With their third album „To Hell Or Kingdom Come“, HEIDRA finish their fantasy trilogy about a king who is driven out of his kingdom and of course wants to get it back. Musically, the Danish band presents an exciting mix of melodic death metal and symphonic power metal with more stringency and clearer lines than before. We talk to singer and songwriter Morten Bryld about the concept, the musical development and the making of the record.
HEIDRA was founded in 2006, but the first album came only in 2014 – why did it take you 8 years?
Well, we were very young back then. I believe I was 17-18, and things moved quite slowly. We didn’t have a full line-up and we spent more time drinking beer and playing cover songs than anything else. We warmed up for Turisas at a local club in Copenhagen and we didn’t even have enough songs to fill a set, so we played Monsorrow’s “Sankarihauta” to fill out the time. After that we did two demos. The second demo, “Northern Tales”, was kind of supposed to be our first album, and it is album length, but it was just not album quality, so we decided against releasing it as anything more than a demo. Our first proper recording was the “Sworn to Vengeance” EP from 2012. So the first years flew by quite fast with a lot of downtime as well, because we didn’t have a drummer or second guitar player for a long while.
What does your band name mean? HEIDRA reminds me of the word „Heide“ in German, meaning heathen. How did you come up with the name, what does it mean and how does it represent the band?
I’m not an expert on etymology, but I suppose it could be derived from the same word. The band is named after the Windir song “Heidra”. As far as I’ve been able to find out, it’s an old Norwegian word for “honour” or “hail” – much like the old Norse “heiðra”, that means the same thing.
„To Hell Or Kingdom Come“ is the conclusion of your “The Dawn” trilogy – can you briefly summarize the story so far and tell how it develops on the current album?
Well, basically the trilogy is about a king who has been ousted from his kingdom by his evil half-brother. The first album takes place on the eve before what is supposed to be the big battle for the throne. It is the story of how he gathers allies, and the trials they face together, before facing their enemies in a final showdown on the battlefield.
Album number two starts off with the battle that the entire first album was building up to, but just when the battle starts turning in our hero’s favour, an enemy warlock reveals himself and casts our hero and all his men down to hell. The rest of that album tells the story of how he finds his way back to the land of the living.
“To Hell Or Kingdom Come” provides a bit of the background to the story of the trilogy in the first two songs and then proceeds to tell the story of how our hero finally comes to face off against his half-brother.
On the cover artwork, I recognize the protagonist of the two previous albums, whom you just introduced as the displaced king. What can you tell me about him, how does he personally develop in this story and what antagonist is he facing on the artwork?
We’ve intentionally left him unnamed and faceless, to keep a bit of mystery. He’s kind of a generic fantasy protoganist if you will. He goes through many trials and ultimately triumphs over evil.
To address your question about the artwork, we need to look at the lyrics to “Ancient Gates”:
“As we approached the ancient gates
The very ground did squirm and shake
Stone was rent, and cracks did form
As things that weren’t of woman born
Came writhing from the earth
The gates of hell gave birth
A horde bound by his will
To rip and rend and kill
Things that slither, things most foul
Things that hiss and things that howl
They came in answer to his call
To form a ghastly spectral wall”
So, it’s basically a huge blob of spirits of evil monsters and demons. (laughs) Dragan Paunovic did a great job on the artwork for this one.
In my opinion, with the third album your style has developed even more in the direction of melodic death metal with power metal elements and muss less pagan elements, in comparison your debut seems quite chaotic and overloaded. Are you still searching for the right style for you or is this a natural development?
I absolutely agree. It was a very conscious decision we made very early in the songwriting process for this album, that we wanted to make an album with a more well-defined style. And while we still incorporate a lot of the same stuff we used to do, the gap between the styles from song to song has become much smaller. We don’t go from full-on folk metal to power metal to black metal from song to song on this album. We wanted to create a more streamlined album where all the songs made sense together as a whole.
In my review I tried to describe the album as a mixture of melodic death metal of the Dark Tranquillity or Insomnium brand with heroic folk/power metal and melodic heaviness such as from Iced Earth. How would you describe your style and influences yourself?
