Hanternoz interview
Hi! Throughout A Hed an Noz, a Noz, a Noz, folklore never feels like decoration. These stories carry genuine emotional weight. At what point did Breton legends stop being childhood tales and become something you felt compelled to preserve through music?
hie! I have always felt to be myself part of the folklore, that’s why I always felt a genuine force driving me and making me talk about these ancient stories. Also, it’s a nice pattern for the songs, i always start from a historical event or a folk tale, and then adapt it to my own life and experiences.
Many of the songs merge documented history with intensely personal memories. Was there ever a moment where you found it difficult to separate what truly happened from what your imagination had added over the years?
No, in Hanternoz I blend the two. We have to be aware of the signs, of the signs that are sent to us as omens. I don’t separate the personal memories from the historical events or folktales. Everything is just a prediction to read to better understand myself.
Rather than presenting monsters as straightforward villains, you often portray them as reflections of human emotions - regret, loneliness, fear, hope. Do you think folklore survives because people recognize themselves in these creatures?
Absolutely, those are intense characters, and they need to be interpreted as allegories, as paradigms as well. Folklore indeed survives because these are atemporal lessons for us to better, or to understand ourselves and what happens to us.
The Devil of Quimper is a particularly striking figure. Instead of reveling in destruction, he watches humanity unite against catastrophe and is overcome with loneliness. What attracted you to telling the story from that perspective?
I started because I wanted to create a song about Quimper. The legend should be of course, dark and grim, as we’re playing metal, I guess. In Quimper, as it was called Quimper-Corentin, there is a say telling about a great fire in the cathedral where everyone could behold a devil dancing in the fire. I tried to imagine the songs from the devil’s point of view, and finally I imagined how far he could feel from human beings. Then I identified myself to it, feeling lonely and hated by everyone as i felt in my teenagehood. It was not true; I think most people just did not really care about me, a few people loved me of course, but in my teenage perception I had the feeling to be the enemy of everyone. So here i am, sending back my hatred to the fellow humans below, and imagine being a kind of punkish devil being the adversary.
The figure of Ankou dominates the artwork without ever becoming the narrator of the album. Was that deliberate? Almost as though Death is less important than humanity's relationship with it?
Yes absolutely. The Ankou has been discussed and theorized many times, but in the end no one can truly know it until it happens. The artwork happened long after the album was written, and needed a character to sum up everything: in the occurrence, the Death being the character that accompanies us our whole life long. In fact, doomed we are. Human feelings, throughout the album, yes, but to sum up everything the dark omen of a near Death.
The Breton landscape seems as essential to the record as the music itself. Could these songs exist anywhere else, or is the land itself one of the album's protagonists?
In a way. the point in Hanternoz is that we reveal our lives and tribulations according to the very place where we live. Yes, Hanternoz could exist somewhere else than in Britanny, but the bound with Bretagne is too big, and there would still be a nostalgia, as there was in Mallozh and Loire which were composed some 600 km away from Bretagne.
Several songs revisit places from your childhood through the lens of folklore. Has returning to those memories changed your understanding of them, or have the legends become inseparable from the real experiences?
It
depends on how I discovered them. Some places of my childhood are fully filled
with the magic of folklore. In some places I discovered later, the magic is part of
the history of the places. And lastly, some places where i never returned are
almost like legends to me. In those places I hope to never return except for
feeling this magic again, but once again, who are we to summon magic at will?
However, this is not only about childhood memories, there are some more recent facts, and things i have evolved upon with thinking and thinking again about.
There is a recurring feeling throughout the album that every path through the forest eventually leads inward rather than outward. Was that sense of self-confrontation always part of the concept?
Nope, it appeared in the split with Rauhnacht / Tannöd. In this split i had the idea that history, folklore and personal experiences would melt in the lyrics of the band Hanternoz. But yes, a path through the forest, the oldest temple to ever exist, is a path inwards and a self-confrontation. Like wandering in the labyrinth of the memories.
"Jean-du-Feu" ends with a fascinating question: when you finally turn around to face the figure haunting you, you see your own reflection. Do you see that as the central idea of the entire album?
It’s
not the central figure, but an important part of it. Let me explain to you: the
Yan Gant y Tan is a bad omen in Breton folklore. It’s a sort of spirit that
follows you with candles on the tip of its fingers. When you turn suddenly to
him, sometimes he puts out the fire. I imagined that this spirit following me,
if i turned really quick to me, would reveal its face. And in his face I see my
own reflection.
Haunted we are. Memories, regrets, ancient thoughts, bad deeds, or even regretted deeds.
The record unfolds almost like one uninterrupted night, with each song marking another stage before dawn. Did you conceive the track order before writing the songs, or did that structure only reveal itself afterward?
Yes,
the structure came only after. But it’s important to note that the last song
was composed as the last song. I wrote all the songs, then wrote the lyrics, with
only the last song as a fixed place. Because it has this long atmospheric build-up, was composed and recorded last, many reasons, also because the lyrics have
the most rays of hope.
Well, when I had all the songs, I sorted them to be not boring, and also to fit the place on vinyl sides. Then I had the order of the songs, and fitted the titles with night-times. Originally I wanted to fit with traditional monks' prayer times (vespres, laudes, matines), but it was not really fitting, and the album is not that turned toward religious themes.
Antiq has always placed enormous emphasis on visual identity and conceptual coherence. Did working with a label that values those aspects allow you to pursue ideas that might have been difficult elsewhere?
Absolutely, it is important for me to blend concept and visuals at the most so that the work is a full art-piece. Of course, Antiq is the perfect home to craft genuine pieces of art that are complete in terms of realisation and spirit.
Black metal has explored Scandinavian mythology for decades, yet Breton folklore remains comparatively unexplored. Do you feel a responsibility to represent that heritage faithfully, or do you deliberately allow yourself to reshape the old stories?
Well, it is important not to mess with the true stories from the folklore. So I rely only on real legends and folklore tales, and on actual historical events. Then I weave on it with real things that have happened to me or that I genuinely think/remember.
Several of these legends have existed for centuries because they evolved through oral tradition. When adapting them into songs, where do you draw the line between preserving a tradition and creating something entirely your own?
I think it’s quite obvious in the lyrics. The references to the folklore or historical facts are written in a way that when my own interpretation and lived memories come, there is no confusion possible. I don’t want my own thoughts to be confused with ancient deeds, and I don’t want to make mine some old facts that are common in the folk mind.
After listeners finish A Hed an Noz, a Noz, a Noz, what would satisfy you more: that they discover Breton folklore for the first time, or that they begin looking differently at the folklore of their own homeland?
Hehe tough question here, I’d say both if I
could. But if I really had to pick, it would be that listeners discover another
look at the homeland folklore, for I’m quite sure anyway most newcomers who
don’t know Bretagne would already be surprised by our deep and grim folklore.
But yeah, that actual Bretons would raise an eyebrow and question their own
bound with Ankou or any other characters of the album would be inspiring.