INTERVIEWS

This is our first ever interview, conducted by Tim Neuhoff of Eternity Magazin in December, 2005.

(translated from German)

ETERNITY MAGAZIN : First of all, please introduce yourself, the band, the music. Tell us something about the history of the band, tell us everything you want about Wraith of the Ropes.

SCARECROW : I'm Scarecrow Rottinghouse, or Jack if you prefer. I'm the vocalist, keyboardist and co-programmer for Wraith of the Ropes.

HEARST : I'm E.M. Hearst: guitarist, bassist and co-programmer for Wraith of the Ropes.

SCARECROW : I guess the only way to describe our musical vision is to say that we write what we would want to hear, without connecting ourselves to a certain genre. I'm sure we could be labeled as a few different genres, but that will all be pointless by the time the next album comes out.

HEARST : We formed back in 2001 under the name Cadaver Dogs and began writing our first album, Ada, sometime in late 2001. Because of certain circumstances and set-backs we were unable to release the album until 2005.

SCARECROW : As far as the history of the band goes, everything that could have gone wrong during the recording of Ada, did go wrong. From lost members and broken relationships, to technical malfunctions, and having to change our band name after discovering another band using the same name. Luckily, a few people helped us along the way, namely Stijn Van Cauter and Alli Annihilate (Sicka).

HEARST : Yeah, Stijn and Sicka have both helped us out a lot. Stijn created our website and logo, and Sicka is the person responsible for all the artwork on Ada.


ETERNITY MAGAZIN : “Ada" is a very doomy album, it can be said that it is a “Funeral Death Doom Album". You say that the concept behind Wraith of the Ropes is “Horror Metal". Please tell us something about the term “Horror Metal" as you understand it, what is your idea of “Horror Metal"? You are not the first using this term, it has already been used by Gloomy Grim or Notre Dame, for example.

HEARST : Yeah, then there's Death SS and Necrophagia who could also be called "Horror Metal", but we really have nothing to do with any of these bands.

SCARECROW : Our first album is W.o.t.R. playing Doom Metal, but I doubt any true Doom fans would accept Ada as a genuine Doom album because it's missing certain elements of "True" Doom, and at the same time it has a lot of things that a Doom Metal band wouldn't put in their music. We decided not to pretend to be something we weren't, so instead of calling ourselves Doom we chose the term "Horror Metal". That leaves us a lot of room to come up with ideas that we wouldn't be able to use if we claimed to be a different genre.

HEARST : Maybe the term "Horror Doom" would be a better description of our first album, but the fact is we are not a Doom band, even though we did release a doomy album. On our next album the term "Doom" simply wont apply, and in my opinion it would be disrespectful for us to claim to be a Doom Metal band when we have no intention of remaining loyal to that genre.

SCARECROW : I understand that there are other bands that use the term Horror Metal, but that seemed like the most natural thing to call ourselves because Horror is the only part of our music that will always be a part of the band.

HEARST : Our allegiance is to Horror alone, above all genre's of Metal. Horror Metal to me just means the "Wraith of the Ropes sound".


ETERNITY MAGAZIN : You stated that your next album could sound totally different from “Ada" because you are not limited to Funeral Doom. From your current point of view: can you already say which are the possible directions Wraith of the Ropes might go? What are possible influences (musically) and how strong are for example possible influences of Black Metal (which would fit really good to your current style of playing music, I think)?

SCARECROW : I'm happy to hear you say that, Black Metal is exactly the genre that we've decided to incorporate into "Demonic Influence", our next album.

HEARST : The tempo of the songs on our next album will be much faster and the songs will be shorter. Blast-Beats are used in nearly every song and, yeah, the Black Metal influence will be very strong. A few Black Metal bands of influence for us would be: Forgotten Tomb, Limbonic Art, Watain, Dimmu Borgir, early Dark Funeral and early Ulver. We wont really sound like any of those bands though.

SCARECROW : Since we claim no genre other than Horror Metal, the next album won't be exactly like any Black Metal you've heard before. It will be similar to our version of Doom Metal, it will be Black Metal as played by Wraith of the Ropes.

HEARST : Yeah, it will be our own unique vision of Black Metal. The second album will definitely be a lot different, but it will still sound like Wraith of the Ropes because we are staying true to our own definition of "Horror Metal". We will never follow any trend or scene, we will always stay true only to ourselves. The horror film influence is even stronger on our new material and it will still be an extremely dark and atmospheric album.

SCARECROW : Also, the album after Demonic Influence won't be Doom or Black Metal, but it will be at least a year before we reveal our plans for album three.


