Piracy on the Digital Seas
People often assume that Bal-Sagoth sell countless thousands of albums and make lots of money. I'm afraid the truth of the matter is somewhat different. We've never sold large numbers of albums; this is simply too much of a niche market to be truly financially successful. And that's the way it should be. Bal-Sagoth was always intended to be an obscure and underground kind of band anyway, so I've always been happy with our "minority appeal" status. We never really sought to make money from this hobby, but by the same token, we don't want to lose money either. On a day to day basis, I'm in contact with a lot of bands, record companies and promoters. And the message from all is the same. Record sales are down across the board. Gig attendances are dropping. The music industry is in a state of flux, and must adapt to survive. The twenty-first century's "something for nothing" culture proliferates. It's a culture in which people want their music, their movies and their games for free. And that's something which will cripple the entertainment industry in the long run if left unchecked. If bands don't make any money from their albums, they'll be forced to stop making them. Even legal downloads through valid channels pale into insignificance next to the vast plague of illegal downloading, file sharing, and the like. All this might not affect the big bands in any truly noticable capacity, but when you're a niche band which sells very few albums anyway, the consequences of piracy and buyer apathy can be devastating. Of course, all this isn't really a new thing, but the scale of it is. In the old days, people bought an LP, and then maybe made a cassette copy for their friends, and then swapped it via the old tape trading network. But these days, with the rise of digital technology and the internet, a song and an album can be copied and shared throughout the world in a matter of seconds, and rather than getting a poor quality third generation analogue copy, you can have a pristine digital copy of crystal clarity delivered to your hard drive in the blink of an eye. You can even print out the album cover, burn the album onto a CDR, and at the click of a mouse button, print a label for the disc, too. All instead of buying the album. So no, we never sold multitudes of albums in the old days, and we sure aren't doing so now. Add to that the fact that even our t-shirts are being bootlegged by dishonourable and nefarious sources, and you have an industry in which many musicians are finding it increasingly impossible to find a viable platform from which to actually create art for their legitimate fans.
Will there be any further BAL-SAGOTH albums?
To be quite honest, the question of subsequent albums is something that has not yet been decided. Obviously all the core members of the band would have to agree to proceed with any further albums, and the reasons for proceeding would have to be right. One thing is certain: the hexalogy is complete, and the first phase of Bal-Sagoth is certainly over. But that doesn't mean there will never be any more Bal-Sagoth albums. I'm not prepared to close that particular door forever just yet. And yet perhaps the legacy is complete, sacrosanct, and should remain untainted. Most probably, people will see the various members going on to new, exciting projects wholly unconnected to the Bal-Sagoth entity. Having said all that... who knows? Maybe one day... if the stars align...
Why doesn't BAL-SAGOTH play many gigs?
It is very difficult to recreate this material accurately in the live environment. The music of Bal-Sagoth is so multi-layered and intricate that there is really no way in which we can genuinely translate the songs live to a truly satisfactory extent. Some of the other guys in the band are okay with this constant compromise in their desperation to continually play shows, but it has always vexed me, particularly when we attempt to play the more complex songs.
Additionally, I have always felt that when a band plays live, much of the magic and the mystique which is contained on an album is generally lost. No matter how good the show might be, the very act of playing live often demystifies a band and brings them back down to a mundane and earthly level; such are the limitations of the technology and the very medium itself.
I'd also like to add that it takes a lot of preparation and logistical planning for us to undertake shows. Rehearsals have to be arranged, tranport has to be coordinated and band members have to take time off from work. The low gig fees and shirt sales from shows often simply do not make all that expenditure worthwhile.
Additionally, we don't have our own sound man, so we are constantly forced to rely on the sound engineers available at whatever venue we might be playing, and those sound engineers invariably have no idea as to what this band should sound like in the live environment. Even if we're afforded a thorough sound check during which to educate the sound men as to the band's nature, the levels and monitor mixes always end up wildly incorrect.
All in all, the live realm is certainly not the ideal platform from which to showcase the artistic vision of Bal-Sagoth.
So basically, those are the reasons why this band doesn't play live very often.
How did BAL-SAGOTH start?
How did the band start? This question has been asked so many times over the years, so here’s the definitive version for the archives! Here you will find out about the origin of both the concept and the band itself. I came up with the idea and concept for Bal-Sagoth many years ago (around 1989), and had tried unsuccessfully to start it up with a succession of different musicians. Unfortunately, it was the era of socially aware thrash metal, and nobody was at all interested in commiting to a fantasy oriented black/death metal project. I was determined to start the project however, and continued my attempts to find musicians who might be interested in the idea. Then, a guy I knew called Mac, who had played guitar in a prominent local thrash band called Systematic Insanity, asked me if I wanted to jam with some guys he’d met. They were only playing Metallica and Napalm Death covers in their bedroom (in an old manor house which had once been a lunatic asylum), but they were interested in starting a serious band. So, I went and met the Maudling brothers Jonny and Chris (Jonny Maudling had previously been in a thrash band called Igniter, playing the regional pubs and clubs) and also Jason Porter, and we jammed some stuff. Unfortunately however, I really wasn’t interested in playing the kind of material that they were into, so I figured it just wasn’t going to work out. Jonny and Chris weren’t at all familiar with black metal, and also Mac didn’t like the fantasy/mythology concept I had in mind for the band, or the name “Bal-Sagoth”. Mac wanted to do a sort of thrash/death metal band with contemporary socio-political lyrical topics. He was also, at that time, somewhat horrified at the suggestion of a metal band with full keyboards. I figured I might as well keep jamming with Mac until I found someone else with whom to start Bal-Sagoth, so we called the non-serious bedroom outfit “Dusk” and continued to spend Sunday afternoons making a horrific noise. Well, this went on for a few months, but absolutely nothing came of it. I wasn’t happy that I couldn’t implement the Bal-Sagoth concept fully, and Jonny and Chris also confided in me that they too weren’t happy with the kind of material which we were playing as Dusk. Then, for a variety of reasons, we parted company with Mac (but ironically, Mac would later re-join us on bass). At that point, I explained to Jonny and Chris in detail the kind of music I wanted to do, and gave them a rundown of the Bal-Sagoth concept, saying that keyboards would ideally play a prominent role in such a band. Back then, I kept all the lyrics, logos, and ideas in a large black folder, which I showed them to give them a firm idea of the whole concept behind the band. They thought it was all pretty weird, but Jonny, who was a trained pianist, was very intrigued by the idea of keyboards, and when I showed them material by black metal bands such as Emperor, they were sold. And so, Bal-Sagoth was formally implemented during the summer of 1993. We still had Jason on bass guitar, and for keyboards we recruited Vincent, and we began crafting the music which would ultimately end up on our demo and later on the debut album. And that’s how the band started.
BYRON Winter 2011 (C.E.)
