Somewhere between atmospheric, melodic black and folk metal, SOJOURNER created their own little niche. „The Shadowed Road“, the sophomore record of the international band is a solid successor to their highly acclaimed debut „Empires Of Ash“. In this interview with mastermind Mike Lamb, you can read more about how SOJOURNER have evolved until now, why hope will always be an important part of their expression and if the band would also exist without the internet.
I have to admit that I had to use an online translation tool to understand the meaning of your bandname SOJOURNER. In which way do you consider yourselves musical „guests“ or „visitors“?
The word ‘Sojourner’ is someone who resides temporarily in a place, so almost like a traveller. That’s how we feel it’s most relevant, in that it is in keeping with our love of the natural world and in a lot of ways our sound and approach to music. Always moving forward, not staying in one place too long.
You are all from different parts of the world. How did you get to know each other and then decided to form SOJOURNER together?
I met Emilio after he contacted me about one of my old bands, we got talking and decided to give this style a shot. I’ve been in bands with Chloe for about 10-12 years, and we’re married, so it made perfect sense to get her on board as we work so well together musically. Mike Wilson joined later on bass, but I’ve known him and have been in bands with him for almost 15 years now so that was a logical addition. Riccardo was the final piece, added more recently, and he completed the whole line-up perfectly. So even though we’re scattered (with the exception of Chloe and me), we’re like a family.
Do you think SOJOURNER would also exist without the advantages of the internet?
Not in the form it is in of course, not without Emilio’s vocals or Riccardo’s drumming, since we’d never have met them in the first place. In terms of the songs, yeah, Chloe and I would have likely written this kind of stuff together since it’s our natural style of writing when combined, but it wouldn’t be SOJOURNER as it is now without our other components of Emilio, Mike W., and Riccardo.
You recently got a permanent drummer, Riccardo Floridia. How did that come together?
He contacted me after „Empires…“ was released, and we’ve just become really good friends since. He’s really completed the line-up, his drumming is fantastic and he’s the nicest guy I’ve ever met so it was an easy decision to bring him on board.
Your singer Chloe Bray sings mostly in a gentle way and not operatic, unlike many other women in metal. What do you think about operatic vocals – would it also be an option for SOJOURNER?
I’m honestly not a fan of operatic vocals, I find them quite abrasive at worst and they bore me at best (in most instances, there are always a few exceptions obviously). My favourite vocalists are people like Britany Slayes from Unleash The Archers, who has a much more rock and power metal-oriented voice than anything operatic, and I absolutely love other more subtle, gentle female vocalists like Heike from Draconian, Anna or Fabienne from Eluveitie, and Anneke from The Gathering and Vuur etc. So Chloe’s vocals were exactly what we needed and wanted, something pretty and gentle. We’ve definitely got no wises to ever include any operatic vocals, that’s definitely not something that will ever suit SOJOURNER.
In 2017 you made a cover of „South Away“ for a compilation dedicated to Summoning. How did that come around and why did you pick exactly this song?
Wolfspell Records contacted us and asked us to do a cover, so we figured “why not?”. There were some other great bands on the roster for the tribute album, so it made sense since we were only just ramping up the writing for the next album at the time and weren’t particularly busy at the time. We just picked „South Away“ because it’s a good song, and hadn’t already been covered. If we had absolutely free choice, we would have picked ‘Land Of The Dead’ but Eldamar had already taken that one.
Summoning surely are a big inspiration to you, aren’t they? What else do you get inspired by as musicians?
To be honest, they’re not really. We respect them, for sure, but they’re not a band that we consider a direct inspiration. I think maybe the fact that we have synthesizers and epic song atmospheres causes people to make that connection more often than not? A lot of people mention it, but I don’t really hear personally, though that but it might be because I’m too close to the songs and kind of already associate them with the things that actually inspired them. That’s not to say we don’t like them though! Not at all, I just don’t really listen to them all that often and don’t think of them in relation to things that inspire Chloe and I as songwriters. We listen to a lot of stuff more along the lines of Moonsorrow, Agalloch, Dissection, Rotting Christ, Mgla, Batushka, Windir, Borknagar, Wintersun etc. along with a lot of doom and power metal. We’re also quite influenced by soundtracks, they are a huge inspiration to how we approach the music and melodies.
Apart from typical metal sounds you also make use of folk instruments like an acoustic guitar and a tin-whistle. What do you think about bands that just imitate those instruments on their keyboard? Would you say that real instruments are always the better choice?
I mean, yeah, when you can use the real instruments it’s the best choice for sure! But I never look down at a band for synthesizing anything. If the final product is good, why complain? Music isn’t something that should be judged by elitism, it should be a celebration of what people can create with the resources they’ve got. There are some phenomenal albums made entirely on synthesizers! Each to their own really. It’s the beauty of music in 2018, anybody can make it with some talent and a few cheap, or even free, tools. There’s nothing stopping anyone that has a drive to make it. It’s great.
Folk instruments and female vocals are sometimes seen as cheesy by metalheads. What, do you think, has to be considered in order to make sure that it doesn’t get cheesy?