ETERNITY MAGAZIN : Could you comment on the songs on Ada, both musically and lyrically? I think that might be interesting.

SCARECROW : I would like the listener to come up with their own story for the album, with the clues that we leave in each song, but i suppose we can give a short description of each track:


CHAMBER OF THE WRAITH :

SCARECROW : It was originally written as my idea of what the journey down the river Styx would sound like. Over the years of recording for Ada, I slowly added more and more sounds that I associated with passing on to the afterlife.

HEARST : Imagine Charon rowing your damned soul down the river Styx, taking you to the underworld. Imagine the sound of the boat creaking as his oar pushes through the black stagnant waters of Hell. That is the imagery intended with this intro track.

SCARECROW : It has been said that this song has a lot of samples, but in fact it only has one sample and the rest is done musically or vocally. The chant that repeats in the song is my re-wording of the inscription on the gateway to Hell, from Dante's Inferno. I incorporated the band name into the lyrics because bands never seem to use their names for anything except marketing. Our name means a lot to us, it was chosen from a list of fifty or so possible names that we came up with. Wraith of the Ropes is something that we are a part of, and it is a part of us, not just a name. This will become more apparent as we release more material.


FINAL REFLECTION :

SCARECROW : The music was written over so many years that I can only tell you that the bass-line was written for someone that was part of my life at the time, and the lyrics are an anti-drug message.

HEARST : Yeah, Final Reflection is song about the horrors of drug abuse, addiction and self-destruction. We are both strongly against illicit drug use. We're not exactly straight-edge though, because we do drink alcohol and Scarecrow smokes cigarettes. We are not militant about our anti-drug stance, but we did want to express our viewpoint with this one song.

SCARECROW : I refuse to be around drugs and I wrote this song about what I had witnessed people around me going through, and what their eventual downfalls were/might be.

HEARST : Musically, this is the heaviest song on the whole album, I think. I have no problem saying that the guitar riffs were mostly influenced by Black Sabbath and Pentagram, especially the heavy final section of the song which is my favorite passage on the whole album.


LAKE OF DECAY :

HEARST : Another heavy Doom song. Musically, it was somewhat inspired by the bands Evoken and Khanate. It is also very influenced by George Romero and Lucio Fulci zombie films. There are actually warped samples from Lucio Fulci movies throughout the entire song, but you could never tell because we messed with them so much. The song seems to deal with a sort of "zombie apocalypse" scenario, but I didn't write the lyrics so i'm not sure what it's really about.

SCARECROW : The main theme lyrically is about a house that I used to live in when I was young. Something about that house always gave me the feeling that death was close by, and I imagined that the lake near the house could have a connection with death. The basic concept is a lake that has the ability to re-animate a corpse that's submerged in the water. This concept may not seem to mesh well with the rest of the album, but it has to do with what awaits us beyond death, much like the other songs on the album.


ALONE :

SCARECROW : Alone and Death Bed's lyrics were mainly written by Hearst, so I'll let him explain.

HEARST : This is by far the most "Funeral Doom" sounding and depressing song on Ada. It's also my personal favorite WotR song so far because of the suicidal atmosphere of hopelessness that it evokes. It's a very powerful and cathartic song for me, the lyrics deal with the true suicidal emotions that I have had to endure for my entire life. Some of the lyrics in "Alone" date back as far as 1995 when Scarecrow and I were in an Industrial band together called "Kindergarten". We saved these lyrics for a decade until we finally had some music that sounded as depressing as the lyrics.


DEATH BED :

HEARST : This might be the best song on Ada in terms of musical composition and song structure; it's a very epic track. It also seems to be almost every listener's favorite WotR song. Lyrically, it's the most personal song for me. In early 2004 I became extremely sick with heart trouble and I thought that I was literally on my "death bed". I was somewhat psychotic at the time, I couldn't think clearly because of the illness and I was hallucinating. I was too sick and exhausted to get out of my bed for many months. Many of the lyrics were written while I was laying there waiting to die. I wondered if my life really had been as meaningless as it seemed. If there is a Hell, I knew that I was about to go there. "Will death bring me peace or will the inferno engulf me?"; I was facing my own mortality and wondering if there would be anything after I die. I consider myself an atheist, but when I was facing death I started questioning my faith, or my lack of faith. Obviously I eventually got better, but I still have nightmares about returning to that horrible mental and physical state. This song holds some very bad memories for me and it's somewhat painful for me to listen to.

