1) First of all give us a short bio of the band for our readers.

Alex: It all started in the Siberian city, Novokuznetsk, in Russia. At the end of 2005, Ivan The Viking, the founder of the band and the main songwriter, was thinking about creating his own project in the vein of Iron Maiden and gathered his first trio line-up without a singer. Early in 2006, due to the lack of heavy metal singers in our city, the band chose me, letting me sing and write all the lyrics for the band. Ivan’s dream didn’t manifest itself at that time, inasmuch as Stormbringer played Death/Thrash Metal instead of the much dearly loved genre of Ivan and myself. Soon after that, Ivan picked the band name honoring Michael Moorcock's “Elric's Saga” – this was a very generic name that was very easy to remember for Siberians who barely speak English. After the first show, our band decided to part ways with our guitar player and take me on guitars so that I could play and sing at the same time. The band recorded the “Hovering Plague” demo, and in a short while, Anton (guitars) joined the band. A series of drummer problems had occurred afterwards, and the band kept switching from one drummer to another, playing live shows across Siberia every now and then. In 2007, the band was lucky to finally find a classic Heavy Metal singer and I just yielded my position as vocalist to Serge Konev (he’s currently on vocals), revering his magnificent vocal prowess. The band changed its genre to Heavy Metal and recorded “The Predatory Divine” single. In late 2008, a gifted double-bass drummer from a nearby town - Vyacheslav Aparin - joined the band and devoted himself to Stormbringer completely, allowing us to enter the studio and begin working on our first full-length album.

The current line-up is
Ivan The Viking - bass guitars and  acoustic guitars;
Alexander "Lunatic Asylum"Avdeev - guitars and backing vocals;
Anton "Arno" Kovalenko - guitars;
Serge "Nocturne" Konev - vocals;
Vyacheslav Aparin - drums.

Ivan: To be honest, I am enmeshed in telling the real quantity of drummers who attempted to play with us – it is possible that we have had auditioned or played with the bigger share of the drummers in our city. *laughs*

2) Tell us a bit about the two demo releases “Hovering Plague” and “The Predatory Divine”. Which was the recording lineup for each one, and what feedback did you get from these two releases? Are there any copies still available?

Alex: The first release was an amateurish attempt at making a record with the band’s oeuvre at that time – but, despite the low quality (the drum parts were recorded with a tape recorder, guitars - through a Shure microphone picking the sound from a Peavey 5150 212 combo), it received a lot of positive response from the audience, and the band started getting invitations to play in various cities of Siberia. “Hovering Plague” had 5 tracks, the last one being our tribute to Manowar - it was a cover for “Battle Hymn” (1982) only with much harsher vocals there. We don’t play some of the songs off the record anymore and they fell into oblivion.
The line-up trio for “Hovering Plague”in 2006 was the following: Ivan The Viking on bass and acoustic guitars; Alexander "Lunatic Asylum"Avdeev on guitars and vocals; Slava Akulenko on drums.
Many fans – mostly those who don’t appreciate real metal - turned their backs on us after they had heard the new singer on “The Predatory Divine” in 2007 – a demo featuring a live song and two versions of the song with the name matching the album title: one of which is with me on vocals and another - with Serge, who is a real Heavy Metal singer. At the time of the recording we had no permanent drummer in the band, so we took an old tape recording of the original member.
The line-up for “The Predatory Divine” was: Ivan The Viking on bass; Alexander "Lunatic Asylum"Avdeev on guitars and vocals; Anton "Arno"Kovalenko on guitars; Serge "Nocturne" Konev on vocals; Slava Akulenko on drums.
The cover art for both records was a pure disaster, and we dare not distribute or flaunt those copies anymore, but we put out some of the songs on a free download – check our site.

Ivan: I would like to elaborate on the song, “Hovering Plague”, which is, practically, one of the oldest creation that I have composed. I kept changing the instrument parts in the song time and again, and you will hear its final stage on the upcoming release. We liked the song so much that we decided to take it from the 2006 demo and re-record it anew, so that it would be included on the new album. The song has gained a new color with Serge’s vocals, as well as it has new twin-guitar harmonies. I remember the travail and torment of recording it in 2006 (the song is not of the easy kind) – this time, everything went smoother, and that definitely makes us happy.
 

3) I was fortunate enough to listen to some tracks from your upcoming debut album. Before we go into the music, I’d like you to give us some general info on the album. Do you have a title yet? Were are the recordings and production taking place and how many tracks will it contain?

