Interview mit Javier „Mille“ Fernández Milla von TodoMal

Your outstanding new album, „Graveyards Of Joy“, brings your album trilogy to a close. Could you tell us a bit about the overarching themes of the trilogy, from Ultracrepidarian through „A Greater Good“ to „Graveyards Of Joy“?
Hello! We’re so glad to be featured on your site. Honestly, the whole „trilogy“ concept came about a bit by accident once we’d finished the new album. A strange bit of serendipity, really. Some people (especially in the early reviews) started mentioning that idea, and the label picked up on it too… and it wasn’t until we took a step back and looked at things with a bit of perspective that we realised it actually made sense. We’d made a connected body of records that hung together. When we made „Ultracrepidarian“ back in 2020, there was this uncertainty floating around about what the future held for everyone. That’s where songs like „Horror Vacui“ came from, describing that feeling. At the time, we had no idea whether the project would even carry on beyond that. But bit by bit, thanks to Ardua Music taking an interest, the project was properly born. That pushed us to get stuck into the second album. The world had calmed down a bit by then, but personal upheavals started hitting hard. I think „A Greater Good“ revolves around accepting difficult (mostly personal) situations, and „Graveyards Of Joy“ is the resolution to all of it. It’s grief, but on the other hand it’s also the strength to look to the future bravely and carry on. To find peace. To accept that some wounds never fully heal, but that can’t stop us enjoying life.

I’ve said a few times it’s a bit like a set-up, a knot, and a resolution. But the funny thing is, we didn’t see it that clearly until we’d stepped back a bit from our own music. Everything we write is very personal, and these three records are a kind of diary of our lives over the last six years. A long timeline, with hard moments and brilliant ones too – like anyone’s life, really. We’re just lucky and privileged to be able to channel it through songwriting.

With that in mind, do you see TODOMAL continuing to work with overarching concepts in the future, or could your next material break away from this trilogy and head in a completely different direction?
Honestly, we haven’t got a clue. Everything we do is a lot more spontaneous than it looks. We don’t set out to make these massive, monumental works, at least not in a narrative sense. We’ve found a space where we feel comfortable making music, a bit like our own private little island. We do have a taste for drama and grandeur, and I’ll admit that sometimes comes from a pretty dark sense of humour, and an attitude that’s very far from taking ourselves too seriously. That’s not to say we don’t take what we do seriously – we absolutely do. But sometimes that theatricality has an ironic undercurrent to it. Even though this album has plenty of psychotherapy and catharsis in it, sometimes we need a tinge of abstraction and surrealism. You can see that in the „Point Of Coalescence“ video, for example, or the one for „Graveyards Of Joy“. It’s also hugely therapeutic to be a bit unhinged now and then. And when you set that against something dead serious, the contrast can hit even harder.

Musically, you’ve always translated your themes into expansive and deeply immersive compositions. What inspires you when writing your songs?
Inspiration… sometimes you just have to wait for it to turn up. When you go looking for it, it rarely shows its face. To write, we need to be in a certain headspace. And it’s definitely not when you’re feeling low. That whole „tortured artist“ aesthetic doesn’t work for us. Looking back, our most productive spells have always come when we’ve been stable, mentally and personally (which isn’t always easy), and we’ve made the most of that by travelling, driving down endless roads listening to music – anything from APHRODITE’S CHILD to ELOY, or whatever has a bit of kitsch to it. Going to museums, spending time in the Matarraña region, where our main studio is, with people… basically, enjoying ourselves. Then, obviously, life carries on with its ups and downs during that process, and that ends up filtering into what we write.
We have always found that true inspiration is spontaneous rather than the result of long, forced studio sessions. We prefer to capture those initial creative sparks on the fly, using our home studios to record quick demos before developing them further.

The atmospheric side of your genre often has a distinctly cinematic quality. To what extent do you see influences from classical film scores in your music?
Are there any particular composers or soundtracks that have inspired you?
There’s quite a lot of that in what we do. But beyond just liking certain composers (Ennio Morricone, Vangelis, Danny Elfman, Giorgio Moroder…), it comes from having a „visual“ idea of music in the first place. What we do is heavily shaped by our surroundings, like that region of Spain I mentioned where we usually finish off the recordings. Endless skies, ruins, loads of open space… and it’s pretty natural for that imagery to give what we do a cinematic feel. Listening back to the day’s recordings under the stars, with no light pollution, is something else entirely. A lot of people mention a bit of a „western“ flavour in the verses of „Deliverance“… though we’re more into spaghetti western ourselves, if we’re honest. But the idea was to give that track, and all of them really, whatever treatment felt interesting or original, and take them somewhere else. Away from the obvious, so to speak. We don’t treat doom (or whatever genre) as a box to stay inside. It’s more of a starting point to launch whatever’s going through our heads. That’s probably why a lot of traditional doom metal fans find what we do quite far removed from the style. And they’re right. We don’t want to be the heaviest, the slowest, or (if you’ll allow the expression) the most tedious act on the scene.

