Cheers, first of all thank you for the interview. We are feeling quite well to be honest, with great expectations for the upcoming times, since we have an exciting brand-new album to release!
Great to hear. What inspired the band’s name?
Well Gwydion derives from the Celtic Mythology, and when we were younger (15-16 years old) we were fascinated by this theme and started to research a name that could fit for the band.
We found that Gwydion is a magician, hero and a trickster and we liked that, so the name was consensual at that time and still perdures until now. We can’t no longer disassociate our sonority to this name, it’s a natural blend!
Which are the main influences of the band?
We can’t limit ourselves to one genre, each one of us has several musical influences, from Black to Death, Heavy, Folk etc. These mixture of influences are well reflected on the main result of our new work.
We are eager to show this masterpiece to our fans.
Do you hope to play live soon?
Yes, we already have some scheduled gigs, including our album release gig party, that will have a limitation for 100 persons, and is already sold out. Besides that, we will have the gig being streamed worldwide also, people can buy a ticket with a symbolic value at https://gwydion.eventbrite.pt .
Besides that we will have also some gigs scheduled that we still don’t know if they will happen but we really hope so.
Even though we need to keep positive and stay active as a band, in these times we need to be stronger than ever!
How come the first album took so many years to finally be recorded and how was the band in the beginning?
Well we had several line-up changes on the early years that caused us lots of setbacks. We have also to take in consideration that back in the 90’s and beginning of 21st century things were a little different then now. Back on those days’ bands released demo tapes not full length albums or even EP’s and we had to struggle to promote our work with flyers and few radio plays. We only released the first full length album when Myspace was very popular, it opened doors to receive the first invitation from a label to sign a record deal.
How do you think you have evolved musically since the first album?
I think its notorious the evolution from album to album, but in my opinion the major improvement was from Ynys Mon to Horn Triskelion. In that time we had our first European tour which was very profitable in acquiring knowledge and experience, and it was very easy to have lots and lots of new ideas to introduce to that second album.
Besides that with the different band members that passed through our history, each one of them brought his influence to our work.
What are people to expect from the new album and why did you decide to make it homonymous?
People can expect 74 minutes of Gwydion. This album travels from the beginning of the sonority of the band till a more mature state. We have put every effort on this one and I think that’s the reason why it’s our self-titled album, and besides on the top of that it’s our 25th anniversary as a band, so it was easy to pick the name for this one.
How was the writing process like for this album?
It started as usual, put the riffs we had in mind altogether and started to join pieces. Of course it’s more complex than this, but between rehearsals and studio sessions at the home of our guitar player Miguel Kaveirinha (which was the main composer of the songs) we had several brainstorming moments to put all this 74 minutes sounding as we wanted, of course with the help of mead and beer everything sounded excellent at those times hehe!! But every one of us contributed with ideas so that every aspect and detail was not forgotten!
What are your lyrics mostly based on?
In this album the lyrics reflect very well the band name and its origins. We went back to the theme we left back on our first album “Ynys Mon” and on this album we mainly talk about tales that were written by a bard. We got the main inspiration from “The Book of Taliesin” which is one of the most famous of Middle Welsh manuscripts, dating from the first half of the 14th century though many of the fifty-six poems, and we adapted this to our songs.
Are there any future plans besides this new album at the moment?
Our plans are always the same, now that we have the album ready we will try to play it the most live we can, but with all this pandemic situation it will difficult things up. But we are used to difficult things and we always surpassed them with determination, so that’s why “a warrior never quits!”
We probably have to reinvent ourselves playing online gigs and at the same time we will start composing new songs…we can’t stop because of this, so we will keep up doing our stuff.
Thanks for the interview, is there anything else you would like to add?
Once again thanks for the interview, and we are certain that our fans will really enjoy our new album and we really hope that we all be together soon to celebrate once again! Horns up!
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