Aegonia - Interview - PETE'S ROCK NEWS AND VIEWS.COM

Aegonia – Interview

Interview with Eli (Vocals/Violin) from Aegonia and Pete Devine of Pete’s Rock News and Views (http://petesrocknewsandviews.com)

PD: What type of artist are you?

E: Hello, we are a band from Sofia, Bulgaria. We develop our music in two directions – one is atmospheric doom/gothic metal, and the other – folklore.

PD: Tell us the brief history of yourself.

E: Aegonia was founded in 2011 by me and Niki (Nikolay Nikolov). We started by playing short improvisations on a guitar and violin without any speciffic plans for the future. Then we began to add vocal lines and lyrics, which were generally improvisations. We soon noticed that the lyrics were connected to each other and were telling us a fantasy story. We were so excited by this discovery, that we started thinking about this all the time. Eli decided to write this story as a fantasy novel with writer’s name Nea Stand. The writing process led to more music, and the music – to more facts from the story. Every new song we wrote was like another piece of the puzzle that we later called “The Forgotten Song” and released this year as a debut concept album.

PD: Who are your musical and non-musical influences?

E: Bands like Trees Of Eternity, Katatonia, Insomnium, Charm Designer, November’s Doom, Amorphis. Music that has its own, unique atmosphere (like Tiamat’s “Wildhoney”, Xandria’s “Ravenheart”).

Our non-musical influences are nature, the traditional architecture of old villages, small towns and castles, fantasy novels.

PD: Who writes your songs, what are they about?

E: The songs are written by me and our vocalist/guitarist Niki, who also plays the kaval on some of the songs. The lyrics of all of the songs from our debut album, and also the next songs that we have composed but are not yet released, are based on our fantasy novel series “Tales From The Lands Of Aegonia”.

In the world of Aegonia the biggest power of a sorceress/sorcerer is their song. Our first album/novel is about Endoriel’s forgotten song.

When we completed the album and novel we realized that the story did not end here. I continued to write “The River Of Memories” – the continuation of “The Forgotten Song”. We already have book one and two published in Bulgarian and I am currently working on book three. Our next album will also be concept and based on them.

We also have several songs that have lyrics in Bulgarian and have a very strong folklore influence. Two of them – “The Maid And The Mountain” and “Samodiva” – are also connected to each other. We shot beautiful nature/folklore videos for these songs. They tell the story of a young woman, who’s beloved one gets lost in the mountain. She goes to the high mountain to ask it to let him go and bring him back to her. She is taking a gift to the mountain – her most precious belongings – her best clothes with fine embroidery and her silver belt. If the mountain does not accept this gift, she will ask it to take her as a gift, but to let her beloved one go free.

PD: How do you promote your band and shows?

E: This year we finally released our debut album. We are working with people like Christina Dencheva who will help us with arranging events to promote our music and novels. We will take part of WOMEX world music expo as part of the artists from Bulgaria. Also, we are working with Markus from Metalmessage, who is doing a great job for our band on the global level.

We use facebook promotions too.

PD: What do you think about downloading music online?

E: I think this is a great way to protect nature from producing more and more items –in this case CDs. The future is in platforms like Spotify and others.

PD: What song do you wish you’d written and why?

E: “Sinking Ships” by Trees of Eternity. I love that song and the whole album.

PD: What are some of your pet peeves?

E: I can’t think of any right now.

PD: What is your proudest moment in music?

E: The release of our debut album “The Forgotten Song”. It took us several years to complete this work. We did everything on this album ourselves, including the mixing and mastering. We learned a lot during this process.

PD: So what are you working on at the moment?

E: We are currently working on new material. Our next album will be based on the continuation of the story told in “The Forgotten Song”.

PD: Tell us about your next shows and why we should be there.

E: In the near future we will be playing several acoustic shows in Sofia, BG. The idea is to promote not only our music, but also our fantasy novels and folklore videos – “The Maid And The Mountain” and “Samodiva”. These lives do not include only live music. We read short quotes from our fantasy novels and tell interesting facts about our projects.