Photo of Carach Angren by Stefan Heilemann
Greek black metal legends Rotting Christ kicked off their 2023 “Under Our Black Cult” North American tour last week. Joining them are several prominent black metal bands, representing a variety of styles and nationalities: the symphonic and highly theatrical Carach Angren (from the Netherlands), melodic American upstarts Uada (from Portland, OR), and the atmospheric and cryptic Gaerea (from Porto, Portugal). The tour is a truly national one, beginning in the Southwest before making its way north through the Pacific Coast. It will then head to the Midwest, and after playing several shows in eastern Canada, the tour will make its way down the Atlantic coast, eventually ending in Orlando, FL.
In advance of the tour’s March 1st stop in Kansas City, we spoke with Clemens “Ardek” Wijers, keyboardist and primary songwriter for Carach Angren, to get some background on the tour and their experiences playing in the U.S. Named after a region of Mordor from the Lord of the Rings novels, Carach Angren was formed in Landgraaf, Netherlands by Ardek and his childhood friend, Dennis “Seregor” Droomers. They released their demo The Chase Vault Tragedy in 2004, followed by six studio albums, the most recent of which being 2020’s Franckensteina Strataemontanus.
Since its inception, the band’s core lineup has been the duo of Ardek and Seregor, who is the primary vocalist and guitarist for the band. Ardek’s brother, Ivo “Namtar” Wijers, was the longtime drummer, but departed after the release of Franckensteina to focus on his other projects. During their live performances, the band is joined by Dutch guitarist Bastiaan “Butcher” Boh and American drummer Gabe Seeber, a session musician known for his work with Decrepit Birth and The Kennedy Veil. We caught up with Ardek, who currently lives in Costa Rica, before the start of the tour.
The Arts STL: You went on tour in North America last year with Hypocrisy. What was that like?
Ardek: Really cool—it was the first time we toured after the pandemic. The preparation was very heavy. In 2020 we had a show at 70,000 Tons of Metal and one in France. It was very easy going—moving into it was kind of stressful, more than before. We were glad that we did it, that all the fans came out to see it.
You currently live in Costa Rica. How long have you been living there and what prompted the move?
I’ve been here for two years now. Prior to moving, I was living in the Netherlands. My wife is from here; we had been dating for five years, and then the pandemic hit. Everyone was locked down, so I made a plan that at the first opportunity, I’d go there [to Costa Rica]. And that’s what we did, we got married, and I like it a lot here!
I’m sure the climate is a lot more cheerful than in the Netherlands.
In the Netherlands you have four seasons, like in North America, but in Costa Rica there are only two [rainy and dry]. Although we make horrible music, I’m a tropical guy at heart.
How did you and your wife meet?
It’s a cliché, but, at a show. We played Costa Rica in 2014, and I met her there at a VIP meet-and-greet. We casually stayed in touch, but since 2017 we had been officially dating. Because we tour a lot, I was able to visit her in Costa Rica [while we were dating]. She came to Holland too, but when all of that traveling stopped with the pandemic, that was kind of a weird feeling, because we could not go visit each other. And so then it was 9 months of us being separate, but Costa Rica was one of the first countries to enable flights again. So then I jumped on and packed my gear, and that was it!
Where does your bandmate Dennis [Seregor] live? Does the two of you living in different countries affect your ability to collaborate?
In the Netherlands still—in Brunssum. We have always been collaborating basically via email, because I lived usually more north of him. We had rehearsals and we would meet for those of course, and now obviously that’s much less frequent. Even then, when I had a song I would send it to him, and we would talk about it over a video call, so in that sense not much has changed.
I know the core of Carach Angren is you and Seregor—your brother Ivo was the drummer for many years, but parted ways with the band. Can you describe how your partnership as musicians works?
As far as the music, I have always been the main writer. Usually Dennis does the lyrics, although I sometimes write them as well. He plays guitar, so he comes up with the lead parts. That’s also why we felt confident when my brother left [in 2020], “Okay, we can go on, because we have basically been doing this now for 20 years.” [Ivo] came up with great ideas as well, but he wanted to focus on his other band, so it was a mutual decision. Now we are working with Gabe Seeber from the U.S., he played for us in Mexico. Really great guy, great drummer.
Is there anyone else joining you on the tour, besides Gabe? I know that you play keyboards during your live shows.
