Necronomicon

Necronomicon is not known for doing an abundance of interviews so I was pretty thrilled with the chance to chat with Rob, better known as The Witch. What followed was a rare look at his initiation to heavy metal as well as the formation and evolution of one of the most recognizable brands in the genre and the rumours that inspired the stage name. Most surprising were the influences on their sound, but after replaying Advent Of The Human God, there is no doubt as to what inspires Necronomicon's orchestration.      Dink Kickin: I've read your lyrics. You're a witch!

Rob T: It was The Witch King originally, but it was too Tolkein-ish. I think it was a little bit arrogant. The funny part is that I didn't give myself that name. My manager at the time was bugging me to get a stage name. When I was in Montreal, back in the days, some people were freaking out because I was a bit spiritual and stuff. They started calling me The Witch, The Witch King, and so on. They were making fun of me, but it became something more. Rumours started, saying that I do rituals and shit.       

DK: People love their rumours. RT: There were parts that were true, but in a different context. Some guy was saying, "I was there! I saw it! There was smoke and symbols everywhere. He was talking with a weird voice." At one point a guy from Montreal came up for a concert. He didn't have anywhere to go so I let him sleep at my place. He started to get weird. I don't know if he did drugs or whatever, I don't give a shit. It got stressful so I did a little purification ritual, like the native stuff, you know? That's more my thing, some sage and a feather. He went back to Montreal and started telling anyone who would listen a bunch of shit. When I moved there they were talking about it. They were making fun of me. I was The Witch, The Witch King, whatever... They were making fun of how I was raised. It was retarded. My manager at the time said, "Dude! It's fucking genius. Just use the name. Use it to your advantage." I groaned. I really didn't want to. 

The Witch

DK: It's worked really well. It's become very iconic with Canadian heavy metal. On the larger, international scale, there's only one Witch and it's a very significant name.

RT: It's funny how the name has circulated world wide. It's funny that when people talk about the band it's my name that comes to mind. Not that the other guys aren't cool, it's just a bit weird. When you think of Borgir, you think of Shagrath. If you talk about Behemoth, you don't talk much about the other guys, you see Nergal in your head. Maybe a little bit Inferno because he's a fucking amazing drummer. There's more to those bands than just those guys but most people mostly think about just a couple. So it started to be like that. It was kind of awkward. When I first started the band I wanted it to be that everyone is equally recognized, but that'snot how the audience sees it. DK: The audience tends to gravitate towards whoever they can relate to the most onstage and that's usually the singer. That's the part they can really get into and connect with. Guitar players generally watch the guitar player because that's their guy. Doing vocals means you're gonna be the guy that everyone sees when they think of the band.

DK: So you're working on a new album?

RT: I've been working on it for some time but a lot has happened. Just before a tour the bass player told us it would be his last one. We did sixty-something shows with almost no breaks. Then we had forty-eight hours before the next tour started. It was just enough time to change gear before starting on a  hour drive from Montreal to Florida. When we got there the show was cancelled. It was a Marduk / Necronomicon tour but Marduk couldn't get into the US. It was already booked so we went ahead anyways. It was a lot of driving. At the end of the Marduk-without-Marduk tour we did another stretch by ourselves. It was an extremely long run. When we got home the drummer announced that he was also leaving. That was right before Christmas. I was trying to write new songs and had just lost a band mate who had been with me for 15 years. I didn't know what to do. I was just in shock. I got used to the situation and started to write. We are also switching studios. Despite the delays we're still making progress.  DK: Dang, you're really making lemonade. I saw online that you were in the studio. Looking at the timeline for what you've been producing it follows a pattern. You've had something come out in 2013, then 2016, so to have something in the studio getting ready for the next release, I would expect 2018/2019.

As Canadians I think we have a duty to bring it to people in remote places.

RT: Hopefully, but it depends on the label. They have the last word on when to release stuff. We tried to set up a tour for the end of this year but the other guys are too new. The biggest question was: How would we find a new drummer? It's not like it was 15 years ago. There are a lot of good drummers now. The new guy is so far ahead of my ex-drummer it's almost ridiculous. DK: When everything is ready, do you think you might tour out by the west coast again?

