Hallowed Ground Zine March 2011

Sydney, Australia

Please tell us a little about your band Diable Amoreux?
Diable Amoreux is basically an avant-garde folk band (Gnomic Folk as we call it) from Australia. However, we do also include genres such as black metal, goth rock, dark ambient etc.; we don’t limit ourselves like most other acts. Starting in 1998 with a three track album, For her Requiem, we are now just about to put out our thirteenth, Hearts in the Dark, and also have just put out our first vinyl, a split 7” with Australia’s Hermann’s Horn. Those are selling like hot cakes (whatever those are). It seems you should go vinyl if you want to sell stuff everyone.

It hasn’t been easy; we actually are very original in some aspects, and not being like everyone else, few people want to listen. I’ve heard some people moaning about not ‘getting’ it, but so few seem to understand that you don’t have to ‘get’ it. It’s not about showing off what you know about the music to others. I like David Lynch films, but I have no qualms admitting I have no idea what he’s going on about most of the time. On the other hand, of course, we might just do bad songs, but that can’t be right, we sing songs about ponies!

You have a new album coming out soon – Hearts in the Dark. What is the song ‘The Wedding Dress’ that is now up on youtube about?
This was inspired by an acquaintance whose pet rat got into her wardrobe and chewed up her new fancy frock. The song is about a rat that chews up a woman’s wedding dress the day before the ceremony. When she and the groom see what has happened they think that someone has done it because they don’t want the wedding to go ahead. So they break off the marriage and never see each other again. It’s a happy tale of love, life, marriage, not marriage, sophisticated sex, those marshmallow flavored jelly beans, the death of Ronnie James Dio, and Devo’s theory of devolution. But why it’s filmed in a cemetery I really don’t know.

Have you ever had any paranormal experiences?
Actually something strange happened right where I’m sitting to type this up a couple weeks ago. I was doing some recording one night with an electric guitar when my plectrum disappeared. It was like the guitar absorbed it. I looked everywhere for it, but it could not be found. So I got a different one (one I don’t like so much) and finished the session. The next day I was back in the studio – no one had been in there since – and I found the plectrum on the mouse pad. Now when I was searching for it the night before I started looking in ridiculous places, and I actually picked up the mouse pad so I could look under it… Anyway, when I found it, it did make me address the empty air and ask who was playing silly buggers. Obviously my guitar playing was so good some ghost got jealous.

Do you ever do any DJing?
All the time. When one album finishes I put on another.

Where do you think we go when we die?
I think there’s probably a spirit world of some sort. Whether or not you believe that ghosts are the souls of dead people, there is defiantly something going on because of the sheer number of persistent experiences people keep having. But I think everyone has to get to wherever it is we are all going along his or her own path. Religion is dangerous because it interferes with other people’s journeys.

Probably out into the universe I suppose. At least a part, or parts, of us does. The physical bit rots in the ground. Other bits go off into the etheric world(s) and attach themselves to living people and make a nuisance of themselves. Still other bits are attracted to places and things they feel an affinity with. More bits go off to ‘the other side’ as they say. Maybe, anyway…

What are some bands you like? What are your influences?
Kate Bush, Burzum, Current 93, Shirley Collins, Striborg, Billy Joel, King Diamond, Al Duvall, Funeral Procession, Motorhead, Willie Nelson, Darkthrone, Misfits, Dolly Parton, Beastianity, Cyndi Lauper, Raison D’etre, Death in June, Wayne Newton, 3rd and the Mortal, Tangerine Dream, Ramones, Sol Invictus, Sharron Kraus, Bing Crosby, Nurse with Wound, Pink Floyd, Kenny Rogers, Diamanda Galas, Go-go Sapien, Johnny Cash, Joy Division, Isengard, Neil Young, Laibach, Frank Zapper, Comus, Black Sabbath, Singing Sadie, Dio, Danzig, Grieg, Sisters of Mercy, Tom Waits, Faith no More, Ego Death, Hermann’s Horn, Bodies Drawn Backwards, Ruins, Narog, Dr. James and the Zero Patients, Bathory, the Damned, Gorgoroth etc. I’m also getting into a band called Pale Roses right now.

Where you live, what sort of noises do you hear at night?
Where I live it is a little like a village with many small streets. At night I hear the sound of branches scraping against the window, sometimes the distant sound of a goods train, the moaning-moaning windy-windy wind, and in the last four months between the hours of 1 and 3 AM, the sound of a solitary skateboarder going down the road.

Also the occasional scream from the glue factory. We take all the mainland people sentenced to life imprisonment and turn them into glue down here – and one or two of the more annoying tourists.

Do you have any live shows planed?
We played a few months ago in Melbourne. It was an interesting experience. I’ve never been to a show quite like it.

There are plans for another, this time in Sydney supporting Beastianity – the band that is, not the act of. At this point it will probably take place at the end of August. There will be some special guest members performing, but as so little is confirmed at this time, I won’t name any names. It will probably turn out to be the album launch for the new Hearts in the Dark album. Maybe some strippers…

I read on the Internet the other day that some person wants to throw meat pies at you for writing the song ‘Silly Holocaust.’ What is that song about?
I haven’t heard about that one before.

I had the idea for Silly Holocaust watching the Charlie Chaplin film the Great Dictator. There is a scene where Chaplin has come back from wherever he went and is working in his barber’s shop. In comes the Nazi thug (strangely looking very much like a New York Irish cop) and tells Chaplin he can’t work in the shop, or has to leave – I can’t remember which. Chaplin tells the guy not to be so silly and goes back to cutting someone’s hair. This stuck in my mind because it’s very true. As well as the horribleness of the Holocaust, and anti-Semitism in general, it is also incredibly stupid and silly.

Perhaps the meat pie person is a Holocaust denier? Which it self is quite silly. I know most people weren’t there, but we have some pretty reliable and conclusive evidence that it did happen.

Are you working on any music at the moment?
Yes, I have almost finished recording all the music for the next album, and have made a start on the lyrics. This one should be similar to Zwergen and Horns used for Butting, but I think more chaotic. I’m also hoping to do something new with the vocals, but I’m not sure how that will pan out yet.

I’m writing material for the live show in Sydney, and there should be another split album out sometime. I’m not looking after that one, so I don’t know what’s happening with it. And, possibly, in the next few years there might even be a Diable Amoreux DVD, full of all sorts of goodies, and badies.

Where can people get a hold of your music?
Here, there, and everywhere. But the most consistent place is the website: www.diableamoreux.com

Or listen at: www.myspace.com/diableamoreux