Heaving Earth inteview

“Darkness of God” is an excellent letter of introduction from the Czechs from Heaving Earth, and in case you didn't know them before, well now is the opportunity, because they have just released a powerful album with a lot to say independently. And if you say that the technology cannot have a dose of darkness, well here you have a clear example that it is not necessary to do things like Obscura, Death, and a whole long line of technical bands that care more about the cleanliness of the effects, to have the rough and direct punch that Death Metal has. Therefore, Metallerium interviewed the band.

Si deseas leer la entrevista en español: Entrevista a Heaving Earth

Metallerium: Welcome, ppl from Heaving Earth to Metallerium pages. It’s a great pleasure to talk with you about the band, this new album “Darkness of God” and more things related to the metal world. To start the interview, how have you been during these crazy times? Two years of the pandemic, a war in Europe, and who knows what will happen next years? A zombie apocalypse, alien invasion, the rise of the machines... 😊   

Heaving Earth: Hi Metallerium community. We´ve been doing ok during these uneasy times considering the circumstances. For sure pandemic had some effect on the lives of people in the Czech Republic (to a smaller or bigger extent) and now we are dealing with hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees, who left their homes with basically nothing and need immediate help. You don´t think about other events that might happen when one of the biggest countries in the world is threatening other countries with nuclear weapons.

Metallerium: To do this interview I've heard all albums from Heaving Earth from the beginning with "Diabolic Prophecies" (2010) to this new one “Darkness of God”. Where you grew with amazing stuff on each record. For that, how do you see the music directly from the beginning to now? And could we say now that Heaving Earth is a technical death metal band and not just a death metal band?

Heaving Earth: We´ve started as a death metal band clearly influenced by '90s (early or late) US death metal icons like Immolation, Morbid Angel, Hate Eternal, or Suffocation. That has changed over during years – not that we´ve abandoned this 90´s US death metal base completely, but these days it´s just one of the influences/sources that we´ve been building and shaping our music and our style upon. The music presented on our new album “Darkness of God” is for sure on a higher technical level than previous records and if the death metal community sees that as “technical” death metal, I´m fine with that, but I personally think of Heaving Earth as a death metal band without any adjectives.

Metallerium: Listening to the first album from you "Diabolic Prophecies" (2010). The influence sound was by Morbid Angel and Hate Eternal and also the name of the came from Morbid Angel's song. Who came up with the idea to put the band's name like the song the Morbid Angel? And the meaning of the name is the same to date as you created the band?... Cuz sometimes after more than 10 years of doing music the feelings changed over the years and the name's concept changes.

Heaving Earth: To choose Heaving Earth as a name for the band was a mutual decision of all band members at the time. It sounds cool and you can interpret it in many ways. For years now I´m not thinking about Morbid Angel ties with the name anymore, it symbolizes some kind of movement that you can link with evolution/progression, so it fits us perfectly whatever turn we might take in the future (within the spirit of death metal).

Metallerium: The name of the name fits perfectly into these crazy times and some of your concept lyrics too like chaos and death as concepts. So, did you imagine someday that your ideas about death and chaos will be true? And how do you feel about the Death being on the corner of many people around the world?

Heaving Earth: Death is the only certainty we have, so I don´t see any reason to think about it much as long as you have a life to live. Chaos, violence, and wars have been always present in the world, it´s just that people who have been living in a country with a long period of relative peace don´t see it, it looks too distant to them. But the current run of events shows us that you should not bet long-term on your life's safety and comfort.

Metallerium: Returning to the discography of the band. How do you describe in one word each accomplishment that you got for it?  And are these feelings will be there all the time or will they change during the next 10 years? Cuz each album from you for me creates different alternatives to brutality.

Heaving Earth: I´m not able to describe our albums in one word, but I´ll take it briefly. Diabolic Prophecies in 2010 was our “introduction” to the death metal scene, we were clearly citing our influences and it has its flaws, Denouncing the Holy Throne in 2015 was a statement, both composition-wise and sound-wise, it had more impact than the previous album and established our position within the non-mainstream death metal scene, Darkness of God in 2022 is in my opinion so far our pinnacle, clearly stating that we have our vision on how death metal should sound these days – we are minding our own ideas and visions, not what others do. And about the future? Who knows, I hope I´ll be able to look back at what I´ve done so far-seeing some value in it, and not a waste of time.

Metallerium: Talking a bit more of the new album “Darkness of God”. The cover art changed with more dark stuff on it. Cuz on the first two you put mountains and buildings on fire. But for this new one, you decide to go with a design that is more anti-Christianity.  What did you decide to change the artist? Cuz for the first two Marco Hasmann did both cover arts and now you worked with Sözo Tozö. And the design was in charge of the artist? or did you send sketches to be more involved in the creation of the cover art?

Heaving Earth: For several reasons, it was obvious that we would not be working with M. Hasmann again and we also felt that we should change the cover concept. I personally think that both our previous cover arts also displayed our anti-religious sentiment, but the cover art by Sözo Tozö has more meaning to us. Basic ideas for the cover art came from us, Sözo Tozö artistically interpreted those visions. We used a symbol of a vacant cross and its arms as a never-ending gallows, but you can easily think of any religion that works with symbols of hope, some kind of sacrifice, that you should be thankful for, and redemption. We don´t see any of it happening.

Metallerium: Talking about one special thing on this new album. Which song for you have more memories of when you play it. What song brings you back in time to see how things resulted in "Darkness of God”? And how do you choose the songs that you will play at the gigs?

Heaving Earth: We don´t have any song like that. "Darkness of God” contains a variety of songs that possess different vibes. You have to understand that in the meantime we went through massive line-up changes and for two years (2018-19) I was working on the stuff on my own with the help of our new singer Marek and a few other guys. We are still looking for a drummer/session drummer to play gigs with us. You´ve probably noticed that drums on "Darkness of God” were recorded by Giulio Galati (Hideous Divinity, Nero di Marte), who´s not able to play any gigs with us.  

Metallerium: As I said in the first question. We will talk about other aspects and for that as usually when a band came from Czechia. Always the bands are Death Metal, Grindcore, Technical Death Metal, Brutal Death Metal, and more extreme styles. Why always Czechia lean down to Death Metal stuff since the 90s? Is it having to do something with the social aspects of Czechia?  And how does your community see the extreme metal there? Cuz outside is different. We see just the music not real aspects of your country related to metal. 

Heaving Earth: I´m not sure if the Czech republic is that much in love with death metal, especially if you compare us to Poland. We are spewing grindcore and gore-grind bands, some of them are well known worldwide, but I don´t see many Czech death metal bands making it. I don´t think social aspects have anything to do with it – we are living (compared to most countries in the world) comfortable and peaceful life with metal and all extreme music being accepted or at least tolerated by Czech society. Some of the coolest festivals of extreme music like “Obscene Extreme” or “Brutal Assault” also take place in the Czech republic. We have nothing to complain about.       

Metallerium: How do you consume music most of the time? Also, what is your opinion about digital platforms and streaming services? What has been your experience with these options that technology is giving us? Is bad or good?

Heaving Earth: Mostly I use music as a background when I´m working - typing some stuff on a keyboard. Honestly, I think digital platforms are in general good, recently I´ve been buying quite a lot of stuff in digital format from Bandcamp and some e-shops. You can listen to the desired music in a few seconds and, in the case of Bandcamp, you directly support the artist. But some of the streaming platforms are rubbish, legalized rip-off, and you will not see Heaving Earth music there (I´ve noticed some Spotify requests, it won´t happen, sorry).   

Metallerium: We are very close to the end of this interview. For that, what are the future plans that the band has for the next days, months, and years? Perhaps a North American tour, European tour, etc. Videoclips are upcoming. ¿Who knows?

Heaving Earth: We will try to promote our new album the best we can, despite still having trouble finding a drummer to do some tours/festivals with us. We have some other plans (like making a short film accompanying one of our songs), but we´re very far at the moment from finalizing it. Anyway – some new material is already in the works, so hopefully, you won´t have to wait another seven years for a new album.

Metallerium: Well, ppl from Heaving Earth. The sad time arrives at this interview. I hope you enjoyed this one like me. Congratulations on this amazing album. Anything you want to add to your Latin American fans and Metallerium readers?

Heaving Earth: Thanks for your interest, time, and kind words. "Darkness of God” album is a continuation of our previous work and at the same time kind of restart for Heaving Earth, as we present a new line-up and a bit different music, less dependent on the traditional form of 90´s US death metal. I´ve met a lot of metalheads from Latin America in my life and I know how they are passionate about music, so hopefully, we won´t disappoint them with the new album. Cheers.