Interviews
...AND OCEANS
...AND OCEANS
Few bands have worn as many skins as …AND OCEANS. From the symphonic black metal of their late-90s debut, through the cyber-industrial detour of A.M.G.O.D. and Cypher, to the genre-spanning sound of 2025’s The Regeneration Itinerary, the Finns have made a career out of never repeating themselves. Days before flying to Baltimore for their first-ever U.S. performance at Maryland Deathfest XXI, vocalist Mathias Lillmåns and drummer Kauko Kuusisalo sat down with The MetalList to talk about the writing process behind the new album, why their covers carry no logo, the puzzle of juggling multiple bands — and why standing still would be the worst thing they could do.
DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT
DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT
Germany's DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT released their sixth album, Innern, in September 2025 — a record that has since landed on year-end lists across the metal press and seen its first vinyl pressing sell out. With the band finally on their way to a long-awaited US debut at Maryland Deathfest, founder, vocalist, guitarist and producer Nikita Kamprad joined us over Zoom from his studio in Würzburg to talk about the album's making, the anonymous WWII diary that shaped its lyrics, throat singing, playing in a church, and what "the path of a freedom" actually means after sixteen years.
1914
1914
The MetalList returns after a long hiatus, and our first piece is a conversation with one of the most compelling voices in contemporary extreme metal. 1914 are a Lviv band who turned meticulous WWI archive research into their own musical language. In November 2025, they released Viribus Unitis — their fourth album, recorded during the full-scale invasion, with one guitarist having joined the military just before the studio sessions. At the end of March the band sets out on their first proper European tour in five years, and in May comes Maryland Deathfest in the US — if the American bureaucracy finally backs down. We talked about everything: from archive work and the book inside the deluxe edition to vinyl collecting, dungeon synth and gorgonopsids. We're glad this conversation became the first after our return.
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Aaron Sammut
Aaron Sammut
A slightly unusual one today. No album, no tour dates, no band — just a metal-themed comic book that takes the genre as seriously as anything else we cover. Twelve years ago, Aaron Sammut had a bad start to the day, put on METALLICA's "Master of Puppets," and by the time he got to work he had the entire premise of a comic book in his head: a superhero powered by heavy metal, and a Walkman possessed by the ghost of a BLACK SABBATH roadie. That comic, Maurice & The Metal, is four issues deep, has been drawn by three different illustrators, and is back on Kickstarter to fund a fifth — one that pits its hero against a goth cult act called THE VAMPLIFIERS and a frontman who wants every genre of music in town to sound the same. We caught up with Sammut, the Brisbane-based writer and creator behind the series, to talk about where the idea came from, the artist who defined Maurice before his death in 2021, why the book has stayed black and white for four issues running, and how much AI he lets anywhere near the actual story.
STORMKEEP
STORMKEEP
Colorado's STORMKEEP have spent the better part of a decade rebuilding a bridge back to the golden age of symphonic black metal, the EMPEROR and DIMMU BORGIR-indebted sound of the mid-'90s that, as frontman Otheyn Vermithrax puts it, had been largely dormant for fifteen or twenty years. With their second full-length, *The Nocturnes of Iswylm* (out now via Vesperian), the band doubles down on that vision while pushing into darker, more dramatic territory: real orchestral arrangements in place of the dungeon synth interludes that once defined their sound, and Vermithrax himself taking on clean vocals for the first time across an entire record. The album continues the story of the world of Elda, following the Seer as he grapples with a curse from the Serpent Stone after the awakening of the Dragon Queen, a figure who also graces the album's cover art, painted by legendary British illustrator Simon Bisley. We sat down with Otheyn Vermithrax to talk about the record's new direction, the Bisley collaboration (and the YouTube algorithm's reaction to it), the symphonic black metal revival happening across North America, and juggling STORMKEEP alongside BLOOD INCANTATION and WAYFARER.
TODOMAL
TODOMAL
Spain barely registers on the doom-metal map, and TODOMAL seem perfectly happy to start from that blank slate. The Anglo-Spanish duo of Christopher "Chris" Wildman and Javier Fernández Milla — two friends who make music in the half-abandoned villages of the Spanish interior "just for the sake of it" — have just released their third album, Graveyards of Joy, on Season of Mist, closing a trilogy that began with Ultracrepidarian (2021) and A Greater Good. Recorded against a backdrop of personal loss, it's a slow-brewing, widescreen kind of doom: operatic clean vocals, Hammond organ, folk textures and cinematic strings, and not a single growl. Chris sat down with The MetalList to talk about grief and music as therapy, the depopulated provinces that shape the record, a 19th-century Catalan painting on the cover, why he switches off the moment he hears a growl, signing to Season of Mist, and what happens after the trilogy.