Inspiration also comes from musical influences. Which artists or bands have had the greatest impact on the music TODOMAL creates today?
Well, being a certain age, it’s not always so easy to be blown away by something new. There are obviously bands we love, but I think we’ve found our own formula by now. Or at least a formula that gives us enough room. But to name a few kindred spirits we’re into… AVATARIUM, YOB, GREEN CARNATION, IMPURE WILHELMINA, CRIPPLED BLACK PHOENIX… It’s not that we’ve got loads in common with them musically, but we share that idea of pushing music out to the edges of a genre that can feel too rigid. We tend to click more with „hybrid“ bands, not the strictly orthodox ones. Though there are more classic-style bands we absolutely love too, obviously, like CANDLEMASS or CATHEDRAL.

How does the music on „Graveyards Of Joy“ relate to the album artwork, and what exactly are we looking at on the cover?
The album cover bears an uncanny resemblance to the landscape I mentioned earlier. If you look at the back cover photo – the colours, the type of sky, the rock – it’s almost identical. As identical as a photograph can be to a 19th-century Romantic painting, anyway. That photo, and others from the album’s promo shoot, aren’t retouched at all. That’s exactly what the sky looked like at that moment. So when we came across the Lluís Rigalt painting, it felt like an almost mystical revelation.

And if you look closely at that painting, it shows the ruins of a church, a dead landscape gradually being covered in life again. There’s an implicit rebirth in there, a sense of hope. The album title itself reflects that feeling. In the painting, if you look really closely, there’s a barely noticeable old man and a young man. A bit like two generations, one taking over from the other, perhaps. It all lines up with the album’s music, that contrast between light and darkness. The idea that something new can be born out of desolation. That hope, we think, comes through most clearly in the title track, especially in its final crescendo.

The title „Graveyards Of Joy“ carries a strong sense of melancholy. What meaning lies behind it?
It’s really hard to put into words without it sounding like self-flagellation. But I can sum it up by saying that, over the last while, we’ve lost people very close to us, which have affected us deeply. But we’ve also welcomed new people into our lives. We’re born, we die… that cosmic balance that keeps the wheel of life turning. The rest of the band have also come into our lives, which has been a real gift. But on this album, yes, there is a sense of farewell and of needing to look forward. A lot of it stems from very hard moments, but in the end… grief is a tool, and if you don’t use it as a springboard, a starting point to launch yourself forward, it’s just self-torment. We don’t want to be the typical clichéd artists wallowing in tragedy. We want to travel, play, meet people and enjoy life. And the ones who are sadly no longer with us will come along with us wherever we go, because they’re part of our life, our memories, our DNA. It also ties into that idea of accepting that some wounds never fully close, and we have to carry them with a bit of pride, and find peace in that. We’re not philosophers or anything like that, mind! And I don’t want it to sound like cheap self-help either.

Could you tell us a little about the creation of „Graveyards Of Joy“? What does your songwriting process usually look like?
Basically it always starts with a simple, basic demo, with one main idea. Something that gets us excited and where we can see potential. Since Christopher and I live in different cities, we usually send those ideas back and forth to each other. With each „trip“, so to speak, the songs get reworked, they mutate… until we end up with something like a rough-ish version of the track. Once we’ve got a set of songs more or less decided on (though that can still change a hundred times or none, depending on the song), we head to the Matarraña studio to finish shaping the vocal takes, acoustic guitars, and steer the production a bit. Sort of pulling everything together. Sometimes we cut songs, or shelve them… and whatever survives ends up being the album. Then comes the more technical stage, which I usually handle, fine-tuning the mixes and all the boring bits. We’ve also got Javi Félez in the live band, from Moontower Studios, so we finished off the last technical stages there… and that’s about it, really. But the initial spark is usually something really simple, really basic. Christopher’s more impulsive with that side of things. I write too, but at the end of the day he’s the one who has to sell the songs live. And I love it when he takes a demo of mine and completely flips it around. He’s got a really distinctive sense of melody, and he always elevates whatever I bring. I think one of our strengths is that we complement each other really well. Which isn’t always easy, because we’re very different people, with different tastes and very particular sensibilities. That’s exactly why what the other person brings is always so surprising and stimulating.

