Hi Anthony and the rest of Order Of Orias, be welcome and sorry for the huge delay sending you this interview. How are you doing in our antipodes? Has Order Of Orias's agenda been very active since the release of “Inverse”? How has been the response so far from your point of view? Not a problem, as your fully aware I have taken some time to respond to these questions. Shit happens eh? Anyway, since the release of INVERSE we have been quite active though of course these things do tend to fluctuate. If we are speaking chronologically then since the release of the album we have had the honor of playing Germany's Deathkult festival as well as a short tour supporting Marduk and Portal in Australia. As far as response to the album goes, we've been quite pleased. A large portion of the credit for people hearing the release of course goes to our label WTC who have been fantastic to work with. Order Of Orias may still not the be a well-known name among our readers, so before starting with the interview I'll have to ask you a bit about the history of the band and the motivation you had to create it. As far as I know, two of you play in the great Denouncement Pyre, one with Nocturnal Graves, another played live with Ignivomous, and the band was created under another name, Eidölon, under which you released a first demo and then mutated into Order Of Orias. But, could you please give us some more details about all this? How much different was Eidölon from this new band? Yes, current and ex-members have been/are associated with those bands. We're a small scene here in Melbourne and those with a similar focus and agenda tend to cross paths (creatively or otherwise) quite regularly. In regard to Eidölon, who cares? Things are completely different these days and all the better for it. Eidölon was simply the first juvenile spitting of an almost entirely different band. The first time I listened to “Inverse” I was pretty surprised to find a sound which has a lot of differences with your other bands, even if still being in the extreme Black/Death realms, with an obscure and heavy sound. What drove you to create Order Of Orias and what was the main idea when it came the sound your monicker should represent? I wouldn't say we set out to create any particular sound with Order of Orias, it's always been a very fluid evolution for us. Like everything creative it's a synthesis of a number of different elements. Our inspirations, our beliefs and our desires all distilled into a more pure form. From my point of view I specially found big differences in the song structures, which are very heavy as well as kind of progressive; and I don't speak about the technique or difficulty of it but about the flow of the songs and their structures. Was Order Of Orias maybe an escape route for the ideas which didn't fit in your other bands? What's your main preoccupation when it comes to writing a song? Our members' other projects have little bearing on Order of Orias creatively, the core elements behind the band are completely different. As for song writing, there is no set "idea" in mind before beginning the process other than mood I guess. It's a hard process to describe as these passages more just...happen. It's only after a song has revealed itself that we more closely analyze it and decide whether it works in the context of an album, an EP or whether it needs to be aborted entirely. I haven't had the opportunity to listen to your demo nor the “Birth” EP, which even if being released past year just like the album, seems to have been recorded long before it. Which main differences would you mention between those recordings and the album? Has your sound evolved a lot? The sound is almost entirely different. The EP represents the more evolved material from the "demo" phase of the band. Consider it a release that caps off our infantile period. It may sound as if I'm dismissive of our earlier efforts, but it's more that it's difficult to cast my mind back to that time and find answers with any clarity. We are always focused forward, on the next shows, the next album, how we can push things further, that I become resentful and largely unwilling to answer regressive questions. I found a lot of structures and kind of feelings in your songs which made me think of Doom Death Metal, not only for its heaviness and slowness but for the kind of chilling atmosphere and oppressive ambiance they cause. Do you feel inspired by that style when writing for Order Of Orias? Not specifically. Again, there is no set idea going into a song before it's written. It's simply a question of how best to convey the tone and message of a song and what will serve that end. As said on your myspace profile, you promulgate evolution through rebellion, opposition and illumination. Could you please define a bit this way of thinking and, especially, let us know the meeting points it can have with what usually is simply defined as Satanism? The information on that site is quite outdated, if I knew how to remove it I fucking would! There are still some details scattered around that come from a period of time that I would call "compromised" ideologically. Back then it was more trying to find common ground between a few different beliefs in an attempt to keep people within the band happy. That pathetic situation has long since been rectified. As for how I define "Satanism", I don't