(In this post, Andy Synn interviews The Demonstealer (Sahil Makhija), frontman of India’s flagship metal band, Demonic Resurrection. As you’ll see, he has a lot of irons in the fire.)
Your last album The Return To Darkness was released back in 2010: it’s had amazing staying power and continues to attract new fans and positive reviews even now. Stupid question, but just how proud are you of what you have achieved with it?
I would say I’m quite proud of what we’ve achieved with it. We got signed to Candlelight Records to have it released, so that was kind of the biggest payoff for us. Musically, we’ll obviously aim to better what we did. We’ll probably say the new record is our best work to date (which musician doesn’t? 
). So yes, I’m quite satisfied with the way it’s gone, but there is a long long way to go yet.
What was the compositional process for the record like? How do you write, either individually or as a group?
Given the instability of the band’s lineup I’ve always remained the primary songwriter in the band and Mephisto has been the second key contributor musically. I started writing songs in 2007/2008 for this record and that was about the time Virendra Kaith joined us as a drummer, so jamming with him had a huge influence on my riff playing because while our previous drummer was more straight-out death metal, Virendra bought a different style of drumming to the table, which was influenced by bands like Meshuggah, Sikth, Textures. etc., and we had to kind of get him up to speed to the death metal style. So I think that’s how we got most of the sound for the record.
Daniel Rego joined us in 2008 as a lead guitarist and he contributed mostly the solos and some riffs on the record. His lead playing in my opinion was absolutely stellar and exactly what we needed. So the songs were written and then jammed on and edited and changed around til we got the best possible result. We tend to record everything and then we have about 5-6 versions of each song and there is an evolution process involved with the tracks so we can get the best out of it.
(Rev. Will’s interview series focusing on metal bloggers and metal print journalists continues today with Chris Gonda, the founder of PureGrainAudio.)
So after cruising through a bunch of American subjects, I’m finally back on Canadian territory with the founder of multi-genre music website, PureGrainAudio. While not a physically-published metal journalist like his fellow countryman Adrien Begrand, Chris Gonda spends his day toiling away for BlackBerry and working his ass off on PureGrainAudio logistical and miscellaneous matters at night—all in a passionate bid to keep the already 7-year old project running so as to promote both Canadian and international music. Talk about keeping yourself busy.
Like Islander and Erik Thomas (of Hails And Horns, Teeth Of The Divine), I’m a cyborg survivor of the Artificial Intelligence Holocaust of 93,1349 Mars years ago back when Earth was dominated by T2’s sent back in time by Skynet and humans were learning how to make Coca Cola. Hence, it was mindless of me to have wanted to interview Chris in person initially, since I don’t have a head (and haven’t had one since the conclusion of the holocaust). Oh, I didn’t get the tattoos though. They didn’t have the Immortal cat design!
After my efforts to force Chris to reply over cyberspace while, ahem, persuading him with an animated .GIF file of Burger King blowing McDonald’s head off, the humorous Canadian gave in to my tyrannous request and shed light on the origins and workings of PureGrainAudio (and more, when I proceeded to show him the .GIF file of Burger King w-a-t-c-h-i-n-g ALL OF US!!!!!!). For example, the dude needs alcoholic rehabilitation.
Graveyard is a band from Barcelona, Spain, who I came across through their superb new EP released by Pulverised Records, The Altar of Sculpted Skulls (reviewed here). It caused me to ponder the question how a band can distinguish itself playing “old school” death metal without tinkering with the fundamental elements of the music in a way that destroys its authenticity. Graveyard pull off that trick; they succeed where other bands fail. They are also one of the few bands from Spain I’ve heard who devote themselves successfully to traditional death metal.
