Anatholy Bonder, vocalist of excellent Yiddish industrial metal act Gevolt gave us some time for an interview. I didn’t have enough time to get to part two, but there will definitely be more to this interview. This has been translated into English from very thick Russian English so it’s not exactly the way he said it, but I tried to stay exactly close to what he did say.

MI: So tell me about Gevolt. What made you want to do Yiddish metal?

AB: It starts in a very virgin way. One day we were thinking to make some cover for concerts and were looking for some beautiful song. So I thought about “Tum Balalaika” and everyone was saying it will be hard! One of the most difficult things was that that song is the waltz! But when we made it we was see that it’s good and people at the concert loved it.

MI: Why is the waltz hard?

AB: One, two, three… You know, ¾. It’s not usually for rock.

MI: Really, it came out great.

AB: Yeah, we have gone over it and done the hard work of arrangement because of this. After this came through we thought: Let’s do one more song in Yiddish. It was the Partizan song. And after this we were ready to understand that it was what we will do.

MI: What kind of songs were you doing before?

AB: Before we did ritual metal. it started as a shamanistic project.

MI: Huh? What kind? Like, American Indian??!

AB: Something like that but based on Russian folk and the Jewish thrust. Some thought that it’s pagan, but it’s NOT.

MI: What do you mean, like, someone thought your music was pagan when it was Jewish?

AB: We do what we do and not speak. People will speak what they want. Because maybe it was doomy and dark. And the words difficult to understand. The words of Sidur are not for understanding, they are for feeling.

MI: What made you want to do it? And call it Sidur? I ask because a lot of the Russians I know hate religion and don’t even call themselves Jewish. How come you care enough that you want to make the music?

AB: One day someone told me that there is a kind of metal named Viking metal. I was intrigued. I was (more optimistic) at that time. And when I was listening to this I was disappointed and wanted to do some good metal music for myself if no one wants to do it for me. 🙂 And finally I did it.

MI: Why were you disappointed?

AB: Because I imagined this music absolutely differently. My profession is soundman. I was working a lot on religious parties and concerts and schools. I can`t tell that it make me sympathetic to religion but… who knows. Sidur is “prayer book,” that is what is the album we did.

PART 2 FORTHCOMING (as soon as I can catch the guy cause the time difference is KILLER)