RT: Maybe. Touring Canada is really hard. I'm not saying I won't do it again. We know it's a small market, but people want to see metal. It's extremely exhausting and resource consuming. We're still going to do it. As Canadians I think we have a duty to bring it to people in remote places. The US is easier to access, but we need to give Canadians a chance too. The industry is hard here, so we try harder. I was talking to thee guys from The Agonist, just back from a Canadian tour, and they said the same thing. They also have the same idea of having to work harder and strengthen the market and make it better. There's not enough metal in Canada and fans want more.  DK: No kidding! Canada needs metal. A lot of musicians have said how hard it is to work here. The tours are brutal and cost so much that it chokes out our artists. Last year was pretty decent for tours, Belphegor and Cryptopsy made their way through as well as a few others. It was surprising that such recognizable names were even coming here. There was virtually no advertising for any of it. I had to look at bar listings to find out.

Necronomicon at V-Lounge in Victoria, BC

RT: That sounds pretty standard.

DK: It seems like whenever we have a well-known act here too many people only hear about it after the fact and they're really disappointed about having missed the show.

RT: The day after we played Victoria we played Vancouver. The next day we got a lot of messages from people saying they had no idea we were in the area and asking when we would be coming back.

Local bands can have a bigger impact than they realize. People listen to them.

DK: It's brutal. I did photos at the Victoria show. You guys were awesome but the lack of turnout was really disappointing. I only heard about the show the day before. Some promoters just don't do what they're hired to do. RT: Yeah, I was pretty disappointed by that promoter. I'd heard rumours, not that he had bad intentions, but that for whatever reason he had gotten sloppy and was not as good as he used to be. Whatever was going on, I hope he has put things back together for himself. It is what it is, but it bugs me that these days promoters think that with social media you just have to put something online and you're going to have magic.  DK: It's pretty misguided. The old-school way of doing it, putting up posters on telephone poles and advertising is still effective. Not everyone is on social media and even those who are, there's so much crap being advertised that individual show posts can get lost in the wash of it all. Dedicated advertising goes a long way.  RT: It's also important to push local bands to help promote the shows they're a part of. They can have a bigger impact than they realize. People listen to them. Having that come from both sides makes a huge difference. When we're on tour we still post on social media because that's how we can best reach people, but we are limited. I mean, we're living in a van!

DK: Absolutely. The music community becomes stronger. I heard there was a label change, who are you with now?

RT: Seasons Of Mist for two albums now but we'll see what happens with the new one. Before the last tour I had a meeting with the big boss from the label. Our contract is pretty much done but we have options to continue with them. Things are going good right now, but you never know. We may consider another offer. It's something that can change at any time. I own the name Necronomicon. It's been like that for over twenty years. So whatever happens, I can keep that name. The label is pretty excited about it. Less problems for them. 

Napalm Death is the reason Necronomicon has blast beats. They inspired us so much.

DK: Very streamlined. If you could share a stage with anyone, living or dead, who would you like to see on the bill?

RT: I like to tour with people who are really different. I'd like to tour with Suffocation. They're way more death metal than us. I like those guys. Same for Cannibal Corpse. We played together in 1994. I really like those guys, too. Same for Deicide. Doing it again with Behemoth would be great. Ooh! Napalm Death! Yeah! Any of those guys would be really cool to tour with. The first known band I played with was Napalm Death in 1993. They're the reason Necronomicon has blast beats. They inspired us so much. Our sound was different before them. When I first heard them I was like, "WOAH! Shit! I wanna do THAT!" (laughs) They've always been one of my favourite bands and they are still.  DK: (laughs) That'd be an amazing festival.  Have you heard Suffo's most recent album? It's been on my playlist since the day after it came out. RT: No. I don't listen to much metal. DK: If we hit play on whatever you listen to music on, what would be playing? RT: I don't listen to much music these days... or this last year. (laughs) I'm pretty quiet at home. The heaviest stuff I've been listening to has been the new material. I've been really focused on that. Aside from that, metal-wise, it's been Motorhead once in a while. When I do listen to music it's usually a band called Ozric Tentacles. It's really not metal.  DK: When you're writing do you find other music distracting? Some writers say that when they're working they won't listen to anything in the genre because they don't want to be unintentionally influenced or find that they're putting someone else's riffs into they're composition. Do you cut yourself off from all music when you're writing or does that not affect you?

