intervclaymorean

Claymorean from Serbia formed under the name Claymore in 1994. They have released a handful of records, the most recent 'Eternal Curse' in 2025. Today I've talked to guitarist and main songwriter Vlad Incivtus and vocalist Dejana Garčević of Claymorean.

Hello Claymorean, Let's start with an introduction of you and the band…

Vlad: Hi, Jim! First of all, I gotta say we're huge fans of your channel and the overall work you do for our favorite music genre. We're an independent heavy metal band from a small industrial town of Lazarevac, Serbia. Our music represents our love for heavy metal, which basically means that we make music we like to listen to, without following any trends out there.

Dejana: What we do today is shaped by years of learning, grinding, and pure love for epic metal music. We blend classic heavy metal foundations with power metal energy, big melodies, and storytelling... Everything is crafted with heart and fire.

Thank you for the kind words. How come you changed your name from Claymore to Claymorean?

Vlad: It was the only logical thing to do at the time, because the internet search engines were filled with all these other bands and anime/manga stuff by the same name. Also, we practically started anew, with new band members, and some fresh musical ideas, so you could say that Claymorean was a new band, built on the ashes of Claymore. We wanted to keep a part of the previous name, because we wanted to honor our past.

Dejana: We basically just added the “AN” at the end of the band name to clearly separate us from THE OTHER Claymores. It kept the original spirit, but made it unmistakably ours

Your band has a female vocalist, which naturally gives your sound a different character and presence. How do you feel that dynamic shapes the band's identity compared to others in the scene?

Vlad: I never really gave much thought about it. I first heard Dejana back in 2011, when she was performing with her former band, and I was amazed that this young girl sings songs like Stargazer or Easy Livin’ with such conviction, passion, and strength in her voice. So, I was sold on her talent.

She kinda reminded me vocally of David DeFeis, in a certain way. And as a huge fan of Virgin Steele, the choice for the new vocalist was obvious. I'm also a fan of the bands like Warlock, Zed Yago, Hellion, White Skull, to name a few, who all had these phenomenal powerful frontwomen at the microphone.

When I listen to Claymorean, I pick up flashes of Manowar and Virgin Steele. You once covered Virgin Steele's The Burning of Rome (Cry For Pompeii). I can hear the same epic and heroic energy in your music, just pushed into a faster direction. What do you think of those comparisons? And do you see any connection yourselves?

Dejana: Yes, we covered both actually. Both bands represent the epic, heroic spirit of metal, and we absolutely feel connected to these notions. Virgin Steele especially influenced our sense of drama and atmosphere. We push that energy into a faster, more aggressive direction, but the emotional core is the same: passion, honor, struggle, and triumph.

Vlad: Thank you for the kind words. Yeah, I frequently get these comparisons, and I can only feel honored, because I grew up listening to Manowar and Virgin Steele. Maybe we as a band are just a reflection of our tastes in music, and it's predominantly rooted in the traditional heavy metal, epic metal, and power metal. I think the first time we got some attention was when we released the cover of Blood of My Enemies, because metalheads often like something they're familiar with, rather than to discover new stuff, especially nowadays.

We got a rather positive feedback on that one, although Manowar fans tend to be overprotective when it comes to their favorite band, and I literally expected a rain of shit because we “dared to touch the sacred relic” haha. Of course, not everyone liked it, but I was surprised with most of the reactions, which were positive.

Our readers might not be familiar with Claymorean, If so, where should they start, Can you recommend an album or a song?

Vlad: Hmm, that's an interesting question. All 4 Claymorean albums sound different from each other, so it's tough to choose one that is the best representation of our music. I'd like to say listen to Eternal Curse, which is our latest album, but I think that most metal listeners would hook themselves easier on Eulogy for the Gods, which came out in 2021, because that album truly opened so many doors for us at the time, so we must've done something good with it.

Dejana: Start with Eternal Curse. It is our latest work that represents us perfectly musically, both emotionally and conceptually. Songs like “By This Sword We Rule,” “Battle Born,” and “Under the Sign of the Cross” give a great overview of our sound and vision.

