alda

Call them atmospheric Pacific Northwest black metal, but don’t call them Cascadian

Asix-year break between albums, at least for black metal band Alda, set a bit of a new precedent in what was once a relatively active discography. “We lived together off and on from 2008 roughly to 2016,” explains drummer and vocalist Michael Korchonnoff. “That was time spent in two houses; then Jace [Bruton, guitars], Timmy [Brown, guitars] and Stephanie [Knittle, bass/cello] all moved way out into rural Washington—in the foothills of Mount Rainier—and I was even further out. ¶ “We were all separated for a while,” Bruton adds. “Then 2018 rolled around and we went to Europe, and that was the catalyst for me.” ¶ With time comes change, and with Alda’s change comes a newfound aggression and speed not really heard since their eponymous 2009 demo. “[We] were always inspired by old-school Norwegian black metal and got back to our roots as far as guitar style,” says Bruton. ¶ Korchonnoff elaborates: “We had all this pent-up energy and this explosion of desire

to play, which had to come out. It ended up much faster and more aggressive, but it wasn’t conscious. We’ve never intended to write in one way or another. It all comes out of how we are feeling at the moment.

“We have never felt that Cascadian black metal was a genre of music,” continues Korchonnoff regarding a term often associated with Alda. “It does not accurately describe a genre of music, in our opinion. What people are referring to generally—sometimes it becomes a music journalism term, but oftentimes when people use that, they are referring to a scene or a community of bands. There is some validity to that. There was a particular time when a bunch of these bands were popping up at the same time. It was clusters centered around particular music scenes and like-minded people. People from a distance, not actually being in the mix, maybe interpreted it as more of a movement or style than it really was. The concept of Cascadia as a bioregion means something to us, but we’re not going to introduce ourselves, nor have we ever introduced ourselves, as ‘Cascadian black metal.’”

“Alda was created in Eatonville, WA, which is a small logging town in the middle of nowhere,” says Bruton. “When we started doing this, as far as we knew, we were the only ones. As we moved out and branched, we realized we weren’t.”

“There definitely isn’t as much of a metal scene as there used to be. A lot of our friends that made this type of music have moved on to different styles,” Korchonnoff explains. “A lot of the music that’s being created by these folks is outside the realm of metal.”