Veil of Sound Interviews

Johnny Cash’s “Hurt“ . Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love“ . Jimi Hendrix‘ “All Along The Watchtower“ . But also Travis‘ “Baby One More Time“ . Type-O-Negative’s “Cinnamon Girl“ . Clem Snide’s ”Beautiful” Or even worse, The Calling’s ”London Calling” . U2’s ”Fortunate Son” . Limp Bizkit’s ”Faith” . Yes, I know that you know – all of these are cover versions. Of course you, as the title to this special alre...

This is an interview which might have been the longest in the making. Roughly a year ago, Ghost Bath released their latest album Self Loather (review here) and we were really taken with it. Therefore we are more than happy that we now finally got the chance to talk with one of the guys behind the project to talk a lot of things - including the way the music works for them and is created in a way t...

What a year it has been for modern Hardcore. There were some really amazing newcomers like Sunflo'er or The Callous Daoboys. We had some good or even mindblowing comebacks like The Mars Volta, City of Caterpillar or Gospel . (you can find out for yourself, which is the "good" one in that trilogy while the other two are mindblowing.) And that were just two ends of a year that also gave us records b...

Picture by John Van de Mergel  ( brothersinraw.com ) On a Thursday night in late April, which was quite chilly by then, three guys from three different countries (Finland, the USA and Germany) are standing outside a tent at Holland’s Roadburn Fesitval listening to a Belgian band play music that sounds like from the Middle East (Syria?) mixed with a bit of Jazz and lots of Psychedelic. The ban...

 Amplification is one of the most interesting things about playing an electric guitar, right? There are myriads of meandering rabbit-holes down which one can go and through which one can gather loads of knowledge about the instrument and the possibilities connected to it. One of the most interesting musicians in that sense is Mat Ball, the guitar player in Big | Brave whose drones and sometimes sh...

It is always a pleasure to talk with Scandinavian acts, because most of them are very humble and easy to talk to, even if they are really important in their own little scene. Talking to Niklas Åström, the drummer behind ef, Sweden’s elegant powerhouse of sparkling post-rock with a lot of glittering appeal, just confirmed that, because even though he might be aware that his band is a point of refer...

Damnation festival should need no introduction to anyone interested in heavy music festivals in the UK. From it's humble beginnings it has blossomed (through a lot of hard work, it must be said) to become Europe's largest indoor metal festival catering to 6000 music fans. The engagement to the festival goers from it's creator Gavin McInally is legendary. And we were beyond happy to sit down with G...

Picture by Raz This upcoming Friday there will the musical equinox again - when the mainstream and the underground will sharpen their ears and both listen to the new record by Dead Cross! Believe us - it’s a really charming version of LIGHTNING in an exploding bottle! Therefore we are happy to give you some background information on the record through this interview with guitar maniac Michael Crai...

 98 minutes! Ninety-Eight-minutes! If a student of mine delivered such a long work my initial question would be “And you are sure there are no redundancies in all of that?” But, believe it or not, over the course of this interview with Ashenspire’s Alasdair Dunn we are hitting so many topics and go through so many details that I can happily say “No redundancies!” We hope you enjoy our interview as...

O. is the head behind Haeresis Noviomagi. He is the guitar player in Turia. O. is the only member of Iskandr. He is in Solar Temple. He did/does lots of other bands and projects in the widespread Dutch Black Metal scene. O. is our interview partner for today and we are really glad to get to learn more about him and so will you! Talking to such an interesting and important figure for the Black meta...

  NULL is upon us. It is the latest record by Noise-mongers KEN Mode, whose version of Blackened Hardcore might be the most intricate thing to grasp, when trying to unravel all the single elements of their music. Together their music is somewhere AmRep, Relapse, Black Metal, Hardcore and so much more. Therefore we are lung-explodingly proud to present you this interview with mastermind Jesse...

  “Lifting the veil from underground music” - our slogan and our duty. And one of those underground secrets which we want to promote is certainly OAHK, the shoegaze/alternative/noise/slowcore-one-man-project by Bryan Ziolkowski. Anybody that I met along the way and whom I played OAHK’s last record immediately felt aghast by what is recorded on tape here: one of the most touching, dark yet hop...

