SOURCE – How did the idea for Konvent initially come to be?
Sara Helena Nørregaard (Guitars) – It was actually pretty random when we started up. Heidi (bassplayer) had been wanting to start a band for some time, but all the guys she knew didn’t have the time, so when she heard from her former roommate Nicolai, from Dirt Forge, that he was giving drum lessons to a girl called Mette. Mette and Heidi quickly got together to jam. Mette happened to know Sara also through the guys from Dirt Forge and she had been playing the guitar for some years in a past band. Rikke was Mette’s sister and she had been taking extreme metal vocal lessons with a metal vocalist for about six months at that time. She was game and we all met up at a rented a rehearsal space for an afternoon and tried jamming to The White Stripes’ 7 Nation Army (Haha!) The vibe was good and we decided to form the band and get our own rehearsal space.
After two years, Mette had to quit the band due to her studies and we were very lucky to find Julie. Julie was only 18 at the time but had played the drums for six years and blew us away with her talent when she auditioned, and it was a no-brainer. Our final formation was established. The fact that we’re all females is completely random. We just wanted to start a band and the people around that wanted to join happened to be women.
SOURCE – How do you see Puritan Masochism as evolving your sound? Could you discuss the lyrical inspirations for the album?
Sara Helena Nørregaard (Guitars) – Our album isn’t a concept album, but if you were to put a theme on it, or around the lyrics of the songs it would basically be losing control over your life.
The song ‘Puritan Masochism’ (which is also the title of the album) is about how everyone has a tendency to do things, or thinking things that actually hurt us, but we keep thinking/doing those things because we feel we have to – in order to fit into something or to live up to some imagined expectations. And sometimes we keep doing these things without even realizing it because you just go on autopilot. It’s sort of our way to say that we don’t have to live like that.
But we would really like people to listen to the album and get their own feelings listening to the music and their own meaning of the songs. Hopefully it’s music where there’s nothing forced on the listener. We don’t like to go into too much detail with the lyrics, because we value the listener being able to create their own stories and images in their heads.
SOURCE – Any tracks that you are particularly proud of this time around?
Sara Helena Nørregaard (Guitars) – Of course we all have some different favorites on the album. But if we should pick one it has to be Ropes pt. II. Ropes pt 2 was the last song we wrote for the album. Our deadline was getting closer and we isolated ourselves in our rehearsal space during the weekend before going into the studio. We spent hours haming to the main riff while the Danish Summer sun was baking outside. It was actually inspired buy our other song Ropes pt. 1 which, at that time, didn’t have a title. Ropes pt 1 is about knowing someone who is going through a bad time and the powerlessness that comes with it. We thought it could be interesting to write a song from the other person’s point of view and connect the songs and their protagonists.
It’s also one of the songs where we experimented a lot with the vocals in the studio. And we’re all really happy with the result of it.
SOURCE – What can you say about your involvement with the She Can Play organization?
Sara Helena Nørregaard (Guitars) – It’s actually just Heidi who’s “involved”.
Heidi Withington Brink (Vocals) – It’s an organization made from three women in the music business here in Copenhagen – DK that thought that there weren’t enough platforms for young women to start playing music and to be helped. So She Can Play was started to get more young girls playing music, and then they just started something new called She Can Manage, which is for young, future women in the music business and I was one of five women who were chosen to be a part of that. We get school in A&R and publishing, PR, music law, and stuff like that. We meet up every month to talk and learn about those things.
SOURCE – How do you feel that you have changed since you started doing music in general?
Sara Helena Nørregaard (Guitars) – When we first started out as a band we just tried writing songs and after a while we had five songs. We wanted to challenge ourselves and got in contact with Patrick Fragstrup, the owner of Wolfrider Productions, who we had heard a lot of good things about and we decided to record a demo at his studio and we learned a lot of this experience since this was the first time recording in a studio for all of us. Personally, releasing our demo was huge for us. Smaller metal radio shows started playing songs from our demo and we got some pretty decent reviews. It was a great motivation to start writing more songs. Bandwise, it was a big learning experience for us and we definitely felt more prepared stepping into the studio this year for ‘Puritan Masochism’Already when we were in the studio recording our new album, we felt the need to get going with even more songs for the next album, and we are already working on new stuff. Working with our producer Lasse Ballade has also been a big experience and we think that he help us developing our sound in the right direction. For us it wa a huge thing to finish the album and get it in our hands physically.
SOURCE – How do you feel you’ve grown as a person in your time with Konvent?
Sara Helena Nørregaard (Guitars) – Being in a band is a big learning experience both musically but also personally. We’re spending so much time together so it’s really important for us that we all feel comfortable with the decisions we make together as a band. One of our biggest epiphanies is (although it seems really obvious) remembering our gut feelings.
You will always face challenges and go through periods where you doubt if the things you’re doing is good enough. But it’s an important learning to tell yourself that what you do is good enough and trust in that. We have also been in some situations where we had to make some decisions due to our personal boundaries. Being able to define and accept these boundaries has also had a huge impact on how we feel like we’ve grown personally.
SOURCE – What are your other interests outside of the music realm?
Sara Helena Nørregaard (Guitars) – Rikke is doing japanese language lessons and all of us like to cook. Heidi also loves to draw and just got a new tattoo machine in order to practice her skills.
SOURCE – What do you have planned for 2020 once Puritan Masochism is released?
Sara Helena Nørregaard (Guitars) – In a few weeks we start our first headlining tour the 24th of January, when the record is released. And we’re going all around Denmark and then Sweden, Norway and Germany for 11 shows in total ( with an UK show just being announced).. We are really excited about this, especially because we’ve never played in Sweden, Norway or UK so that will definitely be fun!
Other than that we’re playing Gefle Metal Festival in Sweden and In Flammen Open Air in Germany this summer and hopefully we’ll add some more shows when the record is out 🙂
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