the NULLL Collective

.: THE NULLL COLLECTIVE Interview :.

So guys, tell me how the project The NULLL Collective came to life and everything that revolves around it.

EMH: I believe the NULLL Collective was born in 2004 with a project called 'The Sad Sun' which was Stijn and I. We did a few tracks over the years, mostly for compilations and splits, then we decided to start writing a full album around 2008 or so. A lot of the 'De Monstris' album was originally written for 'The Sad Sun' debut; most of all "Feed the Whore" and the whole 'De Monstris' concept in general were designed for 'The Sad Sun' at first. When Stijn and I invited S.P. White to join us, we decided to take on the moniker 'The NULLL Collective'... i felt that had a stronger sound to it.

SVC: The NULLL Collective both serves as being a traditional band, and as a larger collection of all our solo-projects. You could say that the 3 of us as people are members of the band, but our solo-projects are members, too.

You have many music projects, what prompted you to create a new one of these proportions and what priorities will you guys give to it in the future?

EMH: For me personally, The NULLL Collective is the most important thing right now. I had an idea to distill the essence of all of our various projects at once, and put it all into one single band: The NULLL Collective. In the future, for me at least, The Collective takes high priority; I have a desire to be as prolific as possible and release at least one full-length album every year from now on.

SVC: I still have a lot of material for some of my solo-projects, mainly for Until Death Overtakes Me and Beyond Black Void, that's in various stages of completion and waiting to be released. For the time being however, I mainly focus on The NULLL Collective.

I already gave somewherelse my own opinion about "De Monstris", now it's your turn. Values and faults from your point of view? What do the lyrics deal with? And what about your favorite song/songs?

EMH: I am very happy with the final album. There is not much i would change, honestly. Perhaps i would have fleshed out 'RepulsUgloid part 2' a bit more and extended it slightly, if i had to do it over again. Other than that i am very happy with the whole, and feel like it flows perfectly from the first song to the last.
My favorite song is 'Feed the Whore'. It seems to be the most controversial song for most purist Funeral Doom fans -- mostly for the inclusion of psychedelic synthesizer sounds. A few have voiced negative opinions of our inclusion of this sound, but i love it and plan to actually enhance the importance of these kinds of vintage analog Moog synth sounds on our second album. I am a fan of 1970's Progressive Rock and heavy Psychedelic "space rock" from that period - and i feel that style is a perfect match for our type of nightmarish, surrealistic Doom.
'Feed the Whore' is also the oldest song on the album, i think some of lyrics and maybe some riffs date back to around 2005 when 'The Sad Sun' were first toying with it.

SVC: It's too soon for me to start looking for faults. Usually I don't see any at the time of release, else there wouldn't be a release to begin with, but over time I tend to see things that could have been improved or that I would do different now. 'Feed the Whore' is my favorite as well, it's the track around which the entire De Monstris concept was originally built up in 2004-2005. Possibly the most varied song on the album, which makes it the most representative track of The NULLL Collective so far.

Your album is already quite a step "ahead", are you guys intending for the future to continue on this path without distorting it too much, or are we supposed to expect something totally different?

EMH: Our second album wont be totally different, but it will be a more expanded sound concentrating more on building a deep-space psychedelic aura. Basically, 'De Monstris' was the sound of the three of us trying to figure out exactly who we were and how we wanted to sound. Now that we know who and what we are, and exactly how we want to sound, our second album will be much more concentrated and pointed - and every style we touched upon on 'De Monstris' will return, more developed, on album #2.

SVC: The way we create our music won't change drastically, but that doesn't mean that the result will be similar to De Monstris, chances are it will be vastly different.

I believe that such a work like "De Monstris" is very difficult to assimilate. I have often thought that even the basic idea was to go against the listener in a way.

