Crawl Interview

I found on the internet, that your first collaboration project was Nothing Scared (Tom Danz, Ron Heemstra, Jason DeJardin and Tim Pantzlaff in its line-up). In the beginning of the 90-ies you had released two demos on cassettes and after that disbanded. Tell us, please, how did you meet each other and became the band?

Tom: A little about the pre-Nothing Scared days...Tim Pantzlaff and I started the band we were Holocaust with a guitarist named Jeff and I believe Jeremy Brown who later went on to Vacuum Scam ...we had a few drummers. Ron Heemstra was a friend from high school. He and I were in our first real band together called Outrage with Phil Doran from Rock and Roll Land on bass. Ron kept telling me about this great guitarist which was Jason DeJardin so Jeff was out and Jason was in then Nothing Sacred was born...we started off playing covers. Metallica, Slayer, Flotsam and Jetsam, and Prong. A few typos in there but you get the idea...

Jason: I met Ron through a mutual friend in a local mall when I was about 17. The band Ron was in with Tim and Tom was looking for a new guitarist and she knew that I played guitar. I made the trip to their rehearsal space and hacked through some songs with them and they asked me to join. It was awkward because the guy I was replacing showed up while we were playing!

DUSK interview

There is no band biography on your official internet resources. Can you tell us about the beginning of Dusk?

A product of Wisconsin's harsh winter climate is Dusk. Six months of overcast, sub-zero weather tends to bring out the feelings of desolate hopelessness. Dusk has chosen to channel these emotions into musical form. Mood, atmosphere and a sense of "groove" are combined into a mournful, aural experience.
Dusk was formed in January 1993 by guitarists Steven Gross and Tim Beyer. Fed up with the brutal rehash that was infecting the death metal genre, Steve and Tim set out to create something fresh. The line-up was completed by Shimron Heemstra(ex-Bleed) on drums and bassist/vocalist Steve Crane.
Live shows with bands such as Cannibal Corpse, Cynic, Morta Skuld, Morgue, Afterlife, Gutted, Broken Hope, Paralysis and Bleed have gone really well. The reaction has been fantastic from show goers and bands alike.

Dusk's self titled EP was recorded in December of 1993 with recording god Eric James. Co-produced by the band and Mr. James, they have embedded themselves into the soil of the underground. This EP shows the direction in which Dusk is headed.

Paul Gillis Interview (Drug Honkey, Morgue Supplier)

I found on the internet that your musical career has begun in the band called Innoculant. After the first year of existence, band`s name was changed to Crematorium and the first and the only demo «Baptism of the Oppressed» was released. This record is versatile: there are typical for death metal faster moments and, otherwise, there are heavy slow episodes, with sound pressure that reminds bands like Disembowelment and Winter. You had changed the name for the third time to Embodied and than disbanded. Can you tell us about these bands - how you became a member, in which direction they developed and why they broken up?

Hello Eugene, & thanks for having me for the interview. Yes, you read correctly. Innoculant was indeed the first band I was in, & that was in 1992. Really, we were only called Innoculant for a short time, before I pushed for the name change to Crematorium..
   The way it happened was - Guitarist Tom Tangalos was a friend for a few years, & he asked me if I wanted to join a new band he was starting called Innoculant. I joined, & after a few months of jamming we became Crematorium..  Yes, we did make the one demo called "Baptism of the Oppressed". Stylewise it touched on Death/Thrash/& Doom metal. We were, & still are interested in those styles along with many, many more.

I think it turned out pretty good for our first attempt at a legitimate recording, & we have seemed to spread it a little bit throughout the world, and it has gotten a decent response over the years.
  The reason for the name change to Embodied from Crematorium, was because there were a couple of key lineup changes.. Chris Mull(guitar) & Mike Mazylewski(bass) were replaced with Tom Leski(guitar), & Russ Powell(bass).
  At this point in time, we were all pretty young, I was about 20 years old and we just kinda were trying to get going with our musical careers, and basically everybody had different visions of what they wanted, & how to achieve it. So we parted ways.

Scythrawl (Ether, Unquintessence, Trails Of Anguish) Inteview (Part II)

Continuation of Scythrawl interview.
28.06.2016

Previous Ether album was released 8 years ago. Why it takes that much time to create a new record for this project? 

That is a good question.
First reason, I am not a musical composer by nature and for that reason, I think my methods are somewhat unorthodox. Ether is and will always be the voice of my profound nature and I let it manifest itself on its own free will. The need to write music started off as abstract melodies in my mind that wanted to get out. They were triggered by various things, dark and beautiful. Whenever I would feel these emotions, they would translate into melodies. These notes would keep playing in my mind for days and they have been following me for years.  Ether is my attempt to render all of these various pieces of primal expression into coherent music. It is my own obsessions laid bare. The only difference now is that I carry around a digital recorder and whenever I feel these bursts of emotion becoming music in my mind, I sing and record what I hear in my head.
Then there is the second reason.
I never really played guitar before Depraved, Repressed, Feelings and I don't intend to become good at it. Not enough free time nowadays and a lot more things to do than sit around for hours practicing some chords and agility. That being said, recording an entire album on guitar was the biggest challenge for me on this album. I used some softwares to help translate this abstract music in actual guitar tabs.
And the last challenge was to find the time to record, arrange and mix all of this in a way that the resulting process would approximate what I was hearing in my head all along.

