Chris Naughton of British black metal band Winterfylleth shares insights on their upcoming album The Reckoning Dawn and how the band is coping with the pandemic.
May 8th 2020 will see the release of Winterfylleth’s new album called The Reckoning Dawn. You can check our review of it here. The band continues to create compelling atmospheric black metal that captures both the beauty and brutality of the world we live in. Especially during this time of pandemic, this album resonates with power and poignancy. Much to our delight, we were able to spend a few minutes with Winterfylleth vocalist/guitarist Chris Naughton to talk about life during this pandemic, the new album, and breakfast.
Our first order of business was to check in with Chris on the situation in the UK and how the band is coping with the lockdown associated with the pandemic. Chris said “I think it’s going ok. Obviously, it’s a huge contrast to normal life for many many people. And the same for us really. It’s changed how our days go I think and it’s meant that we’ve had to kind of change the way we live for a little while. It’s a crazy time, but I’m hoping that we can use it to our advantage to spend some time on family and spend some time with our kids.”
Beyond the typical interview cycle, we asked Chris if Winterfylleth plans on doing any special online events to promote your new album. Chris replied “Well, we had a new video come out yesterday (April 30th – video for the song “Misdeeds Of Faith”). That was launched on a few partner sites and our social, so we’re trying to get people to have a listen to that in hopes that they get into the album a week ahead of time. We’ve also got some other video content coming out this week; some playthrough videos; a video on technique. I guess a tutorial on how to play like Winterfylleth if that sort of thing interests you.” Chris added “We find ourselves in a strange period of time in a sense that we can’t just go out and play twenty shows and we can’t go and tour around Europe or the UK and sort of bring the music out to people. We are sort of relying on capturing people in different spaces.”
Regarding The Reckoning Dawn, we wondered what Chris would pick as the one song he most enjoys and why. Chris laughed “It’s a good question actually; I don’t know if I’ve thought about that”. He continued “Well, I think the one that galvanizes all the most is the title track and that’s why we wanted to release that one (as a preview prior to the album release)…”The Reckoning Dawn” has one of the most triumphant moments that we’ve ever written in it. In the sense of that huge solo and epic section in the middle.”
One of our favorites on The Reckoning Dawn is a song called “A Greatness Undone.” It evokes so many emotions from triumph to mournful loss. We asked Chris to share the story behind this tune. Chris said, “It’s quite nuanced, but essentially the broad idea of “A Greatness Undone” is greed and power-happiness. It kind of speaks to this, I suppose this undercurrent, that we all know exists in society that we’re kind of being controlled by somebody. And be that through the governments, or through financial means, through corporations or through kind of obviously all sort of being slaves to having to have a wage every month to pay our way. All of those sorts of things that subvert humanity.”
The title The Reckoning Dawn seems surreally fitting of our current times. We wanted to know to what extent the pandemic would impact the songwriting of Winterfylleth. Chris provided “I don’t think so. By our seventh album, we know what Winterfylleth is and the way we write. I do think however that it will maybe require us to think about how we bring that music to people in a different way.”
The Reckoning Dawn by Winterfylleth will be available on May 8th, 2020 via Candlelight/Spinefarm records. Many thanks to Chris Naughton for providing insight into the new records and sharing his thoughts with us.
You can check out the whole of our interview with Chris here:
