Pagan Collective The Clan Destined
Interview with Martin Walkyier on Pagan Art and Music Project
The Clan Destined CD In The Big Ending...
Suite 101: So far The Clan Destined CD In The Big Ending... is only available from your website – do you have plans for a commercial release?
Martin: “Oh, I’d absolutely love to and I keep speaking to loads of people and sending it off to companies who claim to absolutely adore it but then there’s this lackadaisical attitude these days where people say they’re interested but then you don’t hear back from them. I would like to get it distributed into the shops because for now it’s only available from the website, which is a bit of a shame. If worse comes to worst what I intend to do is get all the artwork into a jewel case format – something different to the limited edition format, get the video when it’s completed onto the end of it and I’ll ring up the shops myself if I have to. It can’t be rocket science really, can it?”
Suite 101: For anyone who’s not heard it, how would you describe The Clan Destined’s sound?
Martin: “What I said to Iscariah when we were writing the music was: ‘Let’s do something that’s modern but with a retro feel. Something that’s really heavy, with all the sounds of everything we’ve done in the past but at the same time goth girls can shake their booty to it (laughs). We wanted it to be modern, heavy, catchy, with thought-provoking lyrics and a bit of an experimental edge. One of the fun parts to it was working with Les Smith, who used to be called the Reverend Lecter in Cradle Of Filth and now he plays with Anathema. He’s a brilliant keyboard player and what he added to the overall sound was beyond belief really.”
Pagan Musical and Art Collective The Clan Destined
Suite 101: Will anything else you record come out under The Clan Destined banner?
Martin: “I would like it to because The Clan Destined is quite a little entity at the moment. Even though I don’t have any fixed band as such in the traditional way, there are a lot of people who are part of The Clan Destined at the moment. From the filmmakers I’ve worked with – Blue Dog films they’re called – we’ve got artists, sculptors, web designers. It’s more like a pagan collective really in the sense that it involves all these different people that I’ve met over the years and who have outstanding talent. And rather than everything having to do with the handing over of cash and invoices, which all involves taxes – not that I’m trying to evade paying tax or anything like that – but if you can do a favour for a friend there’s absolutely nothing illegal or immoral in that. It’s a pooling of resources and what I’ve discovered in the last five years is that it works astonishingly well. I print T-shirts for my day-job and a lot of the times I’ll print T-shirts for people who might then be able to help me out some other way. It’s like the old barter system really.”
Suite 101: So is it a revolving door collective?
Martin: “Everyone can put as much or as little into it as they want. There’s commitment involved but it’s not compulsory. At the moment I’m looking to do something else on the music side so I’m asking people: ‘Do you want to write a song for it or two songs?’ and the response I’m getting is absolutely phenomenal.”
Click here for more from Martin on The Clan Destined.
Or here to read about his part in the Sabbat reformation.
