Suidakra
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The practitioners of melodically-tinged folk metal for nearly 15 years, Germany’s Suidakra have faced innumerable battles over the course of their career. Formed by singer/vocalist Arkadius (FYI: Suidakra is Arkadius spelled backward), Suidakra were one of the first pure epic/folk metal bands to make any sort of dent on North American shores. Their 2001 effort, Emprise To Avalon was given a proper domestic release courtesy of Century Media, only to have the follow-up (and album of the decade candidate) Signs to the Fallen, er, fall the wayside.
To compound matters, the band has had to sit on the sidelines while epic folk metal has taken off, with far less worthy bands (names to be withheld) getting more notoriety in spite of aping the sound Suidakra ushered in over a decade ago. Their recent inclusion on the inaugural Paganfest tour bandaged some of the wounds, yet there is no sense of bitterness on the tongue of Arkadius as he phoned Blistering as he waited to go on stage in San Francisco.
Blistering.com: Your first US dates are on the inaugural Paganfest. How is it going so far?
Arkadius: The dates have been amazing. It started at the Powerfest in Chicago. It was a huge event for us since it was our first show here and it was nearly sold out. They were doing mosh pits during our show. We didn’t expect that and now we’ve played three shows on the Paganfest so far and people have been crazy.
Blistering.com: What type of setlist do you have? I would imagine it’s hard to choose certain songs…
Arkadius: It’s quite short since we’re special guest. There’s usually local support playing before us, so we have 30 minutes. We have the possibility to play 5-6 songs, which is hard since we’ve released eight albums, so we do one song from every album. We’re fine with that – we’re just special guests and we see it as an opportunity to prove that we’re ready to come back for a real tour.
Blistering.com: Arguably, folk metal is becoming a major trend in metal. For someone who’s been there from the start, how do you feel about it?
Arkadius: To be honest, I don’t care about that stuff. When we started, there were a lot of people that told us, “Hey man, what are you doing? That combination won’t work.” Now there is this huge movement in Europe with all of this folk metal stuff. I think there are going to be a lot of bands that won’t survive this stuff because there are now many bands who think they can get very famous playing Viking metal, but I’m ok with it – I’m just a musician and I’ve been doing it for years and I want to play the music I love. I don’t care about this mainstream stuff. There were a couple of bands, but not many. There was In Extremo, but not in that way combined with melodic death metal, but I’m fine with that, man [laughs].
Blistering.com: Command to Charge finally was released in North America. How discouraging is it knowing that your albums have a hard time being released in America?
Arkadius: Yeah, it was a bit frustrating because when we released the first two or three albums, they were released in Europe. But there weren’t any possibilities because the label was small and the distribution was poor, but then we signed with Century Media and we expected more than they did for us. We expected a cool release in Japan and in the states, but it didn’t happen. I was disappointed about that and it was one of the many reasons we split with Century Media. It’s hard as a musician to stay motivated when other business stuff gets involved. At a certain point, I decided I didn’t care about it to tell them to “fuck off.”
Blistering.com: How little of a priority were you when you were on Century Media?
Arkadius: We didn’t get an answer from Century Media USA. Just, “It’s not going to be released in the states, so deal with it.” I talked to Century Media in Europe and they said when it will be released, they’ll just release it. It’s very hard – the Suidakra fanbase is growing from the United States and it’s very shitty for people not to be able to buy the music of the band they like.
Blistering.com: Your recent album, Caledonia, saw the return of [clean vocalist/guitarist] Marcel. How special was that?
Arkadius: Marcel had a real busy job - that was the reason he just left the band before. He was gone for a couple of years, but always had the feeling to make music, so he wanted to come back on stage. Then he changed jobs and it’s a different circumstance because the guitarist Marcel replaced had to leave the band because he drank too much alcohol and it got to be too much. We’re not the kind of guys to make some trouble and told him he had to leave. I called Marcel and we talked about some band stuff and I asked him if he was interested and we started to work on new material. He’s a big help with the clean vocals, especially coming after Command to Charge because people felt it was too modern.
Blistering.com: Well, Command to Charge has some modern elements, but I don’t think it took away your core sound.
Arkadius: Exactly. I have the same point of view. It was much more disappointing for people in Germany because I have the feeling in Germany that metal fans are thinking in categories. They think about how a band should sound and if you change a bit, they are disappointed. When I did the promotion for Command to Charge, people didn’t care about the sound like the people did in Germany. It’s still Suidakra for me – there were things we wanted to try out and we did them. I have no problem with it.
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