The Damnation Festival has built its reputation on extreme metal so it was only right that when celebrating their 10th anniversary on Saturday that one of the UK’s most extreme acts – Anaal Nathrakh – was on the bill. We caught up with singer Dave Hunt and asked him about the overwhelmingly upbeat response to new album Desideratum:
“The vast majority of feedback so far has been very positive and we’re very pleased with it. You can get too close to it when you’re working on it, but taking a step back, I feel we have achieved what we set out to with this album. We write it, we record it, we produce it – so it should come out right! Because we record it ourselves we’re not under time constraints. We do things again until we’re satisfied.” Was there anything fundamentally behind Desideratum or was inspiration drawn from far and wide? “It tends to be slightly dryer or more academic stuff as that’s what I’ve been working on.” ZT caught much of Nathrakh’s set at Damnation, just an hour or so after speaking with Dave. It was typically explosive with plenty of old material balancing out some of the more recent stuff with the pit spiralling chaotically across the room.
Keep an eye out for tour dates in the new year and read a full interview with the band in the current issue: www.ztmag.com/current.html