EMH: Yes! We really wanted to challenge the listener and never let them become too comfortable listening to this album. We purposely tried to fuck with people's expectations of what this band would sound like. We constantly take unexpected hard-turns and wander into different territiores and styles. Our idea was to create a kind of "Progressive Death Funeral Doom" album... something that will challenge as well as reward repeated listens.
Our second album will include all the styles from the first, as well as even more unexpected twists of weirdness. Most bands these days are too safe and don't take enough chances with their music. Frankly, most bands in underground extreme Doom these days are fucking boring because they never do anything different... i've started to feel like i've heard it all before. We just want to shake things up and create something different.

SVC: I don't really try to create what might be considered as anti-music on purpose. The funeral doom music that has been put out over the last few years has become quite standardized, no matter how extreme it is. So I think it's rather easy to create something unexpected, simply by not limiting oneself to what might widely considered to be the 'rules'. If your audience is used to listening to standardized music that hasn't evolved in years and you bring something completely different, some might experience that as a shock or worse. To me, I can't release anything other than such music. If it's not different enough from what already exists, there is no point.

How were the two Repulsugloid born? I perceived them as a proof for a future dynamic propensity and at the same time as a bright idea to give the listener a little air while listening to the album.

EMH: Hmm, i'm not sure if it was Stijn's idea or mine... but it was our exact intention to break up the three "main pieces" with two short, blunt pieces that were the total opposite of the three main songs. Repulsugloid was meant to wake people up who had been lulled into a false sense of comfort by the more epic songs... to make them feel the harsh reality of things and realize nothing is ever as it seems. You can never feel safe listening to a NULLL Collective album.
The future will indeed see this idea implemented further and expounded upon.

How would you describe your music to those who have never listened to you?

EMH: "Progressive Death Funeral Doom Metal". Ha, there's really no one tag to describe exactly what we are because we are a band without boundaries! If we want to do a fast brutal Grindcore part right in the middle of a 20 minute ambient Doom piece, we will do it. There's really nothing we wont try at least once. It is our intent to experiment within a genre that knows very little experimentation and progression. We will push all boundaries in the future, until we no longer fit into any genre... we are simply 'NULLL Metal'. We are "none of thee above".

SVC: There's no real point in trying to describe the music to people who haven't heard it. Let them listen to it first and if they feel the need to describe in words, so be it.

How do you deal with working separately? For The NULLL Collective such a situation might perhaps be a better one if compared to a typical "session" in the rehearsal room, am I wrong?

EMH: It's hard to say if what we do is better or worse than being a typical band... who knows what we would come up with if we all lived in the same country and could rehearse in a traditional sense? All i know is that what we do seems to work, and seems to produce extraordiary results at times. I don't understand why more introverted, lone-wolf musicians around the world don't use this 'detached collective collaboration' approach to work together and produce music together. This tactic seems to especially work well within the realm of "extreme doom" which is such an isolated and isolating type of music to begin with, frequently produced by a single individual.

SVC: I'm used to working alone and it would be very difficult to work together with other people in a 'live' or rehearsal-type fashion. Being alone gives me full control over the part I'm working on at the time without any interuptions. Once I'm done with that, I can submit it and receive feedback or criticism from the rest of the band. It still allows to combine ideas into larger concepts, but at the same time leaves a lot of room for each of us to do their own thing. Would it sound differently if we rehearsed? Probably, because I wouldn't want to work on music like this in such a fashion.

Who had the idea to create "Silent Night"? The very first time I've listened to it, it definitely gave me shivers.

EMH: It was all Stijn's idea. It is a tradition for us to release a new 'christmas' song every December from now on.

SVC: The original idea for doing something like this actually came one year before we released this cover for the first time (december 2009). Late 2008, I had made an ambient/funeral cover of 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star'. It was fun to do and I like the result very much, but it also served to question and even annoy those that take funeral doom too seriously and believe it should be governed by strict rules. By going with a typical religious track this time, I hoped to also reach people who take religion too seriously.

Your devotion to the funeral/death/doom will surely be remembered for a long time. It's nice to have some certainties that you know won't ever be disappointed. Do you still feel like keep creating music like this? (I need reassurances...).

