CEPHALIC CARNAGE
Breaking Barriers
By: Stacy Buchanan
Used with permission from DIGITALMETAL.com
Photo by Scott Kinkade
Death metal rarely looks outside of its natural boundaries for inspiration it seems. It is a relegated genre that rarely lifts the covers to peer outside and draw influence. Blastbeat upon blastbeat, same lyrical topics, double bass machinegun fire, etc we've all heard it... That's why Cephalic Carnage is like a breath of fresh...er, well blast of fresh death/grind air. With topics ranging from the Roman Empire and the 9/11 tragedy, to weed and aliens it's obvious there is a lot more going on here that your typical death metal/grind band. Of course we haven't even talked about the musical aspect featuring gut wrenching sub-bass drops, ultra high frequencies and experimentation that can only be the Mr. Bungle of the grindcore/grindcore world...
What exactly is the title Lucid Interval all about? That's kind of a unique name for a death/grind band to use as an album title.
Zach: Leonard came up with the title mainly, but it fits in with the scheme of our music too because I think it's our most straightforward, focused record we've done. It had a lot to do with the lyrics and the cover and everything ties together about that one moment of Zen clarity before all fucking hell breaks loose.
Leonard: It's that peacefulness between insanity.
John: The "interval" part of that, in the title, goes with all the songs, mankind's evolution through history, mistakes we've made, and continue to make...
Can you name some of the images on the cover? Because there's some stuff going on there that's hard to make out.
Zach: The printing came out kind of weird, but there are 180 images, which include everything the whole record is about lyric-wise. There's cross burnings, there's guns, aliens, the Roman empire, Christianity, Satanism, there's a lot of war, of course there's sex, crazy S & M, there's even a shot of a dog licking a girls ass in there... it's crazy 'cause the Japanese version, their printers must be twice as good because a lot of that stuff is a lot more accessible, you can really make it out a lot better. Its just life, in a nutshell. Everything that's happened and where we've come and evolution...
It's original for a band of your style because there are references about the 9/11 tragedy and current events and then you guys span history all the way back to the Roman Empire ("Anthro-emesis")...
Zach: It’s just perspective. It just has to do with everything.
Lyrically, you guys are covering lots of ground, but also there's probably even more stuff going on musically, even to the point where people might not even realize a lot of the experimentation that is going on.
Zach: We just have a wide variety of influences per member and as far as recording sessions, we made our practice place into a makeshift studio and we were renting a warehouse at the time so we set the drums up in that room and we just like to experiment. We had enough time to do it, we worked it out so we had time to do, so why not? [Just us] Throwing something out there and playing with it. A lot of stuff was canned because we went overboard and a lot of the stuff was also made more subtle because it took away from the actual music itself. It was made to enhance the music, so if you have a good stereo or something, there's not many death metal or grind CD's that take that element full on where they want to experiment and make it a better listening experience, a little more in depth.
Can you give some specific examples?
Zach: There are some high frequencies that are only perceivable to dog hearing. There's a riff in "Arsonist Savior" where we put so much sub over the heavy riff, that when you hear it loud on a system that can handle the frequency it just makes your stomach rumble. We just buried it in frequency and still tried to maintain some cleanliness to it.
Any particular favorites from the new album?
Zach: Lucid Interval turned out really good, the last song that we did, the improv thing at the very end we did, turned out really good, we had guest members play violin and mandolin and our friend Joe G. on sax, it was cool. As far as standouts, those are the ones. We wrote some of the songs on improv, some of the songs we really worked at and took the better part of a month to get down, and then there were songs that we wrote on the fly and kept them how they were, we didn't chop them up or play the instruments separately or anything like that. "Rebellion" and "Pseudo" those are really cool 'cause I like the technical aspect of them, there's a little bit more experimentation there.
One thing I'd like to make clear is that there is obviously so much more going on in Cephalic Carnage than just some stoners and weed, because you guys have a little reputation with marijuana...
Zach: Yea, we wanted to cut back on that a little bit because we didn't want it to seem gimmicky, but still, when we were reaching for our identity we latched onto that because that was the common practice that we were all into, smoking a lot of herb, so why not? So at first it was kind of a fun, laid back Cypress Hill kind of thing, then we got more serious and it developed into something else. I think at this point we want to separate it from being gimmicky.
John: It's more of a lifestyle thing for us; we don't want it to be a gimmick as far as the band is concerned. It's just the way that we live and the way that we are.
Leonard: But we will smoke weed, and like to smoke good weed. We think it should be legal; it's kind of our edge I guess.
Zach: It was just our attempt to try to find our own identity. We wanted to play brutal death metal and extreme music but we didn't want to tread the same water that bands like Cannibal Corpse and Carcass started, and now there's legions and thousands of bands in the underground that have nothing but what they've taken from those bands.
It used to seem that Cephalic Carnage was a synonym about weed, so that's good to lessen that image.
Zach: That's kind of the point, for us to stand on our own two feet. Live, Leonard will throw shout outs about it and kids are into it, except for a couple straightedge kids. Other kids will be like, "I'm totally not into that (weed) but I respect the band, and I stand for what you guys stand for."
John: Getting out and doing this stuff is what really brings out the inspiration, playing with a bunch of different bands, getting out and seeing a bunch of people hanging out and seeing friends that we never get to see.
This is a big year for Cephalic Carnage then, you have some bigger tours (Cannibal Corpse, Kreator), a bunch of releases, etc. is there anything else coming up for you?
Zach: We want to go to Europe right now and a couple things are in the works that could be really good for us. But, hell, we want to go to Australia and Japan and Brazil and I just want us to do our own headlining tours or continue to open for bands that we can gain accessibility with, kind of freeload off their fan base (laughs).
Can you talk a bit about the song "Anthro-Emesis"?
Leonard: The song used to be called “Human Vomitorium” and after a while I was like, "man, that's fucking cheesy," (laughs) so: "Anthro-emesis." Anthro is human and emesis means to purge.
Zach: "Anthro-emesis" is about the Roman Empire... Parents--or men or women--would demonstrate how to be a good lover or teach their children about love making by making love to them. Cousins and everyone would do this. That's why we make the comment of: "oh what's this world coming to? Where are we going?" Well, take a look at where we've been. It's about perspective.
Leonard: It's mainly used to show where society came from and where we're at and basically that it's not as bad as everyone makes it out to be.
What are you guys currently listening to?
Leonard: Alabama Thunderpussy, Iron Maiden, the new Immolation.
John: Sade.
What about some up and comers then that you're checking out?
Leonard: The Red Chord, The End, Serberus.
What's the deal with the bass drops and stuff?
Zach: There's frequency in all directions, there's frequency that's as high up as dog tones and stuff. We get off on that, we get off on experimenting. It's stuff all over, we get happy or something. We'll spend like a whole day in rehearsal. We'd get delay pedals, we'd get microphones, and we'd get really high... half of the record is really well maintained and practiced and chopped up and another half-or a little less than half-is improv stuff, on the spot.
CEPHALIC CARNAGE's Lucid Interval is available now from Relapse Records. Catch CEPHALIC on the Relapse "North American Contamination Tour" 2003!! - check www.Relapse.com for dates / info.
|
|
|