The following
interview is with Al, the vocalist of the Brutal Death Metal band 'Abhorrent
Castigation from Germany. The two members Thorso and Al formed the band in 2011
with Thorso on guitars and drum programming and Al on vocals. On February 29th
2012 they released the demo 'Enthralled by Abysmal Delusion' which consists of
four tracks, including a cover version of Cerebral Effusion's 'Into Morbid
Obesity'. It was released on several big sharing platforms for brutal music on
the internet and also on their facebook page. The demo was available for
purchase as a self release CD. In April 2012 the band signed to the US Brutal
Death Metal label 'New Standard Elite'.
John Yoedi : Hi Al, How are you
there ? First of all, thanks for agreeing to this interview and I hope you are
well there. Also thanks for your kind support to Busuk Webzine. My friend
Kieran James (Australia) and I, share for this blog. So how are things going in
the ABHORRENT CASTIGATION camp ?
AL : Things are going great. Working
on the recordings for our debut full-length ‘Throne of Existential
Abandonment’. Slowly making progress.
JY : Firstly…Would you like to tell
us a bit about What made you guys to get together to form ABHORRENT CASTIGATION?
AL : Thorso (guitars, song writing)
and I chatted a bit on lastfm about music at the end of 2011 and decided to
start a Brutal Death Metal project together. I’ve been doing vocals for a
couple of years back then, but the opportunity never came to make music. I’m
very glad to be able to be a part of Abhorrent Castigation now.
JY : In February 2012, the band
released demo album ‘Enthralled By Abysmal
AL : The overall reaction was very
positive. There have been a couple of reviews on blogs and internet sites and
people seem to dig the material. Certainly gave us a good amount of attention
in the scene for a start.
JY : And what was recording process
like and who was responsible for production and mastering ? Also how many
copies ?
AL : Thorso recorded the guitars and
programmed the drums at his place, then sent it to me and I went to the studio
of an old school friend of mine to record the vocals for it. I think Thorso
took the material to a sound engineer afterwards to work on the sound a bit,
too. We’ve pressed 100 copies of the demo by ourselves, because we think CD is
a cool format and we wanted a bunch. All sold out some time ago.
JY : Would you like to describe your
vocals style. What kind of vocals do you use ? And what bands influence for
your vocal style ?
AL
: My vocals are basically forced Death Metal growls, alternated by mouth form
and throat tightness for example to create the basically four singing stylesI
have. The basis for all of them is my forced growl. I can’t do ‘real’ guttural
vocals like James Shuster (Scatorgy) for example, who is a brilliant singer.
Wish I could incorporate that style that would kind of complete my spectrum.
But I’m really happy with my singing as it is.I
like this mixture of more classic Death Metal singing and the more low and more
guttural sounding vocals of a lot of BDM bands. Too many vocalists either do
badly executed inhale vocals or totally over the top guttural noises nowadays.
I’d like to hear a lot more vocalists kind of brutalizing the classic Death
Metal growl instead of not being intelligible at all. Vomitous has done that
very well on their excellent new EP ‘Empires of Great Enslavement’ too, which I
highly recommend (available at Permeated Records).
I
can’t really say I have a direct influence for my vocals. I think that’s the
wrong way to approach singing anyway. I think you have to build on what you got
and develop your own style really and not try too much to imitate other
vocalists. Of course you have to have an idea of where you want to go, but that
should only be a general sound, not so much a specific vocalist. I can say
which vocalists really impress and inspire me. A few examples are: AJ Magana
(Deprecated, ex-Disgorge, ex-Defeated Sanity), Fabio Marin (Internal
Suffering), Paolo Chiti (Putridity) and Eric Fiset (Nervous Impulse). All are
incredible singers and I can only hope to reach the kind of skill they have
some day.
JY : Also describe each of your
instruments sound and bands influence to come up with your current playing
style ?
AL : I think Thorso has a very
unique song writing style. Some influences certainly are Cerebral Effusion and
Disgorge. At least that’s what my unskilled vocalist ears hear on our demo
especially. The new album material has a lot of Disgorge in it and we got rid
of the very slow slamming completely. We incorporated a lot of cool mid-tempo
slam parts, which I really dig. Much better than the ultra slow stuff which has
so little drive and takes away so much energy in my opinion. And of course we
have tons of high speed riffing and drums on the new material, which I love.
