When one thinks of Black Metal from the frozen north, one would generally think of Norway and Finland. But not all such thoughts need lead to Scandanavia. Canada can produce some great Black Metal, too, as demonstrated by WOLVEN ANCESTRY. Deeply in touch with the Earth and environmental issues, WOLVEN ANCESTRY are a Black Metal band that tries to provoke thought, rather than sophomoric homages to Satan. Their next album is due out later this year.

First of all, what are your expectations for Heathen Crusade 3?

Fraust - "We expect a crazy show, I guess - we've heard good things from our friends in WILL OF THE ANCIENTS, they played last year, they said it was a good turnout and a crazy party afterwards, so I guess that's all we expect from it."

Lord Defiler - "The promoter said there was about ninety rooms rented out in this hotel, so I think it's going to be a big party, there's great bands from all over the world, so I'm guessing it's going to be pretty damn good and great bands have played this festival like MÅNEGARM, MOONSORROW's second time here and WILL OF THE ANCIENTS, so it's definitely cool to be here and we're looking forward to a good show."

What are your plans on future U.S. tours, given the problems you had at the border?

Lord Defiler - "Well, we didn't really have problems at the border, technically - we got our work visa, but the merchandise was the one thing. We should have shipped it over or something like that. I don't know. We were told we could bring some copies of our albums over for promotional purposes, but that was unfortunately false information."

Fraust - "We've already toured the U.S. twice - well this is our second time if you count this as a tour - it's three shows. Last time we played, we probably had eleven shows or twelve shows. Next time, I think we might just try to go to Europe and just save our resources for that, since we haven't been there."

Lord Defiler - "But if we do the States again, we want to hit up more of the southern states - we want to do the horse shoe; go down to Florida, go to Texas and go back up again. We want to do that because those the places we haven't hit yet. We're just waiting for our album to be done and then we'll start thinking about touring here again for sure."

Speaking of the new album, what can we expect from it?

Fraust - "You can expect a much darker, more mature sound, I guess, than our old album. Still folk elements, maybe a bit faster of an album, but definitely still folky."

Lord Defiler - "I would say more Black Metal in a certain context, you know. It's definitely more speedy, more quick material, a lot more technical and like he said, dark - it's a very good way to say it. It's going to be a very dark, dark album; so basically, that's what you can look forward to. It is a change from the first album, but it still contains the elements. You can hear the new stuff and you can still say, 'yes, that's WOLVEN ANCESTERY. Just like any band, you've got to progress and can't keep putting out the same fucking album, you know? If it's one thing I hate it's that bands don't try to broaden themselves."

No kidding. What will the lyrical themes be?

Lord Defiler - "Well, the lyrical themes… like, I'm the one who writes the lyrics, so basically, the lyrical themes are based off of… it's kind of different, but for the most part it is a concept album on Native American tribes that first came to North America, the struggles that they had, how they got here, we deal with a lot of the battles that the Native Americans went through or their spiritual beliefs, like shamanistic beliefs and stuff like that. A lot of them were minimists and stuff like that, so we definitely sing about their belief that everything has a spirit; a lot of the lyrics are based towards that. There's also some… it's similar to the first album - a few of the songs on there don't really pertain to the concept of Native American tribes or anything like that, but a couple of the themes are similar to our first album, I guess you could say and are based off that."

What kind of label negotiations is the band in? Like, are you going to go indie or go for one of the smaller or big name labels?

Lord Defiler - "Well, we did attempt to try with Napalm Records; Napalm Records contacted us a few months back. They wanted some of our new material, so we sent them three tracks from our new stuff - they weren't the final copies, they were just demo versions, and we had some problems shipping, they didn't receive the package, it got mailed back to us, actually, so they were like 'we didn't receive anything and we're not blown away by that', but I guess they weren't interested in signing us because of the time that went by, they didn't have it in the budget perhaps or they didn't like the new material - I'm not sure what it was, but there was also Candlelight that contacted us. We just haven't gotten a reply back from them yet - we sent them the materials, they might just be waiting, who knows? But if someone won't sign us, we're not going to like, not put the album out, you know, we have our own record label, Archaic North Entertainment, it's run by me and we'll put it out ourselves if we have to. For sure."

What are your thoughts on National Socialism in the Metal community?

Lord Defiler - "Hmmm… that's a touchy one."

Fraust - "We're not supporters. We don't support NSBM."

Lord Defiler - "We don't focus that on our lyrics or anything. Obviously, you can read our lyrics and maybe get a clue in your head that we are singing about NSBM topics, but really we're not - you just have to read between the lines and you'll really get what we're trying to say. Uh… I don't know… we believe that Metal is a worldwide thing, you know, we're all metalheads obviously and we don't believe that you should generalize certain cultures or people."

Fraust - "It just doesn't make sense. There's no basis for it."

Lord Defiler - "To us, National Socialism does not have any fucking foothold on our band or anything like that. We don't support it, we don't condone that, but at the same time, we do think of humans in a bad way. I guess you could say we look down at the human race rather than just select cultures or anything like that, stuff like that, because look what we're doing to the Earth, you know? We're polluting the shit out of it and we don't care anymore. The government has a hold on us, when the American bank crashed, we felt it all around the world - that's a symbol right there of what the human race has become. Look back at history, man - the humans back in the day in ancient times were definitely more well off than we are today, I would say, in a certain way."

