Over the years, I was lucky to have met a lot of young and passionate black metal musicians from all over the globe who share similar views on music, and in fact I still do come across some more amazing people as time goes by. One of the people which I met last year in person, and have been in contact ever since, is a musician who hails from Würzburg, Germany, by the name of Michael Schneider, aka Sarto. Sarto is a member of various bands such as Fantasma, Morgenröthe and Tristețe, and he is also a live/session guitarist for Totensucht, Wehmut and even Bethlehem as of 2023. No matter whether he is involved as a full-time member or a session member, one can't deny the fact that he constantly remains active and his dedication is something that I highly admire about him. Join me on this journey as I exchange words with Sarto regarding his upbringing in the German black metal scene, the latest demo of his project Fantasma, him joining Bethlehem as a session musician, and many other things along the way.

Vladimir

Greetings Sarto! The MetalBite crew wishes you a warm welcome. How are you doing brother?

Хвала, брате. Can't complain, hope everything's good at your end as well.

Before we start discussing some of your works, we'd like to know a bit about you and your overall musical background. What can you tell us about yourself and your upbringing in the German black metal scene, including the black metal genre itself?

Well, I have been listening to black metal since I was eight years old or so. So, after eight, nine, ten years or so, when I grabbed up guitar and bass seriously for the first time, it had to be black metal. The thing is that I never really had a lot of contact with people who listen to this type of music or even play it because they just didn't exist in my place. That made it a bit difficult in the beginning, but it changed positively with age and places. Music-wise I have to admit that I never really listened a lot to German black metal. I grew up rather listening to French black metal bands especially but of course also to others from Scandinavia and where not. By this I mean I was not necessarily focused or influenced by German black metal in a special way.

Your musical reputation consists of various bands, including your involvement as a live/session guitarist in bands such as Totensucht, Wehmut and even in the well-known band Bethlehem as of 2023. What is it like to actively work in so many bands as either a full-time member or as a session musician? How do you manage to balance out everything in order to work both ways?

It's the same like with everything else. You only have 24 hours per day, and you must set priorities. For me, making music et cetera apart from just being a fan developed into a great priority, if not even a necessity. To be honest, it's not that simple because you still need time for your university in my case, part-time job, family et cetera but here's the thing: none of my bands or projects are like those that are on big tours all the time. If that'd be the case, it wouldn't be manageable. So, we have a few concerts here and there with some, with others it's now only studio work. Somehow it works out but to be completely honest, I couldn't do more and thought often enough of reducing the responsibilities. But somehow you still stick to it because it's passion. As long as a project or a band doesn't suffer from me not being able to take my responsibility, I'm trying to stick to it.

Can you also tell us a bit about how you became a live guitarist of Bethlehem and how did you feel when you became a part of such a big and respected name in the German black metal scene?

Me and Jürgen met in 2019 at a festival. We stayed in contact since and once he told me that he needed another guitarist for Bethlehem, we decided that I could help out. Of course, I feel very good about it, especially because Bethlehem is also one of my all-time favorites. In the end it's all about the music and I'm happy to be part of this and to be able to help out a friend's band.

So far, what has been your most positive and engaging experience, either as a full-time member or a session musician? Have there been any things that you managed to pick up along the way?

I think it's an experience that (hopefully) comes back with every songwriting process. It's the freedom of creating music and lyrics without limitations, maybe only with those you set by yourself. Without this freedom in my head, I couldn't make music at all. Maybe that's also the reason why I have so many different projects and ideas for upcoming projects and releases. Maybe there will be projects with only one release. But it's good for trying out stuff and dealing with different moods and so on. But I get your question, I'd say so far it was our first festival show with Totensucht at Boarstream Festival last year. That was neat.

One of your recent works includes your project Fantasma and I noticed that the debut EP "Benevento Black Metal" has song titles and a couple of lyrics in Italian language. What is the story behind the project and the use of Italian language? Are there any influences in particular?