I had the chance to do an e-mail interview with Graveyard’s lead guitarist, Javi Bastard, who also runs his own recording studio. His answers are smart, funny, honest, insightful, and very interesting. Topics include Graveyard’s philosophy about music, observations about why Spain lagged much of Europe in the development of metal and about the current scene, the band’s approach to recording that old-school sound, recommendations about other Spanish bands, and future Graveyard releases. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
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I should confess up front that I’m a newcomer to Graveyard, with “The Altar of Sculpted Skulls” being my first exposure to your music. How would you say it compares to the band’s previous releases?
Javi Bastard: I think “The Altar of Sculpted Skulls” sounds more spontaneous than our previous works, at least more than “One with the Dead”, in my opinion. The 4 new songs on “Altar…” were written and rehearsed in just 1 month or so while the songs on “One with the Dead” took us much longer… When we wrote/rehearsed “One with the Dead”, the band had existed for just 1 year and a half or so, now we’re getting closer to our 5th anniversary as a band so I think that explains a few things. In my opinion, “Altar…” is the first GRAVEYARD release where you can actually find a band with its “own style” (considering the small room left for “own style” when you play this kind of classic Death Metal). “Into the Mausoleum” is a whole different thing; it was written, rehearsed and recorded in 2 alcoholic days back in 2007. It was released as an MCD, but of course I see it as a demo released on CD.
(TheMadIsraeli scored this interview of two very talented dudes — Chris (“OJ”) Ojeda and Tony Rohrbough — of the revived and rejuvenated Byzantine. We could hardly be more excited about the rise of this band from the ashes and the promise of new music to come. We wrote about them most recently HERE, in a post that included their appeal for help with a Kickstarter campaign to assist in the financing of the new album — a goal that has already been met and exceeded. But the campaign is still open, and you can GO HERE to contribute.)
It seems appropriate to do this after Byzantine officially reached and exceeded their Kickstarter goal. Now, production of a new album can officially commence in earnest, and I’m quite looking forward to seeing and hearing what will happen. I hope you will enjoy reading this interview of Chris Ojeda and Tony Rohrbough as much as I enjoyed doing it.
Alright guys, I don’t want to bother with the bullshit formalities. Let’s start with what I think of as the ideal opening question is here. Byzantine: What happened to break you guys up, why did it happen, and why did you get back together?
CHRIS OJEDA: My perception of what happened is this: and it might differ from the other guys because we all were dealing with this internally and processing it differently… We signed a deal with a label and we didn’t really know what we were doing and weren’t prepared for the task at hand. And by task at hand, I mean, going broke, working shit jobs between tours, and not having one single thing in common with your boss at the record label. It started out nice, turned sour and then ate away at our friendships.
When you’re in a touring band, certain things are destined to happen if you do it long enough. 1: You will begin to lose sight of why you became a musician. 2: Relationships will falter back home and/or family members will die while you are gone and you will resent it. 3: Your hatred for your spiraling life will turn and focus its vitriol on your band mates because… well, because they are there. We essentially signed a recording contract, said “Fuck it! Sink or swim”, tied an imaginary chain around ourselves and dove into the water. Unfortunately, I was the first band member to wiggle out of the chains and swim for shore. I bailed. A divorce happened between friends and we wound up not playing music for the better half of 4 years. Wow… that was long winded!!! LMAO!
(Demisery is a two-man death metal project consisting of noted guitar whiz Keith Merrow and his partner in crime, guitarist/vocalist Gord Olson. TheMadIsraeli raved about their 2011 debut album Hive of Misery in his NCS review last November — an album you can stream and buy HERE. Today, we’re happy to publish his interviews with Demisery’s dynamic duo. In this post, he talks with Gord Olson and in the immediately preceding post, Keith Merrow.)
Mr. Olson — you have a voice that sounds like a grotesque swamp monster and the shred skills to eviscerate an entire army of demons. Why ARE you so fucking awesome?
Thank you very much, sir. I can only say that my skills either came to me through many long years of study and practice, or perhaps that creepy guy dressed up as the devil at that Halloween party had something to do with it… As part of a gag, I “sold my soul” to him! (laughs) But of course, that stuff isn’t real though, right? RIGHT???
