Blistering.com: Do you think you pushed your industrial metal experimentations as far as they could go?
Vorph: I think there are still things to experiment with. I’m happy with some of the things we did. In the past, it was to have fun and see where we could take it. The music we were listening to as a teen. I would have dreamed to have listened an album like this as a teen, so I’m happy we’re doing something like this.
Blistering.com: Was there any inkling you would take this direction in your early, more black metal-inspired days?
Vorph: Definitely, but it happened somehow. With Ceremony, Xy had quite a few things featuring keyboards. Once you start to have keyboards and you can experiment more with sounds and stuff, you can take that direction. I remember Rebellion (the band’s 1995 EP) being an interesting thing. We just did one song, “Static Journey” which was only programming, but we didn’t know we’d take this formula to the next album. When the keyboard player left the band, we didn’t know what to do. Xy said he didn’t want to have anyone else in the band, so he would program drums and do it. So he moved from drums to keyboards, so it was exactly what he wanted to do.
Blistering.com: Samael was synonymous with Century Media during the mid-90’s, did the relationship just fall apart?
Vorph: Yeah, it’s behind us now [laughs]. We get along a lot better with them now than we did back then [laughs].
Blistering.com: Excited about your North American tour with Carcass?
Vorph: Yeah, totally. We are leaving in two days, so yeah. It’s great and a few shows are going to be more like a festival-type thing, but there are more bands I’ve never seen live that we are going to play with. We’re all excited about it.
Blistering.com: Being that this isn’t first time over and you’re not headlining, what are your expectations?
Vorph: We have a short set, but we’re still going to play a song from the new album, even though it won’t be out at the time. For us, it’s going to give us the chance to play in front of people who have never heard of us before. That’s probably the most exciting thing. You cannot be sure you will convince people, but we’re sure going to try.
Blistering.com: On your previous tours with Dimmu and others, what did you take away from this country?
Vorph: It was great. The country is so big…it’s different than Europe like everywhere you go there is a different language. We did a tour of the Balkans in East Europe where this is different money and cultures, so you really feel like this are a big journey. In America, it’s more awesome somehow [laughs]. It’s a long and intimate road you’re driving on. I don’t know [laughs].
Blistering.com: This question gets proposed to a lot of bands nowadays, but I was wondering how the economy has affected Samael.
Vorph: Not so far. I have some friends who have their own enterprises…they are starting to feel it. We’ve heard about it going on for quite some time, but personally, I don’t know…there’s no inconvenience for me. As a musician, it’s physical. You cannot go in a different way. If things are going good, they’re first going to try to pay for food and the bills and then to have a little fun. For us, I don’t know if it’s positive, but they want to forget about it…they want to go to a cinema or a concert. At this point, we do the band full-time. We don’t live like crazy, but we don’t have worry about it.