The formation of Solemne ?
Zvi:'' Solemne currently is Rox Lincheo on drums, Sergio Rivera on lead guitar, myself on vocals/rhythm guitar, and Ariel Pizarro on bass. At first time Rox, Sergio and I started Solemne, but then Ariel joined us on bass, so I leave the bass and picked up the guitar.
Sergio:'' The name was a joint search. At first time, we began to share the concepts that unite us such as darkness, stillness, silence, contemplation, among others, and from those concepts, we began to create names. We arrived at the name Solemne after debating several names. However, we all liked Solemne because it was simple, easy to remember, aesthetic and with a meaning that makes sense to all of us, since the word Solemne (solemn in english) is related to the importance and formality of a relevant act, and for us that definition define our music.
What is the Contemplation of Sorrow and how your demo has come about?
Zvi: ''One of the band's important premises is to be able to contemplate human reality, the felt experience regarding various topics of events. Contemplation Of Sorrow is being able to stay and contemplate an area of life that people tends to shy away from, suffering as a legitimate and natural experience. Unlike other bands that talks about suffering from regret, despair, depression, etc., we talk about suffering from a descriptive perspective, from an Epoché perspective.
''Our Demo came from some rehearsals, where we record the drum tracks and then we started to record everything else DIY. At first, we had the idea to use those recordings as an official album, but after analysis, we decide take 3 of those songs and leave them as a demo, because we wanted to re-record everything more carefully. We use this demo mainly for diffusion, when we are playing live we share this demo so that people know a little more about the band.
Sergio: ''The demo process was quite interesting since with Zvi, despite not knowing each other much at first, in our first meetings the musical composition came naturally, there were preconceived ideas or ideas that arose spontaneously, and in a short time we realized that the musical project (when it still had no name) was becoming more and more serious, therefore the need arose to transform the project into a band to play live. We started looking for a drummer, but luckily I knew a drummer (Rox) and when we asked her to join us, she was quickly interested, so we had some rehearsals and from the beginning she showed a lot of interest to participate in what we were doing. It's very remarkable that Rox didn't play Black Metal before Solemne, so for her it was a whole learning process, however Rox has a great talent, discipline and motivation, she was quickly able to play at the same level as what the style demands. That is how our Demo came with the 3 of us in the beginning. Sometime later Ariel joined us on bass, in order to be able to play the 2 guitars live and at the same time to have a more enveloping sound, full of harmonies and melodies.
Are you proud to be labeled black metal rather than the DSBM subgenre?
Zvi:'' Neither one nor the other, to start we are not DSBM, we do not focus on lamentations nor encourage suicide, as I said before, we only seek to describe aspects of reality, a reality that has many edges of cruelty and darkness. Regarding Black Metal, although our sound has a lot of Black Metal, the style does not fully identify us, because we also have other elements that complement the band, for example there are progressive, melodic, aggressive and slow moments. We don't want to reproduce a style similar to other bands, instead of that we want our melodies to be related to our way of thinking, feeling and expressing ourselves. Somehow, the personality of each one can be seen reflected in the music we make.
It is very raw and primal, and what is the basis for your sound?
Zvi: ''We seek to have a sound that can offer a coherent atmosphere with our lyrics, we don't seek to have a strictly a raw sound, on the contrary, we like that all the instruments can have their own role. The album we are recording has a better sound than the Demo, and we hope that can offer an enveloping and dynamic atmosphere.
Sergio:'' I find it curious that you perceived us as raw and primal; Zvi and I have different forms and patterns when we are composing. Zvi is usually very spontaneous and full of ideas when he is creating, I consider him the raw and primal part of Solemne, at the other hand I usually think about an idea a lot more trying to perfect it and make it unique by looking for riffs and melodies that stand out. Despite this difference we both enjoy the creativity of the other, and we managed to elucidate the union of our ideas in the creation of our songs, and that makes it interesting.
What influences the music? Personal experiences and your surroundings or is it the world and start of mankind in general?
