1. What does ADVENIAT HIEMS mean and how did you select it?

The name we have chosen for the band is an ancient Latin expression that means "Let the winter come!" It is closely related to the coldness and stillness we would like to create with our songs.

The band has been founded in Milan at the beginning of 2008, but we had been working together before, as part of the band LUSTNOTES, that stopped its activity in 2006. Thanks to this experience, we had already succeeded in the task of melting our different musical inspirations, so we could start right away with the realization of this new project. The album "Loki" was entirely composed in a small room we rent in Milan, where we met twice a week or more, to discuss, try and decide every single part of this product. We stated from the start as one of our primary objectives the extreme coherence of the finished album: lyrics, music and graphics had to be exactly fit to the concept we wanted to transmit with this album. For this reason we started from a set of lyrics to inspire the songs melodies, then adapted the lyrics to those tunes and only after we got everything together working, fine-tuning every passage and every single atmosphere.  Our main composer is Aganush, Ragno is in complete charge for the rhythmics while Ishtar cares about lyrics and graphics.

We have been strongly influenced by black metal bands of the '90, especially GEHENNA, BURZUM and the first releases by DIMMU BORGIR like "For all Tid" and "Stormblast". Without any doubt, those bands have played a major role in the formation of our musical conscience and inspiration: they had in their works the atmosphere we like and feel so close to us. Surely they have been a source of inspiration for us, and we think this is quite evident from our production too. Beside this, we know time has passed and the musical scene has evolved, so we tried to start from the excellent work those bands did going further on the road they started tracing, inserting some modern but not evident elements in our creations like voice effects and keyboards post-production.

We think this E.P. has one of its greatest points in the passion we put in its realization. We are fond of northern mythology and feel very close to the characters we described in our songs, so that every passage of the album is sincere and heartfelt. Also, the work we did together on the album was meant to be coherent and impressive for the audience; we think we reached our goal, creating a product that expresses in every part the mood, the atmosphere and the concept that inspired us. On the other hand, the production of the E.P. suffered from the limits a self-produced work necessarily has. We would have like the possibility to invest more in order to have a more refined sound. 

"Fenrir", third song of the album, is surely the most complete song we wrote on this E.P.. The song is about the wolf-god Fenrir, destined to break free from his chain the day of Ragnarok to swallow the sun, causing an endless, cold night to fall upon the universe. Waiting for that day, Fenrir is forced to remain chained in the desolated lands before the reign of dead spirits, soaked in fog and stillness. The musical line of the song is rich of changes of mood, expressing the contrast between the motionless plains where the wolf-god lies and his inner rage. In this track every aspect we love in Northern mythology is represented: rage, desolation, stillness, cold.

We feel deeply touched and involved by the evocative power of northern mythology and its sagas. A lot of people ask us why we didn't choose some more Italian concept or, on the contrary, a more global one, not strictly related to countries we do not live in. The reason is simple: we think every band should just compose and write about themes they like and feel particularly close to their nature. Our nature and feelings bring us to the heart of eternal winters, just right beside the giants, among the everlasting night of the Ragnarok: that's why we choose to stick to these particular concept.The album is written around the figure of the god Loki, nemesis of Odin in the scandinavian myth, along with those of his three sons, that will play with him a main role in the events of Ragnarok, the end of the world in northern mythology. A song has been written for every character, trying to define the main traits of them and the role they prepare to play in the twilight of the god.

At the top of the list we should place, without any doubt, all the ambient works of BURZUM like "Hvis Lyset Tar Oss", "Det som engang var" and "Filosofem". Beside this, we were deeply inspired by "For all tid" by DIMMU BORGIR and by the initial works of bands like GEHENNA and MACTATUS.

Ishtar is the ones that takes care of artworks and graphical issues. The pictures represents Hel. Very popular in the northern folklore, she is considered to be the image of Death: a grim old lady with a rake that she uses to catch the souls of mortals and bring them in her reign of shadows.
Hel is one of the sons of Loki, probably,  in our opinion, the loneliest and at the same time the bleakest one, so we thought she could represent our musical style.

The world of music is overcrowded. Even in less popular field like black metal, there is plenty of bands with talent and original ideas, so it is difficult just to be at the same level with the rest of the scene. Furthermore, to reach the audience is not and easy task: often people follow famous bands and do not care about newcomers. We have tried to surpass those difficulties by setting our work free for download and placing our songs in the most visited portals and communities on the web. We are not famous of course, but we think we have reached a fair amount of listeners.

Reviewers often say the production quality is not the best possible. This is true, and it is one of the things we regret most about this album, but as we said it is a self-produced E.P. and this is the best result we could realize. Beside, a lot of our reviewers point out the coldness and the desolation expressed by our work. We like this, because it was exactly the feeling we wanted to transmit to our listeners and it is always gratifying to see someone grabbed the message.

We distribute our music for free over the internet: this is a quite clear position! We play to be heard and to share our musical passion: for this reason we do not care to join the music industry mainstream. It is probably true that the web is making the labels' financial troubles worse, but this is a change due to time and new technologies: the music industry should adequate to this new way of listening and enjoying music.

We do not usually perform live, we didn't prepare any shows. The promotion of "Loki" is entirely done using the web and the distribution of promotional packages to 'zines interested in our style.