Ethereal Blood

What´s the name of your band?
"Ethereal Blood."

How was the band formed?
"The band "formed" when I met our bassist Abyss but our current lineup is only about a year old."

Can you tell about your band?
"We consider it our solemn duty to drink the blood and fuck the souls of our listeners."

Where are all band members from?/Who does what in the band? "We are all from Illinois in the United States."

What was the ambitions of the band when you started?
"I've been listening to heavy metal music for as long as I can recall and when Abyss first befriended me I think we were on this kind of musical journey exploring all the heavy metal the world had to offer and we both had a particular fondness for black metal and then we started seeing all these black metal musicians combining different sub genres together and adding these symphonic, melodic, and atmospheric elements to the sound. I think it was Emperor that I really fell in love with. So really the initial ambition of the band was sort of an if they can do it so can we mentality."

Could you explain your music to someone that haven't heard you? "To put it simply, our music is dark symphonic metal with the core of the sound being rooted in black and gothic metal."

Where was your first gig? "A high school talent show."

Where was the latest gig? "A local bar close to home."

Who writes your songs?/Who writes the music who writes lyrics?
"All the members contribute to the writing process but the lyrical responsibilities are solely my own since I have a very particular poetic style. Nearly all of the members of the band are multi instrumentalists. For instance; our lead guitarist Thanatos could easily play bass for almost any act, our bassist Abyss also plays drums and guitar, and I am relatively competent on keyboard, bass, and guitar. "

Who has the best since of humor in the band?
"That would probably depend on who you ask Haha! I personally feel that our rhythm guitarist Nephilim has kept me in stitches the entire time I've known him."

What's good/bad with the band?/What genre do you feel you are? "The good thing about Ethereal Blood is that we are all really good friends who have known each other since before we even played music together. The one bad thing about the band is probably that when we play live we have to depend pretty heavily on sampling and backing tracks since we don't currently have a consistently present drummer in our lineup. I like to call our genre dark metal because the second you start labeling yourself as black metal people will be getting into fights over whether you are "Trve" or "Kult" enough. I think its difficult to label any modern day metal band because of the multitude of different styles being bred together. We have riffs in our songs that could be considered black, death, thrash, and even industrial metal."

Why did you pick that particular style?/What are your songs about? "Our current debut album Cold Crypt Sonatas Vol. I is about cheating death. It has a lot of songs centered around death and resurrection with various alliteration to traditional vampyre, spectre, zombie, wraith, ghoul, and lycanthrope folklore. It's mildly metaphoric of our band's credo to never accept defeat."

Do you write your own material or mainly covers?
"It is mostly our own compositions but we do the occasional cover. We try to cover songs that we think we can heavily infuse with our style and prefer to cover songs that have poor or outdated production values."

Have you made any albums?/If yes what are they?
"Our debut album Cold Crypt Sonatas Vol. I is currently available on iTunes digitally with physical compact discs being sold through our web page. Soon you'll also be able to download it from Spotify, Amazon, and Google play. I'll provide links at the end of the interview. We are working on a follow up album as well."

Do you have any clips on YouTube?
"Yes, a quick search for "Ethereal Blood" will yield some fan made music videos and segments of live shows."

How old are you?/What got you started in music?
"We all vary quite a bit in age. I'm the youngest member of the band at twenty three. I first picked up guitar at about fifteen years old because I wanted to learn how to play Metallica and Iron Maiden songs. I went on to learn bass and piano shortly after."

Best/worst gig you've played?
"The last one was pretty fun. The worst gig we played was our first show with this current line up. It was an outdoor seasonal festival in the autumn and hardly anybody showed up, it was freezing, and halfway through our first song the stage's reference monitors died haha!"

What places will you be playing in in the imidate future?
"We dont have much scheduled for the upcoming holiday season. I can only say with certainty that we will perform a little bit in support of our friends Through Eyes Of Tomorrow but we are willing to hold our ceremonies wherever the wolves may howl."

Witch band is the best you´ve seen?
"Its difficult for me to pick the best band I've ever seen but I'll tell you the most memorable. I saw the New York based industrial metal duo Hanzel Und Gretyl a while back and I've never seen a band put on such an energetic, intimate, and interactive show. I highly recommend them."

Is it always the same songs live?
"It has been lately but if we open for other bands they usually wouldn't want us to do our whole set list since its over an hour long. So it'll change depending on how large a window a venue gives us."

