FAQ

Q: What is Infernal Symphony?

A: Infernal Symphony is a DIY, Lo-fi, instrumental progressive doom metal band with elements of other metal subgenres such as black metal, death metal, and thrash metal. We are also a one man band, being the solo project and main musical output of Demonic Bishop.

Q: Why a one man band?

A: Infernal Symphony became a one man band for a few reasons; some simple, and others more complex. The main reasons can be attributed to one of 3 things – finances, creative control and timescales.

Having previously been a bassist for much of his musical career before Infernal Symphony’s inception, Demonic Bishop had spent many a year following the lead and building the dreams of others – many of whom did not have the skill, foresight, ambition or drive to achieve the lofty heights that He had always set for himself – whilst neglecting his own burgeoning vision for what His own sound could be, and what he knew deep down he could accomplish without need of others. 

As a bassist, you rely on your bandmates instinctively in order to gel everything else together. But when the glue is stronger than the components, the machine as a whole becomes redundant, and therefore better designs… and designers… are required. 

Eventually, the importance and weight of these ideas accumulated, and reached a critical mass during  Demonic Bishops tenure with Sickened. By the end of this run, what was once a project born of frivolity was now an outlet for everything He had been building towards and dying to unleash for many years. 

A make or break situation emerged at the conclusion of His time with Sickened, and to rebuild, you must first destroy. 

In this post recession age, money is hard to come by, and people are unreliable even at the best of times, and thus with only a sole contributor, it makes managing time and finances alot easier and more stable. 

And because the nature of this music is so esoteric, unorthodox and innovative, and it’s delivery method equally so, it was an entity that only one man could orchestrate effectively.

Q: Why do you release music so frequently? I’d prefer it if you released less but with higher audio quality.

A: First and foremost, Infernal Symphony is a one man band, and secondly, it is a raw and underground project that is created using minimalist resources to achieve a pure and unsullied experience.

Further to this, with our music being very anti-religious and inspired by multiple bands, including black metal bands, I feel that a raw and unpolished sound benefits the atmosphere, authenticity and feel of the work and demonstrates our proudest facet of being a solo project.

Music is released often, in certain respects, as a response to the amount of missed opportunities at doing so in previous bands by the bands leader, but even more importantly, to fly in the face of the modern model of music industry release schedules and album/tour cycles that major bands seem to stick to religiously (ha) because of the current state of the music industry.

I feel that if you truly appreciate a band, then as a fan, you do not deserve to be made to wait for years on end in order to experience 40 minutes of music. And that’s even before you consider the gaps in the output of bands such as Wintersun, Tool and the like.

Moreover, as Demonic Bishop is a highly creative individual, his preferred approach is to record many and often, and therefore the result is alot of material that can be released easily and promptly with the bands current online-only approach.
Q: Why don’t you play live?

A: Although it is currently on the bands list of projects, live shows are currently not possible due to the bands financial situation and the inherent difficulty of playing the songs live. Coming from being a bassist by trade, Bishop has picked up the guitar relatively recently and thus does not have the appropriate resources in order to play shows on his own as yet.

Furthermore, due to an unfortunate hardware disaster at the tail end of 2017, most of the original masters and live backing tracks for Infernal Symphony’s tracks were permanently lost, setting the planned live shows of the band back until an indefinite point in the future.

If you would like to see us play live, feel free to purchase some of the bands music or merchandise through our Bandcamp page in order to help finance the costs of such an endeavour. This is the most direct way of supporting Infernal Symphony as most of the proceeds go directly to Demonic Bishop himself.

If you’re interested, the link is at infernalsymphonyuk.bandcamp.com.

Q: Are you open to interviews or reviews?

A: Yes! If you’d like to get in touch with us for business purposes. there are a few methods in which you can do this. If you prefer, you can directly message the band through Facebook, Instagram or wherever you choose. The best way though, is through our email address or alternatively, the contact form on this website. Just click the contact page to do so.