ARGWAAN on imperfection, late-night office bustle and spontaneity

“Snapshots of our constantly changing thoughts…”

For over 15 years, Argwaan have been blending black metal with rock and various metal styles to create a chaotic harmony. – And with a lot of feeling. How did Argwaan actually come to form the band? Smaad and Stilte have actually known each other since high school. They played together in metalcore, death metal and ambient/post-rock bands, always with a kind of “subliminal love for black metal”, as they assure us. “And while we were having great adventures with our good friends in these bands, going on tour, meeting great people, etc. We felt restricted in writing music and creating art. Too many took their toll on spontaneity. So we decided to form a two-man studio project where we wouldn’t rehash songs over and over again, but just create snapshots of our ever-changing thoughts. After we recorded our debut album, we added my younger brother Sneer as a session drummer, and the collaboration went so smoothly over the following years that he became a permanent member of the band.”

“The moments we loved, hated or downright loathed.“

What’s the band name all about? The trio say that it means “suspicion”, or “the feeling that something is wrong”. “I’m not going to spit out a ten-page sob story about my youth, but well … Things weren’t always right. But those times shape us. The moments we loved, hated or downright loathed. Diverse experiences and emotions often go hand in hand, and that’s something we can fully put into Argwaan without hesitation or judgment.

“… this originalüoriginal, imperfect rawness …”

The new album “Violable” has already been released. You can read a detailed review here. How can we imagine working on the album? “We worked very differently for each album. We recorded the first album in a friend’s studio. For the second album, I had my ENGL combo and a microphone taped up in a closet in my apartment for months, with a piece of chicken wire in front of it to keep the cats from moving the mic. This time we decided to buy some good guitar/bass plugins and just write/record the album song by song. Most of the guitar parts on the album are the first demo recordings. We were able to edit the sounds after the fact, but they still have that original, imperfect rawness to them. Our drummer has a great e-kit at home, so he’s able to record on the fly. That helped us develop the songs in an organic way. During this process, our bassist Smaad expanded our creativity with individual drawings for each song, which really helped to add an extra dimension to the atmosphere we were expressing. For the vocals we had to, well, create a mental space. A closed office in the middle of the night and a crate of beer was the ideal setting. We wrote most of the lyrics on the spot and just tried to match the feel and energy of the song. Nothing is wrong if it sounds right.”

Listen to Argwaan in our “Dark Metal” playlist on Spotify: