1. Please introduce the band.
Alfonso: Albez Duz was born in Berlin as a side project in 2006. It was formed by Eugen, featuring singer Lars Keading. After recording Albez Duz’s selftitled album in 2009 and Lars’ sudden death, Eugen continued writing songs for the project; but it was in 2014 when we met. He showed me the songs he had written already and I was just blown away. We recorded “The Coming of Mictlan” in one week. One of our characteristics, is that we have chosen the Mesoamerican mysticism as a thematic and we want to share that magic with our audience.
2. What is the meaning of Albez Duz?
Alfonso: Albez Duz is old German and means “Swan Rush”.
3. You define your music as Occult doom rock, and you have that very deep and mysterious sound in your music. Which are your influences for composing and writing of lyrics?
Alfonso: The eternal duality has been our main influence; life and death, joy and melancholy, abundance and misery, creation and destruction, order and chaos. The lyrics include a lot of personal experiences and feelings, as well as a great content of PreColumbian mysticism and magic. The music has a lot of influences, but we care more about the atmosphere and how the songs sound at the end. We all have our own influences and that makes the result pretty rich, in some parts you find a killer black metal riff, then a trippy progressive break that ends with a death metal guitar sound and the background is filled with a hammond. I mean, it´s pretty colorful!
4. Your new album 'Wings of Tzinacan’ will come out next October 21st, tell us more about the recording.
Julia: It was a great experience overall. Whereas Eugen had done previous recordings in his own home studio, this time we recorded everything over the course of 10 days in a bigger studio in East Berlin. The surroundings were pretty bleak, fit for doom, even though we’d always joke that the landscape of Soviet bloc architecture and smokestacks looked like some postrock album cover. The studio days were intense, starting at 10am and going for 10 or 12 hours. But there was a magic throughout the recording, and we’re proud of the result.
5. The producer of your 3rd LP has been Michael Zech. He is working with great bands and has a lot of experience. How was working with him, did he satisfy your expectations?
Julia: Absolutely! Michael is fantastic at what he does. He brought out the best of every person in the band, offered valuable input and helped give us an overall killer sound. On “Reflections” you can hear where he laid down some vocals, too.
6. You signed with Listenable Records for releasing the new material. Tell us more about this union.
Julia: Laurent and Listenable were very excited about us from the getgo, and we couldn’t deny that energy. It was important to us to find a partnership in a label that we could trust. We were happy with the communication and timeline for releasing the music that Listenable gave us. As an added plus, they’ve been releasing material lately that I can’t stop listening to (like the newest Satan record).
7. For now I see one date closed in Berlin on December 18th. Any other dates to come? Any release party for introducing the album to your followers?
Alfonso: We will have a small listening party with our closest friends and fans in Berlin, but the date won’t be announced, it is going to be a very personal event. Another concert in Berlin has been added on October the 18th with Castle from SFO. Some other gigs are Chaos Ritval in Switzerland on Sept the 24th, Phantoms of Pilsen in Czech Republic on October the 21st, Leafmeal Festival in Germany on November 15th, Novembers Doom Days in Bulgaria on November the 25th and of course De Mortem Et Diabolum in our beloved Berlin.
8. Are you planning to go out from Europe or will you stay around?
Julia: We’d love to play shows outside of Europe – anywhere that wants to hear us. I’m from the United States originally, so it would be a dream to get over there with the band. But in terms of Albez Duz’s home base, that’ll always be Berlin.
9. If you could choose one festival to play and one band to tour with, which one could it be?
Julia: You’d probably get some pretty varied answers between the three of us, but personally, I’d love to tour with Opeth. As for a festival, I just returned from Psycho Las Vegas and thought it was inspiring and wonderfully put together.
10. Anything else to add?
Alfonso: Yes! First of all, thank you guys for being aware of our path. We also want to thank all of our fans and friends, as well as everyone out there who has made our third album possible; Laurent of our label Listenable, Michael Zech and everyone who has shared the stage with us, especially those who have been part of this band (Ihr wisst wer ihr seid!).
Doom on!!!
Fani Nadki
