HEIDEN – The interview with Werlinga, Kverd and Einsk

„… our metal souls eventually chose a path influenced by what we loved once and what we keep coming back to, which is various forms of black metal and raw sound and vocals. (…) We have a dark aesthetic firmly rooted in us and a sense of raw music, and all of that had to come out over time and the subtle position had to be put aside. we are now on the north side, and I think we will remain there for some time….” – HEIDEN

Hi! I have to admit that I something got mixed up in your discography. Many years ago, sometime in 2009, I got your album “Obsidian” for review. And when in 2022 you reminded me of yourself with the latest release your “Andzjel”, I probably mistakenly described “Obsidian” as your debut album, suggesting information from your official website. And on The Metal Archives you show albums earlier than “Obsidain”. So what is in real? How many were the albums?

Kverd: Hi Pawel, in fact we have recorded 9 full-lenght albums until now. We started our way in 2003 as a raw pagan black metal project. Over the years, we have grown, peeked into many genre boxes and stopped dealing with them. On our webs you can find our music since 2009, because on the „Obsidian” record we deffinitely found our musical DNA and here we started to work with our moody world of tones and stories.

But since we’re talking about the past years… You started hard and predatory almost 20 years ago… with strong Black Metal, even Pagan Black Metal. Such it went until the album “Obsidain”. The next album “Dolores” already revealed inclinations towards an alternative approach to Black Metal. More poetic and ambitious melodies and Post-Rock and Shoegazer’s themes appeared. On the other hand, on the album “A kdybys už nebyla, vymyslím si tě” you moved away from Black Metal towards instrumental Post Rock. On the next album “Na svůj příběh jsme sami” you continued the Post-Rock style by adding a Progressive Rock approach to the arrangement and vocals. The penultimate “Země beze mě” maintained the style of the previous album, maybe with more emphasis on the progressive side of Rock and more “joyful” playing… Rather, you did not change the line-up during this time. So this drive to move away from Black Metal towards Post Rock was unanimous? What changed HEIDEN’s music?

Kverd: Like I mentioned, „Obsidian” record was really a game changing moment in our career. This album defines our musical world and set the approach for the future. Following albums then modified the mood and incorporated other influences to our music. Every development we did in our career was unanimous, we want to follow our musical needs and guard the team spirit inside Heiden, because this is one of our key values.

And how did the old listeners who remembered your Black Metal face perceive the “new” HEIDEN then?

Kverd: Some of them stays with us for all the time. Some of them rejoined us with „Andzjel” record, and some of them left.

But I must admit that “Země beze mě” is a great Prog Rock album in full impetus! Although I like the previous Post-Rock ones too. It’s good that Bandcamp allowed them to be listened to.

Kverd: Thank you. To be honest, we see our music as a floawing river. Yes, moods could be different, used elements also, but the source is still the same. When I grab the guitar, it doesn’t matter which amp is connected, it will always sounds like Heiden. Nothing else. Our advantage and disadvantage at the same time is, that we can bring really different albums to the audience.

By the way, I’ll ask… Do you cleaned up that broken glass from the “Dryáda” music video? Hehe…

Einsk: Yes, of course 🙂 safety above all and we don’t want any child or dog to get hurt, because there are a lot of them everywhere in the Czech Republic and people here love dogs. Filming the clip was very interesting for us. It was conducted very professionally and the main role was played by our friend’s beautiful girlfriend Gába. She totally charmed us all and gave the clip a soul and another dimension. The song is about a girl who falls into depression and compensates for her loneliness and distance from true feelings and emotions with alcohol, drugs and promiscuity. All the locations in the clip are from our native Brno and we like to remember that.

In turn, the latest album “Andzjel” showed that HEIDEN remembered its roots and again began to draw inspirations from Black Metal patents, albeit with wariness. The inclinations to Post-Rock and “progression” still remained… What influenced it this time? For such a stylistic mishmash…

Einsk: All our records are like who we were when they were made. Our lives spring forth through our creation. And before we started writing songs for Andzjel, we had a band debate about what the next record should be. Our frontman Kverd came up with a concept from the White Carpathians and a quiet album with soundscapes and acoustic motifs. But our metal souls eventually chose a path influenced by what we loved once and what we keep coming back to, which is various forms of black metal and raw sound and vocals. And in the end, we felt the best about it in recent years, and the songs sounded incredibly good already in the rehearsal room. We used all the knowledge from the previous records and mixed this beautiful mix, which you can now hear on Andzjel.

I was delighted by this album. Black Metal on “Andzjel” is heavy and powerful, but interspersed with psychedelic, moody, almost hypnotic moments of Prog-Post-Rock composiotions. And Post-Rock solos and Black Metal screams last simultaneously with calm singing and melorecitation. On the other hand, Progressive Rock themes are spatial, created by guitar solos, tangled bass and delicate keys… The whole thing is dark and mysterious… often a bit sleepy, sometimes terrifying… Other times very depressive, full of pessimism, as if doubts… Of course there is no shortage here aggression and rebellion… Summing up, it is very mature music created in the spirit of modernity. Who is responsible for composing?

Kverd: I would say that all Heiden members are responsible for the final form of the song. Every one of us brings his own spirit and energy, arragements are modified in rehersal room untill we are satisfied. Our composition process starts with a leitmotif which is most often composed by me or werlinga, so we are often in the very beginning of our musical ideas.

Werlinga: Composing is a complex process for us. After the initial riff, which writes mostly Kverd or sometimes me, then Kverd lays out the basic composition of the whole song. Next, we arrange – each our own instrument and we give each other feedback on how well our arrangements capture the mood. It often happens that arrangements are repeatedly deleted and redone, which is sometimes a bit crazy, but in my opinion always beneficial for the song.

So, Werlinga has a lot to say as the only woman on the team…

Werlinga: Being the only woman in the team is a role that I got used to a long time ago, and I confess that until the time of parental responsibilities. I didn’t really notice any differences. I think that I need the music I’m involved in to have a strong atmosphere much more than guys. I probably don’t care so much about energy, but the atmosphere must always be there. Otherwise, for me now, of course, the normal functioning in the band is a big difference compared to the boys, because we have two small children, and that makes a difference if dad from the baby goes to the concert or mom goes (laughs).

As for “Andzjel” too, HEIDEN has always maintained Czech lyrics that bring originality to foreigners, but I think that it strongly limits the expansion of your music. The music is very ambitious and the English language would open the door to Europe and beyond.

Kverd: Could be. Czech language is our origin, our history, our nature. English is very important in communication. If we want to offer our music abroad, we have to deal with it and I think that it’s obvious that we really do it. For Heiden lyrics it is not fitting, because another key value of the band is a kind of authenticity. In english I usually cannot find the right word, I cannot expres myself fluently etc. so our lyrics stay in czech. But we are working on professional translations too, so if someone is extremely interested by us, stay in tune. We are going to deliver Andzjel lyric book soon.

Does „Andzel” mean the word „angel”? What angel do you mean?

Kverd: Yes and no. Andzjel was the word for young girls who helped goddesses with their profession. Many of them later became goddesses also, but there was a lot of sadness above this mission and life in Carpathians was hard.

So what is the album „Andzjel” about? You lyrically travel around the White Carpathians…

Kverd: The album is mainly about tendention to guard our own way of life. It is about introspection and roots. It is escapistic journey to the nature and identity of inhabitants of white carpathians, because I see many similarities between their and our lifes. Unfortunately.

The Carpathians are a dangerous and dark mountain range, where many dark folk beliefs come from… You are fascinated by the themes of above mentioned the goddesses from Žítková…

Kverd: I don’t want to say fascinated, but it is definitelly part of history. Life in that time and place was strongly influenced by the phenomenon. To be honest, nowadays it is more about touris which I really don’t like.

Your photos promoting the album come from this village? Does it look like an open-air museum?

Einsk: You guessed it right. It is an open-air museum where there are original cottages and buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries and where we love it very much. No one was there at the time and we had the whole area to ourselves, as it is officially closed in the off-season, although anyone can just walk there and soak up the atmosphere of old times. In addition, we chose a very cold spring day for the photo shoot, when it started snowing again later and we could also shoot the footage for the “I have to tell you so much” video. I will probably never forget that day, we managed to visually define Andjzel and ourselves in 2022.

I have the impression that now you are more “pagan” than when you started your adventure with HEIDEN. Your adaptation of the Moravian folk song from the Kopanice region “Sviť, měsíčku, bright” is totally dark and scary…

Kverd: I was very impressed by original version of the song, so much darkness behind. So we did our own adaptation and let whole the blackness grow up a bit. I’m glad that the song also did some impression on you.

And what does the sign of the cross symbolize in the „Musím ti tolik říct” music video?

Kverd: Humility.

You look like modest people in appearance, and you have terrible demons in your heads… Are they speaking through you on “Andzjel”? Or maybe the demons were in you from the beginning of HEIDEN? And these “Rock” albums were only supposed to put them to sleep? But I guess it didn’t work? Haha…

Einsk: There will be something haha. Every person has a little more than one face, and in each period of life each of them manifests itself to a greater or lesser extent. We have a dark aesthetic firmly rooted in us and a sense of raw music, and all of that had to come out over time and the subtle position had to be put aside. we are now on the north side, and I think we will remain there for some time.

You probably give concerts?

Einsk: We’re trying, but it’s quite difficult without an agent. In addition, we are at the stage where we all have small children at home and we need to provide babysitting and we cannot ride long lines. At the moment, we have confirmed two domestic events in Brno and Prague, where we will perform alongside the Romanian DORDEDUH and the Slovak BESNA. All the bands are united by the Carpathian theme and musical direction, so we are very much looking forward to it and we certainly invite people from Poland to come and combine, for example, a visit to Prague with our concert on May 13, 2023 or Brno on May 12, 2023. We will add info to our profiles soon. We’d like to play at some festivals and we’re trying to write to them, so we’ll see if anyone hears back 🙂

You cooperated with Naga Productions long time ago, then with Epidemie Records and for two albums you are with Magick Disk Musick. What the label is this?

Einsk: Naga productions was my own label, which I founded because Czech labels were not interested in working with us at the time and foreign ones did not communicate with us. Gradually I managed to release some super titles and it was successful. But nothing lasts forever and after 7 years it totally drained me and stopped working financially. That’s why I sold everything and went out of business. After that, we started publishing with EPIDEMIE records, which was interested in working with us. But he doesn’t do vinyl and we wanted vinyl. That’s why we went to Magick Disk Musick, which specializes in vinyl editions of Czech metal bands and later made us a CD. It is a small DIY label that makes Czech bands. We would like to have some kind of distribution and representation abroad in the future, but so far we have not been able to establish cooperation with anyone. Maybe Andzjel will change that 🙂

I saw you also have your own merch…

Einsk: Of course, at our shop eshop.heidenhorde.com you can order anything from the available discography as well as T-shirts with motifs for the new record and older albums. We do all the design ourselves or contact talented local creators. The design for the Andzjel T-shirt was designed for us by the talented Cruela and I think it turned out really well.

Ok. And that would be it! I leave the last pagan’s spells to HEIDEN…

Einsk: Above all, I want to thank you, Pawel, for giving us space and that we can also reach people in Poland. You have great bands and a metal scene there. It is a great inspiration for us and I hope to see you and the band soon. Stay tuned to HEIDEN and hang in there, freedom doesn’t come free.