BEYOND THE VOID: a little sinful love and all that lies beyond

Metalfan: Hello there, how are things Beyond the Void lately? How are you guys doing?
Daniel: Fine, thanks. We are pretty much on the road with our other band Worship, having just returned from 2 gigs in Japan. BTV is discussing ideas for a new album now. Quite a lot of ups and downs, and all arounds.

Metalfan: Nice choice for a band name, it definitely sounds cool, does it have a deeper meaning for you? How did you come up with it?
Daniel: Thanks! Classically, it is used in the way of "there must be something beyond the void of space", leading to the paradox that if there was nothing beyond the void, it would just be "more void". You see? Mind-bending. Also, we are looking for the light beyond the void in our selves. But, hey, names, what does it matter really?

Metalfan: Being familiar with your music since your second album - I Am Your Ruin - I have to say that I'm surprised that the recognition you get as a band is still unfairly low. Reviewing I Am Your Ruin two years ago, I was concluding with assuring everyone that your next album will be released by a major label and by listening to Gloom Is a Trip for Two, I still think you would have deserved it, why do you think it hasn't happened?
Daniel: Thanks for your belief in us! This belief from our fans and friends keeps us going. Business is tough. More and more bands can create (some kind of) music today with the cheaper and cheaper tools that are around. But people buy less and less CDs, that leaves fewer and fewer record deals for huge numbers of bands, many of them very good.

Change must happen from the lowest level upwards. People, buy CDs! One more every month does make a difference worldwide. Use legal downloads or Myspace to check out the bands, and if you like what you hear, buy their CD. Music industry without buyers is like cars without filling stations. It won't bring you far.

A "full service" record deal is just not something you can rely on. It gets more lottery-like every year. We are just doing what we love, heartfelt music we like, and do it for our fans and friends. Whatever else happens is not in our hands.

Metalfan: Building your own label in order to release your music, not so many bands are doing this. Wasn't there another choice, has the music industry rejected you or have YOU rejected it?
Daniel: Of several million bands (really) on Myspace today, only a few dozen bands have good record deals. Some 1000s worldwide have poor deals with tiny labels who do absolutely nothing. That's not better than releasing it yourself. The rest have nothing. Most of them will never have a real record deal before they give up or die of old age. Depressing. You will never hear those stories, the winners write history.

Today, you just can't say "I am good, I will have a record deal tomorrow". Competition is just too heavy. Some labels get 50 or more demos a week or a day or per hour. Thousands a year. They can maybe sign somewhat between 1 to 10 bands per year. Preferingly bands who are already well-known. How is that supposed to work?

Full control is a nice thing, our own label has good partners, major distributions in many countries. And we can do whatever the fuck we want, hahaha!

Metalfan: What do you think about the music industry then, is it good for the music?
Daniel: The music industry like every other industry wants to make profit. You promote a release, and what decides about life or death about anything is the buyer. I can spend a million bucks for promo, if mysteriously nobody buys, it's a failure.

So you, the audience, decide what happens. All the big bands are put there by the masses. Big strategies, super labels, all is fine, but they all try to judge the audience and cater to their needs and wishes.

That's economy. If you sell the best burgers in the world you can drop dead anyway if nobody knows them or nobody likes them. That's why daytime TV sucks so hard and why all the big bands are usually bullshit. Because the majority of mankind is useless.

But don't blame the music industry. They just do what industry does. Sell. If everyone buys horrible trash, then horrible trash is your number one hit! Let me put this clear: The audience with their respectless attitude towards art, with their acceptance of burned CDs and leeched albums... THEY ARE THE BAD GUYS. Present study: 95% of the british make illegal copies. Oh great. Kill music properly. Go out and shoot a musician.

Metalfan: How are things going so far with the label? Do you have plans of expanding this label and getting more involved into financing selling music?
Daniel: Endzeit Elegies (www.EndzeitElegies.com) has 2 bands now, my 2 bands, with 4 releases up to now. So we are very young still. Any distributors who want to carry Beyond The Void or Worship can contact info [AT] EndzeitElegies [DOT] com. What happens in the future I can't say.

Metalfan: Your website presents you as a modern goth rock band, would you care to elaborate on this label? How do you describe your music to people?
Daniel: We are working on a new website, which will label us as Gothic Metal. Everything works in waves, and we are waving towards Metal a lot these days. Also, we are thinking of changing our ways again and have some surprises ready for you.

Metalfan: Getting back to your most recent album, Gloom Is a Trip for Two, is this the best album you did so far? Why is that?
Daniel: Hmm, some of us actually prefer I Am Your Ruin. We wanted to create a massive, center-of-the-road piece of darkness, without much fuss. As such, I like the album very much. In retrospective, our weird elements and not-so-dark, not-so-true moments might be what people like about us. While we were aiming at a solid, true and one-piece album, many reviewers would have liked us to invent something new. That's not what we wanted with this album, but we are planning to make a very original number 4. As I said, we are feeling and thinking in waves. There is always a multitude of possible next albums, and you always thirst for a change, a slow one, a fast one, a soft one, a hard one and so on and so on. The right album, well done, at the right time is what makes an album a hit. We just do what we like at any given moment in time. With Gloom, we wanted a deep, thick, atmospheric, black mid-tempo album for dark moments. A true album. This was right after our very angry and hateful #2, and I was craving for soft romantic moods and even a little sinful love.

Metalfan: How do you feel your music has evolved since the previous record? For example, I, for one, think the new songs are deeper and rather introspective, while they retain the same impressive sense of melody, what is your take on that?
Daniel: We really start from scratch. Album 1 has a little of everything, mostly very personal stuff. Many different styles rolled into one. With number 2, we wanted to kick the melancholic and be angry and bloody. Number 3 saw us turn again towards dark moody romanticism. You see, what we do is the spark of the moment and a concept formed among a group of musicians in a certain stretch of time. "Let's do a XXXX album!". What changes is that we get better as musicians, of course, but the rest is the mood of the day.

Metalfan: I think it is obvious the you guys are not trying to re-invent heavy metal; your music is highly enjoyable despite the fact that your influences are easily detectable: HIM, Darkseed, Charon, Type 0 Negative, Secret Discovery, Moonspell, Love Like Blood... Do you agree? Who do you consider to be your main influences in music, on this record?
Daniel: Of course Gloom does not bring much novelty to the table, but most of the successful bands of our genre don't, either. While I haven't heard songs of some bands you mention, it is true that we have much in common. But, I hardly ever listen to music at all (except soundtracks, which I need for my work), to avoid stealing as much as possible. But we use guitars, we use similar scales and chords, there is the gothic style of singing, similar themes and so on. Of course, whatever you do puts you on the map.
My influences are mostly inside my heart and mind. Of the bands above, I have only old Moonspell stuff, 1 Love Like Blood album and most of Type O Negative. And I don't think Beyond the Void sounds much like either of these.

Metalfan: Since we’re here: how much do you care about your music being original, groundbreaking or not?
Daniel: I had to learn the hard way that some people want a young and new band to sound young and new. It's not a good way to stardom to say: "Let's do the sound of the big bands". When you lack the monster label that can warp reality and act like their new act has always been among the top acts and all others are copies, you end up being labelled a copy yourself.
Take a CD, stick 2 different band names on it, a young band and a big band. The same music will be either "the next masterpiece by the genre's founders XXXX, doing just what we love about them" or "nothing new, all heard before, a copy of XXX". Exactly the same music! I'll bet.
They say, hey, you are a new band, what can you offer? What makes you DIFFERENT compared to the big ones? I say, what, you mean besides good songs?
These are thoughts I never had. I don't care too much about the big ones. I know about 4 songs by HIM and don't own any of their CDs. Still I get compared to them a lot. I do not usually try to be original at all costs. I care about thoughts, feelings, moods, melodies and harmony.
But I will learn. In order to be on every other magazine around, you have to be kissed by the label god or be so new and extreme that everyone just has to drop on their knees in awe. So one of them two it is for me, hahaha!

Metalfan: Could you please tell a few things about the lyrics, are they just presenting standard goth themes, like it seems at a first glance, or do they come from personal experiences? Do you think these topics will change over time?
Daniel: They change all the time. Behind every of my songs is a mood, a fear, a dream, a series of thoughts. I write around this feeling to form a song. I do not have a dozen of life-shaking experiences every year for every album, and I would be careful to believe anyone who claims otherwise, but there is a lot of my personal insides in every line.

Metalfan: The title conveys a standard goth rock theme, the condemned love, the miserable condition of love. Why did you chose this title?
Daniel: Because I think it's fucking awesome. And we had a true album, why not a true title to fit?

Metalfan: Could you briefly describe the music-making process? Did the new songs take a lot of time to come together?
Daniel: We have 4 songwriters, who prepare songs or raw ideas and bring their best to the table. We then jump up and down on those, picking out the best pieces as we see them, and make them happen. I guess somewhere around a year from start to finish.

