Interview with Haag.

First Kalteldur interview is with our favorite married couple from the British Colombia (read the former review). A duo which has managed to create a modern industrial sound, with a hint or two to the old post-industrial ritual sound (Coil, Konstruktivists. PTV, C93 etc). And as you can imagine, I was curious about Haag and was then determined to do an interview with them. So here goes!.

Q: How and why did Haag emerge in the first place? A: My husband Martin and I had been working on separate projects a lot but hadn't really made too much music together. We sat down together one weekend and made our first album and it actually turned out really well, so HAAG was born. It took us awhile to get on the same page musically, Martin was more into progressive rock and spacey type stuff, and I was making ambient and soundtrack type stuff. I've always loved Industrial and goth and really wanted to make something in that genre. Our sound is still evolving, I recently got a microphone so we can do vocals. Q: The project name Haag, mean anything? A: The name is actually a reference to a Saint Vitus song, called HAAG. It stands for "Hell Ain't a Game" Q: How is the interest for this kind of music in the British Colombia? A: It's not particularly popular around here, as far as I know, but the great Skinny Puppy is also from BC, and I know there is a bit of a goth and metal subculture here. We live in a small town so it's hard to get exposure. Q: Your sound is very old-school industrial wise, what´s that your goal to maintain that aesthetic? A: We love bands like Coil, Psychic TV, Zos Kia, etc, as well as a lot of other types of music, but we don't listen to much modern stuff. Our whole set-up revolves around recreating old school technology and sounds and we'd like to eventually experiment with using tapes and even more archaic technology to keep everything raw and ancient sounding. Q: Do you think that the interest in creating this kind of music (and listening to it) will prevail? And why? A: I hope so, I know it's always been very underground and will probably remain so, but I make the music because I love making music, not because it will be popular. If even just one person likes it then I am happy. Q: Are you interested in esoteric occultism, and why? A: Yes, very much so actually. I (Mandy) got into occultism about 10 years ago, I started off with Crowley and reading all the books on the A.:.A.:. reading list, then eventually moved on to Gnosticism, as well as Eastern esotericism. I worship the goddess Kali and am enamored with death, reincarnation, and "the other side". It has a huge influence on my work.

Q: Plans on doing live concerts? A: We would like to eventually get to the point where we can do live performances. We record most of our music live and improvise a lot of it so we would love to be able to do a show where most of the music is improvised. Q: Plans on doing physical releases? A: Yes actually, we are planning on making our own tapes soon if there's enough interest.

Q: Just 2 round it up a bit... Last question: What can we expect from Haag in the future?

A: We will be working on new albums soon, and we will probably be introducing vocals to our project. Our main goal sound-wise is to rotate between more heavy industrial albums and to also put out some more atmospheric and folkish type stuff, similar to late Coil, early Death in June or Current 93.

Bandcamp:
https://haagwitch.bandcamp.com/

Former review on Kalteldur:
http://kalteldur.blogspot.dk/2017/10/haag-iris-haag-is-new-project-behind-it.html