That explains the gap between the two albums. I cannot rush this process and it is an excruciating and immense amount of time and dedication that can lead a person to madness. People need to understand that a regular band divides the work into many individuals. The main composer(s), each individual band members, a record engineer and a master engineer. All of these jobs are a full time job on their own.  When I played with Nefastüs Diès, I only needed to focus on my drumming, practicing to be able to play the parts I created live. Only that plus my normal life took all the time I had left. Now imagine yourself doing the work of all these people on your own, plus keeping your job and trying to have a social life. It needs a level of sacrifice and discipline similar to what monks must be enduring. It really did changed my perception of perseverance.

Scythrawl (Ether, Unquintessence, Trails Of Anguish) Inteview (Part I)

Hohlraum Archive interview with Scythrawl.
27.11.2011

Your first documented project is Trails of Anguish. It isn’t mentioned too often, so could you tell us about its history?

Trails of anguish took form somewhere in 1998. Our first recorded demo came out in December 1999. Trails was at that time the continuation of another band I was part of at that time: Through Somber sorrowfields.

To make a long story short, Through Somber Sorrowfields was formed back then with some random people I had met through my friends. We we’re all different and nobody  really knew what they wanted to play. It started as a Swedish death metal influenced project. The main composer liked In flames, dark tranquility and At the gates. I was a huge fan of At the gates back then so I decided to join in. I didn’t really enjoy the «happy » vibe on most songs so I took the role of writing lyrics and tried to give more depth to the music with concepts. It didn’t lead to anything we made some local gigs but it was obvious we didn’t had anything strong to bind us together. Easily put this was a « friend’s » band and I wanted something more serious.

Later on some conflicts emerged between me and the other band members. This hate was present and tangible in each rehearsal. I and the guitar player hated each other openly. Then one day they threw me out of the band, the bassist told me that I was too negative and that he felt I was dragging him down towards a bottomless pit, which I probably did at that time. Nevertheless I packed my things up and addressed my long hated enemy guitarist an opportunity to start a real band with a deeper meaning.

Even though we hated each other, we we’re linked musically, so he accepted. Trails of anguish was born on that day… The two last songs he wrote for Through somber sorrowfield we’re rehashed and modified and they became the scythe of engrieved melancholia and Laments of martyred innocence. These two songs marked the beginning and a milestone in my black metal evolution. I then knew what kind of music I really wanted to make.

Meatus (Me-at-us) Interview

Pieces of information, unstable price for the existing copies of their only LP (from 1$ to 150$), unusual music style and Wayne Knupp as one of the band members - because of these factors, Me-at-us became kind of a cult, but this cult was almost forgotten for a while. The Band`s name wasn`t widely circulated, they got no followers and they are still unique phenomenon of the US extreme music scene. This brief interview is a tribute for the enthusiasm of these great guys, who were interested to shine a light on some details of their band`s history.

It's hardly possible to find any info on your band over the internet. Please, tell us how it all began. 

Meatus was formed in August 1995.  I was in a death metal band with Wayne Knupp called Exhaulted Evil in 1994, and we played a few house parties.  A mutual friend came to one of these parties and brought Sean and Erik with him.  A few months later the band broke up, and Wayne started hanging out with Sean, Erik and Nelson who were trying to form a band.  They were originally wanted to do more of an industrial metal project but that changed after I started jamming with them.  Erik and I had more of a traditional metal background (Iron Maiden, Priest, Slayer, etc...)  Whereas Sean and Nelson were much more into more experimental underground bands.  Wayne was into everything but death metal was always number one.  With such a wide variety of musical tastes it was the perfect match to create a very unique band.

Urban Desolation Collective Interview

In 2003 TAOP started Urban Desolation Collective. Tell us more about it: as far as I know, despite the name, bands in UDC aren’t united by their love to the urban culture.

I can’t really remember what was going through our heads when we came up with the idea for UDC; I suppose in the absence of any sort of musical scene at the time - regionally or nationally – that we felt we could relate to, we decided to construct our own, creating an umbrella term for projects that we were involved in, including some of our friends. There wasn’t really a concrete way of stating who was part of the UDC and who wasn’t, the whole structure never really crystallised. Nowadays our situation has changed; the whole idea of the UDC isn’t relevant to us in the same way, it’s just a convenient way of being able to discuss a number of different projects in one space, like this interview!

You’re correct that the name UDC isn’t a matter of shared aesthetic or vision; the idea was to unite the different projects based on where the members came from, i.e. the weathered urban landscapes of Teesside and the North East of England. How that location related to each project is a matter for conjecture, though most it must be said we about offering a psychological escape or relief from the place.