The Wounded Kings Interviewed

JJ Koczan of The Obelisk recently conducted an interview with The Wounded Kings‘ multi-instrumentalis Steve Mills about the band’s sophomore album, entitled The Shadow Over Atlantis. A few excerpts from the chat follow below.

The Obelisk: You’re obviously schooled in doom. Where do you see The Wounded Kings fitting in with the doom lineage?
Mills: Ah fucking hell (laughs). You know, I’ve never really thought about it. I grew up listening to Saxon and Dio and stuff like that, and it was only a few years later I started listening to Candlemass and then onto Black Sabbath and stuff like that. Whether we fit anywhere between there, Electric Wizard, Solitude Aeturnus and all those people, I don’t really know. Where do you think we fit in?

The Wounded Kings

The Obelisk: There’s a lot of old school stuff about the record, but the way it’s recorded — the layering of the guitars — there’s a lot that’s modern about it.
Mills: It’s weird. If I’m honest, I’ve got a real soft spot for the old stuff like Dream Death and the very early Cathedral and everything, but when I’m recording the albums, I’m pretty much listening to Pink Floyd and classical music and classical soundtracks. Have you seen the film Perfume? There’s a real dark soundtrack to that, and I’m pretty much not listening to any doom at all when I’m writing or recording. I suppose, because I come from that early doom background, that sort of playing, when I’m writing I just don’t bother listening to that. Maybe I bring in some weird Pink Floyd and some classical aspects to it that gives it something a little bit different. It’s very difficult analyzing, because I just start writing, and George comes over and we just get together, and it spews forth, and that’s how it ends up.

The Obelisk: I know you have a couple shows coming up and you’re doing Roadburn, but are you in writing mode again now?
Mills: No, not at all at the moment. We wrote this track for the Cough thing and since that, we have just been rehearsing for the live stuff. For ages, we’ve had a half-hour set, and for Roadburn, we’ve got a full 60 minutes, so we’ve been working pretty hard in getting that stuff together. We’ve literally just focused purely on the live set. We’ve not played that many gigs. I think in total we’ve played four gigs, and we just want to make sure when people see us they’re blown away.

Continue reading:  The Obelsik – The Wounded Kings Interview with Steve Mills: Done and Dusted in the Shadows

Tags: doom, JJ Koczan, Roadburn, Roadburn Festival, Steve Mills, The Obelisk, The Shadow Over Atlantis, The Wounded Kings

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 at 10:06 am and is filed under 2010, Interviews, Roadburn Recommended . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.