Interview with SKAPHOS (1/2)

Automatic translation. Improvements are constantly being worked on.

Skaphos was founded in Lyon in 2018. We talk to the apocalyptic death metallers about their new album “The Descent”.

Orkus: With “The Decent” you are basically reinterpreting yourselves – or rather, eight tracks from your first two albums. How did this idea or need come about in the first place?
Jérémy Tronyo: Well, with our last album “Cult of Uzura” (2025) we took our production to a new level. So we decided to take songs from the first two albums, which honestly sound more like demos, and release these tracks with a proper and heavier sound.

We only cover songs that we play live, so you can enjoy them both live and on the album with a great production.

O: How should the title “The Descent” be interpreted?
JT: “The Descent” follows on from the same narrative as “Bathyscaphe” (2020), so it’s about a dive into the abyss. Inspired by Lovecraft’s novel “The Temple”, we tell the story of a submarine that is stuck underwater and can no longer find a way up, and of course the madness that the crew experiences until death comes. With “The Descent” we followed this path, but we also took elements from the mythology of “THOOI” (2022) and created a mixture of what we liked best. “The Descent” is therefore both a dive into the deepest abysses of the ocean and a sinking into the abysses of the mind and madness.

O: What was it like for you to revisit those early tracks with a completely new approach?
JT: It was really fun and relieved us of some frustrations. Some songs felt unfinished and underproduced. With the release of this remake, we feel like we’ve finally closed that chapter. Now we can count on great production for our songs from the past and the songs to come. Also, there are songs that we always play live, like “Bathyscaphe” (now called “Okean”), which has been at every Skaphos concert since 2018. So it needed a refresh! We also gave him more maturity and toughness. All for the better.

O: How did you decide which songs to choose?
JT: We wanted four from each album, and we took the ones we still play first and then added the ones we liked but needed a refresh or were missing something to be great. We’d actually been talking about a remake for two years, so it was really clear and easy for us to pick songs.

O: Let’s go back to the beginning. How did Skaphos actually come about?
JT: The project started as a joke in 2018 when I moved to Lyon and met Paul Sordet. We jammed together and I called Stephan Petitjean and Théo Langlois to get them involved in the project. The main inspiration was an after-party where we watched the TV show “River Monster” completely drunk – and an out-of-tune guitar. We added a bit of French literature: “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” by Jules Verne and of course the short story “The Temple” by Lovecraft (after which we named two songs: “U29” & “Le Temple”). And so our first demo “Bathyscaphe” was born, released in 2020. The idea was to tell stories about big, bad fish that are up to mischief in the depths of the sea; it was really fun, with songs like “Cephalopoda” or “Lophius”. Then it got more serious and we added a background story.

Heinrich Zeschner

Line-up:
Stéphan Petitjean – vocals, guitar
Jérémy Tronyo – guitar, background vocals
Théo Langlois – bass
Nathan Faure – drums

We will continue our interview shortly. You can also find out more in our May/June issue.