I think you nailed it. All of us love stuff like Dark Tranquillity and Amorphis and they’re an influence for sure. I’m personally very into power metal, and that definitely influences my songwriting and vocal style. When we sat down to write this album the main concept at the top of the drawing board was symphonic/melodic death metal with clean vocals, basically.
With a mixture of genres like yours, it’s certainly a big task to pay attention to the right balance of styles in songwriting. How do you approach the distribution of the stylistic elements when writing the songs, do you have exact plans for a perfect balance?
Not really, it’s all a matter of where the song takes you. When I write a song I don’t think much about genre, I just know I have to write a HEIDRA song. But at the same time, I can definitely tell when I’ve strayed too far from what I set out to write, which is also why this album had a lot of songs that were scrapped because they didn’t fit into what we were trying to do. We were very critical of the material for this album.
The album also sounds much more symphonic and epic than its predecessors. How can this development be explained, and which other bands, soundtracks or composers have inspired you in songwriting in this respect?
Is it? I feel like the symphony and “epicness” was also very present on “The Blackening Tide”. Also on “Awaiting Dawn”, but in a different way, with keyboards rather than orchestral parts. I think a big part of why it seems that way comes from the production. This album definitely has the “biggest” sound we’ve ever had. We have Marco Mastrobuono to thank for that – he really outdid himself in the production of this album if you ask me.
One big difference on this album is that I did all the keys and orchestrations for this one myself. I got some help from Francesco Ferrini, who is a Jedi Master when it comes to orchestration, to get started doing this on my own. On this album, orchestrations and keys are there to support the guitars and provide some melody. Perhaps in time I’ll learn more and be able to incorporate it even more in our music.
Aside from bands and music, what inspires you in songwriting and writing lyrics?
I can’t think of anything non-music related that inspires the songwriting itself, but in relation to lyrics, which I honestly had very little to do with on this album, I’d say the main inspiration is old folk tales and fantasy novels. I wrote all the lyrics for the first album, but after James, who is a much more gifted lyric writer than I am, joined the band, he basically took over lyric writing, aside from a few songs on “The Blackening Tide”. We of course brainstormed about the story that I’d started, but he did all the writing.
Francesco Paoli of Fleshgod Apocalypse recorded the drums on the album. How did you get into contact and collaboration and how was it to work with him?
We know Francesco from when we toured with Ensiferum and Fleshgod Apocalypse back in 2016, but Marco, our producer, also works with Fleshgod on their albums, so it was quite easy to get in touch and for them to track the drums for the album together in Italy. Due to Covid we decided that it was better to bring Marco to Denmark, rather than flying the entire band to Rome, risking one of us getting Covid and fucking things up.
So, I talked about the drums with Francesco over Skype after I had sent him my initial drum track ideas, and he would actually program the entire drum track with his own take and ideas, and after we agreed and everything was approved, he would record it with Marco pretty much exactly the way he programmed it. After that Marco flew to Denmark with the drum tracks in hand and we recorded everything at our guitar player Carlos’ house.
So it was pretty seamless, and it was great to get a chance to have Francesco featured on our album. I guess that’s one good thing to come out of Covid. He probably wouldn’t have had time for us otherwise, haha.
Which of the tracks on „To Hell Or Kingdom Come“ are your personal favorites?
I think I’d have to go with “Retribution’s Dawn” and the title track, “To Hell or Kingdom Come”.
Let’s conclude with our traditional brainstorming. What comes to your mind first when you read the following words?
Current favorite album: Arjen Lucassen’s Star One – Revel in Time.
Religion: Bullshit.
Summer: Festivals and cold beer!
Best Movie-/Series-/Book-Universe: MCU?
Video games: “The Legend of Zelda”.
Collecting: Metal albums.
Something that makes every bad day better: A nice homecooked meal.
HEIDRA in ten years: Main stage at Wacken!
Thank you once again for your time! The last words are all yours.
Thank you very much for some insightful questions. And to everyone who reads this, go check out our new album and be on the lookout for a HEIDRA show near you!
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24. April 2022 Stefan Popp
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