'King Penda Productions is a UK based label releasing pagan and doom metal music by a small group of maverick artistic collaborators in working to re-establish the link between mind, land, past and future, and to drink as much beer as possible along the way!'

Which is the aim of King Penda Productions? And why King Penda?

Our aim is to release music that is traditional - in that music-wise it is influenced by the 1970s / 1980s heavy metal and electronic scene - yet challenging. Conceptually our music reflects the landscapes and history of England first, and perhaps Europe more generally. We chose the name King Penda because he was an Anglo-Saxon King from the 7th century and we liked him! During this period of course, the Roman armies had left Britain, and the country had returned to a tribal system with separate Kingdoms. One by one these Kingdoms began to be once again compromised by Roman Christianity, with the Kings converting from their pagan 'religions' in order to get more money and power from ties to Rome. King Penda refused to convert and perhaps distrusted those who did. As such he was probably the last pagan King of England, and he caused nothing but trouble for those kingdoms around him, perhaps earning him the title of 'most hated king of England'.

Would you tell us a little about your first productions?

The label was started in order to release work by Symbel, a heathen metal act, and Bretwaldas, a doom metal band. The first release was Bretwaldas 'Droner', limited to 200 copies. It sold quite quickly considering the band had never played live, and only promoted itself on the internet. This gave us the impetus to release some demo material so two cassette releases followed. In these early days there was a general feeling that English heritage and culture could be once more celebrated in a positive way, and this was something we definitely embraced as a label.

Which are the musical and cultural influences/conceptual framework behind any single band produced by King Penda Productions?

Bretwaldas of Heathen Doom is a band influenced by a mixture of NWOBHM, doom metal, and crust punk. The lyrics of Wartooth are mostly concerned with Ragnarok and the way of the warrior. Symbel play a deranged type of black pagan metal, lyrically concerned with the shamanic nature of early warrior societies in Anglo-Saxon times. Herne plays melodic pagan metal with a heroic feel, and lyrically is concerned with the nature mythology of Germany and England. Astral Rune Bastards is a 70s style electronic project that is conceptually about madness, paranoia and conspiracy theories that centre around alien involvement in ancient cultures. Or, maybe that's what they want you to think? It is not entirely clear with which side of the argument the band aligns itself. The music is superb and is one of our favourite ever releases. One common element in all of the acts is that whilst they celebrate European culture, they have no interest in the political ideologies of racist individuals or groups that tend to crop up whenever the word 'pagan' is mentioned.

You are not confined to a single musical style: doom metal, black metal, even electronic music... Which is the perfect music to celebrate the pagan spirit of England now?

Perhaps the best way to celebrate the pagan spirit you describe is by way of a musical quality that can be present in this variety of styles. It is something more than simply using certain music devices that have associations with a time or place, such as folk instruments or sound effects. I think that this special attribute of good quality pagan music makes you feel like you have escaped from everyday life, into a place that is more archaic and magical, and that is something that is mostly compositional. We think that all of our releases have this quality.

Here is an ongoing FAQ, with more questions to be answered soon. Thanks for your contributions. Keep them coming!

About King Penda Productions.

The label was set up to release the work of Symbel and Bretwaldas, two 'pagan' metal acts, and has slowly grown to incorporate more projects. There are currently five people involved musically. The aim is to release as much traditional yet challenging music as possible, release it in limited formats to our discerning customers, and to have a good time doing it.

Who was King Penda and why choose him for the label?

He was an Anglo-Saxon King of the territory of Mercia, England ( Britain, U.K ) in the 7th Century AD. He is famously the most hated of the Anglo-Saxon Kings because he refused to convert to Christianity whilst the other Kings were doing so, mostly of course for their own political and monetary gain, and for the connections with Rome. He has thus been painted in a very negative light by Christian writers such as the monk Bede, and perhaps similarly unfairly, was later to be embraced as a ‘pagan’ King, or as some kind of crusader for a ‘pagan cause’, much in the same way perhas that all Vikings are today portrayed as ‘war-like’. But, we did not use him for that reason - we used him because he was individual, maverick, and English.

Are you happy with being underground? Do you hate bands who have success or sell out? Why don’t you promote more?

We don't particularly think it’s underground - just different, and most importantly it is on our terms. We don’t have any guilt about success, exposure, or lack of it, so whether we’re selling 300 or 3,000,000 albums it doesn’t matter, so long as it remains on our own terms.

Do you hate bands like ‘X, Y and Z’ who play metal for the masses?

No, it doesn’t bother us about other bands being successful – generally they are very good musicians, so they cannot be knocked for that - although it is a bit irritating when bands adopt your style and make it fashionable, which inevitably leads to it being unfashionable two years later. However, that’s life - the ‘overground’ always steals ideas from the ‘underground’ and makes its ideas palatable to the masses, as you say. It isn’t fair, but then life isn’t fair, and you just have to deal with it, or rather you have to stay one step ahead. If you worry about it too much, you go insane.

Your production is raw! Are you making statement with your sound?

All the music is self produced. We just get the best sound we can out of the equipment we’ve got at the time of recording, without it sounding too artificial. Yes, I suppose we choose to avoid the modern compressed and triggered sound that you get at local ‘metal’ studios, and record drum kits live with a ‘room sound’, but we still have to compromise somewhat…we know many people listen to music on speakers the size of peanuts, netbooks, phones and so on, so mixes have to be equalised to accommodate that. If we had enough money we would go to one of the top studios where they really know how to capture our sound. But for now we’re happy doing it ourselves. Sound production is just personal choice really, but it is true that consumers have an idea of what ‘good’ or ‘modern’ sounds like, and that is rarely ‘raw’.

Where do you sell mostly your music?

Mostly it is bought by customers in these countries in rough order of popularity - U.K., Germany, Norway, United States, Sweden, Finland, Italy, Canada, Australia, Japan, Monaco, Austria. We are happy to hear from ANY country though.

Why are you guys bothering releasing cds? Surely nobody buys them anyways?

It is true that the recent explosion in the speed of the internet has meant that illegal filesharing has increased,
whilst sales of cds have correspondingly dropped. Like most small labels, it has affected us considerably, and has meant that whilst the bands may have become more popular, we sell the same amount of CDs ( actually, slightly less )
than when we started the projects eight years ago and the bands were almost unknown. However we believe that music in a digital format, whilst convenient, is never going to replace the experience that a physical object brings. After you are dead, no one is going to go through your hard drives to see what music you listened to. Your children need to see tangible objects of art that reflect your interests. The album - the concept of putting on a piece of music lasting 30-40 minutes - is not yet dead. Sometimes, the thought of turning on a computer to listen to music is just soul-destroying. Lastly, it is true that in some genres ( particularly 'youth' culture ) CD sales are almost at zero ( with the almost mind-boggling mindset that this is somehow 'reactionary' ), whilst there is a traditionalism and respect in our genre ( heavy and heathen / pagan metal ) that seems to live on, and makes releasing in the limited edition CD format worthwhile. We are of course indebted to our customers for their continued interest and support.

Do you release other bands' music if I send you a CD?

Music has to be something special to sell these days ( see above ). If you think you have something positive then we're all ears!

You have re-released some albums like Bretwaldas Battle Staffs. I saw that on Ebay for $42. Do you hate the ripoffs?

We have re-released both of the first two Bretwaldas albums - Droner had one rerelease and Battle Staffs is on its second. Each rerelease has markedly different artwork, so collectors are still likely to seek them out and pay for them if they want them. Of course we don't release in limited numbers with this in mind, and such people are more likely to buy the cds second hand years after they have been released, when they are no longer available from us.

Do you limit releases to be a 'boutique label'?

The alternatives to limiting releases would be to press in four figures and then trade cds with other labels around the world. But if they can't sell their CDs, why would we be able to? Better to press smaller amounts and get straight to the people we care about.

What is happening with Symbel? You’ve not done anything for ages. When is Gyddig coming out? It was supposed to be out in 2005!

Sceot Acwelade: Studies and the other projects have slowed everything down, especially when you are doing absolutely everything on a release, and quite often ideas for guitar parts in Symbel songs are used in Bretwaldas songs. Everything takes four times as long as you expect it to. Also Wartooth, Krom and I ( rather unexpectedly ) became fathers in the last few years – the second, first and third children respectively ( sorry to tell you this ‘new dads’, but your life is over for at least two years when a child comes along! ). However things have changed again in 2010 and we can now really start moving again.

‘Gyddig’ was lost in a hard drive crash. I must have sworn non-stop for a week at the time, but in retrospect it was a good thing, as it sounded like a terrible, terrible Primordial album. Symbel will release something very soon though – we are looking at the possibility of doing a single as an mp3 release.

Sceot Acwealde, you used a drum machine on Symbel’s We Drink Album but not the others. Why?

Recording drums is extremely time consuming and rarely ( apart from on this label perhaps ) does modern music use the sound of a real unadulterated kit. I used programmed drums on that album to quickly get the sound I wanted for each track. The next Symbel album will again have programmed drums, as I am going for a contemporary sound. Incidentally, the entire album was recorded using a Marshall guv’nor pedal as a preamp into a Pentium 400mhz PC that crashed religiously every 30 minutes. It was a miracle that it ever surfaced.

BRETWALDAS

How did Bretwaldas start?

Sceot Acwealde: Wartooth and I got together and jammed in a rehearsal room, and it pretty much instantly clicked and I knew we had something special…it was dirty and rough music but it had lots of charm.

What are your influences as a drummer?

I started to play the drums in 2001, after playing guitar in a hardcore punk band ( that was really good and really bad at the same time and I could never really work out why ) with a good drummer who unfortunately just couldn’t ‘get’ it. Anyway, I asked myself 'Which drum styles do I like?', and settled on the British 60s stuff like Blue Cheer, the 80s goth Killing Joke sound, and 90s black metal. However I couldn’t really play, so, the drumming is really sloppy on the first couple of tracks as I was starting out, but I’d got a little better by the last track. You can become presentable as a drummer quite quickly if you practice a lot. Of course, to actually become ‘good’, takes years.

How did you record the demo Sleeping Trees?

We recorded it on a fostex x-15 tape four tracker, powered by an elastic band. We used two sm58 microphones in front of the drum kit, and they also picked up the bass guitar. We put a 58 on a marshal cab for the guitar…not that it particularly mattered as it was recording into a heap of crap anyway. Then we added the vocals later. On Wychwood, we took along swords and chainmail and had a fight in front of the microphone, but we had to be quick to punch in an out because we only had one track left. All of the vocals went through a delay pedal…a yamaha dds20m. The instrumental track had two guitars, and ‘Bones in the Ground’ was bounced down twice and mixed with all the pedals and effect units I could get my hands on. Not bad work for an analogue recording. Never again though!

Who are those guys with the masks? They look brilliant / stupid.

Bretwaldas of Heathen Doom – oak leaf terrorist period. There are plenty of examples of bands who walk the fine line between crediblity and riducule and the fact that they have such self belief is perhaps one reason why you should be wary of them.

 

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