Given that „Graveyards Of Joy“ serves as the concluding chapter of your trilogy, did you feel any additional pressure when it came to the songwriting or the overall quality of the album? After all, people often say that endings are the hardest part.
Yes and no. On one hand… we’re well aware of who we are and where we stand. We’ve got no dreams of stardom beyond just carrying on making music and sharing it with as many people as possible. So there’s that „nothing to lose“ feeling.
On the other hand, with the very flattering reviews that have been coming in for the new album, and the reception the previous two got… you always feel that pressure to live up to expectations. I don’t buy it at all when bands say they „don’t care what people think“ and all that. Obviously you make music for yourself, because it’s your natural way of expressing things. But once you put it out there, release it into the world and share it, of course you want the response to be positive. You make music for yourself, but you release it for people. It’s part of that ego every creative person carries around. So yes, we’re starting to feel that pressure. But at the end of the day… it’s just music.
We, the bands, put records out into the world thinking they’ll be some kind of cornerstone… and in the end they disappear into a sea of releases, of numbers… and even more so now that digital music dominates everything… records have a shelf life of about two weeks, like moths drawn to a light. So in the end, you’re just a drop in the ocean.

Looking back, how would you say TODOMAL has evolved from „Ultracrepidarian“ to „Graveyards Of Joy“?
I think the ingredients have been the same from the start. What’s probably changed is the proportion of those ingredients. The doom side, the darkness, the symphonic and progressive elements – they’ve always been there. We’ve also changed personally along the way, improving whatever we felt could be improved, refining the productions. That’s not a recipe for success, mind you, because nothing guarantees how the final result turns out. I know people who say our first album is their favourite (which makes sense – when you discover a band, you get a special connection to their first record)… but the thing is, that album, or the previous one, reflects a moment in our lives that’s now gone. Back then, it was the album we had to make, or the one we were capable of making. And that gives it a very distinct light, its own „identity“. At this point, with „Graveyards Of Joy“, regardless of the general reception (which has genuinely been great), it’s the record that represents us best today.

I think we’ve made some brave decisions, so to speak, and pushed our range a bit further out. Personally, we don’t see it as substantially different from what we’ve always done. As I said, maybe the balance of influences has shifted slightly, giving us a brighter record, one that gives off more light. But it still comes from the same two slightly mad heads. Personally, and I can be pretty harsh when looking back at our own stuff, I’m still proud of our earlier records, because they’re both small miracles. Two isolated blokes making music that’s ended up leading to where we are today… it’s been a really interesting journey. And we’re especially proud of the new album. Because it’s a real triumph for us. We’re still fully self-sufficient – producers, designers, photographers, video makers… often out of pure necessity, but now we’ve realised we actually like it that way. It’s the only way to hold onto our identity, and, while we’re at it, to make a statement about keeping full ownership of the creative process. I doubt we’ll ever hand over what we’ve built to outsiders in future. We’re not the best producers or designers in the world, but everything that comes out of our hands is genuine.

As far as I understand, you and Wildman are the core of TODOMAL. At the same time, your new album features a wide range of guest musicians. What do you value most about artistic collaborations, and what kinds of challenges or uncertainties can arise when so many different creative minds contribute to a record?
There’s a small misunderstanding here. We recorded the album ourselves, just the two of us. We’re both multi-instrumentalists and we handled the recording – of this album and the rest of our discography. I did drums, bass, guitars, keyboards… Chris did guitars, keyboards, vocals, acoustic guitar, Spanish guitar, etc… when we’re recording we don’t have fixed roles. Really the only band collaboration on the recording was Cecilia, who laid down some gorgeous vocals. Then, as I mentioned, we did post-production with Javi Félez at his studio. Other musicians contributed arrangements too, like Manu Clavijo on strings, and Teodora Gosheva on vocals for a couple of tracks. Basically we’d send them the arrangements we needed and they’d record their parts afterwards. But aside from those specific collaborations, the rest of the music was down to us. What’s funny is that everything we’ve recorded then gets handed over to the band, and they interpret it. Or rather, „reinterpret“ it, since once your music passes through other people’s hands, it transforms. Even our own performances have to be adapted and relearned. It’s an interesting job, because you have to break down all those layers of music and split them between five pairs of hands. And sometimes the result genuinely surprises us. Let’s just say everything ends up gaining an extra bit of energy.

Do the musicians you collaborate with also join you on stage, or do you approach your live performances differently?
I imagine relying heavily on backing tracks might feel a little… disconnected from the organic nature of your music. Yes, live we’re five people. We try to be as organic as possible, but we do use backing tracks, because we simply can’t reproduce everything live. Cecilia handles the more soloistic arrangements on keys, the main parts, but there are moments where, say, a piano, strings and a Hammond are all playing at once, and it’s just physically impossible to cover. And you don’t want to leave anything out, because you lose atmosphere. Contrary to what a lot of people think, playing with backing tracks is actually quite a risky move. On top of that, we run live audiovisual projections that are also synced to the music. What I mean is, a band playing without sequences and a click track can, if there’s a structural mistake, just vamp for a bar or two to get back on track. In our case, and for bands using this method, that’s simply not possible. One small mistake and it’s a disaster. Everything falls out of sync. Not the main things obviously, but some pads, arrangements, the video track… So once a song kicks off, there’s no turning back. Everything has to be perfectly coordinated. No waiting bars. It’s a jump with no safety net. That said, there’s still room for improvisation within those parameters. We rarely play a song exactly the same way twice. Christopher’s a very visceral performer, and the way he sings or plays guitar can vary from show to show. So on that front, our live shows tend to feel pretty organic and spontaneous. We’d love to have a live string section, a couple more keyboard players and an extra guitarist… but for now, with our little club of five nutters, we’re more than happy.