SCARECROW : Yeah, it was a very odd sensation doing the vocals for this song. During the time of Hearst's sickness, we were unfortunately out of contact because of some things that I was dealing with emotionally. When I found out he was sick, it forced me out of my self loathing and depression. We saw each other more regularly after that, and started finishing Ada's recording. When doing the vocals, I tried to imagine what he must have been feeling during his time alone. I added some lyrics of my own that I thought matched the mood and concept of the song, and did what I could to capture the anger, depression and dementia that he must have been dealing with.


SNOW DRAGON :

SCARECROW : Snow Dragon is my proudest moment musically so far. The emotions that I tried to capture with it are all the emotions that I was dealing with from the early writing and recording of Ada up until the recordings were finished. I've also tried to put an instrumental track on everything we've ever released, all the way back to our original band Kindergarten's two demo releases in the mid 90's. This is actually the musical sequel to a Kindergarten song entitled "Dragon". The underlying theme to Snow Dragon is the loss of love, and the feeling that it may never be replaced.

HEARST : Snow Dragon is the one non-Horror track on Ada. It's musically closer to themes from epic movie soundtracks like "Braveheart" or "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon". It's the false happy ending to the album.

SCARECROW : Yeah, someone actually commented that this song might have been scary on an early album by "The Cure" (laughs) it's not even meant to be scary. That's what I'm talking about, people don't listen to us for what we are, they listen to us thinking they know what we are. Apparently we manage to surprise them, but they're too blind to realize it.

HEARST : I'll never understand how anyone could possibly think we were trying to be "scary" on this song.


UNTITLED : "Track 7":

HEARST : This is the real ending. There is no such thing as a happy ending in this life, in the end there is only suffering and death. The lyrics are a chant of the name "Ada". It's an invocation to our deceased friend, we tried to channel her spirit through this song. The real title of this hidden song is "The Wraith's Rope".

SCARECROW: We've actually not gotten much of a response to this track, it seems like the fact that it's not listed anywhere, and it's really more a grouping of sound than music, would at least get it some attention, but so far no one seems to notice that it's any different than the rest of the album. This was by far the song that I had the most fun working on. I thought of each sound as a part of an orchestra, and there is no sense of timing, each sound has it's place and they all devour each other until the song's conclusion.

HEARST : Someone recently compared this track to Hellraiser's soundtrack, which was a great compliment and something I never actually heard in it myself.


ETERNITY MAGAZIN : A friend of mine, who listened to the song "Death Bed" told me that he thinks the song sounds like a slow, dragging version of Hypocrisy-songs like “The Final Chapter" or “Until the End". Do you feel comfortable with that description?

HEARST : That's a very interesting and strange comparison! I don't really hear any Death Metal influence in our sound, and neither member of WotR listens to Death Metal at all. I'm fine with that description though, it's the most original comparison we've received yet!

SCARECROW : I really don't listen to any current music, I'd rather not be influenced by anything in similar genres. I usually don't listen to anything newer than 1989, unless it's a musical score for a film.


ETERNITY MAGAZIN : Besides Horror Movies: what are your influences concerning philosophy, literature and art? What inspires you for Wraith of the Ropes?

HEARST : We don't really follow any particular philosophy as a band. We are not political or religious and we're not really trying to make any grand statement. We only care about making original and high-quality Horror music.

SCARECROW : I enjoy reading Edgar Allan Poe, my favorite stories by him at the moment are "Shadow - a parable" and "Berenice", but beyond that I don't do much reading. I also never watch television and I don't keep up with the news or current events. I generally try to come up with my own short story and then write lyrics based on my ideas. I guess the flaws of mankind and mental diseases that drive humans to do some of the things they do are what make horror movies, and Horror Metal, interesting to me. So, the human race, and it's flaws, along with human emotions are my greatest influences I think.

HEARST : "Death Bed" is written about a real life situation, and "Final Reflection" is based on reality as well. All of our songs have a bit of reality to them. So, besides the films that inspire us, I would say that we are mostly influenced by our real lives and personal experiences. Yes, we really are that miserable!

SCARECROW : Yeah, there's not much need for a band persona, we really are these guys. The depression, anger and feelings of loss are all real, we couldn't make up characters any better than who we really are. The only thing I might be guilty of is changing my appearance to match how I feel, and what Wraith of the Ropes means to me, but most people's appearances match who they are on the inside I suppose.


ETERNITY MAGAZIN : One very special thing about “Ada" is the outstanding high quality of the lyrics which totally fit and nestle up to the music. Is there a professional background concerning literature?

SCARECROW : Nothing professional, but the way people in most of America talk really bothers me. Most people (at least in the area we live in) can rarely find the right words to complete a sentence, or they'll use the wrong word thinking it's correct.

