Photo: Aurelie La Faute
French gothic metal band The Old Dead Tree arrived on the scene in 1997 – releasing three studio albums during the 2000s that made an impression on a global scene looking for more emotionally-driven material. The debut album The Nameless Disease hit especially home for the group, as the concept record paid tribute to Frederic Guillemot, who tragically committed suicide in 1999 at the young age of 22. The band would first dissolve in 2009 due to personal and musical differences – reuniting a couple of times in the 2010’s for festival appearances, plus a final EP release The End in 2019.
Seventeen years beyond the last studio album The Water Fields, we are fortunate to have the fourth full-length Second Thoughts. Stirring songwriting that reflects the band’s depth of creativity, the tracks can be heavier at times, reflective in others – always touching the depths of your mind, body and soul. We were able to speak to guitarist/vocalist Manuel Monoz and guitarist Nicolas Cornolo regarding the concerns going into the long break between records, how the songwriting process worked in a collaborative sense this go around, video work, what being on Season of Mist means to the group, career highlights, and also career advice for younger musicians.
Dead Rhetoric: Second Thoughts is the fourth full-length album for The Old Dead Tree. Given the lengthy time between records and occasional stop/starts that occurred in the interim, what was the thought process behind the new record? Did you have any worries, fears, or concerns of how this record would stand up next to the previous discography you’ve created?
Manuel Monoz: Oh yes, actually a lot. Before we recorded this album, we released and recorded one single by May 2023 – the song is called “Terrified”, and it really says a lot about how we felt. I was afraid of many things – that we couldn’t compose as good of material as we did before, I was afraid there was no more audience for us that would listen to our music. I was afraid that no record company would be interested in what we were going to compose. The main thing I was afraid of was the risk of ruining our friendship when we stopped the band for the first time in 2009. It took years to rebuild the friendships that we had back then. They are precious, and I didn’t want to risk anything about this.
Nicolas Cornolo: It was different for me because I wasn’t in the band back then. I was already friends with a couple of the members, including Nicolas (Chevrollier) in other projects. I had followed the guys in this band for a very long time. I needed to find my place within this friendship. Friendships change with the end of the band, and now we’ve had time to rebuild these friendships. There are sometimes choices to be made. My concern was to find my place in this band, and if I can make things stronger. To bring some ideas to the band, and I think I succeeded because we are here. Manuel is right, it’s difficult to make music after all this time. I was a fan before being in the band. I don’t want to make a fake comeback, there is a strong legacy for this band. We are very happy with the first response to this new album, and Season of Mist was the first to say to us that this was a great album and that they support us with this.
Dead Rhetoric: Did that acceptance of the “Terrified” single last year give the band confidence going forward with the rest of the material that you were working on for this album?
Monoz: Yes. We could see what we were really made of, nowadays. The friendships are the backbone of this band. We formed this band back in 1997. We felt very proud to compose a song together that was very consistent, very good. It was a huge challenge to develop music that still connects to what we’ve done fifteen or twenty years ago, and who we are now. I think we were able to succeed with this song, and with this album later.
Cornolo: It was the first time that Manuel and Nico played the song for the rest of the band, it was obvious that this was a single. It seemed very obvious, that it should show the path of things to come, like now.
Dead Rhetoric: Which songs either during the creative or recording process immediately stood out to you as strong efforts for this record – and were there any specific tracks that maybe took a little longer or took on the greatest transformation from initial idea to what the listeners hear on the final output?
Cornolo: I will try to make it short because I could talk about this topic for hours. The song “Fresh Start”, that song along with “I Wish I Could” and “The Trap” are a trilogy of songs, don’t move a lot. There are songs where we fought a bit in the band, to find our form of the song. There were debates about which singles to premiere. There was a lot of work on “Don’t Waste Your Time” and other songs. There were songs that were very natural to develop like “Solastalgia” or “The Worst Is Yet to Come”. We love a lot of different styles, and we didn’t want to mess with the recipe for The Old Dead Tree. When you listen to the songs, the back stories are important.
Monoz: There is a lot of care in the songwriting. There are chances that when we compose that there can be some spontaneity. Before one of us proposes the song, we have three composers in the band. We always try to go through all the problems that we may have in the arrangements. Because we don’t live in the same area anymore, it’s very difficult for us to get together and rehearse or talk often about the songs. Most of the time there were no big debates. “Without a Second Thought” was a difficult song to achieve, it had many versions, and we had different visions concerning the song. Like Nicolas, it’s one of my favorite songs on the album now. I am proud of “Solastalgia” because I did that song by myself. It was naturally touched by the others, but I have never composed a song quite like this one. It’s quite difficult to choose amongst the songs, it’s like choosing your children.
Cornolo: There is something special when Manuel sings these songs and the other Nico plays his guitar, there are two things which give The Old Dead Tree touch to those songs. It’s great for me as a composer, to see these two guys and two personalities, when they add their skills, we know if it will make the songs better.
Dead Rhetoric: How did the guest session vocalists come about – and what do you enjoy most about the talent and abilities they offered to color the record even more fully for those tracks?
