Swedish Extreme Metal Group HYPERION unleashed an overall well-made debut last year with „Seraphical Euphony„. But can the sound rather be labeled as Black oder Melodic Death Metal? Neither the one nor the other thing, but a bit of both, according to guitar player Erik Molnar. Here you can learn about his further thougths on topics like metal from his home country, the album’s music and lyrics – or ice hockey and swedish food…
The term „HYPERION“ has quite a number of different meanings – to which did you refer when choosing it as band name?
Hello and thank you for taking the time to interview HYPERION. This is very much appreciated. The band name holds a number of different meanings within many different contexts, but it originates from Greek mythology and that is where we took the name from as well. „Hyperion“ was the titan of the sun before the Olympian gods came to power. The name reflects our music very well with regard to its epic nature and mysterious atmosphere. Also, some of our lyrics deal with Greek mythology, so that makes for a perfect match.
On your facebook page, you describe your sound as Melodic Death and Melodic Black Metal. To which of those genres do you personally feel more connected?
I personally would not label our music as either one of them. All of us in the band do not agree on this particular point, but I would just categorize our music as Melodic Extreme Metal. We are certainly not a Black Metal band, since our lyrics are not satanic, nor do they deal with devil worshiping concepts whatsoever. We also do not limit ourselves to only make use of elements within the Death Metal genre, so it would be a bit narrow to call us Death Metal. Our music is a lot more inspired by Black Metal than by Death Metal, but I do not consider us to belong in anyone of those two categories.
Concerning your debut album about which we’ll talk later, I personally feel that the Black metal aspects are more distinct than the death metal ones. Which black metal bands do you think had a special influence on the album?
As I said and explained already, HYPERION is not a Black Metal band, but yes, I agree with your statement. There are countless of Black Metal or Black Metal Sounding bands that have inspired us, but a couple of major ones would be: Emperor, Dissection, Marduk, Funeral Mist, Dawn and Ulver. Musically, I guess we are more akin to the sound of Black Metal rather than Death Metal. Although, you can clearly hear elements of pure Death Metal in our music as well.
You just mentioned Dissection and I notice that your sound faces often comparison with them. How do you see that?
It is not a strange comparison at all. They are, after all one of our main influences. I would like to add, however that we incorporate influences from a wide variety of other bands as well as musical genres into our music as well, so I would not see us as a copy-cat band by any means. All in all, this comparison does not bother me at all. There are worse bands to be compared to and besides, people can talk all they want. It will not affect our musical direction, nor what we do in any way, shape, or form.
In order to focus a bit more on Melodic Death Metal, I think that the genre has a very high status in your home country Sweden, with lots of popular bands coming from there. What are your thoughts on the swedish Melodeath-scene, or also Swedish metal in general?
The Swedish Melodic Death Metal scene is what shaped HYPERION in its infant stages and it continues to be a very prevalent influence to this day. Classic albums of that genre released in the 90s are among the strongest musical works of all time in my opinion. We Swedes have a very strong musical heritage and we do not cower from that fact by any means. Most of us in the band respect the classical bands from the 90s an awful lot and you can certainly hear that in our music. The music of other Swedish artists than those who play Melodic Death Metal such as Malign, Dissection, Ofermod, Funeral Mist, Marduk, Dawn, Vintersorg, Falconer, Mithotyn and a couple of 100 other bands as well are highly respectable acts to that I certainly have countless hours listening to throughout the years. Needless to say, the respect for many of our fellow countrymen is very strong indeed.
One more Sweden-related question besides music: I have heard some times that when it comes to ice hockey, Sweden and Finland are huge rivals. Are you an ice hockey fan? And if so, what would you say about this relationship?
Sports are among the most uninteresting topics in the world in my book. I appreciate the act of exercising and taking care of your health, but chasing a ball, or a puck, or whatever and then scream at another person for not cheering at the same team as you is nothing but pure retardation if you ask me. Two of us in the band are of Finnish descent, four actually if counting Finland-Swedes, the Swedish-speaking minority whose allegiance when it comes to sports may vary. And like with any neighboring countries, prejudices are quite common on both sides. You also have to consider the fact that Finland was under Swedish rule for several hundreds of years, which naturally has left its mark on the Finnish population. With regard to the hockey relationship however, you will have to ask someone who is more engaged in that type of activity. I think Harry (Harry Lauraéus, vocalist, editor’s note) appreciates it.
Well then. let’s talk about music again and we move on to your 
debut album „Seraphical Euphony“. I think that when you’re at the very beginning of making an album, you have this kind of vision of how it should sound in the end. So, when you compare the record now with your expectations, does it fulfill everything and sound like you wanted it to sound?
I think we pretty much accomplished what we set out to do with this album. I was a bit worried at first, that the sound quality would not mirror the epic atmosphere and that it would not do the material justice, but under the craftsmanship of Sverker Widgren at Wing Studios and the under the guidance of our vision, the sound quality actually exceeded our original expectations 100-fold. There are a few minor things here and there that could have been better, of course, but all in all, we are very happy with the end result.
How can we imagine the songwriting process? Did you share the parts that are to compose on the whole band, or do you have some members who are responsible for all the composing stuff?
The songwriting process can best be described as chaotic, thorough and very open minded. Some members of the band compose a lot more music than others, but everyone is welcome to contribute with ideas, as long the end result is good enough to label as HYPERION material. That being said, HYPERION is very much a band. The experience of creating music is shared by most members. We usually compose copious amounts of material, play around with each other’s ideas in our Dropbox folder and we only end up using the ideas which are the greatest. Sometimes, me and Mikael (Mikael Malm, guitarist, editor’s note) meet and arrange and compose together in the same room, but often times, we sit and compose in our own separate environments. The process is usually quite long and often times arduous, but that’s part of making the music worthwhile.
