How is the band feeling about the next chapter in the Omega Thanatos trilogy finally being released, and what can fans look forward to both musically and story-wise with the release of “Kharon”?
We are very excited to release this album and very impatient, as we lost 3 years with the Covid situation. The album was supposed to be released in 2020, but we preferred to wait until the situation comes back to normal before doing anything. For us, to release an album without being able to promote it on stage is a nonsense and as a self-produced band, it’s important to be able to promote it live, as the concerts and the merch sales are the main revenues for a band, in order to recover the investments. 😉 As “Kharon” is the second part of the “Omega Thanatos” trilogy, yes, the fans can expect to have a music album and another support that tells the story in a second way. The 3 albums of the trilogy will have CD + book and maybe other surprises.
Did the Covid-19 pandemic have any impact on the production and timing of this new release? Or did it influence any of the album’s themes or songwriting?
Yes, as you can read on the previous answer, the album was supposed to be released in 2020 and now, we are 3 years later. There was no influence on the songwriting because all was recorded before but we could have plenty of time to work on the production until we reach the best result possible. Without being pretentious, we can say that is our best production so far. You can hear that immediately.
KHARON takes place in the world between our world and the realm of dead people. It’s the transition world, where you have to cross the Styx and Acheron river to reach the other world.
Michel
We are lucky to have listened to the new album and to have previewed an early chapter of the comic book, and we are definitely impressed by the consistency displayed across both formats in terms of tone and vision. How difficult was it to create such a strong synergy between the two mediums this time around? Did you face any challenges?
Yeah ! Lucky you 😉 hehe.
The biggest challenge was to learn about the process during the OMEGA THANATOS album. For this first try, things were new for us and we didn’t know how to deal to combine music composition with a comic book. We wrote a script together with Alain Poncelet, our graphic designer, and after that, he worked on his side on the comic book and we worked on our side with the music.
When we finished, we received the comic book drawings and we realized that the music didn’t fit with the visual… it wouldn’t work… so, we had to re-compose the music in order to fit the visual side of the story. Then, we understood how we should work.
For this album, we knew how to deal with the project. We wrote a scenario, Alain made some sketches and based on those, we could easily find the inspiration that would fit with Alain’s drawings.
The big difference with this trilogy is that you have to compose like a soundtrack of the story.
You have some guidelines, that can be seen as limits, but on the other side, the story allows you to go outside your usual musical stuff and we can play or combine new elements that we wouldn’t probably put on a normal Skeptical Minds album.
You released “Desert” as the first single from the album earlier this month, and this was accompanied by a lyric video featuring some of the amazing illustrations in the comic. If we’re not mistaken this is the first time that you have produced this style of video before, and the format makes a lot of sense for this type of project. Can we expect to see more promo material like this in future?
You said it right. More and more bands are used now to producing lyric videos. We never did that before, but as we combine comic drawings and story, it was like obvious to do so. It’s like a logical extension of the concept. Certainly, you can expect more stuff like this and probably, in the next videoclips, we’ll also add some live video takes of the band… but certainly that the global spirit will turn around the concept : music, band, comic universe. Few singles will follow. Stay tuned and we hope you’ll like the next ones. But globally, we like what is sober and straight to the point. It fits with how we see the project. Sometimes, too much is too much and the attention goes somewhere else. As people say : “less is more”. That’s something we like and it keeps the focus easier on what we want to show. Too many things create dispersion or chaos 😉
What has the reception been like to the new single? And given the conceptual and narrative nature of the project, did you have any issues when it came to deciding on the first song to release? For instance, were you ever worried about giving away potential spoilers? Or was it a relatively easy choice?
The choice was not easy because we wanted to release all of the songs haha. Very difficult to choose because each one has its identity, its universe. And all of us have the same problem if you ask us to choose just one song. What made us choose Desert is because all of us love to play it live, it’s a song that provides us a great groove and feeling when we practice. So, we decided to release this one for that reason. Expect few other songs to be released soon too because we want all of them to be a single too !!! 😉 It’s like they have 3 different lives : one on the album, one on stage when we’ll play them and one as single with their own visual 😉
We’re assuming that some of you must be comic book fans yourselves. So in that case, can you list some of your favourite comic series? Were there any titles in particular that influenced or inspired the Omega Thanatos trilogy?
The most “comic book fan” is obviously Alain Poncelet, the official 5th Skeptical Minds member with his killing pencils ! I was myself a big comic book fan when I was younger. Alain is a fan of dark things mostly. I know that he’s fan of Liberatore or Moebius for example.
I was fan of the smurfs !!! ok, after I grew up and I like dark science fiction things but also heroic fantasy stories like “Thorgal”, “ l’Incal ”, etc…
Around 2008, we had the project to combine comic book and music, but it was like a project for the future, without knowing how it would be possible to do that… we kept that in a corner of our head until we discussed about that with Alain Poncelet few years after. He was in, and that’s how it started ! 😉 We had our own idea about the story. We didn’t take any element from our beloved series. We just sat down and discussed between ourselves. We took some elements from the Greek mythology, but without making any mythologic story. It’s more like use some references to create our own fiction. As Greek and as fan of Greek mythology, it was like obvious to include some elements in the project.
The big difference with this trilogy is that you have to compose like a soundtrack of the story.
Michel
Now that you have finished “Kharon”, does your attention now turn to the next instalment? Have you already started mapping out songs or ideas for the third part of the trilogy? And is there anything you can reveal about it at this early stage?
Not at all 😊 we just know that the three parts of the trilogy take place in 3 different worlds.
