HOME
NEWS
MUSIC
PRESS
VISUALS
WRITINGS
FASHION
RELEASES
GALLERY
CONTACT
TRIVIA

PRESS

Nebelhexë - Interviews


Rock Tribune

Andrea, you seem to be a perfect example of the saying "rolling stones don’t gather no moss". You’ve been living in Germany, England and Norway, started a career as a fetish model before being part of several bands and meanwhile are busy with your second solo project, next to which you also wrote a book about Paganism. Are you a workaholic or just someone who’s always creative and needs several outlets in order not to become restless?
Oh I am still restless, hehe. I really feel like moving and travelling all the time, and I feel the urge to do more... I have several projects I am working on, both music projects, writing projects and other art projects... and my head is always filled with new ideas. But the key is that I work from home and apart from spending a lot of time with my daughter and close friends, I don’t really often go out to have "just fun" or "hang out" with people. Also I have periods where I am really creative and other times I just do nothing at all. But yes, I really think it is important for a person and an artist to keep changing and growing, both spiritually and artistically. If you only do the same thing over and over again, you simply don’t grow and thus don’t get anywhere. So for me it is really important to constantly seek new challenges and explore new ideas. I have to travel to new places and I seek out new spiritual ideas all the time. I like to challenge myself and I love living an intense life, I love to enjoy the moment and I really appreciate the little things in life. I really like the expression "vital life is ever-changing", this is really true. I think it is strange sometimes how so many people don’t really understand that. They seem to live out the same day over and over again and complain how an artist changes. But the thing is, only the artists who constantly move and change will survive a long time in the music business. Life is movement.       
 
Probably you learned quite some lessons about live like that, not? Which choices or experiences are the most regrettable and which are the best you had so far?
Haha, you don’t wanna know... I did pretty many unusual things yes, and thus I had many amazing and also some horrible experiences. And I do regret several things, I guess we all do. But in the end all experiences make you grow, even the bad ones, so I never really hold a grudge against anyone. Life is there for learning and sometimes I make errors of judgement and then I wish I could go back and do it again. But I believe in Karma and thus I believe that often we get the same negative situation coming our way until we learn from it. It’s like Life, or your subconscious, is sending you a hint that you have to deal with a situation in a different way. I think it really helps to see life as a playground, hehe, it also makes it all less serious.
 
In the past, you were very busy practising Paganism in all possible forms and one could even call you a modern day witch, to which you still refer with the name of your new band Nebelhexë. In your music this is less clear than in the Hagalaz’ Runedance days, but has it kept its importance in your life (honestly I can hardly imagine it wouldn’t, as it’s a way of life one doesn’t abandon easily)?
I am definitely a modern day witch, hehe. But not really in the Wicca sense, I am more kinda like Anton LaVey describes in his book The Satanic Witch (yep, that image is me). But, with Hagalaz’ Runedance I think I somehow made an error, because I wrote a book about the Germanic myths and magical traditions and suddenly people gave me this image of a person practicing the “Germanic Pagan religion”, in this extremely stereotype historical way. And this really started to annoy me, because this certainly was not me. I have always been a general magical and spiritual person, I always said that. I never said I was "suddenly religious" and I would never restrict myself to a religion, thus also not to any “Germanic Pagan religion”, and it annoys me that people thought I was restricting myself to that and even today, still do so. I am really not into the Germanic traditions anymore, I just wrote my book about it to show people how the Christian patriarchal religion destroyed our beautiful Pagan wisdom... (and hey, I am still anti-Christian like hell, haha). But I am not at all religious and I see a big difference between Religion and Spirituality. To me, Spirituality means to be free and to expand your mind. Religion usually means restriction. Like I said, I am always searching for new things, new discoveries, new challenges. I am totally independent and individual, I don’t need to be part of any groups. I have my totally own personal spiritual ideas and they are complicated, because life is complicated.
To me Spirituality, Magic and Art are connected, they all bring you closer to your real inner self. So I consciously try to invoke magical atmospheres with my songs. I like to stir up emotions in the listener. I always had an interest for myths, magic and the darker and hidden aspects of life. Thus I explored those aspects deeply both spiritually and artistically. When I was living in London I was part of several "dark"occult orders, which was great fun, hehe. I’ve always been into the image of the vampire and the werewolf. It always seemed natural for me to explore the natural and more animalistic side within myself... I am writing on a new book now about the shadow aspects and personal life experiences of mine...
 
Music seems to be one of the most important things in your life, not? I mean, you’ve been singing and making music since the early nineties and never leave a long period in between albums. What would a life without music be for you?
Oh, I really don’t know. I think I would feel a gap, like something is missing. I thought several times of just quitting music and start with something else or focus just on the writing instead or my other artistic forms. But I would really miss it, I have so many sounds and melodies in my head and I do it to express myself, so I think I will just continue with it, hehe...
 
Some years ago, you got fed up with the Folk music you were doing in Hagalaz’ Runedance and you said that it felt as if you were in a dead end street. Did you feel liberated when you started Nebelhexë and do you think you have a broader horizon with this project?
Yes, absolutely! It was a complete start over. After I finished the Aghast project I actually wanted to continue solo under my name of Nebelhexë, I wanted to continue doing dark Ambient music like Aghast combined with guitars, but then I got into all this Pagan Folk elements and wanted to explore this. It was a big interest I had back then. So I took a big detour and focused totally on the Germanic magical traditions and Folk music elements. But it was a theme project after all, and as it turned out, very restricting in many ways. I do come from the subculture and Gothic music scene after all, and I really missed creating all this dark, magical and personal art. Now I just create personal songs, they are about my random thoughts, experiences, and deep and dark emotions of mine. Like I said, I have had quite an intense life and have done many peculiar things. I always end up in interesting and bizarre situations. They make often amusing stories, and thus are often the  inspiration for my writings. I’m working on a new CD already and also a Sound Book CD with my poems and stories that will have some background music and sounds... a kind of “Nebelhexë spoken words” project, hehe...   
 
Of course, there seems to be much more space for combining influences, not? I mean, I hear Goth, New Wave, Electro, Tribal/World Music and influences of artists such as Kate Bush, Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance… That probably leads to an almost unlimited amount of possibilities when it comes to writing songs?
Absolutely. I love to create freely, I don’t want to belong to a certain sound or genre, I don’t want to limit myself. I like to be innovative. I like to express myself and see where it takes me. I just love to combine all those darker and ambient sounds with tribal influences. Naturally I do have a personal sound or identity and one can recognise certain elements that flow in my music and voice. But I just love the idea that I can just do what I want... The problem is just that since I don’t play any specific genre I always fall inbetween, you know, like the Metal radios don’t think I’m Metal enough, and then the general radio shows put me into Metal because I belong to a Metal label, I kind of fall out all the time and many people think my music is too weird and don’t understand it... which can be a disadvantage when one wants to sell records, hehe. Can be frustrating sometimes... but in the end it is my choice...
 
On the new album, Dead Waters, you explore even more styles than on Essensual. When hearing the oriental influences in for instance the title-track, I wasn’t overly surprised as acts such as Dead Can Dance did this before, but the dub parts I heard in a few songs were a bigger surprise!
Yeah I think Dead Can Dance also perfectly combined the dark atmospheres with tribal and ethnic elements. I love the first Dead Can Dance albums, they are definitely an inspiration. But I like to bring in other cool sounds as well and thus yes I kinda like some dub grooves, it adds to the trancy feeling...
 
Sadness seems to take a big part of the emotions present on the album. Are you a melancholic soul or is that just a part of you which is most imminent in your songs?
Actually on the surface I’m pretty outgoing, funny and social. I love to entertain, I love to perform, I love to enchant, and I love to express myself. I am also pretty easy-going, and I am very individual. However I have many deep emotions and thoughts and I always felt outside of the crowd, thus often misunderstood and isolated. And the larger the crowd around me, the more I often feel alone and out of place. The feeling of my songs reflect my thoughts when I have melancholic moments, when I think about loneliness, fear, the pains of the world, all the cruelty, all the sadness, my yearn for freedom, yearning to get away from this enchaining humanity... I call those the night-thoughts and it makes me feel better to express those in my art and writings...
 
To be honest, I must say that you are one of the few female singers in nowadays hard music scene which I really like. All these "Gothic Metal" acts with their soprano singers make my toes curl and none of ‘em sound "true". Your feelings in the music seem to be very real though and you sound very "signed by life" (perhaps not the correct term, but I mean in a very positive way; I just couldn’t find the right English word for the Dutch term "doorleefd").
Hahaha thank you. You know I feel just the same, they make my toes curl as well hehe... I really don’t like all this soprano singing, have you read my article called “What happened to our Scene?"? Here I write about how female singers before in the Rock and Alternative scene had all this charisma, bad-ass attitude, willpower and they knew what they wanted. Then we got all these "Gothic Metal singers", and they just sing nicely in a pretty dress. They are completely "non-threatening". They don’t appear to make any music and they certainly don’t express any deep or extreme views. They are nice background women, taking to the front in their pretty long dresses, hehe. Really not my cup of tea, no. The superficial trend has indeed moved into our scenes as well. and I think a scene known for individual and rebellious artists should really continue to support such real and deep artists.
Yes I certainly lived life and am scarred by that hehe, I think this is the most important thing we can do: live life, survive hardships and tell the story afterwards, yes...
 
One more thing: is there any chance that you will perform live some day with Nebelhexë, or do you wanna keep it a strict studio project?
Oh yeah I do play live, but I had a long break though because I was focusing on my other projects, travelling, personal things etc. But I am planning shows again soon, so look out :-).

Back