Monoz: This was the first time we decided to have some guest singers on an album. We played a show with the band S.U.P., which has one of the guest singers we decided to have on the album, Ludovic Loez. They are quite known in France, but maybe not as well known abroad. It’s a very cult band, they were inspirational on the first wave of French death metal, that movement during the 80s. They’ve changed their name and style, and they have made some very interesting Avant-garde metal. It happened that we had never played together during our years together. It was quite obvious that we had to work together one day. We played together a year ago, and it was obvious that we had this connection right away. You have never met the person, but it feels like family. We also found another singer, T.C., who is in a black metal band called Regarde Les Hommes Tomber, they are growing here in Europe. He was a big fan of The Old Dead Tree when he was in high school. Both of the guys gave an outstanding performance. We composed things for them that fall in line with their skills, they recorded the vocals by themselves, and we were very happy with the results. It paints another color for the record.
Dead Rhetoric: You’ve released three videos to date for the record – do you enjoy developing the visual side of the band, and where do you see the importance of this medium in promotion of the record?
Cornolo: For us it’s something that’s very important. We live in a world where imagery and communication are very important. We have the chance to work with people that have known the band for over twenty years, like the director Julien Metternich. We trust him for his vision. He proposed to us different concepts and we worked with them. We did three videos for the album. The videos can be very powerful for the band and for other people. There are a lot of people that tell us that these are beautiful videos. We have had 150,000 people view them in a couple of months. We are artists, we are ourselves on stage, and we need to communicate the visuals, and what the band is about with these videos. We have had good feedback about these videos. I think the videos cost us more than the recordings (laughs).
Monoz: The director always takes some parts of the lyrics to go within the storyline. It’s interesting for us to see another vision of what we compose. It’s impossible now to imagine producing an album without a video. We invested so much in the album and so much in the videos, it helps us to get known by everybody.
Dead Rhetoric: How does it feel to be still on Season of Mist this many years later? Have you watched the growth of the label since the last record and this new one?
Monoz: It became more complicated! (laughs). I have too many people to communicate with now. Now they have offices in France, the Netherlands, the US. You have to choose carefully who you want to send information to, to be sure the right person gets it. We have a strong relationship with the label. They really love the band. That’s why you can say these guys are doing this for the right reasons. We will never be an enormous commercial hit. There is a strong and trustful relationship with the label. We are semi-normal people, we still have the same technical stuff, the same core people. It means a lot to us that we are loyal to people and people are loyal to us.
Dead Rhetoric: When looking at your musical career with The Old Dead Tree, what do you consider some of the personal highlights – either specific albums, tours, festival appearances, or other events when you knew you were making an impact with your art to touch people and garner deeper critical acclaim/respect?
Monoz: It’s a strange timeline actually. The story of the band – we lost our drummer two years after we created the band, he killed himself. We were really good friends, hanging out every day, and it almost broke us. It really impacted the band; it had a huge impact on the way we compose music and the way that we see life. We saw the value of this band. We worked for three years on the composing of the first album The Nameless Disease. This album is about the way I dealt with that death of our friend. We had a huge success with this album, we were a very underground band who sold 1,000 copies of our demo. All of a sudden, we were playing abroad, it was a bit like a fairytale. I was convinced back then we were the best band in the world, because of this success. We had our own tour, and the album that followed The Perpetual Motion was my favorite of all these days. But maybe Second Thoughts is my new favorite. We started to play festivals: Hellfest in France, it was a big festival. In 2009 we stopped the band, we were exhausted. We had kids, wives, a family life, small jobs besides the band and we could not keep things in rhythm.
That’s when we decided to come back when our families were settled in. We decided to compose something new. We gathered again and we wanted to put things back artistically to the way things were before. The feedback we had, we worked with the same people for decades, it really helped the band.
Dead Rhetoric: What fuels your desire to create, compose, and play music? Do you have equal affinities for playing live music as well as recording songs in the studio?
Cornolo: When it comes to creation, I just can’t explain it. Songs are coming, inspiration, we always have a lot of music within us. The process of creating something, for me it’s natural. When we have to share our ideas, it’s work. For the live side of the band, now that we are a five-piece band, it’s great. We are a great live band. Each time we play live, we choose to channel different emotions to the audience. Today, we love to do both from the studio side and play live. The studio side was difficult, we are far from each other, it was more of a logistical maze and a puzzle to fit together. When we are on stage, we are more than the five of us. We create something that is bigger than us. I think today I prefer to play live.
Monoz: For me, the composing part is my favorite. I really love to work on these compositions with the guys. We are far better as a live band now without me playing guitar than we were before.
Dead Rhetoric: Do younger musicians ever ask for your advice when it comes to music or the business side of things – and if so, what words or ideas do you try to impart upon them?
Monoz: We are not a very famous band from the commercial side of the world. Try to make music that people want to hear. Try to make music that you want to make. That’s the first thing – you have to develop your own personality. It’s always messy in the beginning. You get together, and you have to go through this step to build your first set of songs. After that, now you have your own ideas, you have your own way to express your own ideas, what do people want to hear? How can I make my ideas become songs, and not only titles? How can I make something really consistent, from the beginning to the end? The small details make the difference from an artistically successful band and just good ideas thrown on an album. Think in steps, and be true to yourself.