Archive for December, 2009
Interview With Loathe
We got Mark, the bassist of death metallers, Loathe to spit it all out in a one on one interview with Scream. If heavy is your thing, you should check these monsters of metal from Malta out today!
Interview By Scream
Photography By Steve Giordano Imbroll and John Gauci
Head
bang Today: Welcome to HeadbangToday.com! As always, we honour the bands and its members who are willing to do an interview with us! So let’s cut to the chase! For those that a re unfamiliar with Loathe, tell us briefly about the band.
Mark: Hey there, thanks for the offer! Loathe has been around for almost ten years, in various forms. The band is one of the oldest and highest achieving in the country of Malta. What we’ve done of importance in the last 3 years is tour the UK 4 times over, record an EP, record a full length album and headline several great gigs locally.
Headbang Today: Your full length debut album is said to be set for release any time soon… What can you update us with on the progress of your album?
Mark: At present we’re ironing out some minor issues with the label that will carry this album, but after that it’s pretty much the time needed to ship masters out and duplication and the album will be in hand.
Headbang Today: Now you’ve done quite a few gigs in the past couple of months while touring the country. How did that go?
Mark: Correct. That was our fourth tour of the UK in 3 years. So far, our tours get better by time. Crowd response is always stronger, more people show up to the shows, and people seem to like our stuff more every time. Plus, we now have pockets of hardcore fans in the locales we’ve played, so it’s great to have them come back every time and bring their friends!
Headbang Today: You’re doing the “We Have Unfinished Business” show where you “versus” the band Slit this coming weekend. But by the time this interview gets published, you would’ve played that gig already… It also seems to be the final show for your tour… What will you guys be up to after that show?
Mark: Yes, we do have that show, although we considered the tour closed with Friday the 13th’s gig with BNI. However, this ought to be a great show, we have not played with Slit in years, and they are also a vastly experienced band. After this show we’ll get back to the practice room, really hammer out any issues before printing the CD and continue where we left off before the tour when it comes to new material.
Headbang Today: Speaking of new material, I’ve given your tracks a listen and I am very impressed by the solid composition and awesome variety in the vocal work. A perfect blend of thrash, death and hardcore metal! Do you write your songs having these genres in mind or does it come naturally by just jamming together?
Mark: Thanks for the compliments man, we’re very happy with how it sounds ourselves! Well, you mentioned the three basic genres of metal the band is influenced by. Everyone brings some preference of their own to their table. Most of the riffs are written by Kurt, who of course writes what he likes, but then during practising everyone puts their ‘twist’ on to it, if you please.
Loathe Bassist Mark
Headbang Today: And your personal influences would be?
Mark: well, my overarchingly favourite band forever would be Slayer, but in the past few years I’ve gravitated towards bands such as The Black Dahlia Murder, Psycroptic, Necrophagist, Bloodbath and other brutal metal acts. Of course I’m also a big fan of other bands like Lamb of God, Devil Driver, Gojira and so on.
Headbang Today: Aah… the latter of the bands such as Devil Driver and Lamb of God deserve a spot in our up and coming “Top 10 metal albums of 2009″… Any other new releases this year that blew you away?
Mark: definitely TBDM’s Deflorate, Behemoth’s Evangelion, and an odd choice for me personally, Rammstein’s Liebe ist fur Alle Da.
Headbang Today: Rammstein was mentioned to us while compiling the list, but I very much doubt that it would make the list… Unless of course you release your album before we publish the list to take Rammstein’s spot!
Mark: Not that the possibility doesn’t tempt me, but I doubt we can humanly move that fast!
Headbang Today: So tell us about the best and worst gigs (also possibly the most bizarre) gigs that you’ve experienced during your decade of gigging.
Mark: To be fair, I can’t be the judge of all the gigs, because I joined Loathe around 4 years ago. But in these four years, my worst gig has to be some night here in Malta, I was feverish and the sound on stage was crap. Needless to say, my playing was sloppy. I couldn’t choose a best gig, because we’ve had so many, but I rank our appearance with Sabbat in Bradford in 2007, the launch party for our EP and every time we’ve played in Birmingham very very highly.