Zvi: ''Personally, something that influences my lyrics is what I see from my work in mental health services. I have been able to see face to face the deterioration of life, psychosis in its maximum expression, the demoralization of vulnerable groups, deep trauma, the disintegration of the Self, etc. All these experiences led me to narrate these fragments of life. Another very important aspect for my writing is death as a concept, not in a sense of wishing death on someone, but in a philosophical sense. I think that I'm a bit obsessed with the idea of death, in my house I have bones and skulls, also my drawings are always related to death, and the truth is that I don't have a negative opinion of death (I insist, in a philosophical sense). I find interesting that in a knowable life there is no nothingness, since the surrounding world can be perceived, however, according to Heidegger, our most extreme possibility of nothingness is precisely death, since it cannot be imagined or knowable. Death is a breaking point between what we can know (through our senses) and what is not known, and if we could know death (perceive and contemplate it), it would mean that we would make it present in a place of always-imminent, without yet death is inherently out of our reach. Death is the only thing that divides us from being and non-being, it's the only thing that can happen to us and when it happens it's out of our reach.
Sergio:'' Personally, what influences and inspires me to create are silent environments, and when I am in these environments, the ideas begin to come to me as if I were a kind of receiving antenna, from which I analyze the sensations that it generates me. I can spend hours in that state, and then I start the stage of perfecting those ideas.
How do you cope with your darkest fears? Is it something we should embrace?
Zvi: As a band, I don't think we live with irreparable fears, I mean, fear is a part of natural life and I think we all have secret fears that are hard to share with other people, but I also think that our fears can have a utility. Indeed, I believe that fears need to be embraced and accepted, recognized as an undeniable and inescapable part of the Self. Personally, I have grown up with critical areas in my life, however I don't lament myself for that, on the contrary, those experiences have been like a book full of information that have allowed me to know other areas in life.
Sergio: I personally think that even though our fears can paralyze us and prevent us from progressing in many aspects of our lives, we must embrace and acknowledge them in order to overcome them and work on them, not only for ourselves but also to be more empathetic and receptive to others and in one way or another be receptive and help to the extent that we can to those who are in need.
What is rotten poetry?
Zvi: I call my lyrics Rotten Poetry, since I talk about aspects that are dark, somber, raw, and lugubrious, in life in a poetic tone. Like the fate of this world, my poetry is dead.
Is music and rotten poetry the only outlet in which you are able to express yourself?
Zvi: Y''es but is not the only way, also in my work I have been able to do novel things as a way of expressing my thinking, within the research and design of intervention programs. I have a work role that allows me in some way to transmit my reflections about life and death, in a way that can help others to untie knots.
Sergio:''In my case, I am not an expressive person, so music is the only thing that you can get from me.
What is Endless Suffering? Is it the torments of the mind and being unable to find peace?
Zvi:'' The song Endless Suffering talks about a very particular experience, which is called sociohistorical trauma and transgenerational trauma. Specifically, the song talks about the experience of victims of torture, abuse, rape and persecution in the context of the military dictatorship. Many bands talk about dictatorships promoting genocide, but is not our interest to promote that, in order that here are varied opinions regarding dictatorships, which we have no interest in debating in our music, but rather we wanted to highlight the experience of the victims. Scientific research in the field of mental health has been able to realize that the trauma due to political persecution can affect up to the 3rd generation, for this reason it's considered as a transgenerational trauma, and this has different effects, it's not always post-traumatic stress in future generations, sometimes the third generation can develop an affective disorder, anxiety disorders or substance abuse disorders, however, at a social and collective level, these experiences damage countries, permeating them with the so-called sociohistorical trauma. That is why we say that it's a suffering that never ends, because it's transmitted through the generations, and this kind of trauma generates adverse conditions for the mental health of the population.
If people want to know more about this, I can refer some papers.
Plans for the future to support new music?
Zvi: Soon we will have available the album we are working on, which is entitled “The Entrance Of Sorrow”, so we hope to spread our debut album. Will have 8 songs with very varied nuances. Recently we released a single titled "Maze Of Life" from our upcoming album, you can listen here: https://youtu.be/8H-kpbJduOo
Top 6 albums of all time?
Zvi:
1) Judas Priest – Painkiller;
2) Darkthrone - A Blaze In The Northern Sky;
3) Celtic Frost - Morbid Tales/Emperor's Return;
4) Warfare - Mayhem, Fuckin' Mayhem;
5) Bathory - Under The Sign Of The Black Mark;
6) Criminal – Victimized
Sergio:
1) Satyricon - Nemesis Divina;
2) Death - Leprosy;
3) Burzum - Burzum;
4) Satyricon - Dark Medieval Times;
5) Dimmu Borgir - Enthrone Darkness Triumphant;
6) After Forever - Decipher