Upon release of the daily schedules for the Roadburn Festival in Tilburg, thereon after, began arguments and discussions about the numerous overlapping of relevant and strong names throughout the entire festival. Yellow Eyes and Sannhet, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Wolfbrigade, just to name a few. Admittedly, the Converge You Fail Me set could’ve been an easy choice for a lot of people, but truth is, one shouldn’t underestimate the name you can hardly see anytime soon again. That’s one of the many reasons why Furia were put on a pedestal for us. With this, comes the idea of maybe getting to know the Polish band, that has recently turned 15 years old since its inception. To celebrate, Pagan Records made it possible for us to speak face-to-face with none other than the frontman Nihil and bassist Sars of Furia.

After a very busy 2017, touring all over Europe and Poland, in campaign for their most recent contribution Księżyc Milczy Luty, we had the chance to talk a little about their recent collaboration with the Wesele theatrical piece, as well as their first japanese tour and the linguistic barrier between the music and the listener. Check it all, down below.

 

You’ve been active as a band for pretty much 15 years now. Does it seem like a long time?

Nihil - Yeah. Really long time, especially since that there’s only been one squad. I mean three of us have been together since the beginning. There’s just one guy that joined us only a few years ago, so we’re sort of like an old marriage. Yeah, it’s quite a long time.

 

An unfortunate time slot seeing you will be playing at the same time as such a big band like Converge. A healthy competition never harmed anyone but do you feel like not anyone can dig what Furia do?

Nihil - You mean, appreciate? Not everyone, but it’s not about what genre we’re playing, it’s more about the taste of music. There are a lot of people in Poland that hate us, so the same here I think.

 

Poland has been a constant birthplace of tremendous and ambitious black metal projects, even including some of those whose members of Furia have been part of. What makes Poland so great in that sense?

Nihil - I think it’s a good time for us because it’s time that we got our freedom. After the second World War, there were 50 years of communism and starvation, and it was a really hard place to live, and now it’s time to release our potential. All these bad things that happened last century in Poland, we’re now expressing in ourselves and in society. Now it’s time to release it.

Sars - We are not modern society, now we are going out from the forest, and for everybody in Europe it’s interesting because we are talking and playing about simple things, that’s all.

 

Talk a little about the “Wesele” theatrical performance you did last year. How did it all come about and how did you prepare yourselves for such a different live context? Good reactions from the public? Would you do something similar ever again?

Sars - Yeah, we’re actually still doing it. We’ve played it over 13 times already and we’ll play more. It’s an ongoing program, so we’re still playing it.

Nihil - It was a little bit hard, because the theatre is a really different place than a club, where people are drinking beer and having fun, while the theatre is more of a sacred place. People are more focused, while sitting and we don’t have this space to express ourselves. It was a bit difficult but it’s really fascinating. After these 15 years, it’s refreshing for us.

 

Besides “Wesele”, in 2017 Furia also toured for the first time in Japan with Besatt. How was the experience?

Nihil - Oh it was awesome. Because Japan is a different planet. Of course, the culture was the most fascinating thing, but the second thing was how metal culture, made me feel they are at a point where Europe was in the 90’s. They’re like savages, with underground concerts, cults, dirty clubs. Metal in Japan, is not so usual like in Europe, not like a taboo or a niche, but it’s sort of new, in the sense that it’s not popular, so it’s more emotional and fascinating to them.

Sars - There’s a lot of simple madness. I’m not sure if it was the first gig in Sendai, there was a support band and we looked at these guys and a girl playing on bass, and if you saw them in the street, you wouldn’t say they were playing in a black metal band, but when they start to play, they start to act like mad men, but not just like in a black metal concert where guys have corpse paint, leather and boots. They were with their normal clothes and there was something simple but mad while on stage. Because these days, when you want to play a huge gig like in a black metal gig, most bands act like they need to have a lot of props and they do the exact opposite, exactly nothing. Just pure madness. You can like it or not, but to me it was raw.

 

You’ve released a total of 5 full-length albums so far, Księżyc Milczy Luty being your most recent, and I’ve noticed that the change of sound between albums has been ever present. Has the same change been calculated or is every shift of mood a natural transition in Furia’s progress?

Nihil - It is natural. The sound of the first albums were unconscious because weren’t experienced in studio and all the technical stuff, so now it’s more conscious but we try to use sound as a tool to express what we are talking about in a specific album. There’s no such thing as a goal in getting some characteristic sound for Furia, every time it’s different.

 

In all of your records, you speak Polish, which makes it hard for some to understand what you say, but the feeling, atmosphere and emotion, all  remain. Do you think it’s more important to feel than to just understand?

Nihil - Yes definitely! This is the reason we sing in Polish you know? It’s our goal, to play and sing in Polish, but to do it in such a way that the listener can understand exactly what we are singing about. Pure emotions, that’s what it’s about. It’s really hard, I think there’s a lot of work to do but we’re in a good path, because you feel that, as you said it. It’s important for me to hear such a thing because that’s our goal.