JY :What kinds of things inspire you
musically and lyrically ? Would you say that there are any particular themes
that you like to talk about in your songs, and that it’s important to have some
sort of message to put forward in your music ?
AL
: Thorso’s influences are Disgorge,
Cerebral Effusion, Putridity, Gory Delivery and others.
I can only say what inspires me lyrically as I work
out the lyrics and concept of our music. A very important source of inspiration
are the talks and literature of the following: Christopher Hitchens, Friedrich
Nietzsche, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Pat Condell and
more. And music by: The Cinematic Orchestra, Swarms (electro/dubstep/ambient
from the UK), Behemoth, Nile and of course the album material itself. Behemoth
and Nile are particularly good musical inspiration to create epic and poetic
lyrics, which is the aim of Abhorrent Castigation.
A lot of people might find it silly to even write
decent lyrics for a BDM/DM band, especially if they’re coming from the more
slammy regions of the genre, but I don’t really care. A lot of Death Metal
bands write excellent and meaningful lyrics. And no, I don’t mean gore lyrics
by that. I accept gore lyrics as part of the Death Metal tradition, but I am
not interested in any of that. Defeated Sanity have put out excellent lyrics,
Disgorge, Down from the Wound, Dying Fetus of course, Hate Eternal. Tons of
bands.
For me, it’s absolutely crucial for Abhorrent
Castigation to have deep, poetic, meaningful lyrics that go especially against
all religions and the atrocities that arise out of ridiculous beliefs and
propagate a naturalistic transcendence (a track on the album), human solidarity
and a deeper understanding of the world we all inhabit.
I’m talking especially about the demo and album lyrics
now. Other themes are going to be dealt with in future material, too.
I’m not interested in shocking anybody, or being ultra
offensive for its own sake, not at all. But I think it is of absolute necessity
to destroy religions by all means human conversation has to offer, including
ridicule, argument and polemics. And I politely try to contribute to this
endeavor with our lyrics.
JY : As you told me before, you still working for the
new full length album ‘Throne Of Existential Abandonment’. And
besidesthat, two member band came and working for Abhorrent Castigation as Bass
and Drums. Would you like to tell us, what made they would be interest and
joined for this band ?
AL
: Yes, we hired two excellent
session musicians to support us on the album. That’s Lille Gruber (Defeated
Sanity) on drums and Anton Zhikharev (Fleshbomb, Back Door to Asylum) on bass.
Both outstanding musicians and the perfect choices for our difficult album
material.Uhm, I guess they listened to the material and liked it really. And we
offered a compensation for their efforts of course. Good musicians don’t run on
solar energy.
JY : In
april 2012, your band signed to the US Brutal Death Label ‘New Standard Elite /
NSE. As we know NSE have some sick roster
such as : Ossification, Laceration, Secreted Entity, Lumpur, Gore Infamous and
etc. How the deal came about ?
AL
: After the demo release we’ve
got some attention from labels that were interested in signing us. We’ve spread
download links of our demo around like hell and by chance Didi Spindler found
our stuff. He showed it to Daniel Osborn (Inherit Disease) who runs our label
New Standard Elite and Dan was interested in us. After we thought every option
through, we signed to NSE and it turned out to be a great choice for us. The
company on the label is brilliant and the work with Dan is totally relaxed. He
does a lot for us and this label is in my personal view the best BDM label out
there at this moment. Thanks to Didifor hooking us up with Dan!
JY : And how
far are you into the contract your signed to New Standard Elite ? Is it only for
one album release or ?
AL
: Yes, it’s for one album. I
personally don’t think we’re going anywhere but NSE afterwards, but that’s
something future Abhorrent Castigation will have to think about.
JY :Would
you like to tell us a bit about metal scene in Germany nowadays ? And any new comer
bands I should be checking out ?
AL
: I’m really not interested in
the metal scene as a whole anywhere. The only scene I’m interested in is the
BDM/DM scene. The German one isn’t really the best in my opinion. It has some
really good bands and a bunch of quite bad bands.
Slam is getting ridiculously popular here, but it
seems that a lot of people dig the style. I like it too, really, but I lean
definitely more to the blast side of BDM.
The best bands come from Italy in terms of BDM.
Absolutely unmatched in comparison to any other country. I literally don’t know
one bad BDM band from there. All are brilliant musicians, brilliant song-writers,
brilliant vocalists and most importantly they lean as much to blast and a more
classical DM approach to BDM as I do. Some brilliant German bands are: Defeated
Sanity, Suffocate Bastard, Resurrected, Corporectomy, Infecting the Swarm,
Tombthroat, Defloration and Pighead.
JY : I was read on facebook a few weeks ago, someone
from Indonesia stole your album artwork for their band t-shirt….that’s suck !!!
I hateaboutthis. Honestly …. here we
have a lots of artist who can made great artwork for their stuff but pity some
people still stole album artwork from another band. And we are apologies for
this. What do you think about this ?
AL
: It sucks, really. Of course it
crossed my mind, that that might just be the ignorance of a rich central
European to think that people in Indonesia have enough money to buy real
merchandise, or not to sell bootleg stuff. But I don’t think the circumstances
are that bad down there. I am all for digital sharing, but deliberately making
money off of other people’s work is something I can’t understand. But this
incident shows again how huge the demand there is to buy stuff from Death Metal
bands. The right answer to that definitely is, to acknowledge the demand and
fill it with own, real goods. Maybe we should search an Indonesian partner to
sell our stuff there directly.
JY
: Just a side question, What do you think about Busuk Webzine (www.busukwebzine666.blogspot.com)
? In Busuk Webzine, we are try to use two language : English Language and
Indonesian Language… and also try to update news everyday.
AL
: What you and a lot of people do
in their free time, like running blogs, doing reviews and propaganda for music
is absolutely crucial for the health of this BDM/DM scene.
There is no big money in this genre, so nobody but we
all together invest time and money into the flourishing of this scene. We write
our history and comment on developments in our music scene ourselves. All the
bloggers, site hosters, reviewers, writers, commenters, bands, music sharers,
labels, supporters, people who still buy merchandise and music. That’s so
important and I am very glad people like you ask bands like us to do interviews
for example. Thanks! (Ed...You're welcome man)
JY : Would
you like to tell us about what is gears do you use to records ?
AL
: I recorded my vocals with a Behringer
B1 condenser mic in the studio and will stick to that gear and setup because
the vocal recordings were excellent.
Thorso had the following gear on the demo: Guitar:
B.C. Rich ASM Pro, AMP: Marshall MG100DFX, Pedal: BOSS MT-2 Metal Zone, Mic:
Shure SM57, Software: Reaper.
JY : What is the next planning from Abhorrent
Castigation ? Anyshows/tours, writingsongs for
preparing new full length album or ?
AL
: The song writing for our debut
full-length ‘Throne of Existential Abandonment’ has long been completed. We
have all drum tracks recorded too. We are currently busy with getting bass and
guitars recorded and working on the lyrics and vocal patterns. We’re slow because
we don’t do simple music, but we’re getting there. After the album release
we’ll attend to searching a drummer and a bass player for a constant live line
up. Will be difficult and not something we bother thinking about right now. The
album release has full priority.
JY : On a
final note, Indonesian has a reputation as a country with a strong death metal
fan base. And lots of great bands have toured
to Indonesia. Did you know some death metal band from Indonesia ? And what do
you think about them ?
AL
: Of course. I have to admit,
that I don’t like a lot of Indonesian bands. My favorites are Absolute
Defiance, Injury Deepen and Asphyxiate. Lumpur and Gore Infamous on NSE are
pretty good, too.
JY : Well…many thanks for your time and support. Best
of luck with your band. Is there anything else you’d like
to add here ?
AL
: Thanks! Indeed there is. In the
name of Abhorrent Castigation I want to thank all people who have supported and
will support underground Brutal Death Metal and of course us. Y’all should
check out the best label on the planet: New Standard Elite and support it.
Thanks for giving me the chance to propagate my thoughts.
(Interviewed
by John Yoedi, June 02 2013)
If you want to know more about this killer band, you can visit their link here :
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