(“Fun” is a recurring word in Zoltar’s interview of Mike Borders, and “fun” is the operative word for what the interview will bring you, too. The focus is on Ravaged by the Yeti (Borders‘ band with Rogga Johansson and Jon Rudin), whose new album is being released today by Testimony Records, but it goes in other directions too. Enjoy!)
Few people do take a thirty-plus years leave of absence in death metal before going back at it in full swing. But Mike Borders ain’t no regular death metal musician either as he was part of one of MASSACRE’s earliest line-ups back in 1985. Yep, he played along Kam Lee, Bill Andrews, and future OBITUARY axeman Allen West before the latter was replaced by Rick Rozz, recording with them their first two proper demos before hanging up his bass to lead a ‘normal’ life.
That is until 2019 when Lee called him back, eventually becoming part of the team that would record and release the Resurgence album and a few subsequent EPs, including Mythos. Said team included Rogga Johansson from PAGANIZER and a zillion other bands with whom Borders would soon have a very special bond, leading to formation of RAVAGED BY THE YETI in 2023, right after his second and final exit from MASSACRE.
After a cool but nowhere-to-be-found debut on a rip-off label (Apex Predator) and a slight reshuffling of the line-up – gone are both WOMBBATH’s Jonny Pettersson and drummer Jon Skäre – RAVAGED BY THE YETI’s brand-new album Snowbound Horror on the far more reliable imprint Testimony Records is as dumb and fun as its title suggests and Borders doesn’t even try to pretend otherwise.
Mike, can we go back first of all to your final departure from MASSACRE two years ago?
I just couldn’t jump on a plane or play a bunch of shows in South America or something. A close member of my family had huge health issues and I needed to be at home. I didn’t want to be away if I had to get that call you know? Plus I’ve got my own business running and I’ll be sixty this year so… Besides, it stopped being fun. And I need the band I’m involved in to be fun. And RAVAGED BY THE YETI is very fun!
Well, for a start, with such a name, the whole thing doesn’t sound that serious does it?
Of course and that’s why I enjoy it so much. You see, I’m done playing music with guys who overthink too much and that’s definitively not happening that way with RAVAGED BY THE YETI. It did actually start as a joke, really: My little brother was at the hospital and since he had some time to kill, I brought him my ipad and gave him access to my amazon account so he could read you know? With a lot of time on his hands, he started digging and he told me he had discovered there was a whole literature dedicated to exophilia, that is, a sexual attraction for aliens or non-human being life forms, and one of the silliest title he picked up was ‘ravaged by the yeti’. It stuck with me and when I talked about it with Rogga, he spontaneously said ‘man, it’s so silly it would make a killer band’s name’, to which I replied, ‘let’s go then!’.
It’s such a silly idea, we have to keep it going. To not use the Yeti, people might think we’re taking this seriously, and I don’t want that to happen. The second something stops being fun, we stop. You know, I did an album two years ago with somebody, and it honestly sounded pretty good. It was a very thrashy album but it was the opposite of fun. The other guys were entrenched in their garage, practicing and unwilling to adapt to what’s going on right now. They didn’t have the mindset for that. They said we ought to take all these tracks to the most expensive studio in Florida and remix them and it still didn’t feel right. It simply sucked the fun out of the whole thing.
The first album Apex Predator was more grindcore-oriented, with shorter songs and way more blastbeats. What was the original idea you had for the band?
There was no real pre-conceived plan. The four of us – me, Rogga, our drummer Jon Skäre, and Jonny Pettersson – contributed and we all brought songs on the table for this one. As I’ve said, that first album was very spontaneous so we more or less went for something very immediate and in-your-face and that turned out to be more grindcore-inclined, but that’s it. On the new album, Rogga did all the songs and he on purpose went for something a bit groovier.
Apex Predator was released by METAL BASTARD in 2023, a shady label with quite a bad reputation (responsible, among other things, for a ‘fake’ DEFECATION album). How come?
Well, to be honest, I didn’t take care of that aspect of the band, the other guys did. I never even talked to METAL BASTARD, all I know is that the record is more or less available online but that’s about it. I wouldn’t mind seeing Apex Predator being officially released on vinyl at some point though, as I love that format.
On the new album Snowbound Horror each song is about the Yeti and feature in one way or another the words ‘ice’, ‘cold’, ‘snow’, and ‘beast’ right?
Indeed! The first album was about those guys going up the mountain and discovering the Yeti. On Snowbound Horror, we did songs about what the Yeti does to them and it ain’t pretty. This being said, all the songs on the third album aren’t all about it…
Wait, what do you mean the third album?
Oh yeah, the follow-up to Snowbound Horror is already recorded, mixed, and mastered. It’s a bit different as we decided to tune down, and as a result, the music is even uglier than usual. To the point which Rogga decided to switch back to the groovier style of Snowbound Horror on the fourth album, which should be completed before this summer.