The first happened on earth. KHARON takes place in the world between our world and the realm of dead people. It’s the transition world, where you have to cross the Styx and Acheron river to reach the other world. KHARON is the boatman that takes you on the other side. For the moment, we just know that the third and final part will happen in the dark world of THANATOS. The album will certainly be darker, more aggressive, more deadly but no idea yet about its content 😉
We just focus on KHARON for now, promote it and play it live in 2024. During 2024, we’ll start to build the next one and then, we’ll able to reveal more.
Skeptical Minds have gained a lot of attention in Belgium for their powerful live performances, and you have previously released a live audio CD and a double live DVD to immortalise some of these concerts. Do you plan on touring again in support of this new album, and if so, will you be incorporating elements of the new comic book episode on stage? Is there a chance we could see another live recording released?
Turn all your questions into affirmations and you get all the answers. You are right, we will play the new material on stage and when it’s possible to combine with projections on stage, we’ll for sure mix visual comic universe and music.
Live recording is not planned yet but if an opportunity appears, for sure we’ll do it 😉
You know, we don’t plan always everything… we follow the flow of our own Styx river and we see where it leads, and we catch all the opportunities we meet during our journey.
For now, we focus on booking dates. We’ll start to announce them soon. Stay tune and come to have the surprise on stage.
For sure, you can expect intense shows with the maximum of energy we can provide, as we like to do. Believe me, the new material sounds very massive on stage. Wait and see…
Your band name, Skeptical Minds, sounds like a healthy recommendation these days given the current state of the world and the issues we face in determining which information is trustworthy or not. How did you come up with the name? And did you ever imagine that it would have the sort of relevance that we see today?
You know, we chose that name 22 years ago when we created the band. In fact, even at that time, we thought that what we see and what we hear may be right or false… it’s important to be able to have your own opinion about things. It’s also important for us to be able to have a critical mind about everything. I think that since centuries, we have people who dominate, people who follow, people who accept, people who refuse, philosophers (people who think and try to explain), people who judge etc… and most of people have masks… what you see first is rarely what is behind the mask
That was the starting point… we always interpretate or judge a situation.. but appearance can be very different of how things really are.
The first albums were based on that concept – what we see or what we think is not what it is…
The songs spoke about different women who had different destinies, all had a dark side or dark experiences… At first sight, we never see that, but we wanted to show what was behind their masks.
Today, that’s true that the name of the band can seem very “actual” 😉 but I think that today, if you are Skeptical, people want to put immediately a conspiracy theory sticker on the face 😉 let’s say we are just Skeptical Minds 😉
Karolina, can you tell us a little about your background? How did you come to join Skeptical Minds as the lead singer? Were you inspired by any other vocalists?
Karolina : hello ! Thank you for your questions. It’s a pleasure for me to answer them.
As far as I remember, I always loved to sing. I am a self taught singer and I mostly loved music thanx to my father who was rock guitar player. Home, I heard mostly rock from the 70ies, metal from the 80ies and blues. After, I discovered folk music which I love a lot too.
Two of my favourite influences are Nightwish and Loreena Mc Kennitt.
I joined Skeptical Minds in 2008. In that time, I was looking for musicians and the band was looking for a singer. I was leaving in The Netherlands and a common friend of us, Stéphane Odent (Stépix) organized a meeting in Amsterdam on 20th sept 2008. Skeptical Minds came to audition me there. We spent a fantastic day all together and it was like we knew each other since years… Since that day, I’m the singer of the band and I never regretted one second that choice.
We are like a family and that’s the most important.
Don’t try to be someone you are not, even if you love that someone.
Karolina
How does it feel to be portrayed as the main protagonist in a comic book? Can you describe the process of how artist Alain Poncelet transformed you into an illustrated character? Was there much acting involved?
As Alain said, it was obvious for him that the protagonist of the book looked like me. On stage, it’s a bit like people see the protagonist of the comic book on stage. It came from Alain and everybody thought it was obvious and good idea. Alain was free to draw the story as he sees it. We didn’t impose him anything about his scripts. He had full liberty. When he had something to propose, he came to us with his sketches and we discussed them. But discussions were easy because his vision was great and everybody agreed immediately.
There was no acting, no transformation. I did nothing for that, Alain’s imagination did 😊
What general advice would you give to someone looking to follow your lead and become a vocalist in a metal band?
First of all, do what YOU feel you want to do. Don’t try to be someone you are not, even if you love that someone. Maybe you love Tarja and you try to copy her even if her voice is not in your range. It cannot work. You can be inspired, you can learn from all the people you admire, but try to assimilate what they provide you and try to process all that to create your own stuff. Believe me, it’s powerful and the feeling is great to feel you can have your own creativity. We all have influences, we all use them consciously or not, but try to be yourself and make things that fit you and make you feel great. Be proud of what you do if you put all your heart in what you do. If people like or not, you cannot control or impose. But if you are proud of what you do, it’s already reaching a goal.
Metal or not metal, I think that advice is valid for any music you want to do. Be yourself !
Would you be open to having a profile page on our website?
Ah ! that is an unexpected proposition 😉
Of course, no problem !
Thanks again for the interview. Before we go, can you please confirm how fans will be able to accesss the latest album and comic book? Will they be available to purchase physically as well as digitally?
The album is now available on Bandcamp and all the streaming platforms.
Beginning 2024, physical objects will be released too but we want to combine their release with a live release show, singing session with the band and Alain Poncelet and his magic drawings 😉
Is there anything more you would like to add?
Of course : Watch Your Back !!! We are back !!!