EMH: I know i will keep at it, at least for a very long time. I believe there are many more paths to follow within the boundaries of 'extreme doom'. It is something that came naturally to me, so i see no reason to turn my back to it. I can see myself still playing, writing, and recording this type of music when i'm 80 years old. I will also explore other types of music; i do an Industrial Death Metal project called 'Synaptic Fracture', and consider that my "other most important" band.

SVC: I have plenty of ideas to keep me going for a while as well, and not just for TNC but also some of my solo-projects. It all depends on what you mean by 'music like this', we're not going to be repeating ourselves, future albums will sound different from things we've done in the past.

What about new projects? Are there any releases scheduled for the forthcoming months?

EMH: We always release new material, every single month. We do this via something we call the "NULLL Infra", which is a monthly free "digital download release": a single free song in mp3 and flac formats from either the 'NULLL Collective', or our various solo projects.
So far this year we've released new material from Beyond Black Void, Synaptic Fracture, The Ethereal, Uncertainty Principle, Torture Wheel and TNC itself. August's 'Infra' single is actually a brand new NULLL Collective song called "Cerberus Trisector", which is a preview of our second album!
Let me talk a bit about the second NULLL Collective album: it's still un-named but it will contain probably 9 tracks that will flow together into one long conceptual piece. It will be another 'concept album' like 'De Monstris', but this time dealing with cosmic and astral themes: solitude and madness in deep space, time travel, alternate dimensions. It will be an epic, sorrowful, sci-fi story told via Extreme Doom. The "2112 of Extreme Doom" or the "Dark Side of the Moon of Extreme Doom" is how i like to think of it.
Other than that, i'm going to release the first 'Synaptic Fracture' album on CD next year, and possibly a brand new 'Torture Wheel' album mid-year 2011 as well. So, i will be quite busy.

SVC: Through NULLL Infra we will also release a few more tracks from our other projects this year still, expect to see a preview of an unreleased track by 'Until Death Overtakes Me'.

Original version as it appeared on Headbang.it

Collective member pages : EMH - SPW - SVC.
Collective manifesto - Press.
Music by the NULLL Collective (freely downloadable).



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		.: THE NULLL COLLECTIVE Interview :. So guys, tell me how the project The NULLL Collective came to life and everything that revolves around it. EMH: I believe the NULLL Collective was born in 2004 with a project called 'The Sad Sun' which was Stijn and I. We did a few tracks over the years, mostly for compilations and splits, then we decided to start writing a full album around 2008 or so. A lot of the 'De Monstris' album was originally written for 'The Sad Sun' debut; most of all "Feed the Whore" and the whole 'De Monstris' concept in general were designed for 'The Sad Sun' at first. When Stijn and I invited S.P. White to join us, we decided to take on the moniker 'The NULLL Collective'... i felt that had a stronger sound to it. SVC: The NULLL Collective both serves as being a traditional band, and as a larger collection of all our solo-projects. You could say that the 3 of us as people are members of the band, but our solo-projects are members, too. You have many music projects, what prompted you to create a new one of these proportions and what priorities will you guys give to it in the future? EMH: For me personally, The NULLL Collective is the most important thing right now. I had an idea to distill the essence of all of our various projects at once, and put it all into one single band: The NULLL Collective. In the future, for me at least, The Collective takes high priority; I have a desire to be as prolific as possible and release at least one full-length album every year from now on. SVC: I still have a lot of material for some of my solo-projects, mainly for Until Death Overtakes Me and Beyond Black Void, that's in various stages of completion and waiting to be released. For the time being however, I mainly focus on The NULLL Collective. I already gave somewherelse my own opinion about "De Monstris", now it's your turn. Values and faults from your point of view? What do the lyrics deal with? And what about your favorite song/songs? EMH: I am very happy with the final album. There is not much i would change, honestly. Perhaps i would have fleshed out 'RepulsUgloid part 2' a bit more and extended it slightly, if i had to do it over again. Other than that i am very happy with the whole, and feel like it flows perfectly from the first song to the last. My favorite song is 'Feed the Whore'. It seems to be the most controversial song for most purist Funeral Doom fans -- mostly for the inclusion of psychedelic synthesizer sounds. A few have voiced negative opinions of our inclusion of this sound, but i love it and plan to actually enhance the importance of these kinds of vintage analog Moog synth sounds on our second album. I am a fan of 1970's Progressive Rock and heavy Psychedelic "space rock" from that period - and i feel that style is a perfect match for our type of nightmarish, surrealistic Doom. 'Feed the Whore' is also the oldest song on the album, i think some of lyrics and maybe some riffs date back to around 2005 when 'The Sad Sun' were first toying with it. SVC: It's too soon for me to start looking for faults. Usually I don't see any at the time of release, else there wouldn't be a release to begin with, but over time I tend to see things that could have been improved or that I would do different now. 'Feed the Whore' is my favorite as well, it's the track around which the entire De Monstris concept was originally built up in 2004-2005. Possibly the most varied song on the album, which makes it the most representative track of The NULLL Collective so far. Your album is already quite a step "ahead", are you guys intending for the future to continue on this path without distorting it too much, or are we supposed to expect something totally different? EMH: Our second album wont be totally different, but it will be a more expanded sound concentrating more on building a deep-space psychedelic aura. Basically, 'De Monstris' was the sound of the three of us trying to figure out exactly who we were and how we wanted to sound. Now that we know who and what we are, and exactly how we want to sound, our second album will be much more concentrated and pointed - and every style we touched upon on 'De Monstris' will return, more developed, on album #2. SVC: The way we create our music won't change drastically, but that doesn't mean that the result will be similar to De Monstris, chances are it will be vastly different. I believe that such a work like "De Monstris" is very difficult to assimilate. I have often thought that even the basic idea was to go against the listener in a way. EMH: Yes! We really wanted to challenge the listener and never let them become too comfortable listening to this album. We purposely tried to fuck with people's expectations of what this band would sound like. We constantly take unexpected hard-turns and wander into different territiores and styles. Our idea was to create a kind of "Progressive Death Funeral Doom" album... something that will challenge as well as reward repeated listens. Our second album will include all the styles from the first, as well as even more unexpected twists of weirdness. Most bands these days are too safe and don't take enough chances with their music. Frankly, most bands in underground extreme Doom these days are fucking boring because they never do anything different... i've started to feel like i've heard it all before. We just want to shake things up and create something different. SVC: I don't really try to create what might be considered as anti-music on purpose. The funeral doom music that has been put out over the last few years has become quite standardized, no matter how extreme it is. So I think it's rather easy to create something unexpected, simply by not limiting oneself to what might widely considered to be the 'rules'. If your audience is used to listening to standardized music that hasn't evolved in years and you bring something completely different, some might experience that as a shock or worse. To me, I can't release anything other than such music. If it's not different enough from what already exists, there is no point. How were the two Repulsugloid born? I perceived them as a proof for a future dynamic propensity and at the same time as a bright idea to give the listener a little air while listening