VIA DOLORIS
VIA DOLORIS
Gildas Le Pape's musical path has looped back on itself. Born in Brittany, France, he grew up on metal and classical music, drifted into jazz, spent 2007 to 2013 touring the world as guitarist for Norwegian black metal institution SATYRICON, then all but vanished into jazz again for the better part of a decade. Now based in Oslo, and back playing with Satyricon this year, he has just released Guerre et Paix (War and Peace) — the debut album of his solo black metal project VIA DOLORIS, out now on Season of Mist. Gildas wrote and recorded nearly everything himself: guitars, vocals, lyrics in three languages, even the cover art. The one thing he didn't do alone was the drums, which he handed to a man he calls the best black metal drummer alive — his Satyricon bandmate Frost. Gildas sat down with The MetalList to talk about the Breton bagpipe drone hiding inside his signature "chainsaw" guitar riff, why he keeps his black metal and his jazz strictly unmixed, the internal war and peace behind the album's themes, and why he designed a cover with no pentagrams in sight.
THE GHOULSTARS
THE GHOULSTARS
Finland's THE GHOULSTARS spent five years haunting stages before releasing a single note — a horror-punk supergroup of seasoned players hiding behind corpse paint and ghoul names. Founder, guitarist and main songwriter Markus "Daddy Ghoul" Laakso sat down with The MetalList to talk about the debut album The Dark Overlords of the Universe (Season of Mist), the B-movie, sci-fi and '80s obsessions behind the concept, assembling the band, shooting the "Too Ghoul For School" video in a Cadillac that once belonged to Alexi Laiho of CHILDREN OF BODOM, his school years in San Diego, the personal grief tucked inside songs about monsters — and why this music either grabs people or it doesn't.
ERDVE
ERDVE
Lithuania's ERDVE built their name on crushing, sludge-laced metallic hardcore — and on never quite standing still. Five years on from Savigaila, the band return with Epigrama, their third album and their second for Season of Mist — a record that only exists because they threw away the one before it. Vocalist, songwriter and main creative force Vaidotas sat down with The MetalList to talk about scrapping a finished, label-ready album for lacking sincerity, co-producing for the first time with guitarist Adomas, lyrics built on the idea of universal entropy and "moral debt," the hand-made gravestone statues behind the artwork, and what it was like to play a Vilnius church and the former Lukiškės Prison — a building where his own grandfather was once held.
...AND OCEANS
...AND OCEANS
Few bands have worn as many skins as …AND OCEANS. From the symphonic black metal of their late-90s debut, through the cyber-industrial detour of A.M.G.O.D. and Cypher, to the genre-spanning sound of 2025’s The Regeneration Itinerary, the Finns have made a career out of never repeating themselves. Days before flying to Baltimore for their first-ever U.S. performance at Maryland Deathfest XXI, vocalist Mathias Lillmåns and drummer Kauko Kuusisalo sat down with The MetalList to talk about the writing process behind the new album, why their covers carry no logo, the puzzle of juggling multiple bands — and why standing still would be the worst thing they could do.
DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT
DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT
Germany's DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT released their sixth album, Innern, in September 2025 — a record that has since landed on year-end lists across the metal press and seen its first vinyl pressing sell out. With the band finally on their way to a long-awaited US debut at Maryland Deathfest, founder, vocalist, guitarist and producer Nikita Kamprad joined us over Zoom from his studio in Würzburg to talk about the album's making, the anonymous WWII diary that shaped its lyrics, throat singing, playing in a church, and what "the path of a freedom" actually means after sixteen years.
UNVERKALT
UNVERKALT
UNVERKALT are an avant-garde post-metal band founded in Athens in 2017 by guitarist Themis and vocalist Dimitra, and now based in Berlin. Their third album, Héréditaire, is their first for Season of Mist — and the heaviest, most personal record they've made: a turn toward black metal screams and tremolo, a guest appearance from Sakis Tolis (ROTTING CHRIST), and a Greek-titled track built on Themis's grandmother's memories of the 1922 Burning of Smyrna. Themis and Dimitra sat down with The MetalList to talk about the move from Athens to Berlin, working with Sakis, languages on the record, the rain-soaked shoot for "Oath ov Prometheus," and what dish, exactly, Héréditaire would be on a plate.