Alex: The working title for the record, steeped in the inspiration of dark fantasy, is “Tales Of The Sword”: The album will contain seven songs recorded, mixed and mastered at the Stagelive studio by Andrew Sekachyov, an excellent sound engineer devoted to his job, here, in Novokuznetsk, Russia; guitars were recorded at Nikita Nefyodov’s guitar studio in the same city – this guy helped us a lot by mixing our guitar tracks. We only have to decide where we shall record guitars for the extra track that we added to the tracklist recently.
 

4) I consider myself fortunate to have come across Stormbringer because the songs you sent me really blew me away! First class heavy/power that brought to mind a mix between your compatriots Arya and classic 80’s U.S. metal! Especially on the 9-minute epic “Hovering Plague” where you can find everything from doom to speed to medieval music!!! Which bands do you herald as influences to your sound?

Ivan: Thank you very much. I, as the person responsible for songwriting, am especially pleased to hear this! Yes,you can hear some “medieval” themes on the upcoming record (especially on “Hovering Plague”). Medieval music attracts me strongly, and I consider such a traditional English song as “Greensleeves” a masterpiece – this melody inspires me much. Sometimes, I write something in this direction, but that’s not for Stormbringer. It’s obvious that metal should be metal!
  Steve Harris has influenced my playing the most. I remember when I just took up a bass guitar and attempted to play like he, practicing the bass and watching his live shows. You can hear what has become of this on the record. *smiles*

Alex: The band ladles inspiration fromsuch bands as Attacker, Cauldron Born,Witchfinder General, Black Sabbath, Metal Church, Helstar, Manowar,Iron Maiden, Agent Steel, Judas Priest, and many more. I would say Aria has nothing to do with our music –we just work in different genres: Hard Rock and Heavy Metal, respectively. 

5) You guys are really good musicians, I heard some great technical cuts in the songs (awesome bass as well!), are any members of the band professional musicians? Which bands (if any) were (/are) you guys involved in outside Stormbringer?

Alex: It’s a pleasure to hear such compliments, Petros, thank you. Only Ivan and I have musical education. I have graduated a music school’s electric guitar metal class (yes, we had this here not so long ago). As far as we speak about our projects, I started playing with a cover-band, then joined Pantheion, a Death Metal act from our city, which has released a couple of albums independently. I also tried to form my own band. In addition, I have been helping a US Death Metal project with vocals and lyrics; but I must say that my heart beats incongruity only with Heavy Metal.

Ivan: Like Alex, I would like to thank you for these words, pleasant for any musician! I am getting a musical education at college, but not in my instrument, so I am a self-taught bass player. But that doesn’t mean that my playing is bad. *laughs* As for the second part of the question – yes, I give bass guitar lessons privately and I played in several bands before Stormbringer (I met Alex in Pantheion), but I don’t think other bands are worth mentioning, though even at the moment I am busy with several projects to earn for a living, but Stormbringer is my life and it is something that I deal with music for.

Serge: I have an education in programming and I work as a designer, that means, I haven’t had a vocal teacher. I sung in a local band (which split up a year ago, by the way) before coming to Stormbringer, but it wasn’t serious at all.

Vyacheslav:  I am a pure self-taught drummer, I haven’t studied my instrument anywhere. I’ve just been watching videos, trying to repeat after the professional drummers. I pick out technical parts by ear quite often and I try to practice 3-5 hours a day. Obviously, a drummer has to try hard to achieve a high quality standard. As for the other projects – before Stormbringer, I played in a local rock band for a couple of months, which I joined a few days before their first show, and, what is more interesting, I learnt all the songs in a single rehearsal. *laughs*

Anton: Stormbringer is my first band that sparked my music career and that I played my first live show with. In 2005, when I came to Stormbringer (we were a nameless band back then), I couldn’t play well at all, and after jamming for a month – just left the band to improve my techinque. And in a year, after hours and hours of practicing, I re-joined the band when Ivan placed an ad, looking for the second guitar player for his band.

6) The name of the band comes from the epic saga of Elric of Melnibone by Michael Moorcock. The lyrics on your self titled track are also inspired by the tale of the black rune sword as far as I can tell. So tell us a bit about your inspiration when it comes to lyrics and what subjects you deal with.
 
