Summoning’s latest album was released in March of 2006 and has been hailed as their best work in years. While it holds the traditional styles from the past albums, it also mixes several methods that had been known to distinguish previous albums from each other. Earlier, I had the chance to ask Protector and Silenius some questions about the past, present and future of Summoning.

Now that Oath Bound has been out for a while, in retrospect, are there any changes either of you would like to have made? Or are you still satisfied with the final product?

Protector: I am still 100% satsified with the release (as always after a release). This does not mean that we will stick strict to this way for the rest of our life, sure in futures there will be also slight changes as there always have been from release to release. But we have to work on new songs in order to get new ideas and new tastes in music and sound. This all comes naturally and is never planned or discussed.

Lyrically I’ve felt like Oath Bound is perhaps the most conceptual album Summoning has done yet. Would you agree with this, or have most of the previous ones been just as topical?

Silenius: Yes and no. Maybe you mean this because this time we have more songs referring to the same story but otherwise we again have not made an album with just one concept or just one story.

While you guys don’t play live, do you feel like there ever might be a possibility of a Summoning DVD project? The music is very visual, and could effectively be paired with video for a potentially great experience.

Protector: For now there are no plans like this. Actually this is also a matter of the budget of Napalm Records. As long as we could keep our privacy on this DVD we would not mind any DVD, but there is always the problem if the label considers a DVD as worth the price, cause there are not a lot of shows that would play it nor many people would buy it.

How is the mini CD project coming along?

Protector: For now only 1 songs is existing, that actually already existed before the release of oath bound but which did not have place there as we did not want to make this CD longer than 70 minutes. Apart from mixing this song very fine we did not spend any time with summoning since the release of oath bound. This is what happends adter each release; we simply start to work on our other projects which have for us the same importance as summoning. We really would not like to finish a summoning CD and then right after that start with new songs. For us those rests delaling with totally different styles of music makes the work for each of our projects including summoning much more interessting and fresh and is surely one of the reasons why we are still together and not bored about summoning at all, despite of all those years we are working together.

There’s going to be a release of some Summoning albums on vinyl soon, could you please tell us about that from your perspective? Also, how much are you going to be involved in the final art direction of the packaging?

Protector: Yes i heard about some planned vinyl release in the future, but i don’t know much about it. The layout will be based on layouts of the CDs, there is not much more i know about it. Actually I don’t even have a vinyl player at home and only listen to CDs (and prefer them to vinyl) so I am not the right person for questions like that ;-)

Have there been any instruments or various other elements you’ve been wanting to incorporate into Summoning songs, but have not for whatever reason?

Protector: No cause if we would have wanted we would have done it, but there is no need for it as we are totally satisfied with they sound our keyboards, guitars and vocals can create. Well on “land of the dead” we used a real flute, but rather as a detail not as a future plan. As we don’t want to immitate classical music or sound like it we also have no desire for real orchestras as wel and think that with the samples sound and the better controll over the effects and sound we can achieve much more fantasy styled music than with real instruments that are better for creating a real word not a fantasy one.


One song I’ve always enjoyed has been “Khazad Dúm” from the Dol Guldur album because the primary melody quite literally details what I’ve always imagined being inside Moria might feel like. Do any specific songs come to mind where either of you are particularly satisfied for the same reason?

Protector: Actually I almost forget the older songs after a new album appeared. When I hear them again by chance i am still satisfied with them of course, but normally a newer song simply removes the memories of an older song for me, so I can just talk about oath bound where I personally prefer the song “Across the Streaming Tide” most as it sounds very mighty and slow.

Creatively speaking, can you talk about what the future might hold for Summoning? Any particular hopes or expectations you may have set for yourselves?

Protector: As I already said we never make real plans. But I dont see any reason why in future Summoning should suddenly change the sound drastically. We will keep on making keyboard based epic music of course, and put all our other musical preferences in our other projects and not abuse the music of Summoning for some stupid trendy experiments.

In closing, do you have a favorite passage from any of Tolkien’s books? Perhaps something that might have influenced the incarnation of what Summoning has become?

Silenius: No not directly, but after having read “LOTR” and “The Hobbit” I think “Silmarillion” is the most fascinating book because after having read LOTR you really get hungry and totally fascinated about the word around this book and about the complete mythology of this world and all the answers can be found within the Silmarillion. Although it is of course more difficult to read and all the bloodlines are a bit boring with the time, but nevertheless I think this book is the best and most influencial for me.

You can hear clips of Summoning’s work on their Myspace page and visit their website at http://www.summoning.info