1. Hey Zach! Thanks for granting me this interview! First of all give us a brief history of the band and the current line up!
Hey seiji and readers of Ingurgitated Decapitation!
Ok first off we have been around as a band since 1996/1997, We released three demos since then, and one of the demo ended up getting added to a split cd featuring another couple of sick bands "Corpse Carving" and "Twitch of The Death Nerve". Four years after we released it! Which we were shocked about, but at the same time happy to finally see it out there and being received really well. The line-up at the moment consists of just Tim and me. But were are looking for more members to join and hopefully wont have to wait too long! We are currently trying out a second guitarist, so let's hope things work out with that.
2. I'm guessing your main influences are disgorge, decrepit birth and enmity? stuff that's technical and has an ultra blasting brutal sound to it but bludgeon is also influenced by TX and NY styled slamming stuff like devourment, sect of execration. Repudilation and etc right? So describe the band's sound! And tell us your main influences in detail
Hell yeah!!! Disgorge, Decrepit Birth, and pretty much the ultra sick bands around are a major influence on us as musicians. As far as a writing style for us now and what we are currently writing, the Californian stuff is more what we do and then come in with a slam to break it up. We only write sick sounding slams though. We fucking hate all the happy sounding Hardcore influenced shit you get coming out these days. Suffocation/Repudilation/Devourment write the best slam riffs out there, so I guess were kind of a mixture between both styles and not one or the other. Our influences range from the bands already mentioned to others like Digested Flesh/Godless Truth/Vomit Remnants/Retch/Malthusia/Inherit Disease/Gorgasm/Artery Eruption/Amputated Genitals/Suffocation/Brodequin, and a lot of other acts too.
3. if I'm not mistaken you started bludgeon back in 1996 and after a few years disgorge and devourment showed up in the scene. did their appearance influence bludgeon to establish the current ultra guttural blasting sound you guys have now?
Totally bro and what started the big change for me was when I went to the legendary Ohio Deathfest's 99/00/01. Those were the best festivals I ever saw, and the line-ups were immense. It totally blew me away watching Disgorge with Matti and Devourment with the "Molesting" line-up. When I came back from there I was so inspired to create the sickest shit I possibly could, and to this day it is still having an impact on me. Anybody who was there knows like me they witnessed the brutalist shows on earth! I wish it would return to the old days!
4. your vocals are really diverse and sick as fuck gutturals dude, are there any vocalists that influence you? And what's the first band that you imitated gutturals from?
First and foremost Matti Way has been the greatest influences to me. What that guy did on on "Cranial Impalement" and "She Lay Gutted" was fucking genius! As for my gurgles that I do, what started me off doing them was Repudilation. I remember buying that demo when it came out and I literally shit a fucking brick when I heard it! Ha ha ha ha Also Rick Flemming from Embalmer, Dave Rotten from Avulsed/Christ Denied, and Frank Rini from Internal Bleeding.
5. i got to say the drum machine sounds awesome man. are there any bands that influence bludgeon as far as the drum machine is concerned? there's some cool bands out there now a days using them like inhuman dissiliency, corpse carving, vomitous and etc. are there any drum machine bands you love?
I really like this question Seiji for more than one reason! Ha ha ha! I think we could honestly say that we don't take influences from anybody else when it comes to the drum sound. We've been trying our hardest to make it sound like a real drummer using a triggered kit. You won't know what were talking about until the new album comes out though. The new material is way more advanced than the demo stuff, and the drum sound has improved ten fold. But thank you very much for the cool words man! Yeah I agree there are some really cool bands using the machine at the moment, the gods have to be Retch in my opinion! Those guys are really fucking sick! But other cool bands are the ones on the split cd we did of course! And Inhuman Dissiliency/Putrid Pile/Christ Denied etc. One thing I would like to say is I still feel people shy away from drum machine bands, and I really can't understand why!?! You tell me a shit band with a drum machine!?! You can't because these bands try there best all the fucking time to compete with the others! So the standard I think is a lot higher in comparison. There are tons of bands with drummers that sound shit and monotonous.
6. The split cd with corpse carving and twitch of the death nerve is cool! How did you hook up with those bands? And what releases will you have for the near future?
