Sam:  For someone who's only recently got into Delight, can you give me some background? What got you where you are today?

Paula:  Our adventure with gothic-metal music started about five years ago. We formed a band and recorded a demo tape. Then we fortunately signed a contract with one of the biggest polish metal labels- Metal Mind Records. By now three Delight's albums appeared: “Last Temptation” (2000); “The Fading Tale” (2001) and “Eternity” (2002). Current depot is:

Paula – vocals, lyrics

Jarosław Baran – guitar, drums, samplers and keyboards

Piotr Szymański – bass guitar

Cube – keyboards

Piotr Wójcik – drums

The Delight’s story in details can be found on our official website:

Sam:  I've heard Delight mentioned alongside bands such as Lacuna Coil and Within Temptation. Do think that's a good comparison?

Paula:  One thing is the same – female as a singer. Maybe for some people we are “between” these bands and that’s nice but there is one difference: we come from Poland. We live in a different reality – it’s not easy here to play music, especially alternative. We are young people, students and music is rather our hobby. We aren’t full time musicians.

Sam:  Why do you think Eternity was such a successful album?

Paula:  This album is the most mature thing we’ve ever done. Good melodies and nice atmosphere? Lot’s of work and passion to the music? Or it’s a matter of luck?

Sam:  Eternity is the only Delight album that does not have a title track. Why did you choose the name Eternity? What does it represent to you?

Paula:  We chose this title because the label denied assent of our first proposition to this album “The Sunrise”. It wasn’t “gothic” enough :), so we took the most universal name we knew. Seriously, in some way it’s connected with the title of the last song, which is in Polish (“Wieczny final” which means in English “ The Eternal Final”).   

Sam:  One of my favourite songs on the album is Whale's Lungs, but I've always wanted someone to explain to me what it's about. You're the best person - care to do the honours?

Paula:  Oh, it’s my favourite song too. For this song there is a simple story: a man and a woman- a short romance – he leaves her, but there is a child conceived – so she makes a decision to have this baby – even though it’s hard to live that lonely life. She is strong and she believes it’s the proper way. By this song I’ve wanted to thank all women who made such decisions... Life is often hard, sometimes the sky is like a big dying whale but as I say in the song “I’m living my life”, so the devil of hope at the end of the sad song :)

Sam:  Could you pin down any particular event which inspired you to write a song on Eternity?

Paula:  When I write lyrics I try to imagine the atmosphere of the song – the words come to me naturally. In “Whale’s lungs” I saw a big blue sky – then I just found a true story for that “blue” feeling. I just concentrate on emotions, which sleep in the music.

Sam:  There are some nice electronic parts to the album. Any plans to make these a bigger feature of Delight's music in the future, or do you feel that would spoil the formula?

Paula:  We’ve just started to work on next album and we are going to change the formula of the band in some way. First of all – we will do more electronic parts, less of power metal elements in guitars – even we want to end the power metal epic in Delight’s music. One thing won’t be changed – it will be still female singing, guitar band but with more modern, electronic elements.

Sam:  I see the artwork's a little different to that on the previous albums.  Who's responsible for it? How do you feel it represents your music?

Paula:  The author of the artwork is Khaal. We worked with him for the first time. Before we worked with someone else and we weren’t fully satisfied. We’ve made a few mistakes before and this time we were stubborn and the front cover is a piece of the thought contained in the music. There is a stained glass on it – a collage. The photos inside the book are taken by Maja Konarska, who is our friend in private and a singer in Moonlight – one of the main gothic metal Polish scene bands.

Sam:  Do you or any of the other band members have time to indulge in some side-projects? If not, what directions would you like to explore if you could?

Paula:  I don’t have time to do anything more than Delight now. Sometimes i think about something by side, maybe a solo album, something more mature than metal but I’m still too young to start another band. Delight is now the most important part of my music life. Who knows what the future brings? My friends from my band have some side projects; they play even in other bands like Cube who is also in black-death metal formation Thy Disease. They generally play a metal in their other bands. Jarosław is also a producer; he does many metal and other albums in his studio.

Sam:  A lot of metal bands choose to do out-of-genre covers. What was the idea behind doing a cover of Careless Whisper on The Fading Tale? Did you get a lot of stick for that?

Paula:  We wanted to do a nice pop song. It was a real funny experience and still it is when we play it on concerts. It was a good idea to take a song out-of-genre. This is our song in some way now, our own interpretation.

Sam:  Are there any future covers in the pipeline you can shed some light on?

Paula:  We’ve done three covers by now: “Careless whisper” Wham’s song; also Type o Negative song for “Tribute to TON” album which appeared in Germany some time ago, we took “My Girlfriend's Girlfriend” and we’ve done “Wasting love” of Iron Maiden as a bonus track for Japanese edition of “Last Temptation”.

We are not going to do any covers on next album. Maybe we will change mind but now we don’t plan covers at all.

