn money and do our jobs.
(((o))): What if you get to a stage where AHAB gets big enough so you could all make enough money through the band?
Cristian: Yes, but the problem is that we also have families and with the band you would earn money for some period, but what would happen afterwards?
Daniel: And of course, then you would have to play you know. When you have to do it then it could become less fun I guess. Now we don’t have the pressure I suppose. We can take our time working on something until we’re happy with the finished product.
(((o))): What about going outside Europe? A couple of friends of mine in the United States are big fans of AHAB as well, have you ever been over there to play a show?
Daniel: We’ve been in Calgary in Canada once. But the problem with the US is that you need this working visa, and they are so fucking expensive! It would make sense if you like play 20 shows, but if you play like even only 8 days it’s not worth it. We can’t tell beforehand how much money we would get anyway and I heard so much about bands going over there that didn’t get paid and stuff like that.
(((o))): Lastly, can you tell me more about the band’s artwork?
Cristian: For the first two albums I did the artwork, well I would put things together and copy or use an image for the cover, but since The Giant we work with Sebastian Jerke, who is an amazingly good illustrator. He did all the artwork for The Giant, like the cover and the booklet and so. For the cover for the new album he did some more weird stuff this time.
(((o))): Thank you very much for the interview, it was a pleasure to meet you and talk to you. And good luck with the show! (Which was amazing as you can read here)
