EMQ’s with Wildeornes
EMQ’s with Wildeornes
Hi Everyone! Welcome to another EMQs interview, this time with Australian Black/Doom Metal duo, Wilderness, huge thanks to Richy and Damo for taking part.
What is your name, what do you play, and can you tell us a little bit about the history of the band?
Richy: G’day all – we are Wildeornes, a primarily studio based recording duo from Australia. I’m Richy, I play guitar, clean vocals but also tracked drums and bass on all our releases except our second full length album “Erosion of the Self (-)”. Damo is our main riff writer and overall creative force, lead guitar and growl vox. We work together in a complimentary fashion as he will have a series of ideas that I then help with focus and scope and add my own bits to. Some songs are all his riffs and lyrics, some are all my riffs and lyrics, but the way we add our own bits and blend things together means that in the end it’s all 50/50 = 100% Wildeornes.
Damo: I’m Damo, lead guitar and vocals. Richy and I have been writing and playing together since 1996. First in hardcore grind band Without A Reason – Richy on drums, me on guitar. We also played together in seminal Aussie stoner band DownRiver (200something-2009). Wildeornes started because we wanted to incorporate some black metal and heavier metal influences and it didn’t fit the more bluesy stoner vibe of DownRiver.
Richy: We were listening to a lot of Satyricon and Immortal and wanted to know how we could take Quorthon’s shift from ‘black to viking’ and the Abbath/Demonaz shift from ‘Immortal to I’ and basically still rock out but with some tight metal riffing and a streak of icy cold grimness.
How did you come up with your band name?
Richy: We knew it was a risk having a hard to spell and hard to pronounce name, but we went there anyway… And it turned out it works well after 11 years of releasing music. If you spell it correctly there’s only one main search result online haha. The name comes from our lyrical themes and my personal academic studies. We don’t have the time/space to talk about how different languages have influenced the bastard mongrel Ænglisc language, so the basic version is this: we wanted a way to tap into our heritage and cultural mythologies while being respectful to the ancient indigenous traditions embedded in the land on which we grew up and still feel some connection to. For us the name represents a rejection of anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism and an adoption of ‘place’ and ‘belonging’ as concepts. I’ll stop here before the ontological phenomenology takes over.
What Country/Region are you from and what is the Metal/Rock scene like there?
Richy: We come from Australia and the scene here is mad. Australia were genre leaders in the 80s and early 90s with Hobbs Angel of Death, Sadistik Execution, Mortal Sin, Taramis, Damaged, Armoured Angel, Pegazus, Abremalin, and many, many, MANY others. The scene continues to be amazing although Wildeornes are not currently gigging live for lack of a rhythm section, but there is so much quality heavy music in Australia you can’t go a weekend without it.
What is your latest release? (Album, EP, Single, Video)
Richy: Our new album is a double concept album, but not in the traditional sense. The first 5 songs account for the majority of the album and are all brand new and previously unreleased. The last 4 songs are re-worked from our 2021 release ‘Gæð wyrd a swa hio scel…’. Basically in 2021 we had hit the ceiling with what we could do, the pandemic and lockdowns were still in full force so we decided to grit our teeth and release what we had at the time with a couple of reworked older songs. The choice at the time was to release something so people knew we were active or not release anything for 4 years! Now that we’ve had time to actually build up the new songs properly, we wanted to give the older songs a chance to properly come to life. The physical CD has both album names on it because they come together to form the full concept… That I’m not going to explain in full as the listener needs to connect some dots for themselves.
Who have been your greatest influences?
Musically in no order Sabbath, Priest, Maiden, Bathory, Yob, Candlemass, Enslaved, Satyricon, Immortal, Mastodon, among many others. When Demonaz, Abbath, Icedale and King released the album ‘Between Two Worlds’, that was a real game changer for us. It created a blueprint that took Immortal’s ‘At the Heart of Winter’ another step towards more traditional classic metal. It is a blueprint that we still refer back to.
What first got you into music?
Richy: Music itself – my parents were always playing music, there was a piano and a guitar in the house growing up, but when I was 8 I demanded drum lessons. That was early for back then, but now there are kids on social media playing tech-death by 8 haha. My love for heavy music started with the dramatic bombast of the “Bat Out of Hell” album, then when I was 10 I asked a mate if his older brother would make a tape of Twisted Sister for me, but instead they gave me Priest’s “Killing Machine/Hell Bent For Leather” album. That was it.
Damo: I grew up on a strange mix of things my parents had on vinyl from Pink Floyd, Cream, Eric Clapton, The Four Tops and The Temptations, to the Deltones – an early Australian rock band. It got as heavy as Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin in the lounge room some evenings. I remember then buying my first cassette tape – Steve Winwood – “Higher love”, then the Screaming Jets – “All For One”. Then Metallica, Megadeth and Slayer followed but nothing changed heavy music for me like the way Pantera did. I remember being introduced to Kyuss and thinking “oh my ! that’s heavy!!” but “Vulgar Display of Power” was a game changer. From there I stepped forth on a journey back through time and heard Sabbath, and that was the clincher.