Sam:  Your lyrics can be quite unusual. How do you come up with them?

Paula:  Unusual? I try to be as honest as I can and I use casual words to talk about my “unusual” emotions – it’s my recipe. Every man is the Universe in one and the part of Universe on the other side – lyrics are a trial to put it in words and to connect it with the music. Is there anything more interesting than a man?

Sam:  How far would you say Delight's sound has evolved from The Last Temptation to Eternity? How happy are you with the sound you've found at the moment?

Paula:  The sound is evolving with us all the time. we record our albums at home studio – more we learn, the sound is better – so the albums are the diary of our searching for music maturity. The means are the limits for a fancy production but we do our best. So we are happy that this development is audible. Actually we are working on new Delight’s sound, the current state is never enough. Recording a better album is a must in every way.

Sam:  On listening to Delight's songs, it's clear that the music is very fluid.  It's smooth and seems such a natural sound for the band. Is the song-writing process very natural for you or are there times where you find yourself struggling?

Paula:  Sometimes we work on song for months, sometimes for a few days; it depends on the mood, the ideas and our student life. From the beginning the process of composing is connected with the production in the studio, where we spend a lot’s of time. Composing is not a simple thing but every song is an experience that makes you better. It’s our favourite part of the work.

Sam:  Is there any other genre you could see yourself in if you weren't working in Metal?

Paula:  We could be a pop-rock band, very good and very famous :)

Sam:  What bands are you listening to the most at the moment?

Paula:  Nowadays I listen Placebo “Sleeping with ghosts”.

Sam:  Who or what inspired you to get involved in the Metal scene?

Paula:  It was the only option to do a metal band in our small town. We were to rebelious to play rock, to young to play punk. Playing metal was “trendy” that times... truly we’ve always listened to metal, even in primary school. We wanted to play music in high school and that was the only natural option.

Sam:  Personally I'm listening to a lot of Fading Colours at the moment. What bands on the Polish Metal scene do you respect?

Paula:  Fading Colours is trance music. I don’t listen to Polish metal at home, I don’t have time. We have many good metal bands known worldwide here in Poland for example Vader or Behemoth. There are good bands like Sweet Noise and many female singing bands as Moonlight, Artrosis, Desdemona, Closterkeller and many more. Moonlight is my favourite.

Sam:  There is a definite difference between the sounds of bands such as Delight, Artrosis and Desdemona and bands such as Within Temptation, Lacuna Coil and Nightwish.  The Polish sound is rawer and more punchy. Would you agree?  Why do you think that that's the tone of Polish metal?

Paula:  We love to play extreme here:) I have to agree, we have a rawer sound because we don’t have the same financial possibilities than western bands. Metal here is more underground, more alternative kind of music. We do albums without big budgets – the sound is not as worldwide as we wish...But without complaining – we have ideas to do music – it’s out treasure. Pure music is more honest. People listen metal to here pure, strong emotions.

Sam:  The Polish metal bands never seem to play too far from home. How difficult is it for a band like Delight to get gigs in the rest of Europe?

Paula:  We went on small tour to Germany in May but as an unknown band we played for empty clubs... If we were touring with known band as a support we‘d had a chance to show what we can... The promotion abroad is not good, so people don’t come to see bands like Delight, even we could play for free. I believe that it will change when we join European Union. As Delight we don’t complain, we are still waiting for interesting invitations.

Sam:  What are you doing when you're not writing or performing music?

Paula:  I study pharmacy. I prefer to say that I perform while I’m not studying pharmacy. Being a full time musician here is almost without future, you have to be well educated to think about future brightly. We have two professions. I’m not the exception, friends from my band do the same, and they are students and musicians in one.

Sam:  I'm getting a little bored of the same food at the moment, you see. Can you cook? What's your favourite food?

Paula:  I can’t cook, my mother also can’t and my grandmother wasn’t a great cooker at all...But we are pretty and intelligent girls :) I think men do better in this matter. I don’t have favourite food. I can eat almost everything :)

Sam:  I read somewhere that you're a big fan of the Internet. Do you think that the Internet is overall a good or bad thing for bands with the growing increase of file-sharing?

Paula:  Because of file-sharing we still don’t know how many people listen to our music at home...If we don’t earn money on our music (musician is a profession that works for free – a dark, pessimistic future is coming soon), our label won’t invest in concerts and we will work only at home studios with the level of music professionalism falling down with every record... It will go worse; the control over Internet is impossible. Some people from the top must find a new way to earn on music- they will do it, not for the art, just for the money... The Internet is the only way for the world by now, is out of discussion.

Sam:  Where does Delight go from here?

Paula:  To a better future, we hope! 

Sam:  Do you have any messages for the dedicated Sonic Cathedral clientele?

Paula:  Dear friend, I wish you spending a good time listening to Delight, lot’s of kisssseeeessss and thank you for your attention!