Exclusive Interview: Curse Of Eibon talk “Journey Into Madness”!

When you’ve got a love of the Occult and a love of Swedish Melodic Death Metal then look no further than Curse of Eibon. A quartet comprised of seasoned musicians who like to take what they read as inspiration and recreate it in dark, atmospheric form like Demon Wizards following ancient texts of Alchemy, they’ve conjured not one but two EPs in the past six months in “Book Of Eibon” and “Journey Into Madness“. We caught up with them to chat about the World they are creating.

How musicians known for their work in Reek, Stone Brigade and Cynical Existence get around a table and decide to create a new project together? “That’s a good question, but its also pretty easy to answer! We were all really bored and wanted to do something new and all of us had the occult interest and also death metal in common. So basically we just talked and got together and created “Curse of Eibon””

The work of Curse of Eibon is inspired by the occult and notably the works of Clark Ashton Smith and H.P. Lovecraft. What made you choose to use that as the basis for the project and do you think it will continue to be a big part of it going forward? “As stated above, we all love horror/occult stuff so we thought it would be interesting to try and incorporate it into a musical project. The first EP was heavily inspired by Lovecraft and borrowed some of his work. “Journey into madness” has taken inspiration , but the whole story is something we made up on our own. As for new songs and the inspiration for them will probably be from Fredriks [Croona vocalist] mind alone, but who knows if we borrow something else.”

Your sophomore EP “Journey Into Madness” has a guest narrator in JM Burr adding spoken word to a pair of cuts. How did that collaboration come about? “We wanted to make this EP it’s own story , and we needed a narrator to add something extra to a few of the songs. A post was made looking for a narrator on a forum and we found JM and he loves the occult and really loved the music so it just worked out.”

Both Curse of Eibon EPs are considered Melodic Death Metal but “Book Of Eibon” had a lot more prominent In Flames like synths in the mix than “Journey Into Madness” does. Was that a deliberate style shift or something that happened naturally as the songs came together? Having a lot of synths is something that is a big part of the Cynical Existence sound so we’re you trying to make Curse Of Eibon sound really different to that? “It always take a while to find “your” sound and “Book of Eibon” was out first release and we were experimenting to find “our” sound. We always strive to evolve our music and with “Journey into madness” we finally found a sound we like. We don’t really want COE to sound like any of our other projects, that’s why we tend to stick more to choirs and orchestral parts instead of pure synthesizers.”

Across the two EPs, which are your favourite moments? For us “The Call” really stands out from the new EP with its use of guitar layering adding in a really nice lead part. ““Dagon” is probably one of the fav songs because it has so many cool elements that you might not expect. “The Call” also has some really nice guitar work from Martin [Antonsson] and it really gives of a nice atmosphere to the song.”
What does the future hold for Curse Of Eibon? As you formed in the midst of the Great Plague do you plan on taking the project into the live arena when the opportunity arises? “We are actually already working on new songs and will see how far we can evolve the music, and naturally we would love to play live. So if there is any demand for us to stand on a stage we will be there for sure”

Journey Into Madness” by Curse of Eibon is out now and available over at bandcamp