RT: I'don't listen to much metal anyway. I was talking to my new drummer and he sometimes mentions other bands who I've never heard of. I never know what he's talking about. It can be frustrating when you write something and people say, "Oh, it sounds like that other band," and you don't know what they're talking about. It can be pretty awkward.

DK: That's a tough one. Parallel thinking happens all the time unfortunately. You seem to have a good method.

RT: I can recognize some influences in my writing. I like a lot of classical music and I'm a big anime fan. I listen to Japanese composers and bands. It's not metal but I recognize some influences. You have to dig deep to see it.

DK: In terms of classical, who do you listen to? RT: I like Wagner, Beethoven, Gustav Holst... The planets is great.  It's pretty intense. I like how it moves from intense violence,  into mystical, then really romantic. A lot of people talk about bands copying riffs without realizing that the intro to Mars: Bringer of War is one of the most copied. The intro to Am I Evil is exactly that. People get so annoyed when you say that metal is influenced by classical. The guy from Diamond Head who wrote it has even said as much. He's honest about it. He's not hiding that it's classical music. (laughs)

One of the composers that influenced me the most is Michiro Yamane.

DK: Note for note, just different instruments. Mars is one of the most influential pieces. It's amazing how many people don't know that. When you point it out a lot of metal fans get a bit pissy because they don;t like to acknowledge that the style they love so much was influenced or started by another.

RT: Depends on which group of fans you talk to. I've found that people, in general, from other styles of music try to bring down metal. So when you say that it is influenced by classical, they fucking hate it. With a lot of older stuff, like Maiden, Sabbath, and Priest, you can see the ambiance. It's more melodic. When you have Epica, Nightwish... it gets pretty big with the orchestration. It can be pretty catchy with the ambiance and groove, exactly like classical.  DK: Absolutely. That classical influence adds layers to the structure. It's great.

RT: What I always liked in metal is more like... if you listen to Venom's first album they had these crappy vocals but so much atmosphere that it was more than just a poorly produced album. When I first heard it, I loved it. whatever you want to be, whether it's dark, epic,or whatever, you need to have that little something. Paganini was technical but not dissonant. He influenced because he was unique. One of the composers that influenced me the most is Michiro Yamane. She's famous for Castlevania music. There's also Nubuo Uematsu, the composer for Final Fantasy and stuff like that. He's really big for me, too.  DK: I'm not too familiar with Final Fantasy, but I know Castlevania. Killer music in that one! I'm looking up Uematsu now... Oh! I do know his stuff! (laughs) Yeah, he is pretty amazing! He's a legend!

RT: One of his most impressive songs is called One Wing Angel. It was originally 16 bit midi. Even though the sound was kind of crappy, the composition struck me so hard I had goosebumps. It was so popular they did it with a full symphony. It's really impressive.

We were living in the forest, in the mountains. It was pretty black metal actually. It was so far from town I pretty much had to learn by myself.

DK: Metal and classical are the bulk of what I listen to. They're so connected. Without that foundation metal wouldn't be what it is today. Those who take it seriously understand that. Those who take it at face value and appreciate it that way, don't need to know. RT: Blues is also a big part of it's origin. Folk metal is a weird kind of response to the blues. It started when musicians realized the blues influence and rejected it, choosing to look at folk music from their homeland, like Norway and Sweden. I actually really like the blues. DK: So how old were you when you started playing guitar? RT: Maybe twelve. I wanted to play since age five. Our family was pretty poor. We couldn't afford much of anything. One of my school mates and his entire family were musicians. They had drums, electric guitars, bass, and the whole PA set up for vocals. The father played in bars, so every weekend I would go over there are try to learn a little bit. He was showing me chords so we started to play songs that were popular like Balls To The Wall. Every weekend we would get together and little by little I was learning. When I had my first guitar, one that was just mine, I think I was sixteen. I already knew a lot about how to play and one or two years after I started Necronomicon.