Rogga lives in Sweden, your new drummer Jon Rudin is in the UK, and you are in Florida. Don’t you miss being part of a ‘real’ functioning band?
Not at all! I actually believe that this is why I enjoy this so much. We don’t spend hours tuning up in a rehearsal room, arguing over who does what or petty things like that. Nobody’s like, can you take that back and redo that part? I really don’t like your cymbal song, the cymbal thing you do in there. Your solos suck. It’s nothing like that. We all trust each other to this point. We know what we’re going to do.We each do our stuffs at home, using our own equipment, and send each other the result. Whatever sounds good sticks, as simple as that. I have a very good relationship with Jon and I believe we work really well as a rhythm section but I never ever met the guy, nor talked to him!
But don’t you miss the camaraderie?
I miss the early days yeah, when we were all teenagers and nothing else mattered but the music and hanging out. I miss the whole fanzine scene, when you would get that bad photocopy fanzine, with a picture you could barely make out, but it added to that mystique of heavy, underground metal. And you’d see the NASTY SAVAGE dudes, who were really good at making those pictures look like you almost couldn’t make it out, but you wanted to know more. Or those early TV interviews with David Vincent from MORBID ANGEL surrounded by skulls and candles. You’d see the pictures of the audience in those old photo magazines, the photocopies, and they looked so intense. There’s a graininess to them that you’re like, I got to go get the mosh pit. I got to do that. Yeah, I miss those days.
You were born in 1966 meaning that you were a full-blown heavy metal obsessed teenager by the time the whole satanic panic thing hit the US in the mid-’80s didn’t you?
The principal of my school actually called my mother to warn me that I was on a bad path back then for wearing a metal shirt to school. And of course, then you also said you’re mom and you felt bad about it. I said, mom, I promise I’m not worshipping the devil. I promise. My mother was a musician. She was a singer for a country band when I was still a little boy.
And she was always very supportive of this once I convinced her we weren’t, you know, killing animals and stuff in the woods at night. And our very first show, our very first MASSACRE show, was us and EXECUTIONER, which became OBITUARY and opening for us. We had tons of equipment for being young 18-year-old kids. But none of us could drive the truck that was big enough to move everything.So, our very first show, my mom drove the big box truck to the venue. Once she saw we were serious about it, she became very supportive. There was a time that Rick was living with us. Kam would stay a lot with us a lot and she put up with all that shit. My father would come to the shows where there would be girls half his age and he would help me walk up to them, like ‘hey, I’m with the band, how are you doing???’ (laughters).
Are you still in touch with Kam Lee?
Since I left the band for good, no. (he pauses) He’s a very odd little guy, and he can be very paranoid. It’s bad, and he just cannot… He’s always had trust issues. He had a rough childhood, he really did. He was homeless when we started playing together and it was obvious from the get-go that both him and Rick (Rozz, original MASSACRE guitar player)… Yeah, it was obvious that those guys can’t get along. We had two good rehearsals before we started playing together, and it instantly started a clash between those two.
And when we started off the band again with those two in 2019, they would spend a good half hour at the beginning of every practice complaining about Terry Butler. They wouldn’t stop! But then now Rick’s playing again with Butler in LEFT TO DIE or whatever it is… I don’t know how that happened, so I don’t care. Then I would see Terry, probably because we lived in the same town for a long time, and he’d complain about Kam… It was just a non-stop bitch-fest between everybody! But of course, early on, Rick and Kam would complain about Chuck (Schuldiner, off DEATH obviously) too. Chuck getting signed to COMBAT RECORDS drove them nuts and really pushed them over the edge. It made them more aggressive about getting things going, but that’s when it really started getting ugly between everybody. You just don’t get it, really.
Who convinced you to rejoin MASSACRE in 2019, thirty-three years (!) after you had initially left them?
Rick called me one night, it was midnight. I was like, ‘oh my god, this is Rick Rozz!’ He started talking to me, telling me about these offers to play shows and my only question was: is it going to be fun? If it’s not, I don’t need your shit. I don’t need to prove anything. Let’s have some fun, let’s do it for that. Honestly, when Rick and Mike (Mazzonetto, who was enlisted on drums for the 2019 reunion) quit the band, is when we started getting aggressive about getting signed again.
Besides RAVAGED BY THE YETI, I’m also working on another project right now but I can’t really tell you much about it, apart from the fact that it will be quite different, not as heavy. I listen to many different genres of music you know and this will be reflected in this new project. I can also reveal that few former MASSACRE members from way back might be part of it, you never know… But before you ask, no it won’t be Allen West nor our very first frontman Mike Brendt, who sang with us back in 1985. Both are in jail and the latter must have gotten a world record or something as I believe he’s been arrested on various occasions over a hundred times or something…
https://www.facebook.com/p/Ravaged-by-the-Yeti-100077263162210/
https://ravagedbytheyeti.bandcamp.com/album/snowbound-horror
https://www.facebook.com/testimonyrecords