MTUK: Hello and thank you for agreeing to this interview, first of all. I reviewed “Rengeteg” for Metal Team UK and would say it is one of most diverse albums I have heard for a long time. What was your vision when you conceived the idea of “Rengeteg”?

Tamás: Hi Andrew, thanks a lot for your interest. This is the fifth album of Thy Catafalque and I would say we found our own, distinctive voice by the third one, Tuno Ido Tárlat. And when I say “we” I refer to János Juhász guitarist and me. The band has consisted of the two of us ‘till recently. Rengeteg was written and recorded by myself alone because of the growing passivity of János and he decided to leave TC soon after it, but I cannot underline enough how important his creative input had been for all those years, for the first four albums, especially for Tuno Ido Tárlat. That was a watershed album. Since then we have a solid base to build our music on and if you lend an ear to that record and the following Róka Hasa Rádió, you by no means will be surprised by the current record. So if you ask if it was a vision to create a sort of diverse album, I’d answer yes, but not for this particular album. This world has been a vision for the last three pieces of work.

MTUK: I have the impression that sometimes the starting point for “Rengeteg” is a solid Dark Metal base, and at other times you are seeking to create a surreal ambiance which transports us to a distant world. Did you set out with a particular musical or philosophical base, or does each track stand independent in your eyes?

Tamás: It’s an interesting thing. Usually I have intention just to write songs. And I really want to write characteristic songs, tracks that could be easily separated from each other. They don’t have to be classically structured, standard songs, you know, with verse-refrain-verse-refrain-solo-refrain in 3 and a half minutes and stuff like that. That’s not important for me, I don’t believe in the superiority of the traditional song-formula, I use it when I feel the theme demands it, but not all the way at all. However I want the tracks to be recognizable and individual to each other. But at the end of the day the album itself is somehow getting forged together in a common mood, an atmosphere that connects all the songs, covers them all, like a blanket. It’s absolutely not conscious or calculated, it just always happens that way. Of course I do pay attention to the build-up of the album, the inner arch as well. But it it’s the mood that cements the record as a whole entity.

MTUK: You incorporate different folk elements into a number of tracks on the album. The style of folk is distinctive. It is melodic but can be quite haunting. Are these folk styles born from a tradition within Hungarian music or have you adapted a traditional form to meet the atmospheric needs of “Rengeteg”?

Tamás: Well, it might sound unusual because I never use folk music like most of the folk metal bands do nowadays. Honestly I pretty much dislike this recent folk metal craze and the superficial way they adapt the old music. I have a totally different attitude. I enjoy it when you feel the musical roots, the folklore in the music itself, in its depths, in the sounds and not necessarily in the form. Playing a folk song with metal guitars, double bass and stuff has nothing to do with its original meaning and it just reduces its power which actually lies in the simple, fragile pureness. I would like to think that I have my cultural roots in my attitude and you can hear this when you talk about the distinctive sound.

MTUK: Although “Rengeteg” is of course a serious musical work, I felt there were lighter moments within it. As an example, I sensed this on “Kel Keleti Szél” and “Trilobita”. Does “Rengeteg” have a fun element?

Tamás: There are lighter moments here and there musically. Kel Keleti Szél means East Wind Rising and is more or less about longing for the homeland, while Trilobita (Trilobite) is a track about the constant motion of all thing organic and inorganic. I would not call these songs fun, but they are more accessible, indeed. Yes, that’s a better label for them. Some parts of Rengeteg happen to be quite accessible. Even my mum would like some of them, ha-ha.

Tamás: Ko Koppan means Stone Pattering. I tried to depict an image of a forest. It’s like lying in the grass among the trees in the droning woods watching the swimming blue clouds above, while the forest is also moving around us together with the soil beneath. Everything is changing around us and we stare at the passing time.

MTUK: Could you envisage creating a work in future which has a Classical base?

Tamás: It has already happened. I have a solo album under my name entitled Erika Szobája released by Italian label Ars Benevola Mater in 2006. It’s a sort of neoclassical music, really similar in style to the above mentioned song.

MTUK: I have never heard anything like “Vashegyek” before, other than “Molekuláris Gépezetek” on your previous album “Róka Hasa Rádio”. “Vashegyek” seems to be an epic balancing act, in which you first mix a beautiful ambiance with overbearing gloom and darkness, and then in what seems to be a second act the track transforms into a swirling and violent fantasy. Can you explain what this track is about, and also how you built up the process of balancing and mixing all the instrumental and vocal elements. How did you know you had got it right?

Tamás: Vashegyek means Mountains Of Iron. The song describes the iron mountains as the symbols of creation in the making. It explains these mountains as the cradles of life where all the elements are being forged inside till the present day.

“This is the order within here obdurate and austere. Vibratile secrets carving the form, the vast night shines cold.

Rigid lines are hammered here for all the frames by a might, a beat clanging in its halls, a beat clanging in its corridors.”

