Lein comes from Tallinn. A new black metal band passing by FILTHY HANGOUT fest on their way to another fest DUŠTANT in Vilnius. This will band’s first show in Latvia, and one of the first ones overall. I know some of the members from their other projects, one of them being the queer punk band Keskkool. Interestingly, Lein performs the total opposite – black metal, known as the music genre with roots coming from the right wing ideologies. Does this mean Baltics are facing a RABM wave? Let’s find out!
1. Tere! Let’s dig into he misterious and dark world of Lein! The band is only few months old. Could you tell the story of the birth of Lein?
The very first time that a resemblance of what now has become Lein rehearsed was all the way back in summer of 2022, but it was just me (Kaur) and our drummer (Jaagup) jamming black metal together, we didn’t have a name or any plans to take it that seriously. We really became Lein in the beginning of 2023 when we picked a name, started rehearsing regularly and also started looking for other people to complete the band, Kiur (our lead guitarist) joined shortly after and we played our first show in april, where we met our now bassist Adeele who was in the crowd that night and offered herself to join in on bass duties. She ended up joining sometime in late june and after only 2 rehearsals together played our third ever (and her first ever) show with us in Tartu alongside Defekt and Paranarkar. That is when we knew that the band had finally been “completed”.
2. How would you describe your sound? If you would have to choose a subgenre of black metal, how would you label yourselves? What are the lyrics about?
I’d describe our sound as something leaning more on the aggressive side of pagan black metal with occasional influences of punk and a couple other metal genres, but i feel putting Lein in the pagan black category to be the most accurate. I’ve been told we come off as melancholic and hateful. Our lyrics mostly talk about ancient Estonian history and its rebellions and wars for freedom, but a couple songs are just good old-fashioned misanthropy as well.
3. What’s the situation with the black metal scene in Tallinn? I know you guys even have a venue dedicated to black metal – Black Magic. And some black metal bands, for example Goatsmegma are recognised outside of countries borders.
Black metal scene in Tallinn is very much alive and strong although you don’t see bands performing as often as punk bands for example, nor going outside of Estonia unfortunately, we hope to see that change.
4. You are going on a mini tour with Weeping Abyss. How did the planning went? How did you met the other band?
It originally started with us being invited to play at DŪSTANT and me looking for a gig or two on the way there, but i figured that since our demo is ready to release i would organise a small tour around that event (incl. Filthy hangout) in celebration of its release. I simply planned out a rough route of cities to play and contacted the venues. We had met The Weeping Abysd at our second ever gig in Barbar in Tallinn, where we both played. We liked eachothers music and we had been wanting to play with them toether again for some time already so i figured to invite them along for our string of Estonisn shows and they agreed.
5. What are band’s future plans? Cheers, see you in April!
More music, more releases, more rehearsals. That’s all our plans for now.