Claymorean - By This Sword We Rule

What are your main influences and how did you get into metal music?

Vlad: I was exposed to heavy music such as Kiss and AC/DC at a very young age (3 or 4 years old, courtesy of my older cousin haha), but it wasn't until my 5th grade (sometime in 1988) that I was hooked on heavy metal for good. My first cherished metal albums were Mob Rules by Black Sabbath and Destiny by Saxon, but real passion sparked with the discovery of such acts as Yngwie Malmsteen, Manowar, King Diamond, Gary Moore, Running Wild, Alice Cooper, Helloween, Whitesnake,...

And later of course Manilla Road, which remains my favorite metal band of all time. I would say that all these bands and then some influenced me to start making my own music when I was 12. And I dreamed of being in a heavy metal band while I was blasting Kiss Alive! and impersonating Ace Frehley's solos haha.

Dejana: We live on ’80s metal. Bands like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Manowar, Accept, Virgin Steele, and Dokken among many others. Metal is our whole world, our identity. It gave us something bigger to believe in, and once you’re in, if you are true to the core, you never really leave.

I noticed on the Metal-Archives that the band has existed in one form or another since 1994, long before the whole NWOTHM wave. I always thought of you as a more recent band, probably because your music didn’t reach this far north back then. How do you look back on those early years and the evolution from that era to what you're doing now?

Vlad: That's a good question. I more often see Claymorean as a completely new, or should I say different band than Claymore ever was. I may not agree with Metal-Archives on their effort to present us as this legacy band from the early 90's, but I accept the fact that I am to blame for the confusion.

You see, Claymore did start in 1994, but at the time we had one gig and then we broke up. And later in 1998 we tried to regroup, which also didn't last long. Finally in the early 2000's I had the first real opportunity to record my music on PC, with those early DAW's. And in 2002 I had this demo, which a year later developed into an album that was recorded in a few days in my bedroom, and this Serbian label wanted to release it. Bonkers, really.

So, after that we had like several shows and broke up again. I revived the project once again in 2012 just to play at the local festival for nostalgia reasons, and to record the material from 2004, which was supposed to be Claymore's sophomore album. And we released it in 2013. As soon as we played our final show as Claymore, we sat together and decided that we need to leave the past behind and focus on something completely different.

Thus, Claymorean was born. So, I look back on those days objectively, happy that it's the thing of the past, because no matter how much we tried to push it, it didn't work, and it's probably for the best that we ended it some decade ago.

How do you view the NWOTHM movement, considering you predate it. Do you consider Claymorean as part of that wave?

Vlad: I always thought that traditional heavy metal music never went away. It just changed forms. In the 90's it was mostly power metal, and then HammerFall happened, Pegazus, and Wolf a bit later. So, this so-called old school metal was always present in my life, and NWOTHM was nothing new to me. I'm really glad it exists in such a form, and I follow most of the new bands that came out in the last 2 decades.

I think nowadays it's not as strong as it was several years ago, but still there are plenty of great releases coming out, and time will tell if they get to be regarded as classics someday. Some might say that the scene is getting over saturated in recent years, and although I don't believe that this type of music will ever get to be mainstream as it was in the 70's and 80's, it will remain relevant for the certain circle of people who refuse to follow the trends and listen to the corporate made bands.

Are we a part of the NWOTHM? I like to think that we are. Many of the fans, journalists, promoters, etc embraced us as one, so who are we to complain, right? Especially when we consider the fact that we are the first band out of Serbia that got to play at festivals like Up The Hammers, Keep It True Rising, Headbangers Open Air, Metaleros, Helicon,...

How is the metal scene in Serbia these days, You've got any bands to recommend to our readers?

Vlad: Serbian metal scene is thriving with bands. Most Serbian bands are however based in the extreme subgenres, like black, death, grind, thrash, and recently sludge/stoner style of metal. Not many bands here play traditional heavy metal or power metal. I would definitely recommend Oathbringer, Jenner, Kamenolom, The Stone, Burning Leaf, for starters, but there are plenty more great bands here you'd need to hear.

