CARMERIA // Arriving From The Depths Of Darkness

Carmeria; from the shortened Latin for ‘songs of misery’. Far from miserable, though, is the latest offering from the Sydney goth metal outfit. Indeed, you’ll find their new single To Lead The Blind mysterious, sultry, feeling, and heavy.

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Of course, you won’t find many goth metal bands running around Sydney; that style is generally reserved for our Scandinavian and Nordic brothers and sisters. And yet there’s a plethora of those influences running in this track, and running well. As Carmeria’s vocalist Jordan Von Grae says, this is the genre that best serves sonically the stories the band want to tell.

“It’s a direction we decided to go in many moons ago now,” Von Grae says. “But in terms of what each of us naturally tends to write, it definitely tends to gravitate more toward that symphonic sound. Having influences from a lot of gothic rock bands, definitely helps as well.”

Power metal is evident here, as is a heavy influence from the band Camelot. “Lyrically as well, that’s where my lyrics fit best,” adds Von Grae. “I think we’re at a point now where we’re comfortable in the genre and really enjoy writing within that sort of scope.”

As for To Lead The Blind, those power metal influences stick out in the track’s double time bass and drums, working well with the lighter vocals and the sage-like lyrics. The narrative picture Von Grae paints is one of an idea of bowing to pressure and becoming a pillar of strength for those around you. “It’s flirting with the nature of feeling like you’re being there for everyone else and that might not be necessarily reciprocated–I’m sure a lot of people can relate.”

“There’s a little bit of story that runs through our forthcoming album; I wrote these lyrics to fit into that theme. Its own meaning is succumbing to pressure as a result of becoming a pillar of strength for other people.”

A lot of the feedback we get from people is that we remind them of the band Him. I never would have picked our sound as something that could work with them, but I really love that! So that’s something we play with as well.
[ Jordan Von Grae ]

The track’s official music video encompasses elements of religious imagery coupled with gothic ambiguity, offering a juxtaposition between Von Grae’s vision and establishing the pillar as a metaphor through religious iconography. “That wasn’t intentional on my part,” admits Von Grae, “[but it was] the team that we worked with, RodAndCo Productions, and Roderick Gadaev, the guy who directed and produced the video–absolutely amazing guy to work with and his team are fantastic–but I had a bit of an idea of what I wanted.”

“I sent him [Gadaev] ideas as well the lyrics and he pretty much came up with the concept for it and built the set around. I can absolutely see how you might get that interpretation from the video and the single as well.”

Drawing on more Latin ideas, the name for Carmeria’s forthcoming debut album, Advenae–due for release May 14 – came about after the band’s keys player, Mishka Bobrov, spent some time mulling over the lyrics Von Grae had penned. “He called me and said, ‘I’ve got the album title!’ He was talking about the lyrical themes, this being a band whose been around for so long and this being our debut album. He sort of started playing around with the idea that this is very much the band’s arrival, so to speak.”

“He was like, ‘I’ve been looking at different languages, [for] something that translates roughly to ‘arrival’, and basically said he’d come up with Advenae. He went into more depth with it with me and I thought it’s the right title for this album.”

“It’s very much an arrival of the band onto the metal scene. Even though we’ve been around quite a while, it’s taken us a little bit to get everything together and up to a standard we’re happy with.”

“With the arrival of this album, it feels like us going ‘We’ve arrived, we’re here, we’re ready to do this properly.’”

Von Grae mentioned that To Lead the Blind fits into an overarching story yet to be heard in Advenae, but what will that entail? “The previous two singles [Morningstar and Celestia] with To Lead the Blind, paint a really good picture of what you can expect from the album.

“It’s very symphonic metal, there’s a couple of power metal elements in there–To Lead the Blind is definitely a good example of that side–and then we have one more single coming before the album, and that’s a slower one.”

“There’s a nice chemistry between the first two singles and these last two, [which] are pulling from a different emotional spectrum.”

“A lot of the feedback we get from people is that we remind them of the band Him. I never would have picked our sound as something that could work with them, but I really love that! So that’s something we play with as well.”