GRIMM: You worked together with the Ghent University choir.They did, next to their classical repertoire, some pop covers before, but that’s not even close to death metal. How do you find these people and how do you get them into doing this?

That was all Eline‘s work. We decided we wanted a choir, and so we needed to ‘acquire’ one… (haha) And Eline, she knew someone who knows someone in the choir, and she just wrote saying: Are there any people that would be interested? We already had like six or seven people but we wanted more. Are there any participants in your choir that would be interested in joining us? They answered that many of them were interested. I think maybe 12, 13 people?

It’s not actually ‘officially’ the university choir though, because it’s not their director, it’s some members of them… who were super keen on participating and they lent us their space (in the university) to practice in, so that was also really good for us. For three weeks we rehearsed, well for 3 Saturdays and then on the 4th one we recorded in Ghent! That was a really nice experience. And they had a very good level. They really did. They taught us some stuff too, so it was a very nice exchange.

GRIMM: If you make a new album, who does the writing? Who writes the music?

 Ah, well that’s a very good question and for this one the answer is really that most of us participated a lot. That’s also part of why it was a very slow process. We all knew more or less where we were going but you have to make it, and we had to find the people who can do the right parts of it. And so, all of us really participated in very different amounts:

• Luca, our old guitarist did most of the riffing.
• Eric, which is our current guitarist, did the orchestrations.
• Julien obviously was responsible for the sound and he came back on the bass also for this album,
• Eline did, with me, a lot of the lyrics and some of the vocal lines,

And I did the artistic direction. I was basically leading it to become the sound that I was hoping to hear from the very beginning.

So it’s really a very collaborative effort and the next one will probably go smoother than this one because this one was really a very long search for our sound, but I think it would also be a collaborative process definitely. We don’t have one person coming along and be like, “okay, here’s a song; everyone sing it or play it”.

GRIMM: Is there a theme throughout the album?

Yes, there is actually a theme throughout the album. It wasn’t a consciously chosen theme. As we came up with more and more songs, we realized that there was a theme which was ‘inner conflicts’, so conflicts between humans or within a human being. So there’s a lot of words about war and a lot of words about psychology, feelings, and how they can battle inside of one person and make them do really weird things.

So that was ‘war and conflict’ as a very large theme, but again, it wasn’t intentional, it was something that we realized that we really needed to write about and so it became this concept. You have ‘unfolded‘ which is about outright war caused by affiliation to religion. And then you have ‘clockwork in the past‘, which is a more subtle approach to how we keep creating the same monsters in society over and over again throughout history.

Then we have ‘Unbearably human‘ which is a very inner turmoil and then we have ‘No bullets required‘ which is about schizophrenia which is also an inner turmoil and then we have ‘Casus Belli‘ which is actually about someone going to war. So, yeah, that is the general theme.

GRIMM: In the video’s we do see Vincent (ex-singer from Anwynn who has left the band)…

The album in general took a very long time and you said it yourself: It was five years ago, more or less, that we started, and the video’s started  -I don’t remember- two or three years ago, but a long time ago and it was way after that, that Vincent decided to leave the band. The videos were already shot and we liked them a lot, so we decided to keep them.

GRIMM: You have a replacement for Vincent already…

Yes, it’s Dietwin! He’s the new guy! He’s been in the band for a year now, but we never got to perform with him because, you know… life has been going shit for everyone! His name is Dietwin, and we really want to show him off, but we can’t.

GRIMM: Have we already heard him in the new album or are the vocals also from Vincent?

No, the vocals are Vincent. I won’t reveal too much, but something is coming up so you will be able to meet him in a way very soon, outside of concerts, obviously. But he does not perform on the album.

GRIMM: Is there anything else that you would want to add?

Well, if you ask me to talk about my band, then I could talk for, you know, ever!

If I keep it short, I do hope that people would like the album. Although that wasn’t the main point. The main reason we did it was because we’d love it and we wanted to sound that way and we hope, we like to think that we’re pretty different from what’s on the market right now, so if people are able to hear it in that way, whether they like it or not -that’s obviously up to them-  than I think we’ve done what we wanted to do for 5 years now. I’m very excited that people seem to be supporting it and so far, I haven’t had anyone telling me that it’s not good. Everyone who I have talked to has told me it’s great.  

Does that mean anything? I have no idea. Maybe the people who don’t like it just shut up because they listen to something else, (which is what I would do when I don’t like an album (smile)). But it’s still nice to hear that the people who do give me their feedback,  give me positive feedback. That’s very nice to hear so thank you very much.

GRIMM: You’re welcome. It’s a great album and I hope everybody who reads the interview will go check it out!

It’s available on the website: https://inhumanmetal.com