Fraust - "We're really just all selfish beings. We just what we can for ourselves and it doesn't benefit the Earth."

Lord Defiler - "If we left this planet, if we left Earth, there's nowhere else to go - you can't go to another planet; Mars is uninhabitable at this point in time, the Moon is definitely uninhabitable, all these other planets are uninhabitable, so the Earth is the only thing that life has a hold on that it can survive on and when we neglect it, we treat it like shit and we don't care about polluting the water or we don't care about anything like that, we just care about ourselves, like he said, it's very selfish of us as humans and that's what we sing about - we are singing about humans being filthy, disgusting pigs, but really, we're not pointing out different racial groups; we're saying 'fuck humans as a whole'."

That leads very well into my next question - what do you think is the most important thing the average person can do to help take care of the environment?

Fraust - "Learn. Knowledge."

Lord Defiler - "Open your eyes to what's going on. Do some research, 'cause really, there's too many people out there that are just, as we said on our first album, programmed cyborgs - they're programmed to do what they do, they're programmed to go to work every day and they're not really concerned about what's happening globally. A lot of people, too, are patriotic and they only care about their own country, they don't care about other countries. Really, it's a worldwide issue - it's not select to one country. Everybody just needs to expand their consciousness and realize what's going on around them and knowledge is the way to do it. You have to learn about it and then maybe after that point when you have the knowledge and you start carrying it with you, you'll be able to do something about it."

What do you think is the better way of taking care of things - state regulation or corporate and private responsibility?

Fraust - "It's hard to say. I mean, sometimes if you have the right governments, state regulation can work and sometimes it doesn't. I don't know man, it just ties in to being educated, I guess - if your society's educated, then the people will force the right decisions on the government. And a free market system, like a completely free one like the States, doesn't seem to be very Earth-friendly for the most part, but luckily it seems like we're moving into some kind of green shift where people are making it economically viable to make better decisions for the Earth, which is good, but it's pretty sad that it had to be economically viable before we did it."

One of the things that absolutely drives me nuts; I work in janitorial and you would not believe the number of people that have garbage cans and recycling cans right next to eachother and just throw everything into one of them or mix everything together in the trash.

Fraust - "Well there you go - that goes back to that other question; what can we do to help the Earth? That's one thing - don't be fucking lazy. Too many humans are just lazy pigs and slobs. You know, BEHEMOTH said it very good - 'they're unworthy of the gift of life' because life is a gift, you know. We think of life as a gift, we feel almost honored to be a spirit or a soul on this Earth and a lot of people take that for granted."

Okay, back to some lighter questions - why the insanely long song titles?

Lord Defiler - "That was only pertaining to the first album; the new album won't have as long titles."

Fraust - "We felt it was a good way to explain our concepts without someone having to read the lyrics, actually. It's a bit of a unique thing to do, I guess, also."

Lord Defiler - "There's some bands that have long song titles and stuff, but basically I wrote the lyrics and he chose the song names based off of what I wrote in the song and the song title was basically meant to explain what the song is about, so really, they could read the song title and be like, 'oh, okay'."

Fraust - "I guess we were trying to be unambiguous as possible with the titles. (laughter)"

What are your thoughts on the "raw versus symphonic Black Metal" argument?

Lord Defiler - "Why argue? If you're creating music."

Fraust - "Raw and symphonic - mix it together; it's all good. Some of us prefer raw within the band… actually, a lot of us like the raw stuff, but we also like well-produced stuff. I don't know… it doesn't matter. It's more about the music itself, if it's well written or not. The whole band, our influences come from everywhere, like old SATYRICON, old DIMMU BORGIR, OLD MAN'S CHILD, obviously GORGOROTH, very much so EMPEROR, BATHORY, but we listen to everything from NEGURA BUNGET, DRUDKH, WAITAIN, newer stuff, you know - it's raw and symphonic. If a band writes good music then we're going to hear it and we're going to know it's good and like it, obviously. So really, there shouldn't be a battle between the two - if you're making good music, keep it up. If you're making shit music, stop playing. (laughter)

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Lord - Defiler - "Yeah, there's probably much we'd like to add. If anybody likes WOLVEN ANCESTRY, check out Archaic North Entertainment. It's our indie label that we're running ourselves, we've got some good bands on there and EMPYREAN PLAGUE is one of them. We've got our side projects, FRACTAL GENERATOR, which is Death Metal, AMARANTH is more Black Metal, we have ASTERA, we have GRIM, there's DARKBLOOD, so we have a wide array of projects - it's not just WOLVEN ANCESTRY. If there is a big fan of WOLVEN ANCESTRY out there, take some time to check it out. We just put a new video up on YouTube for the song of 'A Bloodline Of Immortal Passion Bestowed The Harmony Of Man And Wolf'. It took us a long time for us to make that video, actually. Our drummer was the one who did all the editing for it and pieced it together and did it all, so he did a really good job with that video and we just put it up on YouTube before we left on tour, so it's been getting some good hits and good reviews, so if anybody is a fan, check out our video on YouTube and let us know what you think." [FIN]