Formed in 2014, Heilung is a European band that transcends genre and definition, with their atmospheric music taking listeners on indescribable journeys through history and myth via the realms of folk and rock. When Conqueror’s Blade entered into its own Viking Age in Season VII: Wolves of Ragnarok, we knew they were the perfect fit to score our saga of wolf-worshippers, berserkers, and mighty shieldmaidens – their songs?Galgaldr?and?Alfadhirhaiti?can be heard in the game’s current opening cinematic and the map Heilung Fjord.?

As part of our ongoing series of Music Week articles, we spoke to Christopher, Maria, and Kai from Heilung about their music, influences, and how to best defend Heilung Fjord from invaders. The photographs featured in the article were taken by Coen Halmans and Kees Stravers.

Thanks for talking with us! Could you introduce yourselves?

Heilung:?Hello and thank you from our side, we are Christopher Juul, Maria Franz and Kai Uwe Faust, the three core members of Heilung.

What is the story of Heilung, why did you first get together and decide to make music?

Heilung:?In another time and age, Kai wished to record some of his poems and asked his friend Christopher, who is a producer, and they agreed on a trade – a tattoo for the recording. Christopher instantly got inspired by what Kai brought to his studio, and creativity was let loose as they began adding all sorts of crazy soundscapes to the poems. At some point, Christopher asked Kai if he could sing something. Kai, usually shy, mumbled and rumbled a bit, which resulted in him being unleashed in the recording room. Maria came along, got hit by a bolt of excitement and inspiration and added her voice to some tracks, and there it was – the little Heilung baby, still an unnamed little beast, but it crawled in our hearts and took off from there…

(Chris, by the way, does not have a single tattoo to this very day.)

Heilung means ‘healing’ in German. Why did you choose this name for the band?

Heilung:?We didn’t. The spirits told Kai to name the project like this.

How would you describe your sound to a new listener?

Heilung:?Take a Norwegian Viking girl, a Danish Viking boy and son of a pagan priest, and let them meet a madman, half-animal, half-German, add a lot of drums, screams and angelic voices. Spice it up with a little dose of overtone singing and not too much psychedelic soundscapes. Let it simmer a little in the blackness of inspiration that already fed the Nordic myths…. Or, forget it and just listen to the music and make up your own mind. ??

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A lot of your music is inspired by ancient Germanic culture and the Viking Age. What drew you to these themes?

Heilung:?They came naturally to all three of us already from our early childhood. Maria grew up in Borre, a little Norwegian village with a big burial field of Viking age grave mounds, and as a child she was playing on that very soil with the ancestors resting under her feet, always very aware of their presence and influence.

Christopher had the revived pagan beliefs of Scandinavia actively performed around him while he grew up, due to the position of his father as a Godi (a pagan priest with the right to perform wedding ceremonies).

Kai, growing up Christian, was nevertheless playing in Iron Age stone circles in the endless forests in the heart of Germany and started early to explore Germanic and Celtic art.

The three of them met through Viking reenactment markets, festivals that show the arts and crafts of the Viking period.

Do you feel a connection to older cultures and civilisations, such as the Vikings?

Heilung:?Everything is interconnected, we still have our history on display in our modern-day culture, visible in the language, our ornaments, our religious beliefs, and so on. Also, our older cultures were dealing with the same basic questions and challenges of mankind as we still do today. It’s all love and pain. If you sit as a mother on the bed of your sick child it feels the same, whether they call your culture Viking or Indonesian. And the song you sing that night on that bed, means the same in all cultures and throughout all ages. We are all connected, through time and space, because we are all people.

Where else do you find inspiration when you’re making music?

Heilung:?We all very often have the feeling that inspiration finds us, and it can be everywhere, no matter if it is in the dusty ruins of Pompeii or in the train. Nature is always a great source of inspiration though.

Each member of Heilung has a distinctive vocal style. Could you tell us about the different styles you employ when making songs?

Heilung:?Whenever it comes to the etheric female singing, that will be Maria. She will employ everything from harmonies to the old Scandinavian cattle calls, from sweet whispers to heart-breaking screams of pain and anguish.