It sounds lame in English, much better in Hungarian, trust me ?. Yes, we can divide the track into the parts in a sense. The first part is about the creation of the mountains, the second is about the creation within them. It had to be a long and almost physically heavy track put into the middle of the album to tower up really like a huge, vast mountain. I wanted it to be long, massive and as weighty as possible. That was the preliminary idea and then started to write the song itself. I really have no formula for it, once it just happened to be finished and when listened to it in one, it felt all right. Of course there’s always place for smoothing things and putting others to different places, but you know when a track is nailed. Then you may still play a bit with the bits. Actually this was the very first song composed and recorded for Rengeteg.

MTUK: Did you get inspiration from other media other than music? “Holdkomp” has the feel of a film soundtrack. Is this an area which interests you?

Tamás: I draw inspiration from fine art – photography, painting, design, architecture, all branches of other art, films, literature, I’m really interested in them. The sample you hear in Holdkomp (meaning Lunar Module) is actually taken from the transmission of the former USSR state radio. Each morning the radio transmission started with this speech. That particular song has a sort of eastern retro-space vibe, one of my favourites off Rengeteg.

Tamás: It was quite easy because both Attila and Ágnes had previously done vocals for the previous album and I knew exactly what standout capabilities they had. I had no one else in my mind singing the clean vocals, they fit perfectly for the music of Thy Catafalque and both are highly professional to work with and are also able to bring in their own creativity to the process and thus enrich the material. For the cello it was just a sudden idea. Originally those parts had been recorded with keyboards and then I spotted a video of a guy playing his cello in an extravagant fashion and dropped a mail to him about a possible collaboration and he nailed it not soon after. Anyway he is Mihály Simkó-Várnagy, the solo cellist of a well respected Hungarian Symphonic Orchestra.

MTUK: When you compose your music, do you seek advice or help, or do you simply prefer to work alone?

Tamás: I work alone. Of course we discuss the clean vocal parts with Attila, but other than that it’s only me in this from the very first sounds and words through the mixing and mastering ‘till the submission of the cover artwork.

MTUK: Who have been your principal musical influences over the years? Has your taste in music changed?

Tamás: I listen to lots of metal, electronic music, jazz, whatever, plenty of different things. Just more and more as time goes so my taste widens I reckon. However to be honest recent metal albums are quite boring for me, at least a large number of them. It bores me to death to hear the same riffs and sounds again and again and it has become regular in this particular genre. Metal is losing the creativity in general. Of course there are exceptions but most offerings just don’t impress me. However I’m into classical music more deeply than ever.

MTUK: “Rengeteg” has been released on the Season of Mist label. What opportunities do you see from your collaboration with Season of Mist?

Tamás: Season Of Mist is a serious label with a roster with more than significant bands and it guarantees a much wider exposure for TC than before. It’s quite new anyway for me as the first three albums were sort of self-released and Róka Hasa Rádió came out through Epidemie Records which is a label not that big scale. Now the new album will be available worldwide and reach such media that have been out of reach before. I feel really lucky to get to SOM, it’s an honour, let alone for a band from Hungary.

MTUK: Now that “Rengeteg” has been released, what project or projects are you engaged on now?

Tamás: I have no other projects. We might do something with Gire, my other, old band but Gire just doesn’t work online and currently we are far too far from each other which is a shame, so we have been inactive in the last four years.

MTUK: Is there a logical follow-up to “Rengeteg”?

Tamás: I never think about such things. I don’t know if Róka Hasa Rádió was a logical follow-up to the previous record or Rengeteg was a logical follow-up to Róka. So I guess the next one will be a logical follow-up in this sense . I plan it to be more experimental and less straightforward, but you never know how it ends up finally.

MTUK: Do you see any possibility of playing your work live? Does this interest you?

Tamás: We never had any gigs and I’m not planning any either. It’s simply too much hassle to organize even a rehearsal, not to mention a well-played gig. We live in different countries, and we’re just not enough in numbers to perform. I would not bother about it. And anyway I enjoy composing and creating music much more than playing it. I have done this with Gire. We had been playing for 12 years and it was no less than fantastic, but Thy Catafalque is a totally different cup of tea.

MTUK: To finish, is there anything you would like to say to UK readers, particularly those who don’t know your work?

Tamás: Hey, I stay in Edinburgh, I love your country first. Second, just check the songs on YouTube, SoundCloud, ReverbNation, anywhere. You won’t understand a single word, that’s all I can guarantee :).

Thanks! I’m intrigued in how you’re going to follow up on such a thought-provoking and alternative vision of music as “Rengeteg”. In the meantime I’d like to wish you every success for the future, whatever you’re doing.

Thanks for the interview and your wishes, Andrew, I wish the same for you!

For more on the band check out

http://www.myspace.com/thycatafalque

Interviewed by Andrew Doherty

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