Vesania - A Chat With Orion
When Vesania had to play their show with Cryptopsy, Aborted and more on the Domination Tour, Semen and I had the opportunity to interview this Polish death/black metal band. We were speaking with Orion (Tomasz Wroblewski) who also plays in Behemoth and is the founding member of this band. We had confirmation about this interview on the day itself, so we haven’t had the time to do some research on this band. Interesting!
First question for you guys, we haven’t heard of this band before now. Could you tell us how it all started up for Vesania?
Orion: I was 17, many years ago… uhhh 8, 9 years ago. It mainly started by all those things happening in Norway. We had a band which consisted of me and the bass player and we needed a drummer. This was a different band than Vesania. We wanted to play different music, basically Black Metal and use lots of keyboards and shit. So, we split up and started a new band. This was back in 1997, so this is the origin of Vesania.
How many albums have you released up to date?
Orion: We have brought out 2 albums and one mini-cd.
About the corpsepaint, is this something you do to shock ( because of the catholic church which renders really strong in Poland) or has it other reasons?
Orion: It has nothing do to with the Polish thing of christianity and shit like that. To be honest this isn’t really affecting the metal scene in Poland. Okay, it’s bullshit to say that it never occurs, because occasionally there are happening really extreme things on stage. You probably remember the Gorgoroth thing. It’s not really Gorgoroth who was to blame but the producers of the show.
Yeah. (Gorgoroth was prosecuted because they used shocking anti-christian expressions on stage, which are forbidden by Polish law)
Orion: Anyways, this has nothing to do with me. I am just going my way, doing my stuff and don’t care about the shit… You know….. uhh the piece of shit on my mind. I don’t have the time to care about that.
So the government hasn’t had anything to do for your style of performing?
Orion: Actually it has, but we have been living for so long in these circumstances that we have managed to get around that all. They don’t affect our things, and we don’t do theirs.
About the last recording, did everything worked out as planned and things like that?
Orion: It never works out as you planned.
At this point there was some jabbering about our Haklust demo and that it still hasn’t got out, while we planned that for January, so we knew what he was talking about.
Anyways, to conclude the question, are you happy with it?
Orion: Of course I am, but you always have that though in your mind: It could have been done better. The recording session took us three months. Of course we weren’t recording every day of those 3 months, because we had some breaks, but we are very busy with the other bands we are playing in. Me and the drummer that is, so we had to switch constantly between studio and had to take all the gear over again.
Second session was the bass guitar and the third session for the keyboards and vocals, so we took a lot of time, but we are very satisfied with it. We recorded it in three different studios, because everyone was of to a tour somewhere. The only way to manage this, was to divide the total proces of recording over 3 studios. It was allright, but it just takes a lot of time, a lot more than for a regular death metal band.
A regular death metal bands just gets in with dropped guitars and vocal shit and is a lot easier to record….. But we….. We have fucking keyboards, to record these is always shit.
A lot of hilarity in the bus
I (Matko) personally don’t like keyboards…
Orion: Me neither!!
But the way it was mixed with your music was different and really not annoying, it’s just the way of how you do it.
Orion: Exactly, pretty much of all the keyboards in heavy metal music is gay stuff.
Hahah, let’s continue with the next question: Is Vesania a band to experiment with besided Behemoth and Vader or is it something you always wanted to have?
Orion: Yes, it is something I always wanted to do, but it’s not for experimenting besides Behemoth. We started this band playing music like this and we will continue it like this. We treat this band as our own child, because Vesania was the first band for us and later we joined Behemoth and Vader, so basically it’s a totally different band we always wanted to have.
A little question about the package of this tour, we think it’s really cool to have such diverse bands in one package.
Orion: Yeah, that’s the way to attract people to shows. Not by doing a strict death metal tour or something like that. I must say that I’m a fan of all the bands that play here tonight. It’s a big honor for us to be in a tour like this, because we have never toured through Europe. We haven’t toured anywhere except in Poland. This is the first tour for Vesania outside of Poland and it’s already a big one. We have 30 or more to go from tonight.
Allright, stupid question for you, are you interested in specific movies?
Orion: I would really like to like movies, but I just don’t have the time for them.
No problem, the question (originally created by Demondust) is… who do you prefer Arnold Swarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone?
Orion: Hahaha, Holy shit…. Alright, let’s say, Sly is the Guy!
Back to something normal then, is it difficult to combine touring with Vesania and Behemoth?
Orion: It’s not very easy, but we get this thing with Behemoth and Vader so it’s basically three bands. We all try to find the time for Vesania between the tours of Vader and Behemoth. It’s of course not very easy, but it’s not impossible.
About your normal lives, is the band your living or is it still necessary to have a normal day time job?
Orion: I don’t really have a normal job, so I have to live from these shows. I’m a very busy man and doing over 200 shows a year. This means you are away from home for 280 days, including the traveling. It’s impossible for me to have a regular job, so I just have to get it from these shows. Luckily, Poland is a very cheap country, but I really can’t afford it to leave that country.
What about the rest of the band?
Orion: 2 of them have regular jobs, but our drummer is a professional drummer, and he makes his money with that.
You do the guitars for Vesania, but you are playing bass in Behemoth. Which did you start at first?
Orion: There was a band I joined before Behemoth with a very close friend, this band is called Neolithic which is hang-over music. They needed a bass player, I was always a guitar player but I took up that bass and eventually I switched to the bass. Now, I only play guitars in Vesania and bass with Neolithic and Behemoth.
There was some confusion between Semen and me, but that was because we were stoned and couldn’t remember something really stupid, anyways, next question weed!
Orion: It’s not very hard to get it, but it’s a lot more expensive. I do smoke occasionally, but I’m not a really heavy smoker. It just makes me slow, lazy in my chair. I always have a lot of stuff to do, so it’s not very practical to smoke that much hahah
Alright, we’ll conclude this interview by asking you to add anything you like to this interview:
Tomasz stands up and takes a really ridiculus pose and speaks in an evil voice, which was so hilarious we all couldn’t hold our laugh.
Orion: Alright I want all of you fuckers to pick up the new cd of Vesania, can you hear me!!!!????
We would like to thank you for your time and have a kick ass tour!
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