Christopher feeds the soundscapes with deep vocals and throat singing, but he also takes on whispering parts, and some tricky, rhythmic passages where Kai is out of his mind, twitching, barking and gargling. ?

You also have a unique range of instruments, including ones made from human bones! Could you tell us about your different instruments, and the process of how you select them to create specific, unique sounds?

Heilung:?That is a very complex topic, due to the fluid character of the selection process. We allow ourselves to really follow the flow of inspiration and it helps to have a sound studio with a lot of space, filled with a lot of instruments and things that makes nice sounds, and the technical equipment to capture everything. We make a lot of instruments ourselves or have them made by exceptional skilled craftsmen. It’s easy to imagine that you cannot buy the replica of a 12,000 year old flute made from a swan bone, tar and grass in the shop just around the corner. We give a lot of love to our drums, we see them as living beings, made from skin, bone, and blood.

What is the strangest thing you’ve ever used as an instrument?

Heilung:?Bones from a 16th century plague mass grave in Germany.

You’ve referred to your live performances as ‘rituals’. What kind of atmosphere do you try to create at concerts to achieve this?

Music is the primal language of mankind. In music we can perceive the divine harmony of cosmos, so a ritual of music in our world is meant to connect people with this spiritual state of mind. So, we open up, we invite everyone to become one. One with the sound, the beat, be a part of our circle. We welcome you to a time space of freedom, getting lost in the music, the visuals, and the scents. The Heilung ritual is our invitation to disconnect from the now and to reconnect to yourself.

The world has changed a lot in the last year, and live music is unfortunately on hold for a bit. How would you recommend fans get into this same sort of ritualistic headspace at home?

Get some good headphones, take an hour or two just for yourself with a glass of wine or whatever you need to relax and just let go. Let the sounds carry you into our parallel world, just to return from it like from a good walk in the mountains.?

There is a new map in Conqueror’s Blade called Heilung Fjord, named in your honour! How would you defend it from invading armies?

Just feed the shaman some mushrooms, he’ll take care of it. If that doesn’t work, send the night warriors. If they f**k up, the snails will take over the defence slowly, and they never fail…

Your music is getting a lot of attention in the games industry at the moment! What games do you enjoy in your spare time (if any)?

Well…. this is quite personal, the games people play, you know… No, just joking. ? You can actually find us sitting on sheepskins and rocking chairs in front of the fire and playing a good old board game. You might not believe it, but most of the time we are really that old school.

Then there are of course the very physical and violent Viking age games, that sometimes erupt during a good party. But they are a different story for another time. ?

Can fans expect to hear new music – like a follow-up to?Futha?– or see you back on the road in the near future?

We spend a lot of the cancelled tour time in the studio, as most musicians probably did. Our time there will lead to new releases, but we have a few projects before that and still some secrets up our sleeve. ;)

We are very positive to see Heilung back on the road in the last part of this year and hope to see you all out there. <3?

Thanks to Christopher, Maria, and Kai for taking the time to chat with us! You can catch Heilung on tour throughout Europe and Russia in 2021 and 2022, check out their latest album Futha (available now on Spotify and Apple Music), and listen for their glorious music in Conqueror’s Blade throughout Season VII: Wolves of Ragnarok.

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成立于2014年的Heilung是一支超越風格和定義的歐洲樂隊，他們的大氣音樂吸引著聽眾們穿越民間和搖滾界，經(jīng)歷難以置信的歷史和神話之旅。當征服者之刃在第七季進入自己的維京時代時：《仙境傳說之狼》，我們知道他們非常適合打敗我們的狼族崇拜者，狂暴者和強大的盾構娘子傳奇-他們的歌曲Galgaldr和Alfadhirhaiti可以在游戲中聽到當前開放的電影和地圖Heilung Fjord。

作為我們正在進行的“音樂周”系列文章的一部分，我們與Heilung的Christopher，Maria和Kai談了他們的音樂，影響力以及如何最好地保護Heilung Fjord免受入侵者的侵害。文章中的照片由Coen Halmans和Kees Stravers拍攝。

感謝您與我們交談！您能自我介紹嗎？

Heilung：您好，謝謝我們，我們是Heilung的三位核心成員Christopher Juul，Maria Franz和Kai Uwe Faust。

黑龍江的故事是什么，您為什么首先聚在一起決定做音樂？

Heilung：在另一個時代，Kai希望錄制他的一些詩，并問他的制作人朋友Christopher，他們同意進行交易–錄制紋身。克里斯托弗（Christopher）立刻受到凱（Kai）帶到他的錄音室的啟發(fā)，當他們開始在詩歌中添加各種瘋狂的音景時，創(chuàng)造力被釋放了?？死锼雇懈ィ–hristopher）在某個時候問凱（Kai）是否會唱歌。凱通常很害羞，喃喃自語，有些發(fā)r，導致他在錄音室被釋放。瑪麗亞（Maria）走了進來，被激動和靈感的震撼擊中，并在一些曲目中加入了聲音，就在那兒–小Heilung嬰兒，仍然是一個沒有名字的小野獸，但它在我們的心中爬行并從那里起飛了……

（順便說一句，克里斯至今沒有紋身。）

Heilung在德語中意為“治愈”。為什么為樂隊選擇這個名字？

黑龍江：我們沒有。烈酒告訴Kai像這樣命名該項目。

您將如何向新的聽眾描述您的聲音？

Heilung：帶一個挪威維京女孩，一個丹麥維京男孩和一個異教神父的兒子，讓他們遇到一個瘋子，一半動物，一半德語，并增加許多鼓聲，尖叫聲和天使般的聲音。用一點點泛音唱歌而不用太多的迷幻音景為它增添色彩。讓它在已經(jīng)充斥北歐神話的靈感的陰暗中immer一下……?；蛘?，忘記它，只聽音樂，然后下定決心。 ?

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您的許多音樂都受到古代日耳曼文化和維京時代的啟發(fā)。是什么吸引您進入這些主題的？

Heilung：從我們孩提時代開始，他們就自然而然地出現(xiàn)在我們三個人身上?，旣悂啠∕aria）在挪威的一個小村莊博雷（Borre）長大，那里有一個維京時代墳墓的大墓地，小時候，她在那片土地上玩耍，祖先躺在腳下，始終非常清楚他們的存在和影響。

克里斯托弗·克里斯托弗（Christopher）斯堪的納維亞（Scandinavia）在他長大后就積極地表現(xiàn)了異教徒的異教信仰，這歸因于他父親的身份（戈迪（一位有權舉行婚禮的異教神父））。

成長于基督教徒的凱（Kai）仍然在德國心臟無休止的森林中的鐵器時代的石頭圈子里玩耍，并開始早期探索日耳曼和凱爾特人的藝術。

他們三人通過維京重演市場相遇，這些節(jié)日展示了維京時期的手工藝品。

您是否與維京人等較舊的文化和文明有聯(lián)系？

Heilung：一切都是相互聯(lián)系的，我們仍然在現(xiàn)代文化中展示我們的歷史，可以在語言，裝飾品，宗教信仰等方面看到我們的歷史。而且，我們較古老的文化正在處理與今天相同的人類基本問題和挑戰(zhàn)。都是愛與痛苦。如果您作為母親坐在生病的孩子的床上，無論他們稱呼您的文化為維京人還是印度尼西亞人，都會有同樣的感覺。那天晚上您在那張床上唱歌的歌曲，在所有文化中和各個年齡段都具有相同的含義。我們都是穿越時空的，因為我們都是人。

制作音樂時還能在哪里找到靈感？

Heilung：我們每個人常常都有靈感可以找到我們的感覺，它可以無處不在，無論是在龐貝古城的塵土之中還是在火車上。大自然始終是靈感的重要來源。

黑龍江的每個成員都有自己獨特的嗓音風格。您能告訴我們您制作歌曲時使用的不同風格嗎？

Heilung：每當涉及到以太坊女歌唱時，那就是瑪麗亞。從和聲到斯堪的納維亞古老的牛叫聲，從甜甜的耳語到令人心碎的痛苦和痛苦，她都會使用各種方法。

克里斯托弗·克里斯托弗（Christopher）用深沉的嗓音和喉嚨的歌聲來喂飽聲景，但他也竊竊私語，以及一些令人費解的，有節(jié)奏的段落，這些段落使Kai失去了理智，抽搐，吠叫和吞咽。 ?

您還擁有一系列獨特的樂器，包括由人體骨骼制成的樂器！您能告訴我們您不同的樂器，以及如何選擇它們以創(chuàng)建特定的，獨特的聲音的過程嗎？

Heilung：由于選擇過程的流動性，這是一個非常復雜的話題。我們讓自己真正跟隨靈感的流向，這將有助于擁有一個錄音棚，該錄音棚具有很大的空間，里面充斥著許多可以發(fā)出悅耳聲音的樂器和東西，以及可以捕捉一切的技術設備。我們自己制造許多樂器，或者由杰出的熟練工匠制造。很難想像，您無法在拐角處的商店中購買到12,000年之久的由天鵝骨，焦油和草制成的長笛的復制品。我們對鼓給予了極大的愛，我們將它們視為由皮膚，骨骼和血液制成的生物。

您曾經(jīng)用作樂器的最奇怪的東西是什么？

Heilung：來自16世紀德國瘟疫大規(guī)模墳墓的骨頭。

您已將現(xiàn)場表演稱為“儀式”。您想在音樂會上營造什么樣的氛圍來實現(xiàn)這一目標？

音樂是人類的原始語言。在音樂中，我們可以感知到宇宙的神圣和諧，因此，我們世界中的音樂儀式旨在將人們與這種精神狀態(tài)聯(lián)系起來。因此，我們開放，我們邀請所有人成為一體。帶有聲音的拍子成為我們圈子的一部分。我們歡迎您來到自由的時空，在音樂，視覺效果和氣味中迷失方向。 Heilung儀式是我們與現(xiàn)在斷開連接并重新連接到您自己的邀請。

去年，世界已經(jīng)發(fā)生了很大變化，不幸的是現(xiàn)場音樂被擱置了一段時間。您如何建議粉絲在家中進入這種同樣的儀式性空間？

拿些好耳機，花上一個或兩個小時，自己喝杯酒，或者放松一下，放松一下。讓聲音將您帶入我們的平行世界，就像從山上漫步一樣，從中返回。

征服者之刃中有一張新地圖叫做海隆峽灣，以您的名字命名！您如何防御入侵的軍隊？

只需給薩滿喂一些蘑菇，他會照顧好它的。如果這樣做不起作用，請派遣夜間勇士。如果他們站起來，蝸牛將慢慢接管防御，他們永遠不會失敗……

目前，您的音樂正在游戲界引起廣泛關注！您在業(yè)余時間喜歡什么游戲（如果有的話）？

出色地…。這很個人化，人們玩的游戲，你知道的……不，只是在開玩笑。 actually實際上，您可以找到我們坐在火爐前的羊皮和搖椅上，玩一個很好的舊棋盤游戲。您可能不相信，但是大多數(shù)時候我們確實是那所老學校。

當然，還有一些非常激烈的維京時代游戲，有時候在一場好聚會上會爆發(fā)。但是，這又是另一回事了。 ?

粉絲能否期望聽到新音樂（例如Futha的后續(xù)音樂），或者在不久的將來看到您重返賽道？

像大多數(shù)音樂家一樣，我們在錄音室里度過了很多被取消的巡演時間。我們在那里的時間將導致新版本的發(fā)布，但是在此之前我們有幾個項目，但仍有一些秘密需要解決。 ;）

我們非常高興看到Heilung在今年下半年重回賽道，并希望與大家見面。 <3

感謝Christopher，Maria和Kai花時間與我們聊天！您可以在2021年和2022年在歐洲和俄羅斯進行巡回演出，查看Heilung的最新專輯Futha（現(xiàn)已在Spotify和Apple Music上發(fā)行），并在《第七季：仙境傳說》中的征服者之刃中聆聽他們輝煌的音樂。