Undivine | Interview with Erik Kumpulainen

Cold, dark and harsh could certainly be adequate descriptions for the atmosphere of “A Deceitful Calm”, the debut full-length album of Swedish group Undivine. Although it’s not a particularly innovative work, their first release stands out as a very promising effort and already displays a strong maturity with the quintet moving comfortably through the grimiest and gloomiest sides of Black and Death-Metal.
Something that will hardly surprise those who know that Undivine aren’t exactly newcomers giving their first steps in music since the band is formed by members of groups like In Aeternum, Isole, Withered Beauty and Rimthurs.
To which point do you think the experiences in such distinct projects like In Aeternum and Isole proved to be helpful to assemble Undivine and record “A Deceitful Calm”, did it allowed the band to have the task a bit more facilitated or did you experienced the same difficulties of any band that is starting up and wish to conquer their own space in the music?

“I have no idea.” Answers guitarist Erik Kumpulainen when we contacted him to find out more details about Undivine.

“I like to think we got our deal with Aural Offerings based on the quality of our music, not because of our participation in other bands.
Maybe it was helpful to some extent for Aural to get the distribution deal with Twilight Vertrieb.”

The recordings of the album started in late 2006 and only were completed in the beginning of 2008, what contributed for the recording process to be dragged for such a long time?

“Actually the recording was finished in the summer of 2007. Getting the distribution deal ready was one major part in the delay.
That was beyond our control. We finished our part of the work in autumn 2007 and then we were just waiting for the album to get released.”

Anyway, the album as mentioned was released in June and following several listenings it’s safe to state that “A Deceitful Calm” is a bit more melodic and diverse when compared to previous work “Behind thy Eyes”, in your perspective what are the main differences between the two works?

“First of all, I guess we needed some time to form our style. The album is more mature and we worked more on the songs on it.
Since we have pretty much unlimited access to the Apocalypse studio (owned by Isole) we can arrange the songs, and change details in the riffs etc more freely. In comparison to renting a studio for a couple of weeks or whatever, it gives us the possibility to produce better.”

The sonority of Undivine has been compared to bands like Dissection, Hypocrisy and Marduk and to a certain point those influences can be heard throughout the eight themes of the album. Do you consider such names to be influential for Undivine?

“Personally, Marduk and Dissection are great influences. The Hypocrisy style stuff is coming from Jonas, since he is a major Hypocrisy-freak. The Hypocrisy-influences will come through a bit more on the next album, since Jonas wrote the music to a bunch of songs on it.”

Apparently the band already has a new album ready to be record, right? Does the Undivine
of today differ from the Undivine that had recorded the album?

“The next album is recorded and being mixed right now. Also, we have got ourselves a new guitarist, Sami Mäki.
He is doing a couple of more solos on it, and then it will be sent out to get us a new record deal.”

What are the future plans for Undivine?

“Right now we are writing songs, rehearsing, and finishing the next album. No gigs are planned at the time, but we are working on it.
”We are focusing on getting some gigs abroad and hopefully someone will take us with them on tour...any day now!”

More info: www.undivine.se