LABYRINTHUS STELLARUM
LABYRINTHUS STELLARUM
The Odesa band on three albums in three years, the Nirlakh universe, ALESTORM's attention, and what's coming on the fourth record. We talk home studios, remote collaboration over Discord, Mark Cooper's artwork, and RINGS OF SATURN as the gold standard of merch. Plus: Pandora, Scavengers Reign, Final Space, and a dream of playing a concert in orbit.
SAOR
SAOR
Andy Marshall is the sole architect behind SAOR, the Glasgow-based one-man project that has spent more than a decade redefining what atmospheric black metal can sound like when filtered through the landscapes of the Scottish Highlands. With Amidst the Ruins — his most compositionally ambitious record to date — still fresh in listeners' minds, Marshall sat down with The MetalList to talk about Scottish history, creative process, the politics of independence, his unshakeable support for Ukraine, and why he absolutely does not like whisky.
1914
1914
The MetalList returns after a long hiatus, and our first piece is a conversation with one of the most compelling voices in contemporary extreme metal. 1914 are a Lviv band who turned meticulous WWI archive research into their own musical language. In November 2025, they released Viribus Unitis — their fourth album, recorded during the full-scale invasion, with one guitarist having joined the military just before the studio sessions. At the end of March the band sets out on their first proper European tour in five years, and in May comes Maryland Deathfest in the US — if the American bureaucracy finally backs down. We talked about everything: from archive work and the book inside the deluxe edition to vinyl collecting, dungeon synth and gorgonopsids. We're glad this conversation became the first after our return.
BLACKFIELD
BLACKFIELD
Aviv Geffen and Steven Wilson discuss what makes Blackfield special, their first moscow concert, and the unique chemistry behind the project.
SONATA ARCTICA
SONATA ARCTICA
It's been almost two and a half years since we interviewed Tony, SONATA ARCTICA's leader. During this period the band toured the world, the album "Unia" went gold, and moreover SONATA ARCTICA visited russia for the first time. Now with less than a month until the release of the new album "The Days of Grays", we were able to talk to Henrik, the band's keyboardist.
SHIVA IN EXILE
SHIVA IN EXILE
The project's mastermind talks about moving beyond guitars, discovering new sounds, and the creative direction of their latest work.
KYPCK
KYPCK
Many metal bands from russia sing in English, but surprisingly a band was created in Finland that plays doom metal and sings in russian! The band name is short but strong — KYPCK (written this way, pronounced "KURSK"). The lyrics are written by the band's vocalist, who studied and worked in st. petersburg for a while. When I heard that Erkki sings almost without an accent, I contacted him for an interview for The MetalList.
AYREON
AYREON
What should every metal fan know about Netherlands, except tulips, gays and drugs stereotypes? Of course such great metal bands, which work in different styles, as - The Gathering, Gorefest, After Forever, Ayreon. Think, the most worldwide popularity got AYREON – progressive metal/rock project of multiinstrumentalist, vocalist and just an interesting and nice man Arjen Lukassen. Each AYREON's album features many famous musicians (not only the ones involved into metal music). Formed in 1995, AYREON released already 8 full-length albums, including the last one, «01011001», released on January 28th 2008. So, 3 days after album release we're talking with the Arjen Lukassen.
STILLIFE
STILLIFE
The hope of the russian gothic scene — Rostov-based darkwave project STILLIFE has existed since 1998. Over ten years the group has recorded two full-length albums, one MCD and a remixes compilation. Their last studio album came out in 2003, and now, five years later, a new STILLIFE record entitled "Destiny" is due in February 2008. A perfect reason to talk to the project's founders — Stanislav Ivanov (Stan_I.) and Mikhail Sokolov (MS).
69 EYES
69 EYES
Finally, this interview is being posted. Due to some reasons we couldn't do it earlier, and it had been sitting in the archives of our portal for a long time. Sorry about that. But it hasn't lost its relevance. Enjoy!
LAKE OF TEARS
LAKE OF TEARS
‘Life is a sad place’, as the song “The Greymen” - out of their last longplay, “Black Brick Road” - says. Proficient music craftmen and the masters of blistrous gothic performance, LAKE OF TEARS have combined two, at a glance, opposite forces - of intellectual art progressive and soft atmospheric metal. From its very beginning - «Greater Art» (1994) album – the unusual band has been thrown in the ultimate vanguard of Sweden underground scene. «Headstones», «A Crimson Cosmos», «Forever Autumn»… Nowadays those titles are legendary. Whole a decade the band has been moving forth, spanning across style-scapes, splitting up and after coming back together. With the 2002’s release - «The Neonai» - they were caught in a landslide of unauthorized criticism. Rumors grew, LAKE OF TEARS are finally over. Yet, they have stood. They have got back to take us for a black brick road…