Speaking of live performances, I noticed while doing my research that you’ll soon be playing in my hometown of Dresden, Germany. That’s quite a journey for what is, comparatively speaking, a small club show. Have you played in Germany before? And if so, do you feel that German audiences differ from, say, audiences in England or Spain?
We were in Munich a few months back, at the DARK EASTER METAL MEETING. It was really interesting to play at a festival of that kind. Lots of black metal, lots of extreme metal… and we turned up to bring a bit of “peace” between one pit and the next. The show went really well, honestly. Loads of people said it was a little breath of fresh air among so much brutality – seeing a more mellow show, where you don’t risk your neck or an elbow to the face. The logistics were great too, the hotel right across the road, so it was all very comfortable.

Something similar happened a couple of weeks ago at RESURRECTION FEST, here in Spain. We were a bit of an oddity among all the modern metal bands (at least on the day we played). We’re getting used to that feeling. But it’s always interesting seeing the reactions when people who don’t know us come over to check us out. And generally, it has to be said, the reactions are pretty positive.

The bands joining you for that show, EVOKEN and GORLEBEN, share a similar musical foundation but explore even darker territory overall. What do TODOMAL hope to give the audience between two such emotionally heavy performances?
We honestly haven’t got a clue what to expect from the tour. But truthfully, our goal (beyond just playing good shows) is to widen the circle. Touring with other bands opens the door to new friendships, to spending time in an environment away from our boring day-to-day lives, and it can be a lot of fun. Hopefully we’ll all head home happy, having got on well, having played the best shows we could, and with a handful of new partners in crime.
What we can bring to the table… honestly, I hope a bit of extra „romanticism“ or sensitivity against the sheer sonic intensity of those bands…

One slightly unusual question before we wrap up: what do you think we, as people, need in order to rediscover a little more joy and lightness in life? Otherwise, we might all end up in the graveyards of joy…
Call people. Meet up with your friends. Stay close to your family, to your elders, because we take it for granted they’ll always be there, and they won’t. Be generous, because what you give is what you take with you in the end. Remember there’s always light at the end of the tunnel, no matter how long it is. And be brave. Love as much as you possibly can. Hatred is for cowards. A lot of the time it takes real courage to pick up your pieces, put yourself back together, and carry on. Find a passion and throw yourself into it. And bear in mind (as you can see at the end of the „Graveyards Of Joy“ video)… that we’re only passing through here. We never know what tomorrow holds, so don’t waste your time. I know that’s easier said than done, but it’s the only way we can get through this world and, when we picture ourselves in the pine box, be able to say, „okay, you can close the lid now.“

Finally, it’s time for our traditional Metal1 brainstorming session:
AI: Without wanting to demonise AI, we’ll just say that for this album, right down to the credits and the lyrics, everything was written by hand. We even included personalised handwritten notes in the Spanish edition. There’s a certain leaning towards some sort of „humanism“, in a way. Obviously AI’s a very useful tool for research, scientific progress and so on… but let’s keep art as human as possible. It’s the only hope we’ve got left in such a rotten, globalised, digital world.
ANATHEMA: They built bridges navigating between genres at a time when that wasn’t so common. Another way to look at rock/metal music.
Hans Zimmer: A genius of our time. His body of work is so vast it’s impossible to cover it all. We all get chills over that wonderful „Gladiator“ score with Lisa Gerrard, of DEAD CAN DANCE (we have a soft spot for them), but he’s also behind the gorgeous soundtracks for „Interstellar“ or „Dune“, among many others. I think he, along with people like John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith and Howard Shore, are the Mozarts or Beethovens of our era.
Typically Spanish? The most typical Spanish thing is moaning about everything in private, but when someone asks how you’re doing, saying everything’s great; „let’s go grab a beer“.
Even though people abroad tend to have a somewhat stereotyped image of Spain (we all do that about other places), it’s actually a very diverse country, very different from north to south. Several official languages coexist alongside Spanish, the climate and landscape shift, people’s character changes…
TODOMAL in ten years? Hopefully in some bar, lost somewhere in the world, telling war stories and having a laugh about how much our bones ache.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE INTERVIEW! It’s been a pleasure answering your questions. Cheers!!

Publiziert am 5. August 2026 von Philipp Sorger