Virus on funding ‘The Agent That Shapes The Desert’

Ever since the earliest incarnations of Ved Buens Ende and their incessant avant-gardeness to infuse jazz dynamics and an outlandish take on melodics with black metal purity through to Virus – current incarnation of Czral’s bizarre black symphony, my heart has weathered considerable respect for Virus and the Czral and Einar duo. Fast forward over a decade, with three highly acclaimed albums behind them and Virus‘ third album is finally approaching the end of a very tumultuous tunnel.

Recently LURKER had the opportunity to ask Einar a few questions regarding Virus‘ highly anticipated upcoming opus. Fusing, blending and introducing a large amount of ingredients new and old, ‘The Agent That Shapes The Desert’ is sure to be a bizarre ride. Abandoning Season Of Mist to pursue an entirely fan funded pre-order project that takes center stage to cover studio, production and marketing costs, LURKER was eager to understand where this new found sense of independence and self reliance came from. Queue the questions…

Why make the decision to release your third album off your own back?
Well, it took us some time to realise that the contract we had with Season Of Mist wasn’t exactly favourable to us. I guess we should have read it more thoroughly in the first place but oh well, lesson learned. Besides, we got some support from a couple of grants that enabled us to pay a substantial part of the studio costs ourselves. T-shirt and vinyl sales have also helped a lot and with the preorders pouring in, I think we can actually pull it off.
Will Virulent Music release music by other projects?
No, it’s strictly an imprint meant for Virus releases. It’s sort of a sub label of Duplicate, where Czral and me put our efforts together.
Does the self-release of your third album have any significant implications for the future of Virus?
Well, at this point I’m not sure what the future will bring. Maybe we will release more music, maybe not. We will see how this goes and if there’s inspiration / motivation to carry on. We will release another ep next year though, with the leftovers from this album, as we had too much material for one lp. I guess you can call doing everything yourself an ideology. We have lost a lot of faith in other people over the years, it seems we are the only ones not making any money on our music. We don’t do this to get rich obviously, but when what little you make falls straight into the pocket of someone else it’s very frustrating to say the least. So our ideology is to believe in ourselves and not leave things up to others.
Can you reveal anything about the third albums style?
It has both elements of Carheart and The Black Flux in it, and also several new ingredients. I think it will be both a surprise and that it will live up to people’s expectations. It’s a Virus album in every sense of the word, it’s the only thing we know.
How is the fan response going so far?
Preorders have been overwhelming. We have very supportive fans. In fact we have made enough to pay for some studio time and print the lp already, after just a few weeks. It’s really nice to know that people are so eager to help out. I also think they like to be a part of making this record happen. We can’t wait to post a preview on Myspace to see what people think, but we won’t do it until we’re actually done. Shouldn’t be too long though, we hope to get the mix done within the month.
To Pre-order ‘The Agent That Shapes The Desert’ and support a project as creative as it remains refreshing, take a visit over to the Virus Myspace.

You'll find me in the vast wilderness of British Columbia, talking metal at LURKER, or working in publishing and front-end web/eBook development.

2 Comments

  • Reply August 17, 2010

    Invisible Oranges

    More like this! You guys have great taste, but I want to see more content that's actually content instead of what's really a quick ad for a product.

  • Reply August 17, 2010

    Alex

    We want the same thing bro ;_;
    Its definitely a direction we're trying to head exclusively towards. By the way, you have great fucking taste too.

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