I’m going to start this interview with the same question I asked Keith: How did you and Merrow hook up, why form Demisery, and how do you feel about Hive Of Mutation in retrospect?
Sometime in late 2010, I had stumbled across a couple of Keith’s videos on YouTube, and I was impressed by certain aspects of his sound. Actually, one of the videos I saw was of him doing a guitar cover of a Cannibal Corpse song, which I thought was really cool, so I wrote to him. I was wanting to pick his brain a little bit about his production techniques. I mentioned that I was a huge fan of old-school Death Metal, and sent him a couple of tracks that I was working on at the time. We found out that we had a near identical list of influences and favorite music, and it was kind of a trip to find that we had many other things in common as well, so I guess that was the start of the friendship.
(Demisery is a two-man death metal project consisting of noted guitar whiz Keith Merrow and his partner in crime, guitarist/vocalist Gord Olson. TheMadIsraeli raved about their 2011 debut album Hive of Misery in his NCS review last November — an album you can stream and buy HERE. Today, we’re happy to publish his interviews with Demisery’s dynamic duo. In this post, he talks with Keith Merrow and in the next post, Gord Olson.)
This is so fucking cool to be doing an interview with you. How are you today fine sir?
Hey thanks man, things are fantastic right now. Happy to chat with you!
Alright, so let’s get to the nitty gritty here. How did you and Gord hook up, why form Demisery, and how do you feel about Hive Of Mutation in retrospect?
I met Gord a couple years ago. He had emailed me for some production tips, and I ended up doing a Skype lesson for him. We just basically hit it off after talking about our musical influences, and found that we had so much in common, musically. We’ve talked nearly every day since we met, and he’s just a great guy. He’s a wicked guitar player and has a knack for writing awesome old-school DM. We had talked about doing a collab on a death metal project for a long time. After he sent me a couple riff ideas he had, we basically just dove into it, head first. I’m really happy with how it turned out, in the end. We set out to make a traditional DM album, and that’s just what it is. It was cool to pay homage to our influences.
We’re as proud as a three-balled tomcat to bring you this very special NCS interview, conducted by e-mail. The victim was Sven De Caluwe, the frontman of Aborted, System Divide, and grindcore trio Bent Sea (which also includes Dirk Verbeuren and Devin Townsend). In part because of his well-known demented sense of humor, we decided to tag-team him with an interviewing duo of Andy Synn and Phro — both of whom also wrote reviews for NCS of Aborted’s ass-ripping new album, Global Flatline (here and here), which is out now on Century Media Records.
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Phro: Global Flatline. Holy fuck. This album impregnated my ears, impaled the aural baby with a clothes hanger, and roasted it over an open flame. This album was originally slated for a 2011 release . . . WHY DID IT TAKE SO FUCKING LONG???
We were too busy jerking off for the past 2 years. As you can imagine, the fine art of auto felatio can take up quite some time. In all honesty it took this long because we wanted to take our time to come up with the best album we could and not rush things out like we have on some past records.
Andy: So first off, can you give us some of the themes behind the title Global Flatline? (the less obvious ones I mean, more what it means to you personally).
As you can tell, it deals with the end of man through man. Different probable causes are taken on topics through the album, such as extremists and religion, drug abuse, social apathy and whatever else causes mankind to show its fantastic attributes to the world—and oh yes, let’s not forget feces. The album talks about feces too.
(Xerath’s 2011 album “II” was one of our favorites last year — check out TheMadIsraeli’s review of it here. Recently, he caught up with the band’s stellar guitarist Owain Williams for this real-time interview conducted via Facebook chat — a conversation to be continued at a later date.)
TheMadIsraeli: Hey Owain, totally random ass question…
Owain: Fire away
TheMadIsraeli: interested in doing an on the spot interview right now?
Owain: I’m game
TheMadIsraeli: Xerath. How did it start and why?
