The Ritual speaks to Konvent after their UK debut
Written by Nate Gough on March 3, 2020
Konvent are a Danish death/doom band that were formed in 2015 and this year released their debut full length release Puritan Masochism via Napalm Records.
They recently played the rammed Retribution Alive’s February event, here in London at The Dev marking their UK debut. They unleashed 40 minutes of stomach churning death/doom to mark their grand entrance to the UK extreme metal scene.
Nate from The Ritual here on TotalRock caught up with the band to discuss their rise in the world of extreme metal.
Hello and welcome to The Ritual here on TotalRock.
I must must start by asking you how the band formed together and why you chose the style of metal that you have for Konvent?
Konvent: When our first drummer Mette started taking drumming lessons in 2015, her teacher (Nicolai from the band Dirt Forge) told his roommate that he had started teaching a girl. His roommate was our bass player Heidi and she instantly contacted Mette, asking her if she wanted to start a band. It had been a dream of Heidi’s to start a band for a long time but all the musicians she asked didn’t have time in their schedules to start a new project. Given that both Mette and Heidi were more or less on the same level on their instruments, a band also seemed like an ideal opportunity to practise as well as write music. They looked for a guitar player and asked Mette’s study buddy Alexander (also from Dirt Forge) if he would suggest the idea to his girlfriend Sara, who Mette knew had previously played in a band. They also needed a vocalist and asked Mette’s sister Rikke, who had been taking extreme metal vocal lessons with a metal vocalist for about six months at that time. She was game and we all met up at a rented rehearsal space for an afternoon and tried jamming to The White Stripes’ 7 Nation Army. The vibe was good and we decided to form the band and get our own rehearsal space. After three years, Mette had to quit the band due to her studies and we were very lucky to find Julie. Julie was only 18 at the time but had played the drums for six years and blew us away with her talent when she auditioned, and it was a no-brainer. Our final formation was established
And we never really decided to play doom, we just wanted to play some heavy stuff with growl vocals. We just labelled it doom, because other people were calling it so, and we could see why. So then we just decided to get on board and called it death doom. But we honestly get inspired by many metal sub-genres, so we like to mix it up a bit.
You have recently just released your incredible debut album on Napalm Records titled ‘Puritan Masochism’. Is there a theme or story behind this record?
Konvent: We really wanted to create something, that the listener could interpret and form his/hers own story, and make our songs more relatable to them. But in general the lyrical theme on the record is losing control over yourself or your life, but the songs doesn’t tie together as such.
Some media seem the need to use the term ‘female band’ or ‘female-fronted’ for band’s that have female members – what is your opinion on this?
Konvent: We really think the “female band/fronted” is a very outdated term. You don’t see other bands being labelled “all male band”. You can’t use gender as a genre and gender doesn’t define our music.
We hope that this term will die out at some point and that the people who show up to our shows are coming because of our music and not our gender.
Obviously Denmark had/has some incredible bands in the extreme metal scene – what would you fair were your biggest influences?
We all grew up with listening to all the old school stuff like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. But as time progressed we all started listening to the more extreme stuff. We all listen to different sub-genres and it goes all the way from punk to technical death metal. We like to get inspired by different things and it makes the songwriting more exciting and fun.
You’ve just made your debut in the UK here in London at the Devonshire Arms for Retribution Alive. Were you excited about bringing your music to the UK and has the music from the UK had any influence in you at all?
Konvent: We were so excited to play in the UK, it has defiantly been on the bucket list and we can’t wait to be back. And I think we all listen to bands from the UK, for me (Julie) I listen to a lot of Dragged into Sunlight and Venom Prison and a lot more that I could go on about. But the big one for us, must be Black Sabbath of course.
So what’s next for Konvent in 2020 and beyond?
Konvent: So on the 28th we have our last show in Oslo (Norway) at the ByLarm festival, and then we’re taking a break to get back into our creative mode and maybe start fiddling with some new riffs and stuff. And then in July we’re playing In Flammen in Germany and Gefle in Sweden. The rest is still on the workbench and things are being planned for 2020!
Konvent’s debut album Puritan Masochism can be purchased here from Napalm Records https://napalmrecords.com/english/konvent