What are the plans for the rest of the year?
"To write, rehearse, record, and perform of course. :)"

How do you get psyched up for a gig?
"By maintaining a perfectly balanced diet of alcohol, narcotic stimulants, and sexual performance enhancers."

What are your goals with your music?
"My only real goal is to make music for like minded individuals. If my music has half of the impression on somebody that my influences had on me, I'll be happy."

Is it easier to get your inspiration from older bands or from bands more modern?
"Both! Admittedly I feel the most inspired revisiting the music of the baroque, classical, and romantic periods but I know the band as a whole still loves to put on our old Black Sabbath, Mercyful Fate, and Slayer albums. It's always very refreshing to hear what's out there today as well though."

What are your sources of inspiration?
"Most of the band's inspirations are pretty self evident being Emperor, Dimmu Borgir, Cradle of Filth, Anorexia Nervosa and a plethora of other symphonic metal bands but we all listen to a very eclectic mix of stuff including all sorts of metal and rock, classical music, electronic, opera etc. Inspiration isn't limited to music though. Poetry, art, cinema, and literature play a very important part for us."

What's the first step when making a new song?
"For us it always stars with a riff on the guitars or keyboard and we just bouncing different ideas around and playing different variations on the same theme until they evolve and you find yourself with multiple melodies where before only one exsisted."

How do you feel about the downloading of music instead of buying albums?
"I think my stance on this is a bit different from other musicians. I speak only for myself when I say I have no issues with people pirating it. We live in the digital age and I don't believe experiencing art is a privlige. I think its a right. Everybody is entitled to experience music. This isn't the dark ages when only wealthy lords were of high enough status to enjoy the creativity of others. The more people that listen to music the better and I personally think its flattering that a person would desire you're music so much that they'd "steal" to listen to it. However, that's not to say I don't grin like a child every time we sell an album, especially a physical copy."

What would be your dreams for the band?
"My dream for Ethereal Blood is to see us functioning on a more grandiose scale someday in the future with an extra large cast of musicians all dedicated to the band and not just session players for higher. I Dream about multiple guitarists, vocalists, percussionists, synthesists and even dancers sharing a stage with a chamber orchestra and choir all in corpse paint with a musical theater esque quality and superior live production. Sort of like if the entire Trans Siberian Orchestra were simultaneously possessed by a malicious spirit."

What do you hold most dear?
“The thought that the music could out last me. That perhaps hundreds of years from now someone might discover our CD's or musical notation and listen to it."

What would be your greatest fears for the future?
"That one of my band mates or myself should suffer a tragic injustice and lose the faculties we use to create music like going deaf or losing an arm."

When you are on stage, what do you fear most then?
"That some vital piece of equipment or another could malfunction or explode. Haha!"

Have you been in any other bands?
"I have not but everybody else has."

What do you work with outside of the band and the music?
"We all hold day jobs to survive."

What would you do if there was no music?
"I would write or paint since those are my two other passions."

How often do you rehearse?
"We tend to rehearse about twice a week at least."

Name 2 of your own songs you like at the moment?
"All of them. I couldn't pick favorites. It'd be like you having a score of children and me asking you to choose two. Hahaha!"

What drives a band that isn't all that famous and renowned to try to make a living on their music and to keep playing?
"Its all about passion. Nobody ever said you have to be famous to earn a living."

Do you have any webpages?
Web site: www.etherealblood.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EtherealBlood666
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ethereal_blood
Instagram: http://instagram.com/etherealblood
MySpace: https://myspace.com/etherealblood
Google+: https://plus.google.com/112685858696012068703/about?hl=en
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKkYhyA5PuF3BNSAqc5FXLg
SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/ethereal-blood
Yahoo: ColdCryptStudios666@yahoo.com
iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/album/id929754710

Any pearls of wisdom for all other bands out there?
"Never compromise. The music industry is failing. Do your best to be as independent of you're record label as humanly possible. Don't trust sound guys."

Describe your show, visually and musically
"The soundtrack to you're nightmares and wet ddreams."