Bastiaan [Boh], has also been playing guitar with us on tour since 2015, so he’s basically part of the clan. We call him “Butcher,” because he looks like one. [laughs]
I know you’ve toured with Rotting Christ at least two other times. What is your relationship like with them?
Sakis [Tolis] is a great guy and good friend, Themis [Tolis] as well. We see them a lot, last year we saw them a couple of times on the road. I saw them in Costa Rica, they came to play here, and then I saw them again in Finland when we played together there. They’re one of the greatest, easiest bands to tour with. I know it’s cliché, but they’re really friendly, and they don’t have any ego going on. We are like that as well, we just sit down and make it work for everyone. I’m really glad we can do this, it’s still difficult times and I’m really grateful we can go on the road with a band that we know.
Do you have any thoughts about the other bands one tour, Uada and Gaerea?
Honestly, they’re newer and I hadn’t heard about them before, but there’s a lot of fans for them. Gabe knows them and said that they’re great guys—there’s excitement around it, I think it’s a strong package [for the tour]. I announced the tour on Facebook and immediately people were going nuts over it!
I know you’ve played Kansas City at least six times before—I think those shows were all at the Riot Room, although your upcoming KC show is at Blvd Nights. What are some of your memories of playing in KC previously?
Riot Room is a special venue, because it’s not the biggest, but it’s like this bar, so it’s a very cool vibe in the sense that you kind of hide there, the backstage is somewhere in the middle. I like that, it’s like a “raw” vibe.
Have you ever done any tourism around the city while playing in KC? I know your tour schedules tend to not leave a lot of room for sightseeing.
Yeah usually, it’s like around the corner we have food, a nice restaurant, but to be honest, that’s usually it. Once I went shopping for some gear [in KC]. It’s usually pretty boring!
I don’t think you’ve ever played in St. Louis before, have you? I know that for a lot of bands, if they’re touring in Missouri, their booking agent tends to pick one city or the other.
I don’t think we have—it’s like you said, usually our booker, he makes a route, and it’s like a puzzle: all the bands, all the other tours, venue availability, et cetera. Sometimes there seems to be no other way to play a show in a certain area, but he [the booking agent] figures it out. We always think it’s better to play than not to play, because the tour bus has to keep going. Sometimes that’s the reality.
What material have you been playing at your recent shows? I was looking at some of your setlists for 2022, and it looks like you had been playing material from all of your albums except This Is No Fairytale.
We’re going to change the setlist up for this tour, we have two different songs on this one. We’re going to start with a very old one, “Ghost of Raynham Hall” from our demo, which we haven’t played in a long time. We’re also going to play “Operation Compass” from the last album [Franckensteina Strataemontanus], which will be the song’s live debut. But the rest is the same as the last tour.
Is there a particular song you really enjoy playing live? It looked to me like “Bloodstains on the Captain’s Log” is your usual encore song.
Ardek: Yeah, I was talking to the guys, like “Should we replace ‘Bloodstains,’ should we do something else?” and they were like “No, it’s the best one!” “Yeah, okay, you’re right.” I like to play “Monster” live a lot, because it’s such a different thing than we’ve done before, but to play it live is very intense for some reason. And “Franckensteina”, because it’s a very short song, almost a catchy song. Both Dennis and I are really proud of that one—we enjoy doing the clean vocals live.
Are you and Dennis working on any new material right now?
During the pandemic we wrote some new stuff, but recently we made a really cool song we have a great idea for. We always need this kind of a “hit,” to get the rest going, and to develop a story of course. I have the story now, and we want to try and finish writing and recording [the album] this year.
I was making a list the other day of like seven [new] songs: music, no lyrics yet. We need one or two more, and then we can finish up. 2024 is the goal [for the album release]—we like to have a new album every three or four years. Now it’s been longer—it’s strange, because we had a lot of time during the pandemic, but if you don’t do anything, you don’t get inspired. The last album, we were so happy with, so the bar is pretty high.
Your songs cover a variety of topics—a lot of them are related to folklore and occultism, and the albums are usually based around a concept. For example, Franckensteina Strataemontanus is based on the life of Johann Dippel. How do you find inspiration when writing your music?