As for most bizarre, well, that may well be Wales, on this last tour. The Welsh are mad. We know that now. Suffice to say that my travelling tip is: “If offered to crash in the pub where you played for the night, sleep in the van”
INTERVIEW CONTINUES HERE: http://www.headbangtoday.com/v2/2009/12/loathe/
Full Marks – Soul Sanctuary’s Afterlife REVIEWED
Review Of Soul Sanctuary’s Debut Album “Afterlife”
Soul Sanctuary is a six piece alternative metal band from England and we’ve been keeping our eyes on them since the initial interview that they had with HeadbangToday.com! Afterlife is Soul Sanctuary’s debut album and was produced, engineered, written, sung (screamed), mixed and mastered by one of their lead vocalists Luke Gibson. Heavily talented to bring us quality heavy metal!
Their demo tracks grew onto me like a parasite, tapping into the host’s brain, convincing me that this will be an album worthy of purchase. So there I had it. I bought “Afterlife” and waited in great inticipation for its arrival. Upon receiving it, I popped it in and the only thing that kept coming to mind while listening to the entire album twice in a row was “REVIEW” – This album deserves and demands a review that will contain my thoughts and feelings that streams throughout my mind as the tracks play along.
The album explodes with the very first track after which the album is named (or vice versa) “Afterlife“. The intro of “Afterlife” itself already gave me a sense of what I can expect from the rest of the tracks with it’s brain-vibrating screaming, fast paced drumming and ground-breaking riffs. The song well put together with very nice polish that will ensure you the overall quality of the album. It has a beautiful guitar solo backed up with heavy riffing and contains two very apocolyptic-sounding breakdowns near the end which eventually leads to a nice steady decline of solid screaming which halts after the song’s trademark drumbeat.
Game Of Conviction is the second track on their album which reminds me very much of Sevendust with it’s coarse backing vocals and short-bursts of combined musical excellence. It contains yet another beautiful solo which is carried by fast metal drumbeats and kick-ass riffing. The melodic vocals and screaming compliments eachother well in this song which is something not many bands in my experience can get the hang of with two vocalists.
Afterlife’s third track is called Destiny. A new song that I haven’t heard from Soul Sanctuary before while I was enjoying all their demo tracks prior to the album’s release. It’s chorusses finnish themselves off with decent fast and well composed riffs. Another outstanding solo has managed to embed itself into this song. Their guitarists Ed Stevens and Anthony Montague have really done amazing work with their talents and have put it to a good use. The melodic bass notes serves as a perfect backbone to the song.
Killing Time, the album’s fourth track kicks off with heavy growling and excells towards slow heavy riffs with the drummer crashing his symbols timeously with the heavy riffing. A song that also proves that whispers and screams can be equally powerful. A brilliant guitar solo electrifies you towards heavy growling followed by a very fast and funky, funk, drum & bass-like bass slapping solo. This song is the shit.
Track no. 5 is Packaged To Sell. It’s been a personal all-time favourite since I heard the demo version. Some have said that the screaming vocals sound a lot like that of Slipknot’s Corey Taylor… I’ll have to disagree slightly, but I have to give it to Soul Sanctuary. Their screams/growls are indeed pretty awesome! Luke Gibson does an excellent job in his vocal work. I like the way the two vocalists have come up with using melodic singing combined with screaming and packaged it into a pretty heavy album – to sell.
The sixth track called Reflections starts off with a chilled accoustic riff and decent melodic singing from both vocalists. The song then eventually progresses into nice heavy alternative rock and rocks on until it declines back into its accoustic state. A perfect blend. I can see this type of song being played on national radio here in South Africa. It’s probably one of Soul Sanctuary’s ’safest’ songs to be commercialised and released for local radio airtime.
Number 7 – Scars Of You, was added to the album for probably no other reason but to show off each band members’ talent in their own respective department! Eardrum-tampering screams, decent melodic singing, another amazing solo, cool bass tunes with solid riffs and tight drumming is rarely heard of in one song!
REVIEW CONTINUES HERE: http://www.headbangtoday.com/articles/?p=75
Scream