  Guess who’s back, back again - VoS is back, tell your friend! Yeah, that’s right, we are back from our little summer break with another interview we are really proud of: Terence Hannum from Locrian gave us a lot of interesting and thoughful insight into how the band works, why there was such a long break and much more! Who would have guessed that the way the band works is pretty visual, or...

Initially we set out to take a break from releasing all these incredible interview for August, but when the opportunity arose for me to interview Jan Hoffmann of Long Distance Calling, I just could not resist and had to release this short but very interesting talk.   Jan and I talked about their new album Eraser which is out on Friday via Ear Music (you can expect my review of it tomorrow aft...

Photo by EKATERINA GORBACHEVA If one asks 1,000 post-metal fans to give us five post-metal bands one of the most frequently mentioned ones would surely be Russian Circles. As the trio is soon releasing their next studio full-length named Gnosis we knew we had to get a chance to talk to the band. Luckily bass player Brian Cook had time to talk with us! In a few days the new album by American Post-m...

Picture by Mathieu Bredeau Jesus Lizard plus Snapcase = Unsane. One might think so, but Unsane is more than a near-indescribable mixture of Noise Rock and Punk/Hardcore. Unsane is a wqay of coping with big city life yet not leaving the city. It is a soundtrack to a city that doesn't care. And it is the child of Chris Spencer - whom we interviewed this week for you pleasure! Okay, admittedly I am a...

  Talking to Thomas from Arizona post-rock phenom still motions is always a really rewarding thing, as he is a rather thoughtful person but never sparse in his answers. Just like the second record of his band is never sparse but really cleverly arranged and thoughtfully crafted. We were able to sit down with him for an interesting 45 minutes - hopefully you enjoy it as much as we do! A few da...

 If you need to hear one blackgaze band with female vocals, some intriguing gothic or romantic elements, a strong connection to our earthly roots and, of course, some really well-done and perfectly-written music for 2022, you might as well stop any search because Sylvaine should be it! We were lucky enough to get Kathrine Shephard onto our little show and we hope you will have as much listening to...

“On Floating” was the first track I heard by a (to me) back then unknown Ohio-based band called The End of The Ocean. It was the first track on their third release In Excelsis which has now seen a vinyl debut via Post. Recordings featuring a new version of that mighty opener! Reason enough for us to talk with two members of the band. When talking to Wes and Tara it seems as if we are talking to go...

A few years back it was still unthinkable to combine black metal (or death metal for that matter) with a typical jazz instrument like the Saxophone. Nevertheless, this is 2022 and bands like White Ward, Gold Spire, Rivers of Nihil and Imperial Triumphant have turned it into a musically completely accepted instrument within the realms of hard music. Imperial Triumphant might be the most adventurous...

Photo by Caroline Harrison This week’s video-interview is a good symbol for our slogan “Lifting The Veil off Underground Music” - because Brendon Randall-Myers might not be the most famous artist but he for sure is a very versatile and interesting one. We were lucky to have gotten this interview with him, so enjoy him talking about his musical development, noise and metal music and how his latest...

We have had a lot of musical “first’s” other the last couple of weeks here at VoS - just remember Dälek as our first HipHop-act. This week we presented a review of the upcoming record by Zola Jesus named Arkhon - and we were so lucky and happy to get an interview with her! Nika, who has a typically diverse American background from multiple corners of the world and who also relocated from Arizona t...

When talking about artists with a wide array of genres they cover with their different projects, one such not forget Jay Gambit from Philadelphia as his projects go from industrial and post-punk to avantgarde and experimental. Just listen to his two maybe most famous projects: Crowhurst and Executioner's Mask - so very different and yet there is one connecting thing: Jay and his voice from the gra...

A few weeks ago we already had a short video special when we were talking to Nathan Gray about the problems of marketing. As we said then, we will not do that regularly but every now and then. This week this special became a little longer so we decided to release it as a regular video-episode for you. We spoke to Nate Hall about the sometimes problematic constellation of a musician and a music jou...

“Lifting the veil off underground music” is the slogan and banner under which we are working here for you. That means that we are trying to give you some good knowledge of what is going in our musical realm outside of charts and pop appeal. Our interview guest today is a perfect example for that as James Romig is an experimental composer who has worked together with Mike Scheidt of Yob on an hour-...