HEARST : I never expected to receive much acclaim for our lyrics, but we do put a lot of effort into creating an original lyrical style and we're glad some people appreciate it, so thanks for the compliment! As for the way the lyrics "nestle up to the music", that is all Scarecrow's doing.

SCARECROW : I've always taken pride in being able to find different words to say the same thing, so when the music for Ada was almost finished, I took the lyrics we had and decided to rewrite them all to fit the music. The message in every song is exactly how it was before I rewrote them, but now they're worded to fit the pace of the song. I am obsessive compulsive and I'm usually not comfortable with lyrics unless every line has the same amount of syllables. If the syllables don't match up it's a dead give away that Hearst probably wrote them.

HEARST : Yeah, perfect order annoys me. I prefer to dwell in chaos.

SCARECROW : If you knew me you'd think everything in my life was chaotic as well, but with lyrics, that's just not the case.


ETERNITY MAGAZIN : You are involved in side projects like Torture Wheel and The Sad Sun. Do you want to tell us something about these projects? I already had the opportunity to listen to some songs of Torture Wheel, and I think it`s a great band, too. What would you say is the difference of these projects to Wraith of the Ropes? Are there any other projects you are involved in?

HEARST : The main difference between Wraith of the Ropes and our side projects is how seriously we take WotR. This band is our one true passion, it is everything to us! All the other projects are only little experiments to try out stuff that we'd never play in our real band. TORTURE WHEEL started in 2002 and it will disband in 2006 after it's final album is released. This final album will be a huge departure. It is not Funeral Doom at all anymore, it's now a kind of progressive blend of Doom Metal and Black Metal. THE SAD SUN is a project between myself and Stijn Van Cauter, the man behind 'Until Death Overtakes Me'. We've only recorded one song (for a Doom compilation tape) so far, but one day we might record together again. NEO HIZUMI is the only other active project. It features both members of WotR and it is an Electronic-Industrial project in the vein of Skinny Puppy and other 80's Electronic-Industrial bands. It is mostly something we do just for fun and we don't take it too seriously yet, maybe that will change though. We mainly started this project to keep the memory and traditions of our first band, Kindergarten, alive.

SCARECROW : Not too long ago, I started my own side project called "Spectre in Grey". It was going to be an Electronic Classical solo project featuring a shorter version of Snow Dragon, among other similar songs, but when WotR was signed by Totalrust, I quickly decided that I had at least one too many projects to handle and let Spectre die before I got too involved in the writing process. I also felt that if I used any of my best material for it, I would be dishonoring Wraith of the Ropes. NEO HIZUMI is different enough from WotR that we'll likely never have the problem of not knowing which band a piece of music is for.

HEARST : Yeah, Neo Hizumi is the only side project that will last, because it's so different from WotR. The two bands will never have to compete with each other.


ETERNITY MAGAZIN : How did you get in contact with Totalrust Music, which is a totally new label? Are you satisfied so far with the work they do for you, and what are your expectations from that partnership? Will they publish your next release, too?

SCARECROW : It was very sudden, we received a message from Gad of Totalrust asking if we'd be interested in releasing Ada through their label. After looking around at other labels and comparing, we found that Totalrust was by far the best option. They were willing to support us financially and they were very open to any suggestions we had about the release.

HEARST : They are very professional and are starting to build a great roster of bands. There is no doubt in my mind that one day Totalrust will be known as one of the greatest underground labels in the world! The Remembrance album they released recently was absolutely brilliant, and The Knell's album will come out early next year, and from everything i've heard it will be brilliant too! I'm really looking forward to watching this label grow over the next few years.

SCARECROW : I have nothing but good things to say about Totalrust, any bands that are approached by them should give them a chance to release at least one album. They've handled everything extremely well, and I'm proud to be in one of the bands associated with them. We are currently negotiating a second contract with them for Demonic Influence.


ETERNITY MAGAZIN : What can you tell us about the response to “Ada" so far?

SCARECROW : The general response is filled with kind words and high praise, but most reviews tend to compare us with bands that we have very little in common with. It seems that some of the concepts of Ada are viewed as mistakes rather than originality. It seems like since we don't fit into the perfect mold of Doom Metal people think we're not writing the music correctly, when in fact we couldn't care less if we're a Doom band or not. We're writing in our own style, we're not making Doom Metal and we've never claimed to make Doom Metal. We've said many times that we will only accept the genre of Horror Metal, but since there isn't a Horror Metal scene we have no other options than to promote the album in areas with people that are interested in a similar genre. If people would be open minded and not try to attach the name of a genre they expect us to play, I think a lot of the people that find "flaws" or "mistakes" in Ada would find that they're actually listening to something they've never heard before, and hopefully they can enjoy Wraith of the Ropes for what we are, a genre-less band.

