“Ascension Beyond Kokytus” … the best way to drown in an atmospheric metal madness, a way shown by the amazing Costa Rican band VoidOath. On behalf of the band, Christopher De Haan (guitars, vocals) spoke to Myth of Rock and Dimitris Zacharopoulos and gave his nice, polite and interesting answers. Get ready to burn down in this sludge metal inferno!
Give us a short biography of VoidOath until now.
VoidOath was formed in 2018. We’ve known each other from other bands (Age of the Wolf and Redhead Match), and we wanted to create something different and heavier, more focused on creating music that comes from our interpretation of horror works.
You released your debut album some days ago. Which are your feelings now?
We are very happy with the overall reception for the album, Cursed Monk’s batch of the album has already been sold out, and Cognitive Discordance Records is almost out of copies as well.
People have been very receptive to the record, which we really appreciate. We got great reviews from different publications, including being featured on Cvlt Nation’s Top 10 Sludge Releases of 2022.
Give us all the information about the recording process and the whole production of “Ascension Beyond Kokytus”.
We wrote the album in about eight months, and we had been playing around with riffs since the release of “Illumination Through Necromancy “(Harmful Existence), so we already had various ideas on what we wanted for the record and how we wanted it to sound like.
After that, we recorded, produced, and mixed the album by ourselves.
You are being described as a doom/sludge metal band. Do you agree with this description? Why?
We mainly got around sludge and doom on our first release, and this was heavily based on the nature of the source material we were adapting. For this new release, we found ourselves having some death and black metal influences, as well as retaining those sludge and doom elements.
Who is main composer in VoidOath? Which are your music influences?
Jose Rodriguez handles most of the guitar composition, but every member adds their own interpretation to Jose’s riffs. We also, collectively, decide on removing or adding specific parts as well as adding synths and that kind of stuff. It’s hard to say which influences are prevalent at any specific time, our goal is to bring something different to each record. We are definitely fans of bands like Sumac, Yob, Interarma, Neurosis, Isis, Toadliquor, Corrupted, Kongh, The Body, Kurokuma, to say a few, but we really listen to all kinds of stuff.
“Ascension Beyond Kokytus” is a concept album. Who writes the lyrics? Can you give us all the necessary details about the concept and the lyrics of the album?
Christopher wrote the lyrics to the album, based on the source material of “Who Goes There”, John Carpenter’s “The Thing”, as well as expanding into the lore set up by multiple media such as videogames and comics. The album, a lot like the movie, details a starship crashing down in the arctic, that then is recovered by humans. To the human’s demise, the creature starts to consume them, isolate them, and make them distrustful of each other.
Who did the cover artwork of the album? Give us all the details please!
The artwork was handled by Nataly Nikitina; we gave her a rough sketch of what we wanted, and she delivered an awesome cover, completely desolate and aggressive.
Why did you name the band VoidOath?
No reason in particular, it sounded cool, but it’s just a name
You come from San Jose, Costa Rica. How are things for metal in Costa Rica? Is there a metal scene? Which difficulties do you face as a metal band in/from Costa Rica?
We have a small scene in our country, but we have a shit ton of bands, mostly thrash and death metal bands, but in late years we’ve had a lot of new genres incorporating the whole of the scene. One of the many difficulties is that we are very severed from the world community, band and music wise, it is also a very expensive country to travel from and to, and being such a small country that is mainly used as a vacation spot, the country’s size doesn’t help.
VoidOath has intricate, long compositions. Why is that?
Weed. But also, some of the pieces we adapt have themes and atmospheres that lend themselves to very long and hypnotic layering.
One of VoidOath’s characteristics is the sultry, dark atmosphere of your songs. Do you agree with me? How would you explain this atmosphere?
We like to make things quite atmospheric; we believe this is a very strong part of our songwriting process. We like to make people feel like they are drowning and then forcefully pulled to reality.
Which are your ambitions for VoidOath?
We’d like to play live more, get our record out on Vinyl, and work on our next album.
Is a tour on your schedule?
We are hoping to visit some countries in Latin America. We hope we can materialize that soon enough!
How did the Covid-19 pandemic and its restrictions affect you as individuals and as a band?
We stopped working momentarily during the first weeks as we had no way to get to gather due to heavy restrictions. So, we worked on a side project called Dilapidated Mechanism which we did around the first months of the lockdown, it took about two weeks to put everything up remotely. But shortly after this, we were able to get together again and keep on working on the songs during rehearsals. So, we eventually got around restrictions to be able to finish the album.
Send your message to the fans!
Greetings to the fans of Myth of Rock, give “Ascension Beyond Kokytus” a listen and tell us what you think! Thanks for the support, and thanks to you Dimitris for having us for this interview. Cheers!
AMERICAS: https://cognitivediscordancerecords.bandcamp.com/album/ascension-beyond-kokytus (Jewel Case CD w/ Exclusive O-Card, Poster, Stickers and Download Card)
UK/EUROPE: https://cursedmonk.bandcamp.com/album/ascension-beyond-kokytus (digipak CD)
DIGITAL: https://voidoath.bandcamp.com/album/ascension-beyond-kokytus
Digital/Streaming Media: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/voidoath/ascension-beyond-kokytus
VoidOath:
https://www.facebook.com/voidoath
https://www.instagram.com/voidoath
Cognitive Discordance Records:
https://www.facebook.com/cognitivediscordancerecords
https://www.instagram.com/cognitivediscordancerecords
