#BekorQilish 🇮🇹 Interview and Exclusive Streams
At Blessed Altar Zine we’ve highlighted a number of great bands from Italy’s I, Voidhanger Records — from Serpent Ascending, to Poland’s -S-.
Today’s focus is on the innovative, solo, avant-garde metal project Bekor Qilish and the debut album Throes Of Death From The Dreamed Nihilism – released on the 17th of June.
Not only do we have an interview with the project’s mastermind Andrea Bruzzone, but we also have two exclusives — a premier of the album’s forthcoming second single “Ocean of Malice”, plus an exclusive lyric video for the album’s first single “Cryptic Hatred”.
Hello and thanks for agreeing to this interview for Blessed Altar Zine. I’ve been enjoying a lot of music on I, Voidhanger recently and your record really grabbed my attention.
Andrea: Hello guys, thanks for having me for this interview.
Can you explain the meaning behind the name Bekor Qilish?
Andrea: Bekor Qilish is an Uzbek term that refers to annulment, cancellation of something.
The essence of man, of civilization, is the belief that everything (a thing, a man or even the entire universe) at a certain point becomes nothing, it disappears.
Some people think that god will be the ultimate savior from annihilation of things, but still they have to believe in the existence of nothing, in annihilation, to hope that one day god will save them from that tragic end. Therefore, what is common in every man, the religion of those who believe they have no religion, is properly the faith in annihilation, total darkness, absolute nothingness. This is the Essence of Nihilism.
In the words of the greatest philosopher of all time, Emanuele Severino: “The whole universe is unbalanced, bewildered, disfigured, and we live in it, unbalanced, bewildered, disfigured.
Despite how beautiful, great and powerful things we have made and thought of could have been. What Is the meaning of salvation, pleasure and happiness IN THE DARK?”
Your first release as Bekor Qilish — Throes Of Death From The Dreamed Nihilism — will be released later this month. What was the genesis for making the album?
Andrea: I’m a musician and I released other stuff before this, so I always felt the need to write my own music. I kinda always enjoyed extreme music among other genres, but in the last 4-5 years I really started getting deeper into that kind of sound: death metal, black metal, and all the infinite sub-genres that refer to those styles, so I ended up thinking that the best way to communicate what was going on in my mind in a creative way was making an extreme music album. That’s how Bekor Qilish started.
What was the process of recording the album like? Were there any particular challenges for you to overcome?
Andrea: I gotta say it was pretty easy, because I worked with Mauro Scarfia, who is an old friend of mine. He was the only person that could easily understand what was the result I wanted to achieve; moreover, he has such a personal taste and some skills that ended up being precious for the final product.
You handled a lot of the parts of the record yourself, with some notable guest musicians. How did the collaborations on the record come about?
Andrea: Well, as a one-man project, everything was under my control, since I wrote every single note of the music. But at some point I needed something that could surprise me in the context of my own music, something outside of my control, a different touch on the songs. That’s why I mostly left total freedom to the great musicians that accepted to collaborate for the album. And, yes, in the end I was amazingly surprised about their contributions.
The music on this record is extremely complicated and multi-dimensional. How did you first start turning ideas into more fully-realised music?
Andrea: I start just creating a riff, or a melody in my mind, then I write it down and from that very first fragment of music I try different variations, trying to maintain a certain continuity with that first idea. Sometimes I completely change direction inside the piece, but I always try to go back in different ways, to allude or to put in a different mood from that very initial intuition that made me starting the writing process for a song.
What was the first music you listened to that inspired you to start playing music yourself?
Andrea: Oh, difficult to say. If you mean when I was a kid maybe it was some hardcore punk stuff like NOFX or similar.
Where in Italy are you based and how do you think your background influenced the kind of music that you’re making now?
Andrea: I’m from Milano, northern italy. I guess nowadays with the constant connection we have with the entire world thanks to the internet, my background didn’t influenced my music that much.
The artwork for the album is striking. In what way do you think the album cover represents your music?
Andrea: Yeah, STRX made an amazing work! It fits very well with the concept of the entire album with its dreamy, surreal, metaphysical and obscure taste. Not by chance the album is called “Throes of Death from the Dreamed Nihilism”.
If Throes Of Death From The Dreamed Nihilism were a living creature, what would it look like and how would it behave?
Andrea: Ahah, that’s hard to say. Might be a giant living black hole that devours everything it encounters, pushing it into eternal darkness.
Now that the album is coming out, what plans do you have for promoting it in the coming months? Is there any possibility to play some of this music live?
Andrea: I’m making a lyric video for the singe “Cryptic Hatred” and I will be posting some footage from the recording process of the album, like the performances of some of the great guests that played on the album, like Eugene Ryabchenko from Fleshgod Apocalypse and Romain Goulon, now in Sadist and ex-member of Necrophagist.
About the live performance I gotta admit that it would be an absolute dream to bring this stuff on a real stage, and I’m already thinking about on how to make it possible!
Finally, is there anything else you’d like to mention or promote?
Andrea: Oh, I just wanna thank you again for this interview. A big thanks goes also to Luciano from I,Voidhanger Records that showed such interest and excitement on the material when I sent it to him. And finally thanks to all the people that made this possible, see you on a real stage sooner or later!
Interview by Tom Osman
Thanks to Andrea for his time, and to Luciano from I, Voidhanger Records for the exclusive stream and video. Pre-order Throes Of Death From The Dreamed Nihilism on CD, vinyl and digital from the links below.
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