HEARST : A lot of people expect us to be just another generic Funeral Doom band and then they're upset when they find out we're actually an original, creative band playing our own style and not just rehashing the same old shit as everyone else. A lot of people seem to have very low attention-spans these days and that is very distressing to me. It seems like some people don't even fully listen to our music before they criticize or judge it. We will never be accepted by the "doom police", our music is made for open minded, free-thinking individuals who truly love music and aren't just a part of some ridiculous music scene or trend. Some people do understand our music, and we love and appreciate every single fan that we have. Our cult is already beginning to grow; it's us against the world!

SCARECROW : Children of the Wraith unite!


ETERNITY MAGAZIN : Wraith of the Ropes is a two man band, like many other bands in the doom genre. What do you think are the main reasons that there are so many two people projects in that scene? Misanthropy?

SCARECROW : If other people are anything like me, they hate people. I despise the human race and rarely find people worthy of sharing a friendship with, let alone sharing something as important as a band with. With W.o.t.R. we have a completely different problem also: no one but us knows what Horror Metal sounds like! Sure, people have heard Ada now and the people that received the album from us have also heard "The Red Door" (the companion EP to Ada), but we haven't found anyone else with the same musical vision that we have. People could copy our sound, and I'm sure someone eventually will, but there are only two people in the world that know how to write Wraith of the Ropes songs, and without the background that we share, no one else has a chance of joining the band as an official member. We're currently considering our options with live musicians. Wraith of the Ropes is sure to have a very theatrical live show, but two men on stage can't put on much of a show without the help of some hired musicians.


ETERNITY MAGAZIN : What can you tell us about the US Underground scene/ your local scene? Are there any bands you would recommend, and why?

SCARECROW : We have no scene, and if we do, I haven't found it, or maybe I just don't care enough to look.

HEARST : Well, locally there is Thorns of the Carrion, but besides that there is no Doom Metal scene, let alone a "Horror Metal" scene. We are the only band of our kind in the entire area. The US Black Metal scene is much stronger I think, but we're not really a part of that either. In our home town (Hamilton, Ohio) I could only recommend the Black Metal band Dark Monarchy (www.darkmonarchy.com). They're the only other decent extreme Metal band from Hamilton that I know of. I would also suggest that you watch out for a new Doom band from California called Gorgon Plague. They are amazing and should be recording their first material soon. Also from the US Extreme Doom scene, I would recommend: Loss, Catacombs, Rigor Sardonicus and Stomach Earth. There are also some really great True Doom bands in this country, like: Orodruin, The Gates of Slumber and Against Nature (formerly Revelation).


ETERNITY MAGAZIN : Do you have any concrete plans for the near future? What can we expect from Wraith of the Ropes next time?

SCARECROW : Our second album, Demonic Influence, is currently being written and recorded, and if all goes well, you can expect a Halloween 2006 release! Hopefully we'll be able to release an album on Halloween of the following year as well.

HEARST : Yeah, our plan is to release a new album on every Halloween from now on. Demonic Influence will be "Blackened Horror Metal" played in a style that is unique to us. There will be a drastic improvement in both the song writing and sound quality but the mood and atmosphere of the new music will remain similar to Ada, only more brutal and hateful. Besides our recordings, our plans also include finding a couple of worthy session musicians to join WotR's live band so that we can start playing some gigs.


ETERNITY MAGAZIN : Did I forget to ask something that you really want to tell the readers? Last Words...

HEARST : First of all, we want to thank you and Eternity Magazin for all of the support you've given us so far! Secondly, to the people reading this interview, thanks for taking an interest in our band! Our debut album is now available from many distributors around the world and you can buy it directly from us too. When you buy Ada directly from us, you will also receive for free our new CD-R EP called "The Red Door", that is the only way to get a copy of the EP! The Red Door will give you a glimpse of our second album and how our sound has already evolved beyond Ada. The EP also includes a few rare cover songs that we've recorded.

SCARECROW : We're extremely proud of The Red Door, it's the most current thing we've written that's available. Many parts of Ada are around five years old now, and yeah, this is a way for people to get a sneak peek at what WotR is currently capable of. It was a lot of fun covering some of the songs that have been a part of our lives since before we even met. It's also the first time in almost a decade that we used a certain method of songwriting, it may sound odd, but covering other band's songs actually strengthened us as a band.

HEARST : If you want to know more about us, visit our website (http://listen.to/wotr).

SCARECROW : Thanks a lot for the interview, it's nice to get some of our thoughts out there for people to see.

HEARST : HAIL HORROR!