Interview

Hi both of you, it’s a real pleasure to do this interview with you and to talk about this first amazing album

Ars Goetia: Let’s talk about the band. How was Los Males Del Mundo born?

Dany: Cris and I have known each other for more than ten years. We always wanted to create music together, but our tight schedules never made it possible. Back then both of us had our own projects, so it was difficult. But in 2016 we were able to start working together on this and we never stopped working after that.
At the same time, with Nikita we had also been talking for a long time about doing something, we have known each other since about 2009 and when I showed him the ideas we had been working on, we started talking about it and that was how we all ended up working on Los Males Del Mundo

AG: The first self-titled ep gave you a contract with Northern Silence Productions. Tell us how that was possible ?

Cristian: At first, we had a series of offers from some interested labels, but after more than 3 years of work, the pandemic caught us with the album finished but without a label for it. 
We had the Ep, so we released it while looking for a label who wanted to release the album
For several years, we had our eyes on NSP because of their releases and the good comments from friends who had worked with them in the past, so we contacted them. We received a response the next day and then we started with the details of the contract signing.

AG: Five intense, aggressive and melancholic songs for this first LP, tell us more about the songwriting.

C: We have, let’s say, a cyclical way of composing, it’s like a process of comings and goings, since we created the music, the melody, then we experimented the different rhythm patterns, then Dany starts to write the lyrics and he makes the vocal sketches. Sometimes we are not 100% sure of the final result, so we go back and change something and we start all over, only then we go deeper into details. That’s basically the songwriting process.
We know it’s not the fastest one, but it’s the one we feel as the best for this project, because after all that strenuous process the resulting music is all connected, since lyrics, vocals, music are creating each other during the whole cycle.

AG: The lyrics are very dark and show the dark side of human. Explain to us the concept of this album and your vision of life through your lyrics.

D: This is a question we get asked frequently, but I refrain from answering it as much as I can, because I feel like it would be a mistake to explain something that needs to be developed with the album itself. And it would be a bit unfair for the listener, who surely would find something personal that might even be better than what motivated me to write. The dark side of the human soul with its miseries, its failures, its questions is expressed somehow in the lyrics, I think the answers are there, between the lines, and can be understood as one immerses himself fully inside the album and its concept.

AG: You chose to sing in English, why not Spanish ?

D: I used to write the lyrics in English, but I noticed that I was a prisoner of the rhyme more than of the idea behind it. So for this project I chose to write in Spanish and then translate it to English in order to feel free to express the ideas with no metric boundaries. 
Although Spanish is beautiful and much of the beauty of the language get lost in translation, I think the result is positive since in English can be understood by the majority of the listeners.

AG: We can notice Spanish narration in the beginning and at the end of the album. Explain to us what’s that about.

D: They were taken from the classic movie The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet). But they are not related to the story of the film, those lines and those words are so powerful that they transcend any context, any time, any place. Those are the question we ask when we are facing death, one of the nodal questions in almost all philosophy. 
It is a very powerful dialogue, and has been taken countless times, but we thought it would be a good idea to use the Spanish dubbing to bring it to the Spanish-speaking listeners who may not have heard it before. 
As I told you before, it has nothing to do with the movie itself, but those lines are so powerful that they transcend any context and that is why we decided to use them.

 AG: I read that Friedrich Nietzsche is a very important source of inspiration for your lyrics. Tell us more your relationship with the philosopher’s work.

D: My interest in Nietzsche began when I was very young, at the age of 10 approx., even though at that time, its reading gave me more questions than answers, although, now that I think about it, to this day that has not changed much. I was always very curious about philosophy and it was one of the careers I wanted to pursue, but I chose Psychology instead (I currently work as a Clinical Psychologist)
So, I think human behavior and its mysteries have always fascinated me, and perhaps for that reason, they are the topics I feel are more interesting when I’m writing, that’s why I try not to focus only on one author but on the ideas of several who drive me to write.

AG: About the music, we can notice some inspirations from the European third wave of black metal, more than South American sounds. Where do these influences come from?

C: Dany started listening to Punk and Rock music from an early age, and I, thanks to the influence of my family, started with classic Rock and Hard Rock bands from the 70s.
We have grown discovering and enjoying metal in all its genres, connecting especially with 90s Black Metal and Doom Metal
Although we have always listened to metal from the United States, for example, its technical style or even its brutal aspect never had a big impact on us, we were always mainly focused and connected with the more melodic sound coming from the old continent, and of course, since we were very young we got influenced by all the emotional energy and the passion that metal bands in South America transmitted to us. With no doubt, LMDM is a blend of all those influences. 

AG: LMDM is a two men band. Nikita Kamprad wanted work with you as a producer and guest musician. How was this meeting possible ?

D: Nikita and I have known each other since 2009 when he released a demo with DWEF, I contacted him on myspace and from there we started a friendship in which we always commented on our intention to work together but we had not been able to do so due to lack of time and various commitments.
In 2016 we started talking specifically about the idea of ​​doing something, I showed him what we had recorded with Cris and he liked the idea of working together in one way or another. Understanding that his priority was and is DWEF, he took charge of composing the bass lines and recording them, he also produced and did the mixing and mastering of both the EP and the album.
Nikita is not only a composer and excellent multi-instrumentalist but also an incredible producer from whom we have learned a lot in all this time we have worked together, and although he is not a proper member of the band, we consider him an important and fundamental part of the project.

AG: What’s the meaning of the artwork designed by Matt Lombard and the relationship with the concept of the album?

C: Matt is an incredible artist, as soon as we got in touch with him, he understood the project perfectly, he delved into the lyrics and offered us some works that were intimately in tune with what we were working on, so, piece by piece everything was connecting perfectly, as a great puzzle that began to shape what the album would be

AG: Could you tell us what’s the relationship between extreme metal, more specifically black metal and people in your country? Can you see the same passion than we can notice in Scandinavian for black metal or USA for death metal (in France, it’s really poor, it’s not really a country where this music can grow)?

Extreme metal in Argentina is not very popular, there is a certain audience more related to Thrash and also Death metal, but not that big. Actually, Metal In general is not so big. Our country has a very small scene compared to the other countries of the region. Argentina has a culture more related to Rock than to metal. And If we add to that the difficulty of a genre as small as Black Metal, well … the number of people who are into it is very very low. In the 90s we were only a handful of people listening to it, today the number has increased but not significantly. For some people that’s a good thing.
I think Argentineans are very passionate for music and if their passion is extreme metal, then it is something for life. Maybe we don’t have a big scene but we feel this music as something very personal, although each person lives that passion in a totally different way.

AG: When the pandemic starts to decay, will a European Tour be scheduled? Maybe in France (I hope so)?

LMDM is a studio project, but we haven’t dismissed the idea of taking this live, but a lot of things need to happen in order to do that, we are not sure of that yet, however, Cris and I are simultaneously working on another project created for playing live, it’s a black metal project a little rawer and more direct. The main goal of that new project is to go on tour, so a European Tour would definitely be on our list

AG: Thanks for your answers and I’m looking forward for your next material. Do you have some stuff yet?

We are promoting our album at the moment, While we continue working on the other projects mentioned before, I think by the end of this year we will start working on the songs for our second full-length.

Thanks again, greetings

D: Thank you, for your interest and support sharing our music