Thank you for saying that Seiji I really appreciate it bro! Everyone involved it the release of the split is 100% satisfied with the end result! It came out really well and was a great collaboration between everyone. I knew the guys in Twitch previously and we had already been pondering about releasing a split cd. I got talking to Tom Pryer from Corpse Carving and just asked him if he would be cool about going in on it, Luckily for us he agreed and submitted some demo material the band had lying around doing nothing. So that's how the split got started. Releases in the future are going to be our first full length album. Tim and I are recording it down as we speak and the majority of it is all done now. All that really needs to be done now is my vokills and about half a song on guitar, then were going to mix it down and see what we have and if were happy with it. Hopefully we will be and will get it mastered and out sometime in the near future. It's going to be entitled "Devoted To Lunacy" and will feature six new tracks and two demo songs. We have started writing new material too but nothing substantial to warrant a release.
7. What kind of gear do you use?
Aside from the Duracell drum kit we have I guess our artillery is pretty standard. Tim plays a B.C Rich Beast six string, through and Engl head and Peavy cab. In the studio he is using some other effects to create the sound. And I use Sennheiser mics and a Peavy feedback destroyer live incase of a shitty sound system. Apart from that it's all normal gear, and we want some endorsements! Ha ha
8. How's the UK scene? Any sick new guttural bands?
The scene in the UK has really picked up in the last few years, There aren't a lot of real guttural slam bands or anything but there are some pretty good Death Metal bands around and Black Metal if you like the kind of thing, here are a few off the top of head that I can remember. Fleshrot/ Trenchead/ Odium Incarnate/ Abgott/ Sarpanitum/ Nailed/ Necrocest/ Condemned/ Putrefy/ Beef Conspiracy/ Days of Perversion/ Lymphoma and I'm sure a lot of others that I haven't even heard.
9. What bands have you been into recently?
Of course the new Devourment cd has been getting spun a lot! Really sick cd!Been listening to Godless Truth/Deprecated/Digested Flesh/Defeated Sanity/Disgorge/Disconformity/ Amputated Genitals, that cd is fucking awesome! Vomit the Soul/Mindly Rotten/Wormeaten/Enmity and way too much stuff to write down bro! Lots of brutal stuff and brutal stuff only! Oh yeah and Decrepit Birth too! Just had my DB tattoo started on my forearm! So I have been listening to there awesome cd tons!
10. You shared the stage with vomit remnants and godless truth during their Europe tour. How was that show?
Those shows on that mini UK tour were unreal! We set them all up and self financed the whole thing through Independent Extreme, which is something me and a few bros have going here. It was such a cool time and we all had a laugh. Both Vomit Remnants and Godless Truth stayed in Tim's flat for the duration and it was party time for them for sure! I'm straight edge so I didn't indulge for obvious reasons but Kei from Vomit Remnants was having a drinking competition with Tim which ended up with them both snorting white rum off of his dining room table! Ha ha ha Just wanna say hello and what's up to all the guys on those shows from both bands and thanks a lot for wanting to do the tour! Let's do it again and soon!
11. Alex from inherited suffering records did the new band logo and it looks sick as fuck. Did you ask him to do it? And his label is one of the sickest labels out there so are you interested in releasing your stuff through his label at all?
Shit yeah the new logo is unreal! I didn't originally want to change the logo, but when I saw what he was doing with it I chipped in a few ideas and that is the end result, and it looks amazing! Way sicker now and a great new look for the forthcoming cd. Yeah I think Alex is interested in signing us, we havn't said yes or no to anything yet as we would like to get a promo of the new stuff out there first for everybody to hear, but he has the sort of label any band should want to sign too! He is a cool dude and his dedication to Brutal Death Metal is second to none!
12. I was wondering, do you guys have other projects besides bludgeon?
No neither of us do anything else apart from Bludgeon, but maybe in the future one of us will do something as well. This is enough for us both at the moment though. As the recording is taking up a lot of time as well as rehearsing and playing shows.
13. Tell us the bands plan for the future!
The immediate plans are just to get the album out there finally and to play lots of shows in support of it. Were trying out a new member also which is going to boost the live presence and sound a fair bit. We just want to move onto writing a lot of new material as we know how unrelenting the new shit is going to be. The poor old drum machine is going to fucking overload! Ha ha ha
Thanks Zach! Any comments you'd like to add like shout outs or plugs?
Thank you Seiji for the awesome interview! Check out the three way split we have called, "And Then There Were Three". Most brutal webstores have it now. Keep checking our website too for updates on our forthcoming album and new merchandise.
Keep it brutal.
www.bludgeon.cjb.net