Funeral In Heaven celebrates 10 years in hela black metal

Saturday, 23 November 2013 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

In 2003, a new wave of metal was introduced to the rock and metal circuit of Sri Lanka. Breaking new ground in the black metal genre, ‘Funeral In Heaven’ with its theatrical performances made a mark in the local music arena, conjuring up compositions that included traditional mantras and beats. Amidst their busy schedules and organising work for the 10th year anniversary celebrations, Chaturanga Fonseka – front-man and vocalist of Funeral In Heaven (FIH) – joined the Weekend FT for a brief interview. Following are excerpts: By Sarah Hannan Q: When organising gigs here, what are the difficulties you have faced as a band and as organisers? How can the fans/ promoters/ sponsors help you in taking your music to the next level? A: FIH has faced every possible challenge within those few years, from lack of resources for recording our audios, venues to host rituals, to uncommitted band members and political death threats. Every possible difficulty and challenge has been thrown at us during our 10-year reign. It’s mostly uncooperative venues which after sometime get greedy and charge us extremely ridiculous prices to book their venues for our gigs. As opposed to other countries which make offers to bands for playing in their pubs, we have to pay our venues a fee for booking, provide bar sales and also give them a cut out of our ticket sales, which is the only thing we rely on to break even with our expenses since there are no ‘sponsors’ who are willing to take a risk in investments. Our comrades and brothers who attend our rituals and support us by purchasing our CDs/tapes/vinyl and merchandise are more than enough for us. Q: What are the avenues FIH is looking at in the international scene? A: Since we’ve been closely working with record labels from Europe and Asia for the past five to six years, having been the only band to release our hymns on the blessed vinyl format, we’re currently looking into an extensive touring of Europe and maybe the USA after the release of our debut ‘Full Length’ opus. Q: What are the marketing tools you have used to attract an international following? A: We don’t see FIH as a product to be ‘marketed,’ so we stay away from the commercial arena of grime and let our audio and other manifestations speak for ourselves. Q: Any possibility of FIH releasing an album in the near future? A: We’ve been trying to accomplish this goal for the past four years as the full length as of now has been recorded, erased and started from scratch over seven times. This has mostly been due to the lack of resources, finances and members. Either way, this will be our next aim. Pix courtesy Duminda Nawaratne