How’s the tour going at the moment?
Cool man, we’ve done a few shows so far, really nice crowds, good atmospheres at the moment.
Has it been pretty standard or has anything unusual happened?
Yeah, pretty standard. I mean the other day we all went out to where I live in Somerset, I cooked a curry and we all drank Scrumpy and got arse-holed on 6% or 7% west country cider, man.
Briefly, how do you feel about the transition from Gorerotted to The Rotted now?
Personally in terms of the music I’m a million times happier with what we’re doing now. Gorerotted was great fun but it was a little limiting. It was idiot-proof really because it was easy to get across what we were about, obviously, death metal/grindcore crossover, where The Rotted has got more elements to it which some people might have a harder time with, some traditionalists don’t like you adding punk to your death metal, but we’re inspired by the bands we grew up on.
Such as?
Bands like Entombed, Napalm Death, Motörhead, GBH, Discharge, Satyricon, Emperor, black metal, death metal, punk basically.
You have a lot of black metal influences then?
Yeah, like one of the news songs ’Dawn of a New Error’, is just fucking Emperor-worship right at the end, same riff and bass changes.
Will you be playing Goreotted songs live ever again?
Well, we didn’t for awhile, we do now more so just because it’s been a few years and it’s just nice for some of the old fans, you know?
You’ve got quite a lot of English imagery and themes with songs like ‘Fear and Loathing in London Town’, your last album had a big dirty union jack on the front of it, what’s that about? Is it a punk thing or something else?
More than anything it’s about the last year or so I lived in London, it was getting to me and messing with my mental well being, basically.
What didn’t you like about it?
Just everything. Too crowded, too expensive. I was getting a lot of crap off the police just walking with my mates. And I just started having…weird fucking occurrences. I won’t elaborate too much but now me and my missus have moved to a quiet little village on the coast of west Somerset. It’s a lovely place to live. The most you have to contend with is a little bit of antisocial behaviour, there’s no stabbings or anything. Well, not many anyway.
You’ve got your Anarchogram EP pretty much out now on sale tonight, how do you feel about it?
Really pleased, man. Self-funded release, got the two new songs on there and a few covers.
Why did you decide to self-release it?
We wanted to do the new album in January next year, which meant there was going to be a long time between releases. We’ve got these two new songs and we thought by the time the next album comes out they’ll be too out of date so we thought let’s stick them on this EP and worship our fucking metal gods from when we were kids.
It’s four tracks out of the six covers, it’s got a Motörhead cover, Entombed cover, Sepultura cover and a Mayhem cover.
Which do you like the best?
I think the Motörhead song came out the best to be honest. The one I chose, Seputura’s ‘Propaganda’ I’m really pleased with too. I was pissed off