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BACK
HOW
LIKE A WINTER
The Winter’s Tale
By Adrian ‘The Energizer’ Bromley
"How like a winter hath my absence been /
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year /What freezing have
I felt, what dark days seen / With old December’s bareness
everywhere…" -- (William Shakespeare, Sonnet XCVII)
There is something heavenly about gothic/doom music. While sad and
downright depressing at times, there is a real sense of life and
vitality in the music. The notes seem to be more passionate and
the vocals—both gruff and angelic—seem to coat the material
with a sense of adventure. The music is a powerful entity and with
each note played the band is harnessing their emotions.
"There are no words to describe what I feel when I play,"
says How Like a Winter singer/pianist/lyricist Dust. "The emotions
I get are the music itself. That’s the best and only way I
can go about explaining it. The great thing about making this music
is that people get their own feelings from this music, while at
the same time some of the same feelings I draw from it."
Listening to the sextet’s debut on Martyr Music titled …beyond
my grey wake, it isn’t hard to pick out an obvious influence
on this Italian act: My Dying Bride. When asked about the bands
that influenced HLaW, Dust replies, "A lot of people compare
us to My Dying Bride and I can live with it. The comparisons are
there and it’s a comparison that honours me. I adore that band,
so surely I’m very influenced by them, and I’m not in
the least ashamed of admitting it. They taught me a lot about creating
style and how to turn emotions in notes.
"As for the other influences running throughout the band, I
can’t answer for the whole band, but for myself I hear a huge
range of music. For example I could be influenced to write a real
doom part from a jingle in a TV commercial. I learned that the most
unexpected things cause the most unexpected effects, especially
in music."
Speaking of influences, William Shakespeare is an obvious one in
regards to the band’s name and ideas within the music. Why
his work?
"I love theatre—I am part of an acting company—and
I love Shakespeare: the tragedies, the comedies and the sonnets.
I love how he paints the most natural and ordinary things gold.
There are passages in his pieces that I often quote, but my favourite
one is without any doubt Romeo and Juliet—spectacular! ‘There
never was a story of more woe...’"
What was it about Shakespeare that inspired them to adapt pseudonyms
(guitarist Mist, bassist Bane, vocalists Tragedy and Misery and
violinist Agony)? Where did those ideas come from and what do they
represent for you and the band?
"They approach the context the band creates. The idea came
suddenly (like any others) and suddenly was accepted by the others
with enthusiasm. Each of them has a meaning correlated to that person,
strictly personal and sometimes so inner. As for me, Dust is something
that remains, over the time, as a shroud that lays everywhere, especially
in the darker and forgotten places. It’s all that remains when
everything is over."
The topic turns to the new album, with the singer revealing, "A
lot of these songs have been around for some time, with some appearing
on our demo The Winter’s Near [2001]. We were ready when we
went into the studio to record this album, but we added little ‘shades’
to the music while in the studio. The mind never stops to work and
I believe if I had spent another week in the studio the new album
would have been another album."
One would think it would be hard to create music with six people
in the band.
"At times, yes, you are correct. Not all of HLaW are involved
in creating the music, just Mist and Bane, and that makes it easier
than having the rest of the band try to throw together multiple
ideas at once. When I let them hear a song I have come up with,
most of the time it still is in parts and without any colour and
they just go ahead and work together to assemble it. I don’t
really need to explain to them what I have in my head. They just
seem to know what kind of colours can match with that portrait and
they just start painting and the music is born."
Do you think musicians are born musicians or people at a young age
just latch onto a musical direction and grow from there?
"Anyone can play music, but not everyone is born a musician,"
the singer states. "There’s something almost imperceptible
that characterizes a musician, something that you can notice even
when you’re only a child. It’s the approach we have with
the music and with an instrument, even if we can’t play it
yet, something is already in the air, a kind of dialogue. That’s
at least what happened to me the first time that I touched a piano
(at age 5). There was a dialogue between my hands and those keys.
The smell of the painted wood goes to my head and the creaking of
pedals made me shudder like a weird omen. Then I understood my journey
had begun.
"In the years after I have touched and played other instruments,
but nothing makes me shudder like the piano still does."
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