to the album. EMH: Hmm, i'm not sure if it was Stijn's idea or mine... but it was our exact intention to break up the three "main pieces" with two short, blunt pieces that were the total opposite of the three main songs. Repulsugloid was meant to wake people up who had been lulled into a false sense of comfort by the more epic songs... to make them feel the harsh reality of things and realize nothing is ever as it seems. You can never feel safe listening to a NULLL Collective album. The future will indeed see this idea implemented further and expounded upon. How would you describe your music to those who have never listened to you? EMH: "Progressive Death Funeral Doom Metal". Ha, there's really no one tag to describe exactly what we are because we are a band without boundaries! If we want to do a fast brutal Grindcore part right in the middle of a 20 minute ambient Doom piece, we will do it. There's really nothing we wont try at least once. It is our intent to experiment within a genre that knows very little experimentation and progression. We will push all boundaries in the future, until we no longer fit into any genre... we are simply 'NULLL Metal'. We are "none of thee above". SVC: There's no real point in trying to describe the music to people who haven't heard it. Let them listen to it first and if they feel the need to describe in words, so be it. How do you deal with working separately? For The NULLL Collective such a situation might perhaps be a better one if compared to a typical "session" in the rehearsal room, am I wrong? EMH: It's hard to say if what we do is better or worse than being a typical band... who knows what we would come up with if we all lived in the same country and could rehearse in a traditional sense? All i know is that what we do seems to work, and seems to produce extraordiary results at times. I don't understand why more introverted, lone-wolf musicians around the world don't use this 'detached collective collaboration' approach to work together and produce music together. This tactic seems to especially work well within the realm of "extreme doom" which is such an isolated and isolating type of music to begin with, frequently produced by a single individual. SVC: I'm used to working alone and it would be very difficult to work together with other people in a 'live' or rehearsal-type fashion. Being alone gives me full control over the part I'm working on at the time without any interuptions. Once I'm done with that, I can submit it and receive feedback or criticism from the rest of the band. It still allows to combine ideas into larger concepts, but at the same time leaves a lot of room for each of us to do their own thing. Would it sound differently if we rehearsed? Probably, because I wouldn't want to work on music like this in such a fashion. Who had the idea to create "Silent Night"? The very first time I've listened to it, it definitely gave me shivers. EMH: It was all Stijn's idea. It is a tradition for us to release a new 'christmas' song every December from now on. SVC: The original idea for doing something like this actually came one year before we released this cover for the first time (december 2009). Late 2008, I had made an ambient/funeral cover of 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star'. It was fun to do and I like the result very much, but it also served to question and even annoy those that take funeral doom too seriously and believe it should be governed by strict rules. By going with a typical religious track this time, I hoped to also reach people who take religion too seriously. Your devotion to the funeral/death/doom will surely be remembered for a long time. It's nice to have some certainties that you know won't ever be disappointed. Do you still feel like keep creating music like this? (I need reassurances...). EMH: I know i will keep at it, at least for a very long time. I believe there are many more paths to follow within the boundaries of 'extreme doom'. It is something that came naturally to me, so i see no reason to turn my back to it. I can see myself still playing, writing, and recording this type of music when i'm 80 years old. I will also explore other types of music; i do an Industrial Death Metal project called 'Synaptic Fracture', and consider that my "other most important" band. SVC: I have plenty of ideas to keep me going for a while as well, and not just for TNC but also some of my solo-projects. It all depends on what you mean by 'music like this', we're not going to be repeating ourselves, future albums will sound different from things we've done in the past. What about new projects? Are there any releases scheduled for the forthcoming months? EMH: We always release new material, every single month. We do this via something we call the "NULLL Infra", which is a monthly free "digital download release": a single free song in mp3 and flac formats from either the 'NULLL Collective', or our various solo projects. So far this year we've released new material from Beyond Black Void, Synaptic Fracture, The Ethereal, Uncertainty Principle, Torture Wheel and TNC itself. August's 'Infra' single is actually a brand new NULLL Collective song called "Cerberus Trisector", which is a preview of our second album! Let me talk a bit about the second NULLL Collective album: it's still un-named but it will contain probably 9 tracks that will flow together into one long conceptual piece. It will be another 'concept album' like 'De Monstris', but this time dealing with cosmic and astral themes: solitude and madness in deep space, time travel, alternate dimensions. It will be an epic, sorrowful, sci-fi story told via Extreme Doom. The "2112 of Extreme Doom" or the "Dark Side of the Moon of Extreme Doom" is how i like to think of it. Other than that, i'm going to release the first 'Synaptic Fracture' album on CD next year, and possibly a brand new 'Torture Wheel' album mid-year 2011 as well. So, i will be quite busy. SVC: Through NULLL Infra we will also release a few more tracks from our other projects this year still, expect to see a preview of an unreleased track by 'Until Death Overtakes Me'. Original version as it appeared on Headbang.it Collective member pages : EMH - SPW - SVC. Collective manifesto - Press. Music by the NULLL Collective (freely downloadable).