Band of the Day: MVRDVRKVLTVR

Is it getting dark or is it just me? Or is it the influence of MVRDVRKVLTVR…?

Simple things first – where are you guys from?

Leesburg, Virginia

How did you meet?

You might say that we’ve always known each other – we all go back a very long way.

How long have you been playing as a band?

We first started writing the earliest versions of our material in December 2018 – this was just tossing around early ideas and developing the basic concepts, determining musical direction and the rules we would follow, etc. There was a productive period that lasted until about March that resulted in some demo recordings. Then there was a short hiatus due to some unexpected travel and other eventualities. The effort resumed in earnest in December 2019 and we released the latest EP on 23 March.

Before you get sick of being asked… where does the band name come from?

We seek to explore the destructive forces residing behind the seemingly mundane aspects of everyday life, and to reveal the savagery beneath the veneer of civilization and the way the world’s inhabitants are daily subject to it. All societies, all countries, all cultures – all humans – are united in one thing: their love, whether they admit it or not, for violence, for blood – for murder. The one global human culture is the culture of murder – hence MVRDVRKVLTVR.

What are your influences?

The classics of blackened death and war metal: Blasphemy, Conqueror, Revenge – along with the down and dirty old school stuff like Bathory, Von, and Hellhammer. For more contemporary influences, we love most of the Hell’s Headbangers bands, especially Abysmal Lord, Slaughtbbath, and Perdition Temple. Lastly, we worship the DIY ethos. We do absolutely everything ourselves and we respect and hail others who do the same.

Describe your music. What makes you unique?

Rough, raw, and primitive blackened death. At the beginning of this we set ourselves several rules we would follow, with rule #1 being: only the essential. If we can cut it out, we cut it out. What makes us unique I think is that we take the relentless riffing approach of war metal and apply it within a black/death context. The rhythmic and metric emphasis of the vocal line is also something unique. The DIY scene is healthy these days, but we emphasize that everything – music, vocals, recording, mixing, mastering, artwork, and even printing the jewel case inserts is all done by MVRDVRKVLTVR. If you buy our physical CD, it was put together by our hands.

Do you have any particular lyrical themes?

The EP is essentially a religious service. It begins and ends by calling on the forces that drive MVRDVRKVLTVR – primarily Prometheus and his avatar, the Serpent of Eden, who brought mankind wisdom. We follow the Ophite Gnostics in this sense. Other aspects of the same presence that we single out for devotion include: Satan, the Adversary — who destroyed the prophet of weakness at Golgotha; Beelzebub, Bringer of Rot and Rust – who destroys and kills and thereby renews; Lucifer, Bearer of Light and Lies, who gives us the tools to deceive and confuse our enemies; and lastly, another face of we believe the same presence that we ourselves discovered – the God of MVRDVR, who grants strength and hardness of heart and banishes pity. Astute listeners may also recognize, in the interlude track “The Wall,” our interpretation of a key scene from an H.P. Lovecraft story.

What’s your live show like? How many shows have you played?

We have not played live and currently have no plans to do so. We conceived of MVRDVRKVLTVR as a studio project. That may change in the future, however.

What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done at a live show?

Oh, too many to list between all the shows that we’ve attended and played as members of other bands. Seen lots of fake blood, real blood, naked people, fights, spilled drinks, and all the rest of it. Some of it we even remember!

What kit do you use / guitars do you play / etc.?

Our studio setup has been cobbled together from an almost random assortment of gear we’ve picked up over the years. Ekhthir plays an old guitar he bought in 2001 with money that was supposed to be spent on rent, which has been re-strung and tuned to baroque tuning. Effects pedals are several, suffice it to say we hold the “Swedish chainsaw” in high regard but don’t have the genuine article ourselves. The only thing we’d like to plug by name is Cakewalk by Bandlab, a great full-featured DAW that is available for totally free download. It has lots of onboard effects and plugins that we used in producing the EP. Kids, if you read this, download Cakewalk today and start making music, and shoot us an email, we can do a split. For real. DIY or die.

What, if anything, are you plugging/promoting at the moment?

We’re plugging our Mauled by Savagery EP, and, this being our debut, the band MVRDVRKVLTVR itself. The EP is available at Name Your Own Price on our Bandcamp page. Download it and blast it, and let us know on Facebook if you like it. We have a limited number of physical cds for sale also via Bandcamp.

One thing we are interested in is doing splits or compilations. Any bands interested in something like that, reach out to us.

What are your plans for 2020?

Our plan is to keep up the momentum. We will continue to promote this EP and begin to work on new material. The next album may be another EP or an LP. We may also look into releasing individual tracks online. Fans can let us know what they’d prefer on Facebook. As I mentioned we are not currently planning to play live, which would probably be impossible right now anyway.

If you were second on a three-band bill, which band would you love to be supporting and which band would you choose to open for you? A chance to plug someone you’ve toured with, or a mate’s band we’ve not heard of before!

We would love to support one of the great blackened death/war metal bands out there now. One that comes immediately to mind is Abysmal Lord.

It seems presumptuous to select someone to open for us, since we are just breaking the ice with our first release and have never played live. But in the spirit of answering the question, and promoting other DIY artists, we would choose someone like Lamp of Murmuur, who makes great, raw, DIY black metal.

MVRDVRKVLTVR: official | facebook | soundcloud | bandcamp | youtube

 

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