Metalfan: Are you a real goth? Is the gothic culture a way of life for you or just a mean to get your music heard? How do you relate yourself to the values of the goth subculture?
Daniel: I would consider myself not living in one box. There are many things I like about many genres, and the sad & dark stuff I usually like the most. I guess I am not typical. I love to make music, and we as Beyond the Void come together to create music, we found out that it turns out dark, sad and heavy. A style labeled Gothic Rock by somebody or other. That's why we are where we are.
I have respect for true followers of one subculture, but I love to be alone somewhere, doing just what I like, not in a faceless army of any kind.

Metalfan: What is your musical background? Your profile on the band’s website says that besides singing, you can play guitar, keyboards, bas and drums. How did you achieve this performance?
Daniel: I see myself as a composer. That's why I like to try every instrument. In my work as soundtrack composer for games and short movies, I need to understand all instruments of the world. I am easily bested by a good player, e.g. guitar, because I don't fight to get as far as possible with my instrument. I just play to bring emotions and moods across, if it's on guitar, on keyboards or whatever. It's all about the song for me, that's why I guess I am a composer and a singer.

Metalfan: Being the mastermind in a band, I guess this brings along the need to control everything, isn’t it? Is Daniel Pharos ruling Beyond the Void as a dictator? What do the other band members have to say about it?
Daniel: Actually, we started as a truly democratic band. But as we learned that everyone gives a different amount of energy, and has a different vision, Dominik and I took control of the band, just to make sure that we hold up the level. To inspire. But still, we all decide most stuff together. I don't feel like a tyrant at all. Should I?

Metalfan: How do you feel about internet and file sharing? Basically, it gives you a chance to reach a great number of people and to lose a great amount of money at the same time. But does it do more good or bad when you draw the line?
Daniel: I don't really know. I am very much against illegal downloads, and you should be too. Go buy CDs and save variety. Or else you are heading for a market where only the mainstream can survive.
Again, I am your grandfather in this affair, but this must be understood. We, the Non-Madonnas of the world, suffer and die if you continue to steal music. I know many bands that actually lost their record deal or split up because of illegal downloads, no kidding.
A few weeks before our last release there were ten Google pages or more of different sites presenting our full album. The next time I won't only sue, I will start killing everyone of those top-level domain owners, whose address is fat and bold to see in the internet. Maybe they have to swallow one of my unsold CDs per illegal download? This could be funny.

I like Myspace, it's free, we meet a lot of people, but it's not illegal leeching. Use Myspace, and those other free services, then buy what you really like. If you buy something that you don't like so much, then sell it on Ebay. Where is the problem? You don't leech food, you don't leech clothes, or your PC. Everything that takes a lot of money to produce, you pay for. But music, hey that's free! No it is not, asshole. I can show you my bills, hahaha.

Metalfan: How do you feel about playing live and how is you live activity in general?
Daniel: Wild year. We played a Nightliner tour with L'Âme Immortelle and will play another in October. We played gigs with my other band Worship (with many BTV guys) in for example Russia and Japan. As we grow older, we try to play fewer, more effective and more enjoyable gigs.

Metalfan: What are the short term plans of the band?
Daniel: Right now we are gathering ideas. Things are slow again, as we played a lot with Worship. We have many great and wild ideas and want to take some time to show everyone what we are capable of. It will be awesome. But I think we'll need 2 years.

Metalfan: Any final words before the quick quiz?
Daniel: Thanks for this rich interview. Sorry if I came across bitter and angry from time to time, that's just because I am bitter and angry and hate mankind. And everyone out there, check out our stuff, free songs on www.myspace.com/BeVoid, and buy our stuff at www.EndzeitElegies.com/catalog hahaha.

Quick quiz:

Black or grey
Black. Is the new grey.

Moscow or Rio de Janeiro
Moscow. Because we really had a great time there when we played there in Moscow, great crowd and greater feedback.

E. A. Poe or Charles Baudelaire
Poe. But both are not exactly my favourites.

Opium or absinthe
Both stirred, please.

Sisters of Mercy or Type 0 Negative
Type O. But close call.

Spikes or piercing
Why can't we have both? I like metal on girls as long as it's tasteful.

Frankenstein or Dracula
Frankenstein is one of the saddest things I have ever read, while Dracula is a key Vampire story, and vampires rule, this can't be really decided. A draw.

Loud or clear
Clear. Loud is overrated.

Black raven or black cat
Clearly the raven. I fly in every dream I have, and cats suck.