If you could collaborate with a current band or musician who would it be?
Heaps of local musos including Chris Fisher from Lamassu and Adrian Naudi from Black Jesus. We think a future Wildeornes album will present that opportunity.
If you could play any festival in the world, which would you choose and why?
A small and quiet one where they have tea and biscuits available for bands and everyone is back home by about 8pm.
What’s the weirdest gift you have ever received from a fan?
Damo: Applause!
If you had one message for your fans, what would it be?
Richy: Everyone has their own backstory and complex inner life. You’re not the star of your own movie, you’re in an ensemble piece. Supporting each other and offering a helping hand to people who need it makes it better for everyone.
Damo: Have fun and always bring a spare pair of undies in your top pocket.
If you could bring one rock star back from the dead, who would it be?
Richy: The only way I can answer this is to reinterpret it slightly: I wish that the ‘Heaven and Hell’ band had released a follow up to “The Devil You Know”. Four masters of the craft just finding their feet in their third collaboration.
Damo: Similar for me, Ronnie James Dio. I missed Heaven and Hell all those years ago. Richy even offered me a ticket, I can’t remember why I didn’t take it up! A decision I rue to this very day!
What do you enjoy the most about being a musician? And what do you hate?
Richy: For me, music is about personal expression. I don’t think artists have a choice. I enjoy being able to capture and express emotion. I hate not having enough time and money to learn more instruments.
Damo: The therapeutic process of creating music is all… It’s a language and a canvas. What do I hate? I’m not a fan of wasps or mosquitos… What are they even here for? Just to get in our face and shit? I had one in my beard the other day FFS!
If you could change one thing about the music industry, what would it be?
Richy: Same thing I would change about any industry: I would de-industrialise it so that its purpose was not manufacture and self-driven profit. Industrialisation destroys the essence of everything it touches.
Damo: HUZZAH!
Name one of your all-time favourite albums?
Richy: Rainbow – “Rising”.
Damo: Black sabbath – “Dehumanizer”.
What’s best? Vinyl, Cassettes, CD’s or Downloads?
Richy: They all have their place, but if you told 19 year old me that I could listen to literally thousands of songs in the car or on headphones and not have to change cassette sides, or choose which CDS to stack before they journey or whatever, then I would have thought MP3s etc were a blessing. I still do. I had a great vinyl collection that was nothing but a burden. As a kid I couldn’t jump around as it’d make the record skip, and even early CDswere like that. I don’t listen to Minor Threat or early Celtic Frost for their production value.
Damo: I’m fond of Cassettes for their vulnerability (this message will self-destruct in 10 secs) vibe, and it was my first real listening experience on my walkman. Vinyl is great in the regards of size and feeling like you’re absorbed in the music while listening. I don’t collect as that would be weird. I only have physical copies of my friend’s bands CDs, I sold mine years ago, it felt weird… I am weird.
What’s the best gig that you have played to date?
Richy: We played some corkers in DownRiver, but my favourite Wildeornes gig is tied between the 2015 album launch at the Eastern in Ballarat and the 2016 EP launch at the Last Chance in Melbourne.
Damo: Yea The Last chance gig was pretty sick! My second gig ever at Luna park as a teenager in Peanut supporting Silverchair… And that other time I had the onset gastro but still played!
If you weren’t a musician, what else would you be doing?
Richy: Probably just what I do now but without needing an extra room for all the shit… or maybe it would all be a different type of shit.
Damo: Probably a professional Snooker champion from Chiswick? I dunno. Wait, are we talking about past lives here? I’d probably have money also… wait, can I be Iron man?
Which five people would you invite to a dinner party?
Damo: Five Liam Neesons.
Richy: No brainer.
What’s next for the band?
Richy: Pre-production for the next album. My favourite part is the writing and construction – the creative process is the most fun I have out of everything. Recording properly, releasing an album, even playing live, all of that is mostly a headache compared to the thrill of hearing a badly recorded, drunken out of tune/time demo that perfectly captures the spirit of a song.
What Social Media/Website links do you use to get your music out to people?
As an independent underground band, Bandcamp is the preferred music platform and like it or not most people who get our music are around our vintage, so the usual daggy older platforms are the go.
Jaffa Cakes! Are they a cake or a biscuit?
Richy: Wildeornes are about overcoming the restrictive thinking of the western metaphysical tradition. In this instance it means moving beyond superficial semantics to embrace the conceptual distinction with ‘and’ instead of ‘or’. The Jaffa cake is both cake, biscuit and much more. What you have to understand is, there is no spoon.
Damo: A conglomeration of atoms that’s described as a desert due to its cellular make up… What you are experiencing… Is the quickening!
Thank you for your time.
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