Whats your Pre-show ritual?
"I don't really think we've developed any. We pretty much just crawl out of our coffins have a bite, drink, smoke, fuck, or whatever and start loading the equipment up." - Robex Lundgren

“Atop the cusps of jagged crags that knife the swirling clouds. Knee deep in corpses raise our flag victorious and proud…”
The Ethereal Blood Sanguinary Symphony, also known under mortal context as “Ethereal Blood”, is a bone-chilling melodic black metal band based out of Illinois. The band primarily consists of front man Luke “Lord Vardoulacha” Lisner, guitarist Nate “Nephilim” Aichele, and bassist Andrew “Abyss” Miller. The band has also recently added a new guitarist whose name remains yet to be known to the mortal world. While the band has been practicing with a couple drummers from time to time they have yet to find a permanent fit for live shows, so the band usually performs to a track. The band self-records all of their music and has an outstanding work ethic, along with an intense and horrifically entertaining live show. During an interview with Luke the most outstanding and unique aspect of the band was their beautiful use of the English language. Luke’s lyric writing not only uses a very sophisticated vocabulary but is extremely unique and in many contexts eyebrow-raising for lack of a better term. By mixing the sophisticated speech with the violent and often sexually explicit lyrical context, Ethereal Blood is sure to impress black metal fans everywhere: as well as frighten any mortal incapable of tolerating such an intense art form.
Metalheads everywhere can agree that the genre of black metal has many ups as well as many downs. What gets tricky is that the definition of good and bad black metal varies significantly from person to person. While many enjoy the raw and intense poorly recorded sound, others may enjoy the sophisticated opera-like performance style. However, Ethereal Blood delivers what is an excellent mix of intense and raw sounding power along with well-orchestrated and sophisticated instrumentals. Ethereal Blood’s debut “Cold Crypt Sonatas Vol 1” is a must have for committed black metal fans everywhere. Tracks such as “Conceived in Cemetery Soil” and “Courting the Blood Countess” give a beautiful display of the power that Ethereal Blood can deliver in their tracks. Intense and brutal sounding screams and shrieks are later accompanied by well written guitar melodies and beautiful string parts that have given black metal its iconic sound. Being a self-recorded album, it was extremely impressive to hear such tight sounding recordings with very good clarity of all parts, relatively speaking. Some downsides to the album is while lyric writing is amazing, many vocal parts are difficult to hear and an excessive amount of shrieks can be distracting on the album. What was most enjoyable, however, is that this album could easily fit as a horror movie soundtrack with the frightening wolf howls and intense sounding string sections. What may come as a surprise is the band also is not afraid to occasionally experiment with some electronic parts in their music as well. While this was very surprising in respects to their genre, it was also very fitting to the parts and was an absolute plus to the listening experience.
The band is very well executed live as well, and the members really know how to give a memorable show. As a black metal band, you can expect leather armor and face paint along with many stage props. From a musician standpoint, their live setup is excellent. Loaded with Marshall full-stacks on the guitars and a bass rack with enough equipment to overwhelm even the smartest of mortal sound technicians, these gentleman are not playing around when it comes to projecting a clear and well thought out live sound. Andrew Miller also has a plethora of admirable basses, including his trusty self-modded Warwicks. When the band finds a permanent drummer, their live show should intensify only that much more.
Overall, the album very well identifies what black metal stands for as a genre. As Luke stated in his interview “We aren't exactly reinventing the wheel just perfecting it”. The album includes everything a black metal fan would want to hear and it executes every part extremely well. “Cold Crypt Sonatas” is extremely enjoyable to listen to and keeps the listener at the edge of their seat at all times.
Talent Rating: 9/10
Production Rating: 7/10
Live Performance Rating: 8.5/10
Album Rating: 8.5/10
Overall Rating: 8.5/10

-Jon Vokal - The Guitaricle

To those of you who love Cradle of Filth (as well as Hecate Enthroned), especially their early years, then you will find this to your liking. As The Principle of Evil Made Flesh and Dusk & Her Embrace have a very unique sound, it's hard to find other albums with the same quality. Countless time I will find myself in the mood for that style of music, but I only have a couple albums that fit into the incredible, yet exceedingly rare genre. Other than the above mentioned, The Slaughter Of Innocence, A Requiem For The Mighty and Dark Requiems... and Unsilent Massacre are the only other albums I have that fit into that category. Needless to say, as near and dear to my (cold black) heart as they are, you need to mix things up after a while, that is part of life and more importantly, Metal. It's nice to see some fresh blood come into the scene and pay their respects to such inspiring bands as them, while still bringing their own ideas to the table. I am sure there will be those who will just label this as some "copy" or "knockoff" group, but honestly, I will gladly take another band who brings that same Transylvanian Winter soundtrack to us. There are countless ____ Metal bands out there who sound similar, there aren't nearly enough that have this special sound. Cheers and horns raised in supplication! \m/ - Moloch Belial