First of all, hello and thank you for agreeing on the interview!
Serena: Hi, thank you for showing an interest in my nerdy little project! I really appreciate it
There are a few things in Wretched Abyss that push the black metal boundaries - sorta hopeful yet bleak, and I think this is perfectly exemplified by tracks like Deathbell Harvest, the triumphant melodies under the black metal vocals. Did you think about it while writing, was it just something that came to you naturally?
Serena: I actually never really think about the boundaries of genre when I’m writing music, it’s just not something that crosses my mind. I don’t deliberately sit and think about what I can do to defy black metal expectations, but I’ve never been motivated to try and create music that fits neatly into a descriptor box. I just love being in the flow state of writing, creating lots of layers and melody. I’m quite a selfish musician in the sense that I write the music that feels good to me and don’t really worry about how it is perceived by others.
You mentioned in interviews before that your roots are black metal. That said, what about black metal (be it music or production or anything really) you can say you safely left behind as you grew as a musician?
Serena: When I was a teenager I made a couple of black metal demo tapes using a drum machine and a karaoke machine, which I would plug my guitar into the mic input. They sounded awful as you can imagine! But I always loved the DIY aspect of black metal, the fact that you didn’t need loads of money to make a tape and the fact that there was no pressure to create something with good production. I was also drawn to how raw and inaccessible it can be sonically at the time, the freedom to create these harsh, hypnotic noises. But the one thing I left behind is the idea that it has to sound raw and under produced. I like my guitar leads to be nice and clear now. Musical software has changed so much, it’s so more easily accessible to create a nice sounding record without paying mega bucks to record in a big studio. If the tools are available to make a record sound crisp and clear on a computer, why not use them? That’s my outlook now. But a lot more recent black metal has a more polished sound. I think it’s a natural evolution with the times and technology.
Extinguish Thy Flame is entirely inspired by Elden Ring (awesome game btw); was there any similarity to the composition process of Wretched Abyss or was it a totally different way of transposing what the game felt like to you into the music?
Serena: Wretched Abyss was an album I made pretty casually during Covid 19 Lockdown, I lost my job at the time so I was just in my bedroom writing music and playing a lot of Skyrim at the same time. Once I had written a few songs, I realised that playing Skyrim was influencing the music I was writing, so from that point on I deliberately wrote the rest of the album to be about Skyrim. Sometimes you don’t always feel aware of what’s inspiring you from the start! I initially had no plans to release the album, it was just a bedroom project, but a few people heard it and liked it and Wretched Abyss ended up being released on 3 different record labels and being well-received.
With Extinguish Thy Flame, it was a far longer, more deliberate process. I wanted to follow up the accidental success of Wretched Abyss with something far more ambitious that showed what I’m capable of as a musician. From the moment I started playing Elden Ring in 2022, I knew I would write an album about it. That game just gripped hold of my heart like no other. So I really sat down and thought about which bosses to write songs about, how to represent each one musically. In that respect, Extinguish Thy Flame is a much more musically diverse album, because each song is about trying to represent what makes each boss in the game so unique.
When black metal first came out and for a fair amount of time, there was obviously a very different idea of what the genre was supposed to look and sound like. Looking at black metal now, what do you like the most about how the genre has evolved? Any particular modern bands you listen to and would like to mention?
Serena: I think the strictness of ‘what is true black metal’ in the 90’s actually inspired a lot of creative pushback and deviation, from as early as the late 90’s with bands like Dodheimsgard and Fleurity. It’s always been slowly shifting and now I feel like black metal is an ingredient, an essence as opposed to a set of musical rules to follow to belong to a genre. I’m heavily inspired by Moonlight Sorcery, who bring virtuoso musicianship into black metal, as well as the more hypnotic, melodic bands like Shylmagoghnar and Spectral Wound. They’re not black metal but I have always been really inspired by Brymir and Keep of Kalessin too, I love their guitar work!
With Extinguish Thy Flame pushing Noctule further into melodeath as well as black metal, do you feel like you’ve found what Noctule is, or do you still want to experiment more and more?
Serena: I don’t even want to constrict myself to setting a certain mould for Noctule and following that pattern for the next music I write. Music to me is all about creative freedom and challenging yourself, so the goal is to have no 2 albums that sound the same.
Finally, the space is yours: anything you’d like to add, comment on, anything really, the floor is yours! :)
Serena: I’m self-releasing this album, Extinguish Thy Flame, which means no financial support from record labels, no playlist “pushes”, no algorithm “pushes”, no online ad campaign, no huge PR campaign - it’s very difficult to raise awareness of the album without those things. So it means a lot to me when people like yourself choose to take the time to interview me about it, so I’d just like to say a big thank you for your questions and your time.
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