I have a close connection to Italy, have been there many times and have some very good friends there, for which I'm very grateful. I remember that I was visiting friends in Campania in 2021, and I still didn't have any lyrics or a band name in mind, only the images in my head when I was writing the music. So, I came up with "Benevento Black Metal" as a title while being in the city and the surrounding area. For the lyrics and everything else I have my imagination which I mix up with historical facts, places where I've been and the general themes. All in all, I see it as a tribute. The band name was an idea of my dear friend Leonardo, who also did the spoken word part on the song 'Benevento Black Metal'.

As of recently, Fantasma released the new demo "Abomination Of Human Pestilence", released on limited edition cassettes with a total of 66 copies via Narbentage Produktionen. How was the overall process for making this demo, including your experience on working with Agathodaimon drummer Oliver Kraus?

The reason why I wanted to start with demos instead of a full album right away was to give myself time to develop the style of Fantasma. The second demo is a bit different, so I needed some time. In general, I can say that it took quite a while but last but not least thanks to the good work of the others it went pretty well. When it comes to the drums, I'm happy that Mortos recorded and improved them once again. I worked with him already before with Morgenröthe's live shows and Fantasma's first demo. He's a talented and responsible musician, I'm grateful to be able to work with him.

Another change to Fantasma alongside the new demo is that the project managed to expand and become a two-piece when Martyris joined as the second guitarist, and so the "Abomination Of Human Pestilence" also marks her official "baptism by fire" from a musical standpoint. Has this change affected Fantasma in a way to help the project work more effectively, faster and better than before?

That's a very interesting idea. In my experience, the more members, the more opinions, and problems, the slower the process. That's why I like solo projects. No but in this case it was worthwhile. It was good to have a second opinion on the music by someone who really knows the genre and add some ideas to it.

Now that you have released your new demo, were there any plans that you and Martyris envisioned to do with Fantasma in the near future?

The plan is to work on new material this year and to find a split partner to release a third cassette tape as part of the 'demo trinity'. Afterwards it's finally time for a full-length. Apart from that there aren't many plans. There might be a one-time only gig this year if we're in the mood for it. But in general, there won't be many gigs with Fantasma.

Since I met you in person last year, we had the opportunity to exchange our opinions regarding black metal bands and even the genre itself. Along the way we also spoke about the importance of good and creative songwriting in black metal, the necessity of analyzing your work from different standpoints and we also talked about some of your past experiences. I don't recall asking you this before, but what do you personally regard as good black metal and what would you consider to be an important ingredient for achieving such?

That's a very difficult question. There are many good subgenres of black metal, talking about the music itself. When it comes to black metal without considering the subgenres, I prefer the old-school sounding bands over the modern, polished ones that pop up everywhere today. Also including the subgenres, I could drop many names now, but I think that wouldn't answer your question. I think the core of 'classic' black metal, if we want to call it like that, is a certain 'fuck y'all' attitude of disappointment which arises from looking at ourselves and the people around us. That doesn't mean that good black metal must contain hate, most likely it does to a certain degree, but it's more about reflection of reality. The music helps to deal with the emotions about this reality (while or even by creating other emotions) while the lyrics describe more or less the reality itself (or should I say the 'realities' since this is all very subjective). There are 'good' bands in my personal opinion that do one of these things, only a very few can do both. Luckily, I can listen to music without bothering about the lyrics as well. Otherwise listening to many bands would seem just too stupid. To sum up, if you make great black metal music, you're a good artist. If you're even able to make it mean something, to have a special thought within it, you're a great artist. This is all very subjective, one must add, and it feels a bit bad to reply here because actually one could (maybe even should to a certain degree) do his own research on this and really think a lot about it. Maybe one could come up with ideas about it, you've never thought about before. I would like to recommend that to many 'good artists'. Especially those mindless who think black metal must necessarily be evil, hateful or satanic, just for the sake of 'being black metal'. If you think of the genre like that, you're not better than the religion you say you are disgusted by, because it's both a faith in a set of rules that you didn't create but (mindlessly) hollow.

A last question I'd like to ask you is where do you usually look for inspiration when working on your music? What do you consider as reliable sources that will always help your creativity no matter what?

I turn on the news or I leave my apartment. There's much inspiration for writing skeptical and critical music. But seriously like I said before, Italy is always a great inspiration, history and general, stories about the church and some mystical things. And then there's always the music you listen to. You are never free from this influence. If your creativity feels non-existent sometimes, take a step back, reflect and try again after a few weeks or so. Something I had to learn myself.

Thank you so much for doing this interview, Sarto! I am really looking forward to hearing more great stuff from you in the near future. Are there any final words you'd like to leave before we wrap this up?

Thanks a lot for the interview. See you soon!

Norwegian black metal legends In The Woods… lately announced that they got a new vocalist. Curious as I am, I couldn't resist asking the band for an interview and so I got the chance to talk to their axeman Kåre Slettenberg via Skype. I got quite a lot of interesting news about the band and the maybe most interesting information that the band is currently working on a new album. But it's not as easy as it seems - just read for yourself!

Michael

Hi Kåre, how are you doing?

I'm doing good! It's Sunday and I'm preparing for a new week, that's all.

You just found a new singer for In The Woods…, namely Bernt Fjellestad. Can you tell me a little bit more about him?

We've been working with James since I joined the band and he decided to leave the band. So, we had to try to find a new singer. We wanted to get one from Norway because of how the situation has been in the last two years where you couldn't travel. It has been very hard to keep the whole band thing going. We all agreed that if we find a guy from Norway and he can sing and do what we want there is nothing better. So Anders Kobro started to talk to a lot of people and we had like two or three names on the list and these were the people we wanted to go for. We had one in Sweden and two in Norway and we had a meeting with Bernt Fjellestad a couple of weeks ago and introduced him to the new material that we have. He took one of them with him and sent us the track in return a couple of days later. And it was just wow! He played with Anders in Susperia twenty years ago and in Guardians Of Time which is a totally different genre than we are doing but this all shows what he has become. He is a strong vocalist. When we got the songs, it was pretty easy (laughs).

Why did James quit the job?

That's a tough question. I think it was more personal for him, it was quite difficult for him, especially these last two years with not being able to come together with us. It has been hard to keep up the work because we dropped everything when everything closed down and when we decided to start taking up things again, I don't think he felt as included as he might have wanted to. I mean we tried, but it was different. So he decided that for him personally it was time to move on. We respect that and wish him the best.

Well, I think it's quite a pity because I really liked his performance when I saw you once together with Sigh in Essen in 2016, I think.

Yes, he did an amazing job and I'm very happy to have done it with him and got to know him because he writes so much music and he performs really well. And he had a good connection with the new and the old fans of In The Woods...

At the moment you are recording a new album. How far did you already come with it?

Before James decided to leave, we had eight songs which were completely finished, with guitar, drums and bass already recorded. He took three of these songs with him, so we have five left and we are going to start tomorrow to record three new songs that we have written. So, we record those and start working on more detailed work on the other songs, record vocals, mix master and see what happens.

Are there some titles / the album title you maybe can reveal?

We had one but that was James' idea (laughs) so you see you can't really go with that, you know? We have a few working titles, but nothing decided. We just had announced the new singer and are working on the music, and we will sit down and find a fitting name.

What do you think will be the circa release date of it?

We hope it'll be in September. If everything goes up to plan, we have some live stuff going on at the end of this year and it will be good to have it out and promote it (laughs).

Will you also come to Germany?

Yes, definitely. We have always come to Germany. It's Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, I think these are the three locations on my last updated list. But let's see what happens.

Is the music a continuation of the previous two albums or do you change many things in the sound?

Before James quit, we knew we were going for the heavier parts of Cease The Day and he had a certain way of adding his keyboards and working with his voice. I think the sound is going to be a little bit different. You will recognize it I hope. We will have the same guy mixing it, that's what we're hoping for and we'll have a hired hand to record some keyboards for us. Our new singer has an extreme talent for harmonizing and melodies and it's still gonna be heavy and you will recognize it in the guitars and all.

But it won't be such a change like from "HEart Of The Ages" to "Omnio", will it?

No, it won't be as big a change as that (laughs). We will keep it like we did on Cease The Day. I don't want to go out and say that it's a follow-up but with the music written you can certainly hear elements from this band and what we were doing on Cease The Day and what we've been doing live.

What will the lyrics be about?

To be honest, I haven't read them all. Our writer is a very happy-go-lucky guy and I think one of his working-titles is 'We Sinful Converge'. I don't know what is going to happen with that, but it will not be as with James. He wrote about things that pissed him off. I don't know how Bernt will write, I mean I can see him pissed off, but it will be about things he cares about.

After all the line-up changes, Anders is the only one who is still remaining of the old ITW line-up. Would you say that the band still has the spirit it once had in the 90s?

I had an immense long conversation with Anders about how it is when I joined, and the band had a certain individual spot. You never gonna find anyone to fit that spot but when we did that tour back in 2016, things were extremely rushed because we had Christian and Christoffer Botteri with us and I hate to say and they hadn't played the songs for twenty-five years maybe and so it was all kind of half-ass. When we've been touring in 2019, we kept a lot of those arrangements and these last couple of years we've all been going very deeply into listening to the details that make those songs so good. We are never gonna copy what they did but we try to keep that spirit but it's more modern and the things sound better these days and we try to keep what made the band out. They made three records that are totally different but if you take that live album Live At The Caledonien Hall, we have used that as an example of how we want to sound as a starting point. We work on it and our main focus on the old stuff is HEart Of The Ages. The way we play is sometimes very authentic but as musicians you like to put your own feeling in it as we are a new band with new members and the changes that come naturally with that.

Besides ITW, all of you have some side-projects. How important are these bands to you?

When In The Woods… completely stopped in 2020, I started writing a lot of my own ideas and spent a lot of time doing that when we did nothing with In The Woods… and released my own record. That has kept me inspired to work harder with In The Woods…, to make this upcoming album become good and it's the same thing for Nils (Drivdal ;M.) our bass player who recorded a lot and playing in two or three other bands. But we all were true to that that In The Woods… was priority number one to us and will be for everyone.

You released as "Kas" a very fine black metal album in December called "The Problem Of Evil" which sometimes reminds me of old ITW. What was the intention behind it?

Well, all musicians have a dream to record an album for yourself – a project where you can do whatever you want. No one is going to talk against you or stuff like that (laughs). That was the main thing – I wanted to do something completely on my own and a lot of the music sounds a lot inspired by early In The Woods…, Green Carnation and those bands because those bands are what made me learn how to play when I started to play black metal. The harmonies and all that type of things. By playing all these old songs you get inspiration (laughs).

Besides, what does the name "Kas" mean?

Haha, it means nothing! It's just the initials of my name.

Oh, alright, haha! I looked up at Google translator and it told me it would mean something in Estonian. Well, that's simple! Where can one purchase the album? Is it only on Bandcamp and Spotify?

I've been doing all this independently. You can buy the album on Bandcamp or directly from me. I have no label, nothing, so I am just doing this by myself. You can also buy it on ITunes or stream it on Spotify and all those streaming services.

Talking about music in general, what are your major inspirations apart from In The Woods… and which were the last remarkable albums you bought?

Hm, I love this question (laughs). One of the biggest influences on me in the last three or four years has been Agalloch. I like that depressive sounding, rather simple and the way they play that stuff I find it pretty cool. Of course, there are some of the Norwegian black metal bands; you never get away from them but it's something I don't listen to a lot. There is this band from Finland which is called Mustan Kuun Lapset from which we did a cover version with some friends. I did the mixing session and all and the album they released in 2007 – the one with the pink cover ("Viimeinen Laulu Kuolemasta"; M.) – is such a good album. Unfortunately, I cannot understand a word. But my influences go way back to Rory Gallagher and Uriah Heep until 75. That's probably the reason why I play music. The last album I bought was from Italian band Shores Of Null. We toured with them in 2019 and I got this one sent up from Italy. It's a brilliant one.

Thanks for the interview! Stay safe!

Thanks for talking to me! Stay safe!