It’s interesting, because fans and people always send us mail and messages, “You should do this, you should do that.” But it has to come on our path—for example, with Frankenstein, I knew the story and we watched the movie, then I started reading the book. I researched it, and I came across this Dippel story, and then I had a kind of nightmare about it. I need to get hooked on it—”Wow, this is something special that nobody knows about.” Personally, that’s always what I need. It has to be very specific, something new. For example, I’m very much into [the American author] Michael Crichton. I love his novels. The guy researches for years, and then suddenly he writes a novel in a couple of weeks. I try to follow a little bit in that line.
I believe we live in a day and age where everything’s fast, “put out another record, another song, post it on Instagram.” But we need time, it takes years to write. For the last album, to get ideas, I went to museums, I wrote to scientists. It’s always a bit of a bummer after the album is released—the album’s out, there’s a review, and then it’s gone. So I had to learn to enjoy the process of making it.
The lyrics in your music seem very narrative—there’s an emphasis on telling a story, and introducing a plot within the songs. It seems like there is a novelistic approach with how you write music.
Yeah, writing the lyrics is about a 50/50 effort between me and Seregor. We always want it to make sense. The last one, for example, starts with this boy, and this whole story with narration, and in the end there’s a conclusion that ties it back to the beginning. I like that loop, I always want to put it there. It’s like a novel in that sense, definitely. I write all the time, so there’s a lot more that we could be releasing, but most of it I throw away, to be honest. I think for what you hear [on the albums], there’s maybe 80% that you don’t hear.
Another thing that makes you stand out is your nationality, obviously – although there are some quite famous Dutch death and black metal bands, I think a lot of people associate that style of music more with Scandinavia. How do you think being Dutch sets you apart from other European metal bands?
Interestingly, when we grew up, there were a lot of small black metal bands [in the Netherlands]—that’s how I met Dennis, because he played in another band. We were like 16 at the time, we played together in a band called Vaultage.
We are both from the south. I came from a town called Well, a village with a couple of thousand people. There’s a lot of forest there, so we grew up playing outside, and that’s also where the folklore and the stories are. I had to bike to high school, 15 kilometers there and back, so I was always listening to music. I cherish that time now, although back then, sometimes I hated it!
So I think it’s maybe a little like Scandinavia. We have the forests, and the dark winter days as well. We were not from the city either, so I think there is some [common] influence there. Dennis and I, we would walk around the woods together. We would read books about the Lammendam murders, which is where the first album came from.
What were you doing before you became a professional musician? Did you have a “day job”?
I studied social science, and I worked as a therapist and social worker for many years. I did that part-time and combined that with touring for many years. Around 2016 I jumped off that, because I just couldn’t combine it with touring anymore. I worked at a personality disorders clinic, I would lead the group meetings and all of that.
What are your thoughts on your label, Season of Mist? Am I correct that all of your music has been released through them?
Yeah, we put everything out on there, from the first album onward. It’s a great label, they always support us. Last year they helped me out a lot with my visa. They’re not just a label—they invest in their bands, they really believe in us. We are very happy with them, no reason to switch!
Missouri metalheads can catch the “Under Our Black Cult” tour on Wednesday, March 1st, when it comes to Blvd Nights in Kansas City, MO. Much like Pop’s in Sauget, Blvd Nights is a typical night club most evenings, but occasionally books extreme metal acts as well. Rotting Christ played there on their 2022 tour, a show that featured St. Louis’ own Stormruler as an opening act.
Our writer and photographer Zach Johnson will be covering the Kansas City show. For those who can’t make it, here is a playlist featuring recent setlists from all four bands on the tour. | David Von Nordheim
Tour dates
02.25 | Vancouver, BC @ Hollywood Theater
02.27 | Salt Lake City, UT @ Metro Music Hall
02.28 | Denver, CO @ Oriental Theater
03.01 | Kansas City, MO @ Blvd Nights
03.02 | Minneapolis, MN @ Skyway Theater
03.03 | Chicago, IL @ Reggie’s
03.04 | Detroit, MI @ The Sanctuary
03.05 | Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace
03.07 | Montreal, QC @ Le Studio TD
03.08 | Quebec City, QC @ Imperial Bell
03.09 | Boston, MA @ Middle-East
03.10 | New York, NY @ Gramercy Theater
03.11 | Philadelphia, PA @ Warehouse on Watts
03.12 | Greensboro, NC @ Hangar 1819
03.13 | Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade
03.14 | Orlando, FL @ The Haven