Alex: My primary inspirations for lyrics are H. P. Lovecraft and E. A. Poe, and expatiating on this topic can be immense and endless. A lot of the material that I write never becomes lyrics – you may see the examples on http://lunaticasylumla.livejournal.com – my personal place for keeping ideas in memory. 
Songs like “Hovering Plague” and “Sword Arm” are influenced by David C. Smith’s stories and Clark Ashton Smith’s “Tales of Zothique” (our song, “The March”, is inspired by Clark Ashton Smith's story “Necromancy In Naat”). It is not a secret that I had to sacrifice eloquence for melody somewhere on the album, but that just added the kick, coercing and stimulating the listener to draw more tenebrous images each time he gives a ear to a track. One may think straight and imagine the great calamity of plague spreading over the city in “Hovering Plague”, as the lyrics are sung from the illness itself personified; another person may think of religion, for instance.  Ivan sketched the lyrics for two songs on the record: “Stormbringer” and “Elric’s Pride”, he’ll elaborate on that.
 
Ivan: The centerpiece song, “Stormbringer”, and the postlude to it – “Elric’s Pride” – were the first songs where I have participated in writing lyrics in addition to composing all the music. And this was an interesting experience for me, since before that, all the lyrics writing task was put on the mighty shoulders of Alex. 
It was the ending in a book by Michael Moorcock (I wrote the lyrics based on one of the books of Elric’s saga) that inspired me to write the lyrics for “Stormbringer” - the part where the protagonist experiences the fearsome feeling of hopelessness, because that world where he lived, which he loved, is destined to die in a moment - and I tried to reflect that in the end of  “Stormbringer”, music-wise and lyrically. This continues in the “Elric’s Pride” postlude. So, the ending of the album is somewhat tragic.
 
 
7) Right now Stormbringer are in search of a record label. How’s the hunt coming along? Have you had any decent proposals yet?
 
Alex: At the moment, Stormbringer are finishing working on their debut record. The band will start looking for a label right after the  mixing and mastering of the last two tracks is done (hopefully, very soon after this interview gets published;).  While working with the album for 8 whole months, we decided to update the material and throw in an additional track – that means, we are going to review the proposals from labels at the moment and we’ll grab the best deal as soon as all the art and the last song are done. Feel free to contact us.

 
8) How’s the metal scene over in Siberia? We all know how metal used to be persecuted over there in the past, but how are things these days? Do you get opportunities for live shows etc? Any new bands we should be looking out for?
 
Alex: According to Russian law, a person wearing a t-shirt with a Pagan pentacle, or praising the Adversary in his creativity, might get interrogated, and for that, they might  cancel a show – even if it wasn’t the musician but someone from the audience. This is extremely silly, but that happens.  People in Siberia enjoy Russian lyrics in their hardcore, metalcore, grindcore, punk rock, folk rock, and symphonic blackcore bands. There’s no place for  heavy metal music here. Most Slavs are deeply rooted in their ancestry and they just whirl and wallow in their folklore, employing keyboards, balalaikas, accordions, their mother tongue and other stupidity. I am far from the Russian culture and far from liking the conformist lives of the inhabitants here – my mind is far away with the few USA, British, German, Swedish, Greek, and other European metalheads. If you want to hear metal music from Siberia – try our record.

Ivan: Alex put it in words right – the situation with metal is quite poor here. Everything is overblown with the wave of the “underground” fad: all sorts of –core and whatnot. I can’t even go to a show – everywhere I go I can hear punk or –core. But it happens that we may have a chance to play a show somewhere, and we give all we have and push ourselves to the limit at our shows! *smiles* Sometimes, we get bras from female fans thrown at us on stage. I hope I’ll make a collection of them someday.
 
9) That’s about it! Thank you for your time, you may end this small interview as you wish, or add anything you think we might have omitted! Best of luck to the mighty Stormbringer and I hope we’ll talk again soon when the album is released!!!

Ivan: What can I say, I hope it’s just the beginning of the conversation with you! Thank you very much for the interview and the pleasant review from you, Petros. In advance, thank you, everyone, who will listen to us and buy our CD. STAY METAL!

Alex: Thank you, Petros, for the opportunity to show our thoughts to the readers across the globe through The Forgotten Scrolls! It was a pleasure to answer your questions!
If you wish to get in touch with Stormbringer, use this email: lunasyl@gmail.com or just visit http://stormbringer-nvkz.narod.ru (though we’ll have a newer and better site soon) – the contacts are all there.
Keep it metal, fellow metalheads who have their hearts in the right place. Keep it true and never give up!