Stephan: Couldn't be better: Our record is about to get released, we don't run out of ideas and it's still just awesome to meet, turn on the amps and make some noise!

Michael: And of course we are curious about the reactions concerning our new album.

Stephan: Our key influence is metal! We all grew up listening to bands like Pantera, Sepultura, Machine Head, At The Gates, Dissection, Immortal and many others. Our main goal lies in creating music which has its own character and doesn't follow any special genre/style.

Michael:  And to achieve our musical imagination we attach importance to variating riffs full of pressure and melodies with a high recognition value. We definitely aren't a political band and we refuse any kind of political and religious extremism. But the northern and germanic mythology and the corresponding  atmosphere provides a great part of the stuff which completes our compositions. Furthermore the human behaviour concerning mythology, anger, frustration, envy and so on.

Stephan: Volker is an old friend of mine who helped out when we had the opportunity to play at Extreme Fest Austria and our former bassist Stephan wasn't available. He had to learn the set in five days and so there was no time to settle. As Stephan definitely left the band, we kept Volker and by now he contributed a lot to our music.

Volker: All of our songs start with some guitar riffs from Stephan, Michael or Florian and usually I can feel free to add my bass line afterwards. But as well as our drummer Anton I come up with own ideas on structuring or finishing a song.

Michael: The lyrics of the new Album are basically influenced by the northern/Germanic mythology and different human behaviours essentially as the album before. Thereby it's not especially a single topic or tale, so it's not a concept album, but the momentariness of all is omnipresent. Each song tells its own story suitable to the atmosphere of the music. I don't want to interpret and expose the lyrics exactly because i think they offer space for different methods of approach and everyone should feel free to interpret.

Stephan: We don't write songs, record and release them like a machine.  One of us comes up with an idea, and then there can be a long period of practising until we all feel that the song is finished. For example, this procedure took over two years for "Homo Sum Humani".
After the decision was made that we would record this album on our own, we bought the equipment and did demo recordings before starting the final recording to ensure the quality will fit our expectations. And the last time-consuming task was to search for an appropriate label ...

Stephan: As "business" (we hate this word) has changed in the times of internet, there are no more labels who discover bands like us and give them thousands of euros in advance to record an album. Today a band has to invest in a label as well. We got several offers where we would have had to pay a lot of money and the label would have made easy money just from the deal itself.

Finally we got in contact with Malte from Quality Steel Records: He offered us a fair deal and - which is much more important - he gave us the impression of being really interested in our music and not only in a new deal.

Stephan: First of all - we don't see ourselves as a straight black metal band but we admit that there are some basic influences

Regarding your first part of the question: I think we have had and still have a strong black metal scene especially in our neighbourhood. When Ars Irae started there was a black-metal-only festival not far away in Innsbruck, Austria, called "Misanthropic Violence" where we saw bands like Watain, Inquisition, Kampfar, Lunar Aurora and Orlog. We have many friends from those times, who we still meet at other concerts/festivals nowadays. The scene today isn't as big as it has been but I don't think this is a German phenomenon since there was sort of a black metal hype which is over now.

Stephan: We celebrated it playing "Blood Revenge", the first song of Ars Irae at all, which we haven't played for a long time live and thereby we discovered how much we improved over the years.

Michael: And of course we drank a lot of beers with folks who accompanied us the last years.

Michael: We actually don't have plans for a big tour but we are straining at the leash to play the new stuff  live and that is essential for us because the emotions of live gigs are unsurpassed. We never put down good opportunities and at the moment we are looking forward to the "Hammerfest" festival in June  which is the first time for us playing live in Italy.

Stephan: Since "Dunkle Klänge" has been recorded we are already writing new songs for our next album, so this won't be the last thing you will hear from us!

Michael: And our target is to be a little bit quicker finalizing it than last time 😉