Owain: It was actually the brainchild of Andy Phillips, the old Xerath guitarist. Myself and Michael Pitman were merely there to facilitate his ideas. His vision was to marry classical music to technical heavy metal. All Mike, Rich and I have done (as well as recruiting Chris) is understand and realise that goal and try our hardest to make it our own and achieve it. While Andy’s no longer in the band, I think we were in agreement in the first place about how the band should sound
TheMadIsraeli: And Andy was on “I” and you were on bass at the time. So in a sense you’ve kind of taken the helm of a band you were just assisting along in its goal originally. How does that feel?
Owain: I was credited as bass/guitar for “I”, so there are some songs that Andy or I would call our own. “Alterra” for instance was all Andy, “Right to Exist” was me, some we played about 50/50 guitar. We’re such a multi-instrumental band, it’s hard to put a finger on who’s responsible for what anymore. For example I think the first song we ever wrote together was me showing Andy how you could have different tiny Polymeters on drums over different limbs which ended up as “Intrenity”. Rich (vocals) wrote a LOT of riffs on “II”, like “Sworn to Sacrifice” (my favourite!), and Mike (drums) wrote probably the most technical “guitar-wise”, “The Call to Arms”.
(In this interview conducted by phone last month, NCS writer BadWolf caught up with Bob Meadows of Philadelphia’s A Life Once Lost, who have a new album in the works — the first since 2007′s Iron Gag. The band played the inaugural Metal Suckfest in New York City last November (reviewed by BadWolf in a two-part feature here and here), and the live photos accompanying this interview except for the one above were taken at that show for NCS by Nicholas Vechery.)
Bob Meadows is angry.
And why shouldn’t he be? As vocalist for A Life Once Lost, it’s part of his job description. More than that, his band has been jerked around within the industry on a near-continual basis for their entire career. It’s a common story, but a tragedy nonetheless. It’s been nearly five years since 2007’s Iron Gag album, and since then A Life Once Lost has gone through innumerable lineup changes.
But all that’s in the past. This year, the Philly bastards will release a new album on Season of Mist. They’ve already done some smaller gigs, as well as played the Metal Suckfest.
So why is Bob so angry? Maybe it’s got something to do with the toxic in-fighting that pulls our great art-form into infamy. It might also have something to do with the youngsters following in Bob’s footsteps. These Djent youngsters owe him some credit as well: A Life Once Lost mixed Meshuggah-like math grooves with melodic hardcore sensibility (before Hot Topic co-opted that sound) over a decade ago.
His views on these and other subjects, after the jump!
(Rev. Will’s interview series focusing on metal bloggers and metal print journalists continues today with Erik Thomas, one of the founders of Teeth of the Divine.)
Finding a part-time metal writer with a day job that freakin’ deals with the law is like fantasizing about the existence of a zealous Christian pastor who has an obsession with researching about witchcraft—it is just a combination that comes off as extremely unlikely and weird to many. Well, such a weird occurance does exist.
A law enforcer by day, and a metal writer by night, Erik Thomas is not only one of the founders of Teeth Of The Divine (one of the Internet’s leading metal e-zines), but an ex-contributor to the now-defunct Metal Maniacs magazine and a current writer for Hails & Horns magazine as well. He has a family to boot! It’s just so cool when Papa writes about metal, isn’t it?
From his Missouri dwelling, the fervent devourer of traditional Swedish death metal sheds some light on the workings of Teeth Of The Divine and some of the social stigmas of metal—a topic banally discussed on various metal and non-metal news media during the days of yore.
Also, he is one of the last few surviving robots from the same batch as Islander, only with much more than a head missing than our benign NCS editor. Both of them may be old, but check out their cool arm tattoos! A legacy of and testament to their robotic past (perhaps they are cyborgs now), these unique markers were originally meant as identifiers, something very much akin to a barcode. Luckily for them though, they are fashionable statements now that just scream “Hot geezer alert!”.