really. I think at it's core it's a hunger to be higher than what you are, the individual then dedicates himself totally to raising himself above his limited humanity in accordance with his own goals. It's a destructive ideology that sacrifices the self (and others if required) to bring forth a liberated, chaotic and utterly free being. Read some books, put the information into practice and discover it yourself. I'm hardly an authority. The more I explore, the more I realize I've barely scratched the surface of what is possible. Do you have any interest in that “religious” side of Satanism some bands seem to follow in the last years? Are you a spiritual person or more on the rational side of things? Are the two mutually exclusive? Yes, I am a spiritual person but I am not a zealot. By the same token I consider myself a rational and reasonable man, does believing in higher and lower powers instantly disqualify ones' sense of sound judgment? Of course not. How far would these ideals be from what you promulgate in a band like Denouncement Pyre, for example, when it comes to Satanism? I mean, would Order Of Orias be more on a philosophical/metaphysical level, while Denouncement Pyre would approach a more rebel/purely anti-religious message? I don't "promulgate" a single thing in Denouncement Pyre. Is the message an important part in this band, above the music, or would you put it on the same level? I think it's impossible to disassociate one from the other, it's a symbiosis that serves the whole. Each an element that is synthesized into a final poison. For the cover of “Inverse” you worked with Metastazis, which have been taking some credit recently thanks to their good work with other bands as Antaeus, Averse Sefira, Ascension or Secrets Of The Moon. Why did you choose them? Did the works with some of those band have any weight on that decision? How was this part of the process managed in accordance t your ideas? According to their website, they don't follow the rules of their clients. We went with Metastazis because we liked his design work (obviously), he has a unique way of twisting old ideas into something new and interesting that we felt suited the album. Sometimes he twists a few too many of the same ideas though...that's all i'll say on the topic. This year you had the opportunity to be on the Deathkult Open Air Fest, in Germany, where band such as Deströyer 666, Urfaust, Inquisition, Ascension, Horna, Diocletian, Aosoth or Denial Of God played too. How was the experience? I imagine this was the first show Order Of Orias has done outside Australia, am I wrong? The Festival was killer, a totally new experience for us. The professionalism showed there utterly dwarfed 95% of the fucking idiots putting on shows in Australia. Yeah, first show out of Oz for us (unless you count New Zealand, which no one does!) and i'm glad it went so smoothly, definitely gave us a taste of the lifestyle and a hunger to do more... Not so fucking keen on the 40+ hours of buses/airports/flying though! Australia always had a really strong extreme Metal scene, even if it was small and very underground, and more honest than many other countries that claimed to have the “truest” bands, and to my surprise in the last years there are a lot of bands coming from your lands, and close ones like Tasmania and New Zealand, which could be placed as some of the most interesting in the Black and Death Metal fields. Would you mind giving me your oppinion about some of them: - Portal: - Diocletian: - Stargazer: - Witchrist: - Impetuous Ritual: - Ignivomous: - Destruktor: - Cauldron Black Ram: - Grave Upheaval: - Innsmouth: Tasmania is part of Australia, even if we don't want to admit it. As for our scene being any "truer" than other...no. We have our hordes of shitty bands and poser fuckwits the same as any other country. Additionally, I don't think we have a huge amount of talented bands, especially for our population size. Maybe it just seems that way to the rest of the world as for the most part, only the better bands get heard outside our shores? We definitely have more than our share of awful, pointless bands. As for those bands you listed, I enjoy all of them to some degree. There are quite a few other active bands at the moment that are worth checking out as well. What news can you give us from your other bands? Is Denouncement Pyre definitely releasing its new album? And I just read Nocturnal Graves are alive again, right? That would definitely be great news. From recent events, pretty sure both of these questions have been answered. Before closing this interview, could you please let us know what will be happening around Order Of Orias in the coming future? Have you already started writing news songs? Maybe there's already a new recording on the way? What can we expect of your next release? There is a new recording on the way, a second album. Don't expect "Inverse II" because it wont be happening. That's all I really want to say at this point. Thanks a lot for your time, and good luck with Order Of Orias's future, it was a pleasure. Not a problem.
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About ...Gia Thanatos is a webzine dedicated to music for the apocalyptic times. No matter the scene or genre it comes from, and mainly chosen according to its author's taste. Archives
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