1. Hey Matty! First off let me just say how grateful I am that you're doing This interview with me for Repudilation and 420, I'm a huge fan of the Legendary Repudilation and the band was a huge inspiration to me to do this zine so I Really appreciate Roc p from one of New York 's newest promising bands hatred For all who hooked me up with you in the first place. ok enough of me babbling, so how did the band get started?
Repudilation was created by Brian Wishin (Drums) and myself (Guitar, Vocals). We started making music when we were 13 years old/ we we're playing music similar to Metallica and Slayer and as we kept playing we got into more extreme bands like Cannibal Corpse, Suffocation & Pyrexia. When we were about 15, we started a band called Mangled and then our music started to get heavier and that's what Repudilation evolved from. 420 came to light a few years later when Repudilation disbanded.

2. When your first arrived on the scene you made a big impact with your sound which has been copied but basically every band in the scene now so describe your sound in your own words and who inspired you to come up with it?
I think Repudilation had its own sound but I think the songs were influenced heavily by other Long Island Death Metal bands. Suffocation was our forefathers, Pyrexia and Internal Bleeding taught us as well and we wanted to do our own thing with similar intensity. Repudilation stood out because of the guttural vocal style. Our first demo had ultra low vocals. By the time we broke up we had 3 vocal ranges including the deep shit but we started switching it up a little bit.

3. The band has a lot of killer slams and breakdowns but why did you decide to go that route with your music instead of playing more like other fast paced death metal bands like suffocation? And who comes up with most of these slams and breakdowns?
Yes at the time Brian & Myself were all about writing groove riffs, that was where the focus was and the fast stuff wasn't written as intricate as it was for 420. Brian and I wrote 95% of that POI demo and Joe Reilly wrote the rest.

4. You were one of the earliest bands to use low gutturals so what made you do that instead of just the normal death metal vocals?
It was just the way it worked out, we liked all the deep vocals at the time but we didn't even realize how deep Rich's voice was till we hit the studio and heard it through the speakers. And we just built on that sound from there.

5. What do you think about all these bands that take your sound and try to make it their own? and what are your views on the current scene?
I think all bands in death metal borrow influence and sounds but it's a matter of who makes it stand out and memorable. People will name bands that they think we took our sound from but whatever; it is what you make of it. As far as the current scene I haven't really heard many new death metal bands that impress me. Hatred for All is good, 13 Bloodlines was good. I'm stuck in 1995 with the death metal bands I like. I still dig bands like, Mortal Decay, Cryptopsy, Torture Krypt, Dying Fetus, etc.

6. What kind of gears did you use for Repudilation? and who influenced your guitar playing style?
I was using Jackson and Ibanez Guitars, Ampeg Heads, BBE Processors and a Boss Noise Gate. I guess guitarists like Jeff Hanneman, Max Cavalera, Dimebag Darrel, all the bands that were heavy around 1990-94.

7. How has the current scene changed since the era Repudilation was around in? Do you listen to any newer NYDM bands?
On Long Island there aren't many new death metal bands. Hatred for all is keeping it true to the LI scene. 13 bloodlines who I think broke up already was a newer LI death band. The scene is mostly hard core orientated at the moment. Unfortunately there haven't been many big shows recently. I drove 3 hours to Philadelphia a few months ago to see that Dying Fetus, Necrophagist, Cannibal Corpse tour just because I haven't been to a show in a while.

8. Let's talk about 420 now, so after Repudilation split up you started 420 and the other members of Repudilation started Entorturement. So tell us what happened to you and the rest of the members and what is the main concept for the band and why did you choose the name 420?
420 was started by Chris Matiuk who was Repudilation's 2nd guitarist and I. We recruited George Torres from Dehumanized on drums and had some other rotating members. Brian Hobbie from IB and other bands played bass for a bit and we had a dude named Josh from a band called Evil-ution on vocals for a little while as well. 420 started out strong, we did a 2 song demo and wrote a bunch of songs, played about 10 shows but we stopped because we wanted to find a vocalist. At the time we recorded our 2 song demo I was doing the vocals but I wanted to be able to focus just on playing the guitar. We found Josh which worked out but he moved away and after that we experimented with different vocals. We wanted to try something different like mixing some non typical vocal styles to our heavy music. We tried out guys that screamed, another had Mike Patton style vocals, we even had 2 rappers try out too, lol. Ultimately we started a recording of 10 songs that we never finished that I was going to do vocals on. We chose 420 for a few reasons, Repud broke up April 19th and on April 20th we started 420. We were huge potheads at the time too so we felt that was fitting. We liked that name because it wasn't a typical death metal band name.

9. describe the band's sound in your own words for us.
Brutal new York death metal with more emphasis on speed and technicality rounded out by its slam riffs.

10. how does 420's sound differ from Repudilation?
There was a lot more going on guitar wise with 420. More notes and music theory were put into the writing process. All of it was written for 2 guitars with many harmonies and shit. We had some odd beats and even had 2 hand tap parts. Very technical compared to repud.