Hey guys! What's up! Any new Gothiccrap rose up in Finland?
Hi there! I don't really (want to) know about any new Finnish Gothic bands. It would be great to get rid of the ones we have already, but I guess that it's impossible when these bands are selling quite well.
Let's talk about your new masterpiece "Murderworks". What's up, much more speed I think! Great! How comes?
Thanks a lot! We were making a serious musical direction selection after Drain and Still Psycho - Drain was quite heavy album and Still Psycho had almost all possible styles presented in it. I guess that we just wanted to do no compromises or so-called "easy" songs on this album, because those are usually breaking up the overall extremity. J was also leaving the band and we thought that we must be able to play the new songs live with one guitarist, which led us to leave out all solos and melodies, which was maybe the best decision we have ever done because we are playing Grind.
Every songtitle of the album includes only one word. Is there a spezial concept behind it? Shot songs, short titles? The song "Edge" reminds me a little but on older EDGE OF SANITY...
The main idea was to find out as simple description for each song as possible. It is also much easier to introduce the songs live with these short names and one important thing was to create more atmosphere into the album. We also included only "punch-lines" for each song in the inner sleeve instead of full lyrics to give the listeners some space for their own interpretation of the lyrics. I don't know about "Edge of Sanity" influences in "Edge". I think that there's more in common with Nasum and Dark Funeral.
There are many old school Sweden influences in the songs, e.g at "Revenge", I.Q." or the mentioned song "Edge". Do you still like the old records of GRAVE, ENTOMBED, DISMEMBER, ...?
I, Q and K like the old (and new) Swedish death-metal scene a lot. The songs are not meant to remind about anything else than themselves, but our influences are always heard from our music in some way. We are also carrying some influences from our own death-metal past with many different bands.
There are also three video sequences on the CD. Where did you recorded these tracks. There is mentioned a club named "Club 25". Was that the club where you played?
Club 25 is the only music-club in Vaasa (our home-town). That's the place where we have done one of our first live shows and it's always cool to return to play in there. Club 25 is also an excellent place for video-shooting, because it is in 2 levels and there's a "balcony" which comes to the both sides of the stage.
Hey, the drumming of K is very cool! I think, I have never heard such a drumming on any other release till now. Cool blasts, but every time very technical and... not the normal way.
K has always been an awesome drummer, but it seems that he's getting better all the time. We also had possibility to create a suitable drum-sounds for him this time when we have 2,5 weeks of studio time instead of just couple of days. And yes, he is also inventing new ways of playing grind and he is also really creative when we are writing the songs which creates quite much variety into the songs.
Since 2000 you are on Deathvomit Records. Was the work with Repulse Records not satisfying or why did you split up with them? I've heard that Repulse dropped some bands, which had a not so good selling rate, e.g. ANASARCA.
Repulse was a good label to start with, but they did not have enough resources to pay us sufficient studio-times and to support our touring. Repulse said officially that they dropped us due to our bad sales, but the fact was that we left Repulse to join a label, which can help us to get us further. We are still good friends with Dave Rotten and the label-changing was also done in quite good will except for the incorrect public announcement from Repulse.
Necropolis/Deathvomit is now distributed in Europe by Century Media, but the "Drain" wasn't distributed very good in Europe I think?! What do you think? How were the reactions, sellings of the MCD?
That's also one big reason we wanted to hook-up with Necropolis/Deathvomit: they are using all possible means to get us further and the distribution, marketing and manufacturing deal with Century Media is giving us possibility to get better visibility and to reach more grind-fans than ever before. Reactions about Still Psycho were really good and the sales figures are around 5000 copies.
"Under Pressure" was also released on vinyl. Is there a chance to see a vinyl from "Murderworks"?
We have done almost all of our releases in vinyl and it's 99% sure to get "Murderworks" on vinyl in near future. I think it's important to support all possible formats because some people like vinyl more than CD and in some countries CD's are not so common yet.
Now, let's come to the older days of ROTTEN SOUND. Last year you released a split CD on MCR Records. I've never heard about this CD. Please tell me something about the other band/s, the label and your tracks!
Unholy Grave (JPN) has wanted to make a split-EP with us for many years and we finally got a change to record three tracks for it. We recorded one new song and 2 cover songs: "Dead Shall Rise" Terrorizer and "Nankin' Atrocity" from Unholy Grave. Unholy Grave recorded two songs from and three new songs. I guess that this release is already sold-out.
In your info stands, that the "Psychotic Veteranian" was released as a MCD, is it true, course I have it as 7" vinyl?
Psychotic Veterinarian was originally released as a Mini-CD, but S.O.A. wanted to release it also as a vinyl because there was a lot of requests from the hc, crust, punk and grind scenes to do that.
Let's talk about the beginning of ROTTEN SOUND. I have to say I know nothing... There was a 7" named "Sick Bastards", but demos... Come on!
We started off as a project in the end of July of 1993 and "Sick Bastard" was recorded just two weeks after that. It was supposed to be our first promo-tape to get a recording deal, but Genet Records wanted to release that immediately as a 7" vinyl. Then we did also a 2nd demo with the original line-up (K was not in the band yet at that time), but that was never released because we were not satisfied about all the songs and sounds. We used 3 tracks from that demo to Psychotic Veterinarian, which was our 2nd official release. Psychotic Veterinarian was also supposed to be a demo, but also this time S.O.A. wanted to release it right away as MCD.
So, why did you change your name back in the early nineties from VOMITURITION to ROTTEN SOUND. So, there were three members left.
Vomiturition was a different band and we actually were playing with Vomiturition until the end of 1996. Rotten Sound consisted originally four members from Vomiturition and when the old drummer left, K replaced him in the both bands (in year 1994).
Do you still like the "A Leftover" and the "Headtales" releases? I think that the first named CD is very cool!
Vomituritions "A Leftover" was an OK release. We could have played it much better and it should have been mastered somewhere. "Head Tales" has propably the ugliest CD-cover of the history of Death Metal and the playing was done really badly on that one. People were just not that motivated to play in Vomiturition. But as said, they were done with a different band and with really different music style.
What do you think about the Finish(ed) scene? I think there are not many cool Bands left from the early days and not many good new bands. I have to say, that I only like SLUGATHOR next to you from the actual Finish scene. Any other cool bands left?
There's at least Deep Red, Emulgator, cause for effect (not that grind, but really fast and furious), Irritate and couple of other bands which are playing grind. Finnish musicians seem to be much more into playing more melodic and main-stream stuff than something like Rotten Sound. I guess that it's quite hard to get gigs in Finland as a starting extreme-band, because there are only few places in the whole country where you can play such music. It's also really expensive to travel from here to some another country to play (besides Russia) because we are practically surrounded by sea. That leads into creating music that is appealing to as many as possible to get big audiences over here. But Finnish crust-hc scene has always been quite vital, which gave us good possibilities for live shows when we started.
Interviews: Leif
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