«We believe that the biggest part to keep the band together is the friendship for sure«

Interview by Luishard

Dioses del Metal’s Friends, from sweden we have the pleasure to talk to the band called Mumincunt, thanks to spend your time with us. They’re Commander M, the voice, Shaman W with the guitar, Warrior J playing the bass and Rebel D with the drums.

We can read the review of «Visor Fran Muminskogarnas Morker» in this link.

Well, first of all, we’d like you to introduce yourselves, how is Metal music felt generally and particularly the Black Metal in Upsala? Are there any concerts, bands, places to play that music, is the people cheered up?

Sorry for starting out this interview sad but I have to say that Uppsalas metal scene is worthless if you look at how big the town is. It is Swedens fourth biggest town and has just a few bands in comparison to the people living there. We do have bands like Watain, In Solitude, Sportlov and so on. But most of the local bands here are metalcore bands and that’s quite annoying. The old school Black/Death/Trash metal bands from Uppsala has turned into ashes and disappeard. Luckily there are a lot of good places to play our music, and obviously the Metal scene here as a whole isn’t garbage, only the majority of it.

According to you, to survive musically in the underground world, what things you have to do?

Stay active, that’s the most important thing to us. We try our best to come up with new ideas which in time turn to new music releases. Our biggest concern is for our fans not to lose faith in us or get tired of what we do, so we keep them updated as often as we can. To be honest we’ve got a lot of publicity without much work. We’ve simply been lucky, and that’s motivated us to keep on and work even harder.

Is it difficult to form a music band and keep all the components together? Was that your case fortuitous?

It’s been hard at times, especially in the beginning, to keep the band together. We had rythm guitarists coming and for a while and we are still searching for a permanent one. The motivation to continue has been a bit varied in the band as well, but now it seems that we’re all on the same page and motivated to take the band to a new level. We’re also thinking of adding a keyboardplayer to our band. So there are some things to take care of before we consider ourself 100% done.

Which is your motiviation to keep together and play music?

We believe that the biggest part to keep the band together is the friendship for sure. Liking what we do and coming up with new fresh ideas. Maybe not dreaming to much of becoming a big band and instead just doing what we like and what keeps us band members happy and with that, come whatever may. Also the atmosphere is a big part of our band and image. There are really a lot of things motivating us to keep Mumincunt together. Fans for example, their response and credits. Always fun to see they appreciate our music or give us hints on what we could change for the better. Also when all of us in the band come up with new material and play our old songs and we really like it. It feels good knowing you have created it all and I guess that makes you the most motivated, to show the public what we have accomplished.

You’re a recent band, from May 2015, and you had a single, «Julbord Och Muminmord», was it clear that you had to launch a LP as soon as possible?

We already had our first album ready, but at that time we didn’t take the band too seriously and we think you can hear the humor in some of the songs on our album. In the end that humor really added to the full experience of the album. Many of the song had already been published on our facebook, but we decided that it was time to put it all together and publish it on spotify and of course release as physical CD’s and so we did.

Is it true that you only launched 20 CD’s of that album? In some years it will be a treasure. Hehehe

Haha yes that is actually true! We only bought 20 jewelcases and we went home printing the covers out. Because we didn’t have so much money to spend we decided just to keep the limitation to 20 copies and yes, hopefully this CD will become a rare treasure one day!

The discography Heathen Tribes is going to launch it as CD format, how did you get that opportunity?

Well one day Nicholas from Heathen Tribes Records was sending us an invite for Mumincunt to join their brand. We gladly accepted and they told us they would release our album ‘Visor från Muminskogarnas Mörker’ under their label. The album will be released as a Digi-pack CD strictly limited to a 100 copies. And as a new started band it’s an offer you could not resist.

The album cover is blue, cold, dark, suffocating… Any hidden meaning?

Well, the cover was made by our very good Danish friend Jimmy Christensen. And we told him we wanted a dark album cover. I mean as a Scandinavian you are used to the woods, the darkness in the winter. The depressing atmosphere. And what wouldn’t suit better than a dark forest representing where we’re from. Also the picture can awake feelings, exploring new things as we do in our music, also darkness which is our sound and depression which is in our lyrics. The album cover is really mysterious and I believe it speaks differently from person to person and that in my opinion is what artworks should do. Open new worlds. Open new thoughts.

I am really suprised due the interpretation you do of Black Metal, is there any Mumincunt style?

There is defenently a Mumincunt style. I mean as you can tell from hearing us there is a lot of Metal genres mixtured within. For example Black Metal of course but also some Death and Trash Metal influence. And we also have non metal genres involved. A lot of Piano and Orcestral parts. For example the track ‘Hemulens Bekännelse’ take a step away from the regular Metal sounding songs. I believe also our quality in the recordings stands out as our own sound. And I can proudly say that our sound is so different from other bands and we really do have a sound of our own. Which makes people recognize it the second time the hear us.

What do you all think when composing music?

When composing the instrumental parts we mostly try to come up with our own thing, raw but also melodic. But when the lyric writing starts we usually try to make something out of almost every crazy and filthy ideas we come up with. To be honest the composing is done mostly by our guitarist Shaman W with some input from the other members. Most lyrics are written by Commander M and Shaman W, but Rebel D has written his share of lyrics too. In the future we’re going to include our basist Warrior J more to the composing as well.

Talking about Black Metal, I think one of the secrets of «Visor Fran Muminskogarnas Morker» is the variety, is there any one more?

We think you’re right about the variety, that’s what we were going for with this album. Trying to include as many elements as possible from differnet genres while still not overdoing it. We believe one other secret could be the overall production quality, which is quite unique and charming in it’s own way. We also think the mixture of having a serious sound and mix it up with at times unserious lyrical themes is quite original too.

Are there any bands that have inspired you?

Actually I have to say no. When we started out we did takes this quite unserious as we previously said and we just had our own style. We started out making a classic sounding metal song with no perticular inspiration at all and so we added some crazy lyrics and then we got our first track ‘Knullad av en Mumin’. And to us it sounds like any other metal song basically. I mean we didn’t think of any other band while making it. And for the vocals I guess you have never heard anything like that, haha.

How have the public received this album?

Mostly the reviews of this album has been great, I mean for being our first CD that we didn’t take too serious in the beginning has still earned alot of good critics. Of course there has been a few reviews were people dislike the album. But I understand them both. I mean the album is great but some songs are just understandable for swedish people and some tracks we are even ashamed of. But over all this album is our first and we’ll always love it.

Any desire, activities, concerns for the rest of the year?

Our biggest desire right now is to get our album printed as a physical copy which for us is a great way to show us that we are doing this for not just ourselves but for the people out there and also to show that Mumincunt is a real band and not just a pixled music file on your computer. Of course we are also really excited to see how it turns out. As for the activities we do want to play live and we are currently recording our second CD which unfortunatly will take a while to finish and we hope people will enjoy it as much as we do.

Well, we have reached the end and it’s time to say goodbye to all your fans, it has been a pleasure, good luck! Cheers