Dejana: The scene is small, but passionate. There’s a lot of underground fire here. I'd like to add bands to the ones Vlad already mentioned like Nemesis, Infest, Khargash, Númenor, and many others that are keeping the flame alive.

Do you write with the live environment in mind, or do songs come together more naturally in the studio first?

Dejana: We write what we love. If we don’t love it, it doesn’t matter how it sounds live. Of course we think about the sound and the impact on stage, but the song has to excite us first. Most of our stuff is born in our little home studio. It involves lots of cooking, seasoning, tasting, and spinning it around a hundred times before we decide it’s ready to leave the kitchen. It's only when we feel it in our bones, we take it to the stage.

Vlad: I like to rely on a sudden whim of inspiration, whether it's something I dream of or a melody that comes out of nowhere. I never really thought about the live vs studio concept. But I do have the tendency to not overcomplicate things regarding the songwriting process, so I would say that perhaps I lean more towards the live environment in mind, because I don't want to add sixteen guitar tracks, or hundred backing vocals.

It's just not fit for the live performance we have in mind, since we don't use any click tracks or backing tracks while performing live. I don't want to be dependent on those things. I want the audience to see and hear a real live heavy metal band, from the first note to the last.

Your lyrics often lean toward epic fantasy and mythological themes. What inspires your storytelling?

Vlad: I'm a fan of the fantasy genre in all its forms. From literary giants like Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, Ursula K. LeGuin, and J.R.R. Tolkien, to contemporary writers like G.R.R. Martin, Brandon Sanderson, or Patrick Rothfuss. Conan the Barbarian, John Milius’ spectacle from 1982 was the movie that had a huge impact on my mindset so to speak, especially combined with the epic soundtrack of Basil Poledouris.

It's really all stuck in my head, all those scenes, stories, feelings, which I try to transform into lyrics for our music. I admit that I am not a very good lyricist, and I often have problems with that aspect of my songwriting. But sometimes I manage to write something that's not too shitty haha.

Your latest record Eternal Curse from 2025 got some great reviews from what I've seen. I guess you're happy with the album and how things turned out?

Vlad: For me it's our best album to date, not because it's the newest one and I have to say it haha. It represents everything I hoped for, and I believe our longtime producer

Boris Šurlan did a phenomenal job of mixing it. We wanted to capture the sound of our live performances. So it's not too polished, and everything was recorded the “old-school way”, just like what we did on our previous 2 releases. And the reviews were really good. I think both Stormspell and GoldenCore did a terrific job with the physical releases of Eternal Curse. I just think the marketing of the album and the overall promotion could've been done differently.

I don't think the album reached as many people as Eulogy did. Maybe it's just the current state of the scene, or maybe we could've done something better to push it a bit harder. Either way, we're not into this type of music because of the money and fame, so we're grateful for how things are going at the moment.

Dejana: Very much so. Eternal Curse is the fastest, rawest, and most focused record we’ve ever done. The response has been incredibly encouraging, and it truly feels like the album connected with our fans the way we hoped it would.

Do you already have ideas brewing for the next album?

Vlad: Here's an exclusive for you - actually we have and we're currently working on the new material! So far we wrote several demo songs, and we will continue to write until we have enough material for the 5th album.

Dejana: Always. We never stop writing in our heads. There are already some new riffs and lyrics brewing, new themes are constantly explored, and darker emotional themes will be channeled. The next album will go even deeper.

Any last words for our readers?

Vlad: If you're into traditional heavy metal music, check out Claymorean on various platforms. And continue to support true metal content like Ruthless Metal! See you somewhere on the road!

Dejana: Thank you for keeping real metal alive. Support bands, buy merch, go to shows, and stay true to what moves you. We hope to see you all somewhere in the near future!

Thank you for the interview! 

By / Ruthless

2026-01-28