The Father of Serpents

The Father of Serpents is a doom metal band from Serbia, the first band from the country to feature on this blog. The band consists of well known figures from the Serbian metal scene and they released their debut album Age of Damnation a couple months ago via Satanath Records.

I spoke to guitarist Loncar about the album, their writing process and more.

 

Most of the band members are also part of The Hell. How and when did you’ll decide to start a new band?

TFOS: Hi, you are right, most members are from The Hell except the drummer Aleksandar Maksimović and Pavle Sovilj who plays the violin and is also a singer.

It all began when a few songs were made for our guitarist’s – Igor Loncar side project. It wasn’t meant to be a band at all, but after a few months a lot of people were very interested and excited about this project, we received the offer to play as a support band for Attic shows in Serbia and also to play on Exit festival in Novi Sad. That was the perfect moment for this project to become a band. In addition to this we were and still are very good friends, and we have similar music taste so it was natural for us to play together once again.

Your music a mix of gothic, death and doom metal. How did you develop your unique sound?

TFOS: That’s probably because of the various mix of the music genres we listen to, there are influences from Pink Floyd to Bolt Thrower in our music! It’s not really unique, or at least we do not feel it that way, we wanted the recycle the 90’s doom/death sound we all were listening at that time.

Your debut release Age of Damnation reminds me of the Peaceville era of doom metal. Tell us a bit more about the album

TFOS: Yes, it has the atmosphere just like the old (gold) era of doom metal. It has 10 songs, almost an hour of music and we are really proud on what we achieved with it. Idea was to record an album that we would listen at home. Today a lot of bands records music just to show their technical skills, or to be cool, have fun on stage (nothing wrong with that), but our main goal was to have an album that is both easy to listen and interesting enough at the same time. To some extend we believe that we managed to do that.

With 6 members in the band, how do you’ll manage the songwriting process? Is there one or two main contributors or everyone contributes equally?

TFOS: There are no rules when we talk about the songwriting. Sometimes one of us makes the whole song and brings it to the rehearsal, sometimes we make it all together, sometimes we just jam and hope it will go in some direction.

The album was recorded at Wave Studio in Belgrade. What was the recording process?

TFOS: We are lucky enough that our guitar player Igor has his own studio , mentioned Wave Studio, so we didn’t have to rush with recording and mixing. We had actually a great fun during the recording, we had the freedom to try everything we wanted. It was recorded in parts during the whole summer of 2016. The last song, for example was made and shaped during the recording process. A lot of people really like the production and so do we! We already heard from people it sounds like 90s doom with modern (good) production!

Do recommend bands from Serbia that the readers should check out.

TFOS: If we talk about doom metal, you should definitely check out ‘Tales Of Dark’ and ‘The Bloody Earth’.

What are your plans for the rest of the year? Are there any shows/tour planned in promotion of the EP?

TFOS: We will have the album promotion in our home town – Belgrade, it will be a gig in the club ‘Elektropionir’ on 2nd of September. Right after that the plan is to visit all nearby countries and cities and to promote our album and music in the best way we can. Also we hope we will record new material soon since we already have some new music for the listeners!

Thanks for answering all my questions. Do you have any final words?

TFOS: Thank you for your interest in our music, and see you all on the road hopefully soon! Doom on!

Listen to Age of Damnation below