We’re not really too worried really, we’re making music that we love for us and for potential fans, not to please elitists. In almost every instance I can think of the people who enjoy our music all seem to be very open minded and have a lot of musical interests, and of course there are people who think we’re cheesy… but that just doesn’t factor into it. I love a lot of bands that are considered cheesy, we all do, and while we do try to avoid overt cheesiness when we can we don’t consider it a bad thing if a melody here or there is a bit upbeat or folky. I think the wrong kind of cheesiness happens when people make things without passion, when their music becomes a caricature of what they’re aiming for instead of something made with heart. As for finding female vocals cheesy… I don’t really understand that in the slightest really. There’s plenty of overly testosterone-filled tough-guy metal out there in case anybody feels threatened by some female voices in their metal.
Your latest album is called „The Shadowed Road“. It’s about the bright as well as the dark parts of the journey of life, isn’t it? Would you say that it this is a result of your growth as human being?
Yeah, it definitely is about both the bright and dark parts of the journey of life. So was „Empires…“ though, it just had a slightly more downbeat tone overall, but it was still an album of hope and triumph as much as it was an album of melancholy.
Your debut „Empires Of Ash“ on the other hand is said to be darker. Was that so because you had a more negative mindset at that time or was there a different reason?
Nah, not at all, they both have the same feelings and intentions behind them, I think we just found our sound a bit more during the process of writing our second album. „Empires…“ had a darker overall tone, but it was still a hopeful album. It’s just progression, the sound evolving and some elements coming through more while others move to the background a bit.
Would you consider this element of hope to be an integral part of your music or could you also imagine doing a completely dark album some time in the future?
The hopefully aspect is 100 % part of our approach to writing the music, it’s a part of the band. There are equal parts hope, triumph, and sadness in the atmosphere of our music. Maybe next time the album might be darker in some respects, but in a different way than anything we’ve done. We don’t know yet. All we know is that we’ve got a lot more music in us.
The mixing of „The Shadowed Road“ was done by Øystein G. Brun (Borknagar), the mastering by Dan Swanö. Why did you choose exactly those two for these particular tasks?
We’ve respected both of them hugely for the entire time we’ve listened to metal. I’m a huge fan of the work of both, and once I got to know Øystein there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that he was the man for the job. Dan sprang out of that actually, we got in touch through Øystein’s suggestion. We could not be happier with the outcome.
Do you think your music would also work with low-fi production? After all, Summoning for example don’t have that much of a polished production either…
Not really, we have been striving for great production since „Empires…“ and only really achieved it on „The Shadowed Road“. We love good, clear, punchy production and I have no real interest in making any of our albums sound low-fi for the sake of it. Production values matter a lot to me.
Anders Jacobsson (Draconian) also contributed to the album: He wrote the lyrics for the track „Titan“. How comes?
Emilio and Anders are good friends, and Emilio really wanted him to do a guest contribution to the album so he asked him to do the lyrics for a song.
The fantastic artwork was created by the Romanian artist Bast, right? How did he come to your attention and why did you decide to let him do the job?
Bast contacted us with a video of him doing an open-air painting in the Romanian mountains overlaid to our song ‘Homeward’ off „Empires Of Ash“. That was really touching, we loved seeing that, so we sat on that for a while and I eventually contacted him again when it came time to begin work on the artwork for the new album. I had high hopes, but he blew me away.
You recently played your first love show with Saor in Glasgow, didn’t you? I guess it took quite a big effort to organize it, wasn’t it?
It definitely was a big effort, and sadly we had a bit of a guitar tech issue during the show with my guitar, but that aside I think it was okay for a first gig. We’re playing in Germany next week, and there’ll be more to come after that though. It’s hard to get us all together, but worth it.
Do you plan on doing more shows in the future?
Yeah definitely, as I said we’ve got some coming up, but we’re definitely going to be doing more in the future!
Let’s continue with our traditional Metal1.info-Brainstorming:
I’m not sure if I quite understand exactly what I’m supposed to say… but here goes…
Sci-fi: all Alastair Reynolds books, Arthur C. Clarke’s „Rendezvous with Rama“, Dan Simmon’s „Hyperion“, Neal Stephenson’s „Snow Crash“, the movie „Sunshine“, „Event Horizon“, Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, my degree at university. (laughs)
Death Metal: Fleshgod Apocalypse, Cannibal Corpse, Carcass, Morbid Angel, Entombed, Bolt Thrower, Behemoth, Obscura, The Black Dahlia Murder.
Drum computer: Uhhhhhhh, I like to use Steven Slate Drums for demoing. If that’s what you mean.
Concept record: Rush’s „2112“, Pink Floyd’s „The Wall“, all of Coheed & Cambria, Iron Maiden’s „Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son“, all Ayreon albums, Avantasia’s „The Metal Opera“.
Optimism: It’s important, the world needs it. Especially in the state it’s in these days.
Ancestors: Personally I’m just from stock standard English/Scottish/Irish decent, nothing too exciting.
So, we’ve already reached the end of our interview – thank you once more. The final words shall be yours:
Thank you for the interview, and thank you to everyone for the support!
30. Juni 2018 Stephan Rajchl
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