DK: What a great way to go after it! RT: Sure. It took a long time because there was no alternative. There was no music store to just go to. We were not living in town, we were living in the forest, in the mountains. It was pretty black metal actually. (laughs) It was so far from town I pretty much had to learn by myself. I had a few lessons, to learn how to tune and play some chords, some of the basics, and that was it. I created my own technique. Sometimes it's a bit freaky when you see kids who have been playing for only six months and they're playing Malmsteen because they had everything they need to get that speed.

The Necronomicon is not an evil book. It's a little book that explains the ultimate knowledge. It explains stuff that no one can explain.

DK: Everyone seems to be a prodigy! The struggle is real for old-school players.

RT: YouTube has helped that. All you have to do is sit down and watch what the guy saying, spend a little bit of time on it and you get it in a matter of a few days. It took me years!

DK: How did you pick the current name? RT: It was right at the start of the band. We had another name for about a week or two. It wasn't bad but I thought it was too negative. We were called Cataclysm. It was pretty powerful but at the same time pretty hopeless. Too negative because when a cataclysm strikes, like what happened in the US with Irma, it's pretty sad. You can't do shit with that. You have to wait for it to pass. A lot of families suffer, people who have spent their whole lives building what they had. I didn't like the dark side of it. I wanted to have something that was more obscure, more galactic. Something that is bound, something that you can see and feel and understand to a certain extent. I wanted to have something darker in the same way, but have a bigger meaning. If you've read Lovecraft, then you know the Necronomicon is not an evil book, contrary to the Evil Dead. It's a little book that explains the ultimate knowledge. The ultimate knowledge defies what you think you believe in to the point where you can go crazy if you read it, if you touch the truth. It explains stuff that no one can explain. It explains things that no one knew existed, but can be proved with this book. They were saying that the real definition of Necronomicon was change related to death, it's customs, and it's laws. So I took the name of the band from that description.

It's roughly shortened from the Egyptian or Tibetan Book Of The Dead. They talk about life, death, galactic energy, and stuff like that, so that's the reason. By knowing that, it's easier to understand my lyrics. I wanted something to summarize and express those ideas. One day I was going to see my drummer to talk about the name. I wanted to change it. I was walking there, it was a nice day, there were a few clouds and I was thinking to myself, "We need to change over." Suddenly there was this huge gust of wind and really dark fucking clouds come over and I heard the word "Necronomicon" in my head. DK: (laughs) Perfect.

RT: No exaggeration. (laughs) It actually happened like that and I decided that's gonna be it. At first we were talking about Lovecraft stories and stuff like that and after a while just opened up it to the extreme, to the larger stuff that I believe in, that I'd been living as an experience. DK: The Necronomicon is pretty misunderstood. People who don't know much about it frequently refer to it as the Satanic Bible, which is completely inaccurate. RT: Yeah, that's way off. We need to know what it is: It's a fictional book. It doesn't matter what anyone says, the Necronomicon does not exist. Lovecraft said it himself. He said it many times. Even today, people write to me asking where they can find it.

DK: (laughs) How do you respond to that? RT: I have to explain that the book they are looking for doesn't exist. It never existed. They all say, "Yeah, but I saw-" NO. It's the biggest rip off of a novel. It's highly Babylonian in it's religious content. The perception of it, it's bullshit. DK: It's a mishmash of Babylonian and Summerian mythology and legends. RT: (laughs) Yes. I love it! It's like Conan. If you look just a little bit deeper, it's Lovecraft. That's who created it. It's fiction so you need to research this stuff to see that it's not an evil book, but a very good story of mythology. It's a book that contains a knowledge of this and that and it's so extreme that it can fuck everything that you have, your conception of the universe and how it works. It destroys everything. That's why we took the name.  DK: Makes sense. Some information will make your head pop.  RT: If you take it from Evil Dead it just makes it a cheesy band name.

DK: (laughs) Yeah, it's fun. I was gonna ask how you would describe your spiritual, philosophical outlook, but that's sort of explained itself. RT: A little bit. (laughs) Some of it. 

For tour dates and info on the upcoming album follow Necronomicon on Facebook or look them up on Bandcamp.