Protector: All orchestra instruments are played through keyboards as the drum sounds (including the tomtoms, snares, march and kettle drums). Only on a small part of a song on the new album will you hear a real flute. I also played with an oriental drum on 2 songs. The vocals are of course natural, as well as the guitars.

Do the songs come to you as a complete product or do they get expanded on little by little?

Protector: No they definitely expand little by little. Adding one layer to the other and making the song grow piece by piece until it finally sounds like a full orchestra is the main element of our music (and also any other projects I am involved in). In the case of Summoning, Silenius has the main idea for a new song. This means he has the chords and the lower tunes for a new song including all parts. When he comes into my studio he records the midi on my computer and right after that I play along to his tunes, to give the songs the typical orchestral mood. Some other tunes follow and I’ll add the drums. Once the keyboards for a new song are finished, we start the next song and only when all songs are completed, do we add the guitars to them then lastly, the vocals.

The themes and melodies are great! What do you site as your main influences when writing?

Protector: We don't really think we have any influences in particular. For example I mainly get influences by playing around on my keyboards. Mostly it’s a one-man session where I accompany my own chords recorded and played in a loop etc. In the past romantic/classical music has had some influence on me. I listen to Gustav Mahler and Anton Dvorak. If you listen to the typical horn phrases I use in the Summoning alot of similarities can be heard.

And would I be correct in saying that the vocals are influenced by another form of music altogether?

Protector: No, actually I don't know any vocal style that is more similar to ours as the vocal style of Black Metal. Especially, Silenius’ vocals are very black metal orientated, whereas mine are a bit hoarser. I really have no idea what other kind of music outside of Black Metal that does this.

How much time was spent in the studio with layering, polishing, recording and creating this work?

Protector: Unlike in the early days where we spent only 3 days in the studio for recording and mixing etc. We now do everything in our own studio, free of time and money pressure. We really work as long on the sound as necessary. For the mixing and mastering we spend about 3 months on it. We really work hard to get best result as possible. We listen to the mixes on different sound systems and even ask friends if we can check the sound on their machines just to make sure that it’s suited for various systems. Sure I know if a person doesn’t like The Summoning’s music, this person will also not like the sound. We do almost 100% the opposite of what other bands do when they mix; we love lots of reverb, which of course makes the music much more atmospheric giving it that far away feel. On the other hand it decreases the aggressiveness of the sound.

Most of the songs are very big and involved. Does this hinder playing them live?

Protector: The main reason for not playing live is another one. We simply feel like composers not like instrumentalists. We like to create new tunes and rhythms, but don't really feel satisfied when we have to play already composed songs over and over again. Once I play a guitar for the recording I never touch it again, instead I create new guitar riffs. I don't even know how to play the riffs from Oath Bound anymore. If we would play live, we would have to have rehearsals and that would consume lots of time leaving very little time for making new songs. We have full time jobs outside of music to survive, so our time is precious. If we ever did play live, people would surely notice that we don't feel comfortable and the mood of the concert would suck.

Apart from that I think that you have to be a special kind of person to enjoy being on stage. In the studio everything is about the music, nothing else is important. On stage you have to focus on more aspects and one of the main aspects is expressing yourself through body movements, facial expressions and etc. We are definitely not the kind of people that like to put on some kind of act in order to express our personalities. All these years we’ve done our best to hide our personalities as much as possible, so on stage we only would do the contrary.

The songs have alotted of heart. Tell us which one is your favorite and why:

Protector: During the production of the CD, our favorites change and I guess for the future they will also change. Generally, you can easily tell which one is our favorite. When we decide who will sing which song, we just take the songs that are our personal favorites. So the songs where you can hear my voice are more my favorites than the others. Right now my favorite is "Across the Streaming Tide". I think the guitar riff in it is one of the best and the solo drum parts are alsovery good. I also like the horns sound too, normally songs with horns have more of a battle feeling that better suits Silenius’s voice. In this case, the horns create a total fantasy mood. In addition the fantasy sounds create a very strange mood.

Silenius: By the way, the leading melody of this song was also used for an exclusive Kreuzweg ost song for the Cold Spring label compilation- Swarn.

How did this song come to be?

Protector: It was Silenius that played the horn sections and and I added the other music. This song was the last one we composed for Oathbound. When Silenius played his part, we were not sure if the song was going to be any good, but the longer we worked on it, the more we liked it.

What are your plans next?

Protector: After all of these interviews, (which is 4 times higher than ever before) slow up, I will finally finish the next album for my Classical inspired Darkwave project Die Verbannten Kinder Evas. All of the songs were composed 2 years ago, but due to bad luck I haven’t been able to finish the album. The disc is already recorded, all I like is mixing it.

Silenius: Contrary to former times, I only have one other band besides Summoning called "Kreuzweg ost". This is a mixture of military-industrial and neo classical arrangements with a lot of spoken word, sampling of different films that deal with military and religious topics. Next month I will begin to work on new songs for this project and I’ll probably release a single or a few compilation tracks. Afterwards we’ll release Edelrost, on the English label, Cold Spring records at the end of the year. Maybe, I’ll do some vocals on the forthcoming Amestigon release?

What’s next for the Summoning?

Protector: We are planning on releasing a mini CD next year because we had a song left over from Oathbound because we didn’t want the CD longer than 70 minutes. We will also put 1 or 2 new songs on it and a few unusual mixes of old Summoning songs.