AN NCS INTERVIEW: ANDY EFTICHIOU (MORTAL SIN)

 Interviews  1 Response »
Jul 012012
 

(In this post, we bring you an interview by Dane Prokofiev [formerly known as Rev. Will around these parts], and the subject is Andy Eftichiou, bassist and last remaining original member of Australia’s now-defunct Mortal Sin (pictured dead-center in the above photo). Dane would like to thank Liam Guy — editor of The Fallout magazine and drummer for Brisbane-based Malakyte — for his help with this interview.)

Australia’s now-defunct (again) Mortal Sin had always been plagued with line-up woes. Taking into account the more recent internal strife that ended the  band’s career once more, it was the fourth and seemingly the final time the band would split up for good; and it was just after the latest line-up had found a new guitarist in the form of the young Ryan Huthnance (second from the left above) and the new vocalist Dave Tinelt, too (far left above).

The Australian thrash metal veterans were well known for being labeled as the “Next Big Thing” in the early years of their career, thanks to their well-received debut full-length album, Mayhemic Destruction (released in 1986). It seemed set to be a most promising career, with highlights of their active days being their 1986 signing of an international album deal with Vertigo Records, the UK sub-label of the titanic Phonogram Records (to which Black Sabbath and Metallica were signed to during its early days)—which re-released Mayhemic Destruction worldwide in 1987; being tour support for Metallica on their “Damaged Justice” tour in Australia during 1989; and working with famed producer Randy Burns on their first EP, Face Of Despair (released in 1988).

By a stroke of luck, NO CLEAN SINGING managed to catch up with one of Mortal Sin’s founding members and long-time bassist, Andy Eftichiou, nearly three weeks before the band’s fourth and supposed final demise, which was announced toward the end of April 2012. We asked Andy about his flashy new hobby-cum-career, reminisced about the glorious days of early Mortal Sin, stared in awe at a recent photograph of Gary Holt wearing a Mortal Sin shirt, and more. Continue reading »

AN “INTERVIEW” WITH KEN SORCERON (ABIGAIL WILLIAMS)

 Interviews  10 Responses »
May 272012
 

We’re pretty high on Abigail Williams around here. NSC writer Andy Synn got a very early listen to their 2012 album Becoming and praised it in this review. It’s an ambitious album, crafted with care and intelligence, and I highly recommend it, too.

The band’s frontman, Ken Sorceron is an interesting dude. He marches to the beat of his own drummer and he’s smart, informative, and entertaining when he talks about his music and “the business” of metal in the current age. At some point earlier this year he set up an account on Formspring, which is a social network where people make themselves available to answer questions from the public and the answers are available for everyone to see.

Recently, Sorceron referred to it in a Facebook status as something he was starting to prefer as an alternative to interviews. So I had a few minutes to kill and went over there to read all the questions and answers. Sure enough, it is sort of like reading an interview. Some of the questions are lame, and some of the questions (and answers) presuppose more inside knowledge of the band than I have, but overall I thought it was a very interesting and informative read.

If more metal musicians started doing this, it would put blogger interviewers out of business. In one place, you could find every question worth asking (plus many not worth asking) and all the answers, frozen on one site for all to see. I think it’s a cool idea. In Sorceron’s case, it may save him the time of enduring repetitive interviews. In my case, it saves me the time of trying to conduct an interview — because I’m just going to post the whole thing right here after the jump, through the magic of multiple screen captures.

Is this lazy of me?  Well, fuck yes, of course it is.  “Lazy” is one of my middle names, and for good reason. Continue reading »

KEYBOARD VIDEO WARRIORS: ROBERT PASBANI AND FRANK GODLA

 Interviews  8 Responses »
May 032012
 

(Rev. Will continues with his Keyboard Warriors interview series, and today’s victims subjects are the creators and operators of Metal Injection.)

Before the well-known MetalSucks, there was and still is Metal Injection, a behemoth of a metal website that offers a cornucopia of metal-related content in a variety of formats. It’s like a virtual Swiss Army Knife of fixes for one’s metal cravings!

Metal Injection is more a Web TV site than a blog even though they do have an active blog section, and the main perpetrators behind this multimedia website are none other than Robert Pasbani and Frank Godla. Robert is generally the Pikachu of the site while Frank is generally the dude behind the scenes (literally)  holding the camera filming Robert on-site covering insanely cool events such as the annual Revolver Golden Gods Awards show. But one most definitely wonders: how did they get to where they are today?

From across the cyber-void, Robert and Frank thought-spoke into the neural transcriptor and discussed the origins and workings of Metal Injection at the speed of a quark on steroids. By the time you see this, they are already light-years ahead in their busy schedules working on the next big thing for their little baby.

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Rev. Will: Let’s start from the beginning. Was the name “Metal Injection” thought up like that to give off the feeling that metal music can be as addictive as drugs?

Robert Pasbani: That’s certainly part of it. I just tried to come up with a name that had the term “metal” in it and sounded cool, and including “Injection” evoked so much imagery that I thought it would be perfect.

Frank Godla: Well if you think about it, isn’t metal appreciation very much like a drug? Aren’t the metalheads you know absolutely hooked and passionate about it? Most people find metal through a gateway rock band, and before you know it,  you’ve moved on to way harder and faster stuff even your friends don’t understand. You don’t often meet metalheads who drop it like a bad habit either, it’s just something that sticks with you. I can tell you metal music is the most important thing in my life, and because it’s a 25-year-old habit that isn’t going away, I really don’t mind referring to myself as a metal junkie. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: TONY FORESTA (MUNICIPAL WASTE)

 Interviews  2 Responses »
Apr 252012
 

(Yesterday, we posted BadWolf’s review of the March 23 Toledo stop on GWAR’s headlining tour, which also featured Municipal Waste, whose new album The Fatal Feast-Waste in Space was released on April 10 by Nuclear Blast. Before the show, BadWolf caught up with MW’s frontman Tony Foresta and here’s their discussion.)

BW: So this is record number 5. What are your thoughts on Municipal Waste five records in?

Tony: I think we got better. I think the last record was good, there are some hits there, but on this one we definitely jump back up. Some people said it’s the best thing we’ve ever done. As good as our earlier Earache stuff. As long as it’s not shitty I’m stoked. We put more effort into this one than anything else we’ve ever done.

 

BW: There was a video of you guys in the studio with a piano.

Tony: Yeah, that was our buddy Lance, who records the vocals. He had that huge piano so we just recorded a video to confuse the shit out of people, make them think there’s a waste track with a piano.

 

BW: Is there?

Tony: No. Continue reading »

SHOW REPORT: LEGACY OF DISORDER, GHOUL, MUNICIPAL WASTE, GWAR – Mar 23, 2012

 Concert Reviews, Interviews  2 Responses »
Apr 242012
 

(BadWolf provides this report of a show at Headliner’s in Toledo, Ohio, on March 23, 2012, featuring Legacy of Disorder, Ghoul, Municipal Waste, an GWAR.  All photos were taken by Nicholas Vechery.)

Every large metal show in Toledo rolls through Headliners—bands like The Black Dahlia Murder or Between the Buried and Me play the small drive-friendly stage. Bands like GWAR, however, play the big stage, which looks like a whole lot of nothing, just a big concrete floor splaying out in front of a stage with a few industrial beams holding the roof up. In other words, spartan. The place practically begs to be coated in fake blood.

I’ve seen some of the best and worst shows of my life here: one side of the equation, I saw Lamb of God, Trivium, and Machine Head here in 2007 with a little-known band called Gojira opening for them; on the other hand I saw The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus here. (Don’t ask. It’s a shitty story. I punched a 12 year old boy.) I rank this show in the middle of the pack overall—two winners, one check, and one dud.

I arrived before Vechery, Vokillist, and d00shc00gr to interview Municipal Waste. I tried to interview GWAR and failed to penetrate a layer of bureaucracy—yes, such things exist in the world of metal. I accept this failure as an even trade for a rarer sight: a team GWAR staff meeting.

Opinions on the band aside, I have never seen such professionalism backstage. The band’s Tour Manager showed zero-tolerance for bullshit on the part of local staff and the band alike while displaying absolute reverence for the security team. Continue reading »

KEYBOARD WARRIORS: TEUFEL

 Interviews  14 Responses »
Apr 232012
 

 

(Rev. Will continues on his mission of interviewing every metal blogger and journalist in creation with an actual personality, though this one runs the risk of making all the others seem dull by comparison. As one of Rev’s previous subjects, I just want to say, thanks a fucking lot, dude, what did I ever see in you?)

Perhaps the most greatly misunderstood metal e-zine out there on the Internet is Teufel’s Tomb. Style-wise, it is like the metal equivalent of Tucker Max (that Texan lawyer-by-profession and self-proclaimed asshole who shot to infamy in 2006 with his debut ‘fratire’, “I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell”); disgustingly hilarious and exuding a personality protected by such a thick layer of concrete-coated skin that the two words “shame” and “remorse” do not exist in the mastermind’s music reviewing dictionary (obscene words are a dime a dozen though!).

Many people got and still are getting offended by the mastermind’s highly satirical and offensive writing style, which probably explains its low number of ‘Like’s’ on Facebook even though Teufel’s Tomb has been in existence since 1996, but that is actually the whole point! And from an objective point of  view, the dude and his cronies actually consistently cover many of the latest album releases on time, so labels and bands especially should not be complaining. You know what they say about any publicity being good publicity.

The mastermind in question is, obviously, also a self-proclaimed asshole called “Teufel”. On top of being an experienced web developer and graphic designer, Teufel once worked in the adult entertainment industry (or “smut biz” as he calls it), and his recollections are as funny as Tucker Max’s own wild escapades.

Who knows? If his interest in something as underground as extreme metal music didn’t exist in the first place, he might have gone down a different career path entirely and penned a book called “I Hope They Don’t Buttfuck In Hell” and shot to promiscuous notoriety! Continue reading »

SHOW REPORT AND INTERVIEW: GOATWHORE – LIVE AT RAMALAMA RECORDS, TOLEDO, OHIO 3/7/12

 Concert Reviews, Interviews  6 Responses »
Apr 112012
 

(BadWolf and friends attended a special performance by Goatwhore in Toledo on March 7. This is his review, plus his on-site interview of Ben Falgoust and Sammy Duet. All photos accompanying this post were taken for NCS by Nicholas Vechery.)

I’ve had the most rotten luck with local shows lately. That awesome Black Dahlia Murder/Skeletonwitch/Nile tour was supposed to come through my hometown, as was the Faceless/Dying Fetus/Goatwhore tour. Both of those were cancelled. In fairness, the Black Dahlia Murder decided to headline a huge local metalcore festival—the Jamboree—instead, but I’m no huge proponent of skinny-jean deathcore. Thank god (or satan or wotan or whatever) for Goatwhore, who decided to play Toledo anyway—for free.

Ramalama Records

Goatwhore picked the perfect venue: Toledo’s finest record store, Ramalama Records. I have a long history with the establishment; it’s fair to say I would not be a metalhead were it not for the owner, Rob, and his clerk, Nick. A story within a story:

I rode into the store on bicycle on a Saturday afternoon at the age of 15. I was dressed in black jeans and a Master of Puppets tee-shirt—Nick said I was the first cool-looking guy to enter the store all day, and as such if I bought a record the second would be half off. A sick deal, but I had no idea what to get, so I just pointed at my tee shirt and said “Stuff like this.”

Nick picked out Municipal Waste’s Hazardous Mutation record. “What’s that sound like?” Nick threw it on the stereo.

“The good old days,” he said. Twenty seconds into ‘Unleash the Bastards’, I said he had himself a deal.

For my second buy I took a gander at the new releases shelf, and a  record cover caught my eye—some really great art of a ship being sunk by a whale. The band was called Mastodon. The album, obviously, was Leviathan. Nick let me listen to “Blood and Thunder”, and that was the end of normalcy in my life. $20 or so later, I was in metal for life. Continue reading »

KEYBOARD WARRIORS: ANGRY METAL GUY & STEEL DRUHM

 Interviews  14 Responses »
Apr 052012
 

(Rev. Will returns to NCS with another installment in his Keyboard Warriors series. Today’s subjects are the creator of the Angry Metal Guy blog and his collaborator Steel Druhm.)

I. ANGRY METAL GUY IS THY WORD. THY WORD IS ANGRY METAL GUY.

II. THOU SHALT NOT BE HIPPIE IN THE PRESENCE OF ANGRY METAL GUY.

III. REMEMBER: TWELVE MUSCLES THEE USETH TO SMILE, ELEVEN MUSCLES THEE USETH TO FROWN.

IV. HONOR THY DIGNITY AND INTEGRITY.

V. THOU SHALT NOT KISS ASS.

VI. THOU SHALT NOT ADVERTISE.

VII. THOU SHALT NOT SOLICIT MATERIAL TO REVIEW, MATERIAL TO REVIEW SOLICIT THOU.

VIII. THOU SHALT INTERVIEW ONLY IF SUBJECT GIVES THEE A MUSICAL BONER.

IX. THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOUR’S WORLDWIDE SONG PREMIERE.

X. THOU SHALT NOT PARTAKE IN CELEBRITY GOSSIP.

XI. EMBRACE THY ELITIST SIDE AND HATH CYNICAL WORLDVIEW.

XII. MASTER THY HOLY PATH OF KEYBOARD WARRIOR. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: HEIDEVOLK

 Interviews  6 Responses »
Mar 292012
 

(You remember Trollfiend, don’t you? He used to hang around these parts more often before he started his own metal blog, ALSO, WOLVES. In February, he graciously (and glowingly) reviewed Batavi, the new album by Dutch folk/pagan metal band Heidevolk. The review is here. Subsequently, he conducted this e-mail interview with Heidevolk’s vocalist, Joris den Boghtdrincker. Wait for the insightful Q&A about growing Viking beards . . .)

 

Your vocal arrangement is pretty much unique. How did that come about? Was it chance or planned?

Me and Jesse, our previous singer, met up at a concert and after a few beers we came up with the idea of a choir-like vocal style for a metal band. It wasn’t long before we got in touch with other guys who wanted to start a folk metal band so we decided to join forces. We took our mics to the rehearsal room and started experimenting with combining our vocals. Ah yes, the good old days of 2002!

How many drinking horns do you own?

One. I used to have two but the other one got lost at Ragnarök festival in Germany. I wonder to this very day if it was because of an overzealous cleaner, or if it was stolen. It hasn’t popped up on E-bay so far. I’m still trying to come up with a fitting curse for the thief in case it was indeed stolen. Any suggestions? A drinking horn can cause a lot of nasty injuries and embarrassment when not handled properly, you know. That reminds me of the time our old guitar player Sebas mistook a blowing horn for a drinking horn. He only found out after he poured the beer in. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: BLOOD RED THRONE

 Interviews  4 Responses »
Mar 282012
 

EDITOR’S NOTE: In September 2011, Andy Synn reviewed Brutalitarian Regime, the most recent album from Norway’s Blood Red Throne and ultimately named it to his list of 2011’s greatest albums, summing it up in these words: “This is a brilliant and unflinchingly brutal record, start to finish, standing as a testament to the seemingly boundless talents and uncompromising nature of the Norwegian death metal war-machine.”

Andy recently had the chance to interview the whole band in the flesh during one of the UK stops in their European tour with Suffocation, and he delivered the interview in two formats for you, because we know some like to read and some like to watch: Above is a video of Andy’s interview, and then a transcript of it is after the jump.
Continue reading »

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