Hi guys, despite your band was born in 2005, you can debut with your first full length just now. I've read it's mainly due to the Murphy's Law, but can you point out what happened exactly to prevent you from releasing this album before?

Basically equipment either being broke or breaking down during the recording, be it guitars or cables. We also had problems and missing experience getting old equipment work with new one. Probably most of all we had high expectations towards the final product, for example the mixing took longer as expected since we first didn`t find the right sound for the guitars and also focused quite much on having all instruments in balance with each other as much as possible.

The founder members are A. and C., but then the band has grown up with other three members. Can you tell us how much have they contributed in the songwriting? Can we consider Total Self Hatred as a true band, where each member contributes?

Total Self Hatred is growing into a real band with each member putting his own part into the band. Yet on the debut I (A.) did most of the music and C. more of the lyrics but also N. and J. have contributed.

Your music is usually described as depressive black metal, but I don't agree totally. In my opinion, as well as the traditional black metal component, in your sound there's a lot of the classic doom metal vibe. Do you agree with that? How would you describe it to someone who hasn't heard you yet?

There’s a lot of different influences on our music (too much to name) on the basis of traditional atmospheric Black Metal. We describe our music more on basis of emotions, so we`d say it`s melancholic-desperate music being as well furious as also calm, airy and sensitive.

Finnish people are usually considered as having a strong tendency to depression and suicide, mostly due to the influence of the long cold nights up there. For sure Total Self Hatred don't seem to steer away from this common place! How much have you been influenced by your background?

Actually I´m originally from Germany but yes, the others are finnish and I´m sure there`s an influence concerning the background, which I have noticed also on myself living here for many years now. Still, we`re not suicidal and our lyrics deal more about dealing with life and in particular with dark and depressive times than piting ourselves. We also use the band as a channel to release negative feelings out of our minds.

Why do you hate yourself?

There`s a lot of different ways to see our bandname. You can see it as an emotion that probably everyone has (had) at some time. You could say we hate THE self not ourselves because it keeps us from being one with all. OUR self again is a tool which we try to use to solve the riddles of life by being possibly self-critic, trying to find the causes for the misery.

I think the biggest strength in your debut album is the particular care paid to the arrangements, that are never weak or neglectable. How long have you worked on each single detail? Or maybe it's been rather easy to complete the songs, writingwise?

Great you noticed this since I´ve put a lot of time and effort into making the arrangements as enjoyable as possible, also in the details. One more reason why the release took so long time.

What are the issues you like dealing with your music? How important are lyrics for you, do you consider them when composing the tunes?

 Other way, we search for fitting lyrics to the atmosphere of a song. Important with the lyrics is that they support the main-theme. So we have a couple of songs where there`s different lyrics from different members even in different languages. Personally I think it`s important the words fit to the atmosphere so they can be sung with passion.

What goal have you set to reach though this debut album, both musically and commercially?

Total Self Hatred has been a long-time vision of C. and me to do really emotional melancholic-desperate music. Concerning growing of the band "commercially" we just take it step by step, deciding according to the possibilities we get.

   This final space is for you, conclude it as you prefer the most!

Thank you very much for the interview! If interested, check our music on myspace.

Fulvio Adile