Metal Wani’s Roshan Machayya recently had a chance to get up close and personal with Steffen Kummerer of progressive tech-death masters Obscura to discuss all things Obscura, the new album Diluvium (Read Our Review Here), influences, the joy of playing music, the future and beyond.
On the whether the album’s vision matched the final product:
“Um actually yes and no. Yes in terms of that it ends the 4 album cycle. The whole idea started with Cosmogenesis in 2009. All the 4 records are connected with each other. This is where we wanted to go to. But I wanted to record an album full of orchestra. Due to budget reasons, instead of working with plastic sounds or anything out of the box and instead with real musicians we concentrated with one with one song with strings, like in the last album. The album turned out pretty much the way we wanted.”
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On the influence of the legendary band Death and newer influences:
“Its a very good question. I would say its hard to answer the question. During the recording of Deluvium we more and more found our own niche. It doesn’t matter if you pick out Retribution, Cosmogenesis or Omnivium you simply could pick out one song and immediately could tell where the influences are from, from which band. Death is of course a big influence and still is. I think we simply evolved into our identity. Therefore its very hard to choose which influence we have at the moment. That’s my point of view.”
Steffen on his favourite part of the album:
“I really like the production. I’m very, very picky about it. I’ve been there since day one. Aside from the production there are some songs I really like. I think its diversity in the recording. They’re very colourful.”
Advice to budding musicians who look up to him:
“Umm never lose fun in playing music. That’s the easiest and most valuable thought you could have in my opinion. It doesn’t matter if you’re successful or not. Just do it for the fun of playing music with your friends. That’s what its all about.”
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On stress and fatigue from playing music:
“Everything I’ve put into the band was always everything I had. Even if I hadn’t had anything I put everything in. So to say so it actually affected me personally since 16 years since I have this band pretty much. Its not easy if I talk about jobs or my career at the university. Of course it affects me a lot. But at the same time it gives me a lot of joy and pleasure.