How is it here at Deathfest 2010?
It's just a really great atmosphere, everyone's really cool and friendly.
What were your first festivals attending and playing?
Sadly my first festival was Reading festival, I went and I saw System Of A Down and Metallica. I was a little scrawny 16-year-old stoner and I remember I thought: "Fuck me, I'm going to see Metallica!"and I was literally bleeding out of every orifice in the space of about 5 minutes. It was just after James Hetfield had come out of rehab, and the crowd were just unbelievable! The first festival we ever played was Infernal Damnation Festival in London, we played after Severed Heaven - and fuck me, never see that band in your life! They're an all girl band and the only reason they're getting booked is because they're girls. Actually, I chatted with the drummer and I thought afterwards "yeah, you're alright." But anyway, when we played I loved it. I loved the crowd response, and it was just great.
How did today compare atmosphere-wise to then?
Today...it was amazing! It was actually better, and you know London was good. London was wicked and we had a following...but in this bigger venue it was incredible! The sound, to be honest, could have been a little better. I mean, this is Leeds Union where dance music is constantly played. I can remember playing one of our songs and I wasn't doing a lot of blasting at the time but I remember looking at my snare drum just fucking bouncing about because of the bass underneath the stage overwhelming eveything! We've had one of the most amazing gigs, and I was really taken aback by it. Some of the songs we thought maybe wouldn't get a reaction - we were just blown away.
Do you have any more plans for future gigs?
Yeah, we're playing the Death Festival in the London Underworld, I think that's on June 28th. I'm really looking forward to that. Should be a good crowd coming, I know a lot of our fans that follow us - amazing, amazing guys. Really dedicated to the music, and that's why I love this kind of genre.
What exactly do you love about this genre?
What I look for in metal...I mean I listen to a lot of different kinds of music. But, I'm very specific in my death metal. I LOVE French death metal. You know, Gorod, Gojira...
OH! The new Gorod album?!?
OH. MY. GOD! FUCKING amazing! *There now proceeds several seconds of humming of riffs, expletives, and general nerdy behaviour* It's fucking groovy shit man. Tracks like 'Diverted Logic', fucking incredible! Here's something - *speaks very loudly into audio recorder* French fucking death metal bands: come to England NOW!
Gojira played a tour recently, I wasn't really a fan on record, but live...
*furiously nodding* Fucking unbelievable live! For me, in death metal terms, I get very pissed off with people who just blast a lot. Drumming to me, that's the core of the band. And you can tell by certain... a lot of death metal bands sound the same but you can have different vocal styles and genres etc. - it depends how pernickety you want to be really. But, I mean, it's just unbelievable that a band will just say: "Fuck it. Let's speed that up, and we'll just blast all the fucking way through it!" It's such a lazy way of writing songs. They'll be playing, and then suddenly cut out and go into the next section, and they've just thought: "how do we get from that bit to that bit?" and to just drop out, it's just such a lazy way to write music!
What would you say to someone who hasn't come to a festival like Deathfest and is maybe considering it?
Even if you're not into this kind of music that's this brutal, you know, the people - you're in the pit, you fall on the floor and you've got a thousand hands in your face and people will just pick you up. I never seen so much respect as in any other genre of music as in death metal, and metal in general. But it's almost like death metal fans are outcasts and there's a real sense of...
Fraternity?
Exactly! It's a close-knit group and everyone looks out for one another as well and I've never seen that in any other genre.