Some songs, like the title track, also include symphonic elements. How did those influences come up? Did you work together with a real orchestra and choirs?
The epic nature of the songs demand a certain amount of orchestration in order to enhance the general grandiose atmosphere even further. In the case of the title-track, it just felt natural to use a large amount of orchestrations as it seemed to fit every part of the song. A lot of the music we listen to is very dramatic and a lot of it includes orchestral, or classical elements and that I am sure that it has rubbed off on us as well. All symphonic parts, pads and choirs were either programmed by us using VSTS, or recorded by our drummer, who in turn used plugins to record them from home on his keyboard.
Is there a chance that you will include more symphonic parts in your further music?
That is certainly a possibility. HYPERION has always been a very guitar driven band, however and I don’t see us turning into a heavier version of Nightwish if you will (even though I personally love Nightwish for the record). Only time will tell what direction the future material will take. I personally love a lot of symphonic bands and orchestrated music in general, so I would certainly not have anything against that being the case, but we shall see.
Your vocalist Harry Lauraéus uses mainly typical black metal screaming, however the last song „Blood Of The Ancients“ contains additional clean vocals. Is he also responsible for them, and could you imagine to use cleans more often in the future?
True that. Harry is the one responsible for those clean vocals and they were actually his idea to begin with. When the lyrics for that particular song was finished, I insisted on having growling and screaming vocals on those clean passages, but he managed to convince me to consider otherwise. I could imagine us having some more clean vocals in the future, although I find that HYPERION’s music demands the power and the aggression that you can only get from the guttural, raw and expressive nature of Extreme Metal vocals. We don’t ever sit down and plan, or try to calculate what should come next with regard to our material. We just do what feels right.
How would you describe the lyrics? Which topics do you deal with on „Seraphical Euphony“ and what inspired you to choose them?
The lyrics on „Seraphical Euphony“ cover many different subjects and most of them are related in a way. It is definitely not a concept album, though. The topics of choice often revolve around ancient legends, mythology, stories of ancient warlords and often times those types of topics are used as 
abstractions to convey a specific message, or philosophical standpoint. A lot of time and energy is spent making the lyrics as representative and strong as possible, so they are by no means just ‘‘random cool words‘‘ that we just put together for the hell of it. A lot of personal outlooks upon important overarching concepts in life are also expressed in the lyrics. The lyrical subject of choice usually depends on the general mood of the music and what we want to express at that point.
I could write an entire book about each lyrical topic on „Seraphical Euphony“, but I will just give you a couple of short topic summaries as examples to keep it short. „Flagellum Dei“ for example deals with the story of Attila the Hun, while „Empyrean Yearning (Flagellum Dei Part II)“ deals with the story of Genghis Khan. The song „Seraphical Euphony“ is basically a story that was inspired by the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice that is a metaphor for something we wanted to express that summarizes the general direction of the lyrical concepts on the album.
Let’s have a look into the future. The album is out, what about bringing the songs on stage? Any concrete live plans?
Oh, yes. We have been playing more and more live since the album was released, which I think is a healthy thing for the band. We need to get out there and promote the album and bring people the full live experience of Hyperion. Our record label has made sure that we will embark on our first European tour this autumn and there are some other plans in the air to perform live in other cities and countries as much as possible. Two shows for the autumn have been booked so far and more are coming. You will definitely hear more about that in the future!
Imagine a follow-up album to „Seraphical Euphony“. How would you want it to sound, what should be different or even better than on your debut?
I want it to sound like HYPERION. It will probably feature all of the musical elements on „Seraphical Euphony“, but taken to a whole other level. I would like it to be grandiose, super-melodic, intensive, and brutal and I would like it to venture further down some musical directions, which we have never traversed before. Personally, I try to work on new music almost every day in one way, or another and we have quite a lot of material lying around, but it’s far too early to speculate of a follow up to „Seraphical Euphony“. The material will continue to evolve and grow in it’s on pace and when we feel that we have enough quality material the record another album, we will most definitely do so.
Thanks a lot for taking time. I’d like to finish the interview with our traditional Metal1-brainstorming session. What comes to your mind when you read those things?
Amon Amarth: Tremolo picking and the very distinctive viking growls of Johan Hegg.
Jon Nödtveidt: Usually a song, or a cover art from Dissection enters my mind when I read his name. He was one the most unique and talented artistic minds to have ever walked this earth in my opinion.
Depressive Suicidal Black Metal: I usually think about my other band Mist Of Misery, or of my friend Mortuz Denatus when seeing that label for some reason. It’s not a genre that I have taken a huge dive into, but there are a couple of bands like Coldworld that really make this genre something worthy of recognition.
Swedish food: Swedish Christmas food, eggs covered with sour cream and caviar, meatballs and potatoes. Perhaps not all that Swedish, but still extremely pleasant to my taste buds!
Germany: The land of a lot of proud people according to my impression. Perhaps not always proud in some aspects, but a lot of Germans seem to have a very particular way of communicating in order to make their points come across, and of course…. Blind Guardian!
Facebook: The Facebook logo and some random Facebook page in the Google Chrome browser usually comes to mind when reading that word.
That’s it! I leave it up to you to finish the talk. If you want to add anything, feel free to do so.
Thank you once again for taking the time to interview us and coming up with some interesting questions. Not all interviewers actually research and try to ask questions about things that are specific for the particular band they are interviewing. Also, I would like to extend my gratitude to all of those who have supported us so far. You have been nothing short of amazing. Eonian zeal recites in Euphony!