The Inquisition: 069.Tengil

1. How did you came up with the name of the band?

Tengil is a name almost every swedish child grew up with, since it's from one of author Astrid Lindgren's famous stories.The story is called The Brothers Lionheart. Tengil is an evil ruler in the world of Nangijala, a place you come to in the afterlife, according to the story.

2. Do you have a standard procedure of creating a song? Do you just jam around or is there a main riff and the track is build up on it?

A song usually starts from a riff someone plays, that we decide to keep, but it happens in so many different places. It can just as well be from someone sitting at the piano, as us jamming in the rehearsal space. If we decide to keep a riff, we record it and try to fit it together with others later. Usually the song we make fit in the context of a concept, so we try to fit the riffs we make in to that.

3. What are your influences and what kind of music do you hear when you are at home?

We all certainly have a diverse taste in what kind of music we like and listen to, ranging from classical music, to bands such as Bon Iver or Touché Amoré, but there is also a lot of bands we all enjoy as well. As for our own music, we find a lot of inspiration from bands such as O'Brother, Lifelover and Nine Inch Nails. We would be sitting here all autumn if we had to name them all.

4. Which is the one album you can't live without?

Anton: "Deadwing" by Porcupine Tree

Sakarias: the OST of "The Lord of the Rings"

Pontus: "The Black Parade" by My Chemical Romance

Karl: "Good Morning Susie Soho" by Esbjörn Svensson Trio

5. What's the first record you've ever bought?

Sakarias: "Era 2" by Era

Pontus: "Lest we forget" by Marilyn Manson

Anton: "Pray for Villains" by Devildriver

Karl: "The Eminem Show" by Eminem

6. Name a band that you would like to share the stage or tour with?

O'Brother is a band we all would love to tour or at least play with. It's a little hard to know if you would like to tour with a band that you really look up to,since you don't know if the musicians are nice people or not, which we think is the most important thing if we would tour with anyone.

7. Did the internet and specially the blogs helped to spread your music around the world? Name a place (country) that you were surprised to know your music has reached to?

Well the internet helped us a lot, no doubt about that. For example, us getting in contact with Japan-based Tokyo Jupiter Records. It was a huge surprise to us when Kimiyuki sent us an e-mail, telling us he found our old EP's and wanted to work with us with our new album "SIX". The internet is a great way to get your music out all over the world, but it can also be quite the hassle competing for the attention of big webzines or blogs with other bands out there. But if you keep working hard you might catch someone's eye, and getting some exposure out of that.

8. Do you support the idea of bandcamp where fans can decide the price or services like Spotify?

We like them both in different ways I guess. It's great to have bandcamp where you or the buyer can decide what price to sell/pay. It's just a great functioning service all in all. And as for Spotify it's really convenient for the listener to use since you're just one search-bar away from thousands of different songs from all over the world for a cheap to no price at all. Maybe it's not the best way for a non-famous band like ourselves to get rich, but that isn't the point for us either. We just want to spread our music as much as we can, finding those who would really enjoy what we do,and for that, Spotify is a great tool.

9. Where do you see yourselves in 5 years?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mny0zkq_goM

10. Is the artwork of an album important nowadays in the digital era?

Yes it is, because in a social media context and almost everywhere else on the web, it becomes the "profile picture" of your current piece of work, often the first thing new people see when they come across you. In this way the artwork becomes your first chance to communicate what your work is about, and when people come back to it after listening to your music, it serves as a way for you to expand the story you're telling.

11. What is you favorite album cover?

It's hard to remember and decide among the thousands of great album covers we're aware of but here's a few: Bon Iver - Bon Iver, Shadows Of The Sun - Ulver, The Satanist - Behemoth etc.

12. It seems that a lot of people are turning on vinyl again. Why do you think that is and which is your preferable media format?

Because the only real advantage the CD had over vinyl was that of convenience, it was easier to take with you, you could play it in your car, you could skip tracks easily and so on. With the dawn of digital albums and streaming, all that was made even easier so there's really no reason for CDs to continue being the mainstream format. However, If you're wiling to discard convenience, vinyl albums demand more attention from you in order to listen to them and that makes them more immersive. Also important is that the cover of a vinyl album is the size of a small painting, and we've seen many people using the to decorate their homes.

13. What's the most vivid story or moment as a band?

It feels almost like you've been in this band playing music for all of your life, since it's taking up so much of your time. So picking one moment or memory with the band isn't the easiest. But one moment worth mentioning is the short EU-tour we did with our friends in Totem Skin during late 2013, visiting Germany, Belgium and Denmark. In Denmark, we spent one night in the home of the guy who put us up with the show, where we slept in this room with maybe five to seven guinea pigs. Real and alive ones at that. And they where awake all night, running around making noise and doing guinea pig-stuff, so it was quite difficult to get some sleep for the next day. This was also the night Sakarias got drunk for the first time in his life, drinking tequila straight out of the bottle with our very dear friend Behzad.

Tengil released their ablum "Six" this year and it sounds amazing!

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