DRUKNROLL. Heaviness, Vigor and Flask Break
In 2024, a lot of good iron was forged on the Russian metal scene, which will not remain in that year, but will be transferred to the Future by music lovers in their playlists, flash drives and collections in physics.
Today we will talk with the musicians of the DRUKNROLL team, who will get in touch in order to clarify the latest album, as well as the entire history of the team.
1=Greetings, the first question will be: – how is your spirit?
– Vigor has risen and is not going to rest!
2=The new album turned out to be very ambiguous, very sophisticated and, as I already said in the review, progressive. Please tell us what prompted you to create such a complex music that not every metalhead will perceive?
– My friend Doc often talked about “boring crap” while listening to boring metal, and I, too, sometimes “sort out crap”, i.e. spend precious time to, say, pick a couple out of 50 bands to listen to! But it’s worth it, because after digging around there really is relief!
3=You invited a lot of musicians to create this album. What kind of people were they, first of all, where were they from, what bands were they from, and most importantly, how did you determine that these particular people would create the necessary themes, the necessary melodies?
– That’s right, they’re not just musicians, but gods of guitar art, real virtuosos of their craft. I found them on social networks, listening to their material for a long time. I entrusted them with the most important and difficult part of the job – solos, and they did a great job! By the way, a little advice on how to quickly “clean up the crap”, you need to immediately turn on a solo in the track, if it doesn’t work, immediately dump it! Here they are – virtuosos of their craft,
4=In the review I noted that it seemed to me that somehow spiritually your album is close to the work of the group CORONER. Of course, you know this team and have you not had this impression? ))
And with the work of which team do you think the content of your album is close?
-About CORONER, yes, I have not heard of such a group))) Now I’ll go to the net to look))) But for myself this year I discovered the coolest groups Scar Symmetry and Daath, though they disappeared somewhere, although Death is also cool, but it was Daath, they made excellent material in 2024, they have everything, speed, skill, dizzying solos, and they sing and (I almost said dance), and shout, in short, they have everything, just super! So, I got to CORONER, not bad!
5=Well, for an interview, I think, an important and significant question: the new album – what is it about, what is it dedicated to, what themes, what did you talk about?
-Yeah, if I say it very briefly, about the flask! The flask tearing off – that’s the main message! When it will leak – no one knows! When the brain goes crazy – also! Here I will give you some excerpts from the lyrics and you will understand everything at once:
— a cunning brain suffers from helplessness
— cut the wires, free your mind
— a distorted conscience degrades at the speed of light
— my skeptical mind emits only inhuman anger
— my head is like a nest of my demons
— a dull pain is killing my brain right now
— vile demons run fast in my head
— 3.141592653589793238462643383279
Yeah, you couldn’t say it better!
6=I will repeat that the album turned out to be very complex. And how was it recorded, how was it created, starting with some first ideas and further on?
That is, some initial framework with riffs, with rhythm, with tempos was created first? How did you finish drawing, finish it to the last line and purely technically this musical material?
– Well, it’s not exactly a framework, a flask, if you like! You take a flask, pour ideas on the bottom, if there are any, of course, the main thing is to throw in the right ingredients – more heavy riffs, a little of the wrong size for sharpness, a pinch of electronics, you can scream in there, you also need to throw in sparkling solos and put it in a warm place to ferment … it’s better to take an old flask, so that it whistles everywhere, so that the bottom breaks through and the roof does not close … and in a couple of years you can try and pour for people!
7 = In your opinion, how many times does this album need to be listened to for a listener who started running it through for the first time to get it?
– Of course, you won’t get it the first time, only the third time you can count all the sizes, for example, I plugged Daath – The Deceivers (2024) into my car to listen to in September, well, I’ve definitely listened to it a dozen times, well, this is from fresh material, but if you dig deeper, for example, DIO, you can’t count. Of course, I dream that DRUKNROLL fans would at least come a little closer to these results and I will puff like an armored train for this!
8=Aren’t you afraid of alienating such mainstream metalheads with your album, such as those who listen to “light” music. They might say: oh, come on, that’s too complicated, we don’t need it…
– I’m not afraid, it’s a matter of taste, if you want to relax your brain – go ahead, but if you want to get loaded and, like in the song… your head becomes like a nest of your demons…, then load up on DRUKNROLL!!!
9=Well, I also noted in the review that this is a fateful, very significant album for you, and here’s the question: what kind of plan will the next album be? Likewise complexly composed or will it be something simpler in the style of Thrash Death?
-Do you want to say that for 8 albums we racked our brains, banged pots, screamed, and then… a distorted conscience degrades at the speed of light… and then – the 9th album turned out in the style of Laskoviy May, yes, it turns out to be just some kind of crap or complete ass!
10=Well, right somewhere in the middle of the interview, a question… who is currently playing in the band?
-Oh, a difficult question, I don’t know for sure, but I’m sure that I will be playing, and Uzhas will be screaming!
11=How many musicians have passed through your team? How did they come and, more precisely, how did they leave, with some scandals or in a normal human way?
– Not much, considering 18 years of work, hard work, and what scandals, no, we just punched each other and went our separate ways)))
12=Some resources claim that your first albums were in the style of Melodic Heavy, Hard Rock. What were these albums, their names? And a more important question, how did you manage to make your material heavier?
– It all started in 2006, there was nothing, no experience of playing in a group, no experience in recording, not even instruments, nothing, just one huge metal lump rolling in front of me like a bun and showing the right way! Maybe the first albums were in the style of Hard Rock, but then the lump became bigger and bigger and, accordingly, heavier, so it is obvious what will happen next…
13=How many of you are in the group of creative centers? Sometimes 1, 2, and sometimes all the members of the group take the most direct part in the creation of the musical material. How does it happen with you?
– Of course, every musician saws in his own way and creates unique material, and I just throw this material on a metal lump so that it is bigger and rolls further and louder!
14=How do you, as a team, feel about concerts? Are they hard for you, is it easy to reproduce the material on stage, the one that was created in the studio? And what is your general feeling after a concert – is it like a squeezed lemon or, on the contrary, cheerful as a cucumber?
– After a concert, we are all cucumbers and ready to rush into battle! A small jamb – we do not play concerts yet, but, as pioneers, we are always ready! To play live, I would say, is still an adventure, then we need to invite Zinchuk to help or something!
15=The new album of the team was released on the Dark East Productions label, how did you contact this label and, most importantly, are you satisfied with the cooperation with this publishing company?
– Yes, Dark East Productions is a great label, it does everything clearly, specifically and a complete set of what is needed now for VIA, and it prints discs in any edition and places digitally, everything in full, well, and the contact – I wrote to the creator Oleg and everything started spinning!
16=By the way, in an interview with Dark City magazine last year you said about the new album – “whoever can understand it will have an easier time looking at the world.” Such a mysterious statement…, but what did you mean, actually?
– About the new album, you can say something like this: whoever wants to have an easier time looking at the world should count all the sizes in all the tracks, and to make it really cool, should write down from memory at least 20 digits after the decimal point in the number 3.14……
17=Well, and about the interview, how did you get into rotation on the Italian radio show LupOnAir on Radioerre.it? Please tell us how it happened and how did you communicate in English, Italian or some other language? ))
– The Italians are great in this regard, they’re blowing the right pipe! The interview came from our previous, no less cool label Metal Scrap Records! Since I don’t know Italian and they don’t know Russian, we communicated in the international language – Cambodian!
18=Well, what a big task you set for your sound engineer, that’s completely clear to me. Tell us, who is this person? Or maybe you did it yourself? How long did the mixing process, the creation of the final musical image, take?
-Yes, Oleg Kireichuk, the head of livelinesstudio, where we actually worked on all the material for 2 years, did all the work! Oleg is a master of his craft, he passed every note (even the crooked ones) through himself and I am grateful to fate for meeting him!
19=Well, as I understand it, I need to ask the traditional question about my immediate plans. As I understand it, you will need to rest for six months, and then… And what will happen then?
– We’ll get some sleep at a depth of a couple of meters, and for now the new track is 80% ready (about the flask, naturally), the plans are to record 3 tracks and release an EP and then move on to a new full-length (by the way, I need to see, there’s something bubbling in the flask already…)
Res, [25.11.2024 15:28]
We’ll finish here, the questions were not easy, and the answers were quite serious, but with humor… Good luck to everyone, and see you soon on the air!
resurgam