... Who's behind the TEMPLE ? Pt 6 with comrade Aleksey Evdokimov !

Here's the final part (at least for the moment...) of that mini-interviews serie presenting you all the members of T.o.P.' s staff... After Lucas, Steve, Ulla, Andreas and Steph, here we go now with Aleksey :

1. Hi, could you please present yourself in a few words/lines?
 
My name is Aleksey, you can call me "comrade Aleks" because I'm Russian. I'm 29 years old, I live not far away from Saint-Petersburg hanging with bears, playing balalayka and drinking vodka. And one little detail – Hydra Dominatus! Nope… srsly!

2. When and how did you come to Metal and more especially to Doom and its subgenres? When did you start to write on music?  Has writing in general always been something you liked and were at ease with?

I started to listen metal when I was 14 years old, my first bands were Iron Maiden, Accept, Manowar and Russian heavy metal band Aria. Somewhere a year later my friend gave me audio-tape with Tiamat’s “Wildhoney” and such songs like “Whatever That Hurt” and “Visionaire” soon become my favorite ones. Ha-ha, you know – rare one can resist that puzzling rhymes “Honey tea! Psylocybe! Larvae! Honey moon! Silver spoon!” When were Paradise Lost, Theatre of Tragedy’s first album and Russian bands Great Sorrow with their great raw work “Dreams… Solitude, Silence” and Deceptive. After that Cathedral and Jack Frost have shown me a direction to True Path of Doom.

I did start to write on music somewhere in 2004 for Russian web-zine metallibrary.ru, that’s pretty funny but it’s still alive! There was an option to get free CDs from some Russian labels for reviews, so I can’t miss such a chance. I did practice writing low-qualified reviews for 2-3 years, then I get some experience and work goes better – it was only question of time. Later I refused to get these CDs because there came a lot of bands which were totally not interesting for me though through that I meet Aarni, Ahab and other fantastic bands.

From some moment I found that I couldn’t find interviews with bands which are interesting for me nor in paper magazines or web-zines so it seems logically to do such interviews by myself.

Do I like a process of writing in itself? I guess (speaking about reviews) that it help to bring thoughts in order, it’s a good practice but I’m afraid that review as literal genre is quite dead, it’s like this problem with digital downloads. About interviews… Writing questions became problem with time because it’s sometimes difficult to write anything new and original when you speak with band who have only one demo or album, but there’re a lot of great people on doom-scenes anyway, and I’m really proud of having interviews with them in my list.

 

3. Do you remember from when did you start to follow regularly Temple of Perdition? Any special interview(s) or review(s) that caught your attention?

 
I try to check interviews with bands which are interesting to me and I do it always when I’m composing questions for interviews for them to avoid repetition. French scene is rich with amazing bands – Barabbas, Stangala, The Bottle Doom Lazy Band just to mention few of them, so it was logically that I visit Temple of Perdition time after time. Stephane did write me in October 2012 with an offer of collaboration and after that I became one of Temple’s regular congregation and a time after – a writer.

It was interesting to find a publication about “Wives of Doom” as I did few doom-quizzes for doommantia.com in similar manner. Also I have to admit that last live report of Anthems of Doom gig was very interesting for me. And it’s interesting for me to read professional reviews ‘cause I still consider myself as mediocre reviewer speaking about some specific sub-genres.

 

4. You’ve got all other various activities related to Metal (own blog for Lucas + other contributions too - just like Andreas, Aleksey and Ulla who has also a podcast… I’m sure that Steve would do something else too, if he wasn’t studying too beside working ! Do you manage to find enough time and the right balance between this and the usual daily life (work, family, etc…) ?

Metallibrary.ru doesn’t have any publication into English, so a problem was a low effectiveness of my work, we’ve started to collaborate with doommantia.com in spring of 2010. I guess it was Mountain of Judgment interview. Occasionally I write for Doom Metal Front, I did 3 or 4 interviews for lordsofmetal.nl and Occult Rock Magazine. And yes – sometimes it takes all of my free time because often I do not have it at all. You know after a day of seating in front of monitor on work, it’s pretty hard to seat patiently 2-3 more hours in front of another monitor at home. Damn, I still can’t find that balance, but look – there’re too much of good bands which really need more exposure!

 

5. Isn’t Steph a too tyrannic editor with you?!!! How do you see the fact of contributing in English for a French blog with a cosmopolitan team? (just nothing special in this web era or pretty cool and enriching?)

 
There was only one time when it seemed that we have some predicament with Stephane: I was offering him a review of album from a band which he already interviewed few months before that, and he tells that one publication is enough (and I still think that Aleks... this band just released one demo, honestly I didn't see any particular interest to post a review of their demo after having already had an intie with them ! the best was indeed to post your review in another blog where people might not have heard of them yet...). Well, it was incomprehensible for me but anyway we posted this review in another zine, so after all that’s not a problem. So answer – no, Steph isn’t tyrannic editor for me.

I’m satisfied with fact of writing for a French blog into English because it helps to support good bands and good people. As I said publications into Russian don’t work well, so I’m pretty satisfied to spread a Word of Doom Cult in such way… Even if I need to use that horrible kapitalistik language :-D