Interview with Ahráyeph (November 2024)

Music has the ability to take you to the distant corners of the sky. To see the Fallen Ones enter our earthly ground. A world taken over by the Offspring of Angels.

I have the privilege of talking to a musician who knows how to perfectly portray this world in his music. And although he has spoken to Peek-A-Boo many times before, living in our small country, he certainly deserves to be brought to the attention again.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me present to you; Raf Ahráyeph.

Q: Hello to you Raf!

Raf: And hello to you, Hayley.

Q: To us you are no stranger, but to introduce yourself a little to those who are not yet familiar with your music, how would you put it into words?

Raf: It's at once an easy and a tough question to answer... I could say my music is a reflection of me and how I view the world at large, which is the philosophical thing to do. I suppose I could take a description my late best friend bestowed on me and say it's “Progressive Gothic Rock” or “Prog Goth” for short, which is what I think most people will understand. But I guess what comes closest is that Ahráyeph is an expression and externalisation of the dark aspects of my life and what I observe around me. It's a better form of expressing darkness than being depressed, I guess...

Q: Say you could describe your music by naming both movie and classical literature titles, which would you choose?

Raf: Well, coincidentally, I just rewatched Coppola's take on Bram Stoker's Dracula last week. I felt that that's the perfect visual – and narrative – illustration of the kind of music and lyrics I write. Ever since I discovered Romanticism as a literary, and later visual, art form (thank you, Iron Maiden!), I've been partial to that form of expression. My literary influences are the usual suspects: the Shelleys, Byron, Pope... But there's also quite a bit of more modern influence like Sartre and the Beat Poets by way of Jim Morrison.

Q: The start of Ahráyeph was with the 2006 Heralding The Marooned EP. Was it at that time a conscious decision to take the direction that characterizes your music today?

Raf: In one word, no. That came long before the E.P.'s release. At the tail end of the period when the band was still called Crucifire, I was jamming with David and Peter, my then band members, and I had already started looking for a sound that was less ensconced in Metal. One afternoon, after listening to The Cure's compilation album Staring At The Sea, I reflected on how their iconic song “A Forest” moved me emotionally and then tried to put that emotion into my take on that song (as evidenced in the cover song I later released). That's when what I call the “Ahráyeph Sound” was born. 

As a happy coincidence, I also found my lyrical “voice” around that time. I was never happy with the worse-than-sophomoric lyrics I wrote for the Crucifire songs the year before. Luckily, it all came together at that time. A few years later, when virtual synthesizers became available with the advent of computer recording, I was finally able to put it all together into the sound I had in my head and create a perfect sonic environment for myself that contributed to the creative process of the lyrical part of my songwriting...