Sear Bliss interview in Terrorizer 52

It's usually a feat of inhuman strength for an underground band to break out of its domestic scene and successfully enter the world stage. However, when that band comes from such un unlikely place as Hungary and goes to achieve the success that Sear Bliss have, surely something not of this world is at play. Gregory Whalen speaks to András Nagy about his group's spookily good new album "The Haunting".

When we last encountered Sear Bliss, back in the long hot sticky summer of 1996, they were wide-eyed young hopefuls. Their debut album "Phantoms" had just been released on II Moons, the Dark/Black Metal subsidiary of the Dutch Mascot label, and been awarded CD Of The Month by Holland's legendary Aardschock magazine. Frontman András Nagy was, shall we say, a "challenging" interview partner, his English as broken as the phoneline was crackly. Getting answers from him was a slow, laborious process that more often than not requiring a great deal of prompting, only to be rewarded with a tentative "Yezz". Eighteen months on, and you can barely get him to shut up. A simple "What's up?", for example, is returned with an epic monologue cataloguing Sear Bliss' adventures since "Phantoms" was released.

"In early 1997 we went on tour with Marduk, which was a great opportunity for us. It was our first real tour, as we had only done five gigs before that, and we discovered that we loved playing live. The guys from Marduk were great, and we really enjoyed travelling between the countries in Europe. It was a milestone in the life of Sear Bliss. On the other hand, we also had some problems. When you are touring with the other members and living together with them, you get to know each other very well. It turned out that some of us weren't as serious about the band as the others and had different aims. That's why, unfortunately, we had to change our line-up and fire our guitar player, drummer and keyboard player. It's quite hard to find the right people for Sear Bliss, because in Hungary this kind of music isn't very popular. We were due to record the second album, so we had to look for new members. Fortunately we found them in April, so we spent most of our time writing new songs and rehearsing the old material. We rehearsed six times a week, so it was quite a hard period for Sear Bliss.

The new members, Viktor Max Scheer on guitar and Zoltan Schönberger on drums, trumpet player Gergely Szûcs having doubled up on keyboards, have breathed new life into Sear Bliss. Having come from different musical backgrounds, they have brought diverse musical influences as well as over thirteen years of experience into the band, and "The Haunting" is a much stronger, more dynamic album than "Phantoms" as a result.

"We have developed a lot, " András agrees, "And we have a better idea of how to write a song now. We have changed the structures of our songs a lot, and I think the music is more exciting than before. I like our old material, but I think we have really got the feeling right this time. Our guitar player is a sound engineer, and that's also great for Sear Bliss because he was also the producer of the new album. He does a lot of Hungarian bands in his studio here. He's a very good guitar player too. The drummer is also great, because he has studied different types of music. He knows Jazz drumming and also Blues drumming, and that's why I think our new album is a bit different. "

In what ways is it different, exactly?

"I think the most important thing is that three years have passed since we recorded "Phantoms". We're older and we've learned a lot on our instruments and in life as well. I think that's why we have a better idea of how to build songs. "The Haunting" is not as experimental as our first album, and it's more powerful. I know it's not as fast as "Phantoms", but I think it's more powerful because of the better sound. It's quite a heavy album. It was pretty easy to record because, as I told you, we rehearsed a lot and knew the songs. And we have changed as a band, so we recorded this album in a different way than before. I think, with the exception of the trumpet and the vocals, we recorded everything at the same time. It was just like when we play live. And I think that's why the sound is so powerful, because we played as if we were on stage. As I told you, we like playing on stage, and that's why the mood and the feeling in the studio was much better. "

"The Haunting" shows a marked progression from the Sear Bliss of old. Still very much unique in sound and style, the Hungarians have blended their characteristically dark, driving Metal backbone with some rockier moments and garnished it all with a sprinkling of atmospherics courtesy of Gergely's keyboards and trumpet. Although more straightforward than the debut, "The Haunting" is by no means a less challenging album, and there are always a few surprises awaiting the unsuspecting listener.

"I think some people will be surprised by the fact that there are some more unusual parts on the new album," says András, "And, as you said, some rockier stuff. Sometimes the solos and the lead guitars are just like those in rock music, but I think it's mostly because the new members have got different inspirations and we wanted to experiment and bring fresh flavour into the Metal scene. We didn't want to do what we have done before, we wanted to do something which is a bit out of the ordinary. I mean, Black Metal bands don't use guitar solos or this kind of drumming very often..."

Lyrically "The Haunting" is diverse as it is musically, yet there appears to be a common thread between the songs. Was that the intention? Does the album have a particular concept?

"Yeah, you could say that, and if you take a look at the cover artwork for our albums, you can see a connection between them too. We've used the eagle again. However, it's not flying up anymore. It's flying down now. Our first album was called "Phantoms", and we gave the new album the title "The Haunting" because now those phantoms are haunting. It has a lot of meanings, and I think you can interpret it in a lot of different ways. I like it because maybe everybody will read something different into it. There's definitely some connection, but it isn't so close. "

Phantoms seem to appear quite often in Sear Bliss lyrics, either as spirits or demons or even as ghosts or echoes from the past. Are they central to the band's concept?

"Yeah. The lyrics are like fantasy stories, but you can find a realistic point in each of them. As I told you, they can be interpreted in many different ways. Our lyrics are like when you dream something and you try to write it down on paper. We try to express our hopes and feelings in both our music and lyrics. "

Do ghost stories make up a big part of Hungarian folklore? Is it maybe an indirect influence from that?

"Yeah, we were quite interested in some stories which you can find in Hungarian mythology or Hungarian history. I think it's a very exciting side of expressing our feelings. We have used some stories from the history of Hungary on "Phantoms" mostly, because we're very interested in our country's heritage. However, I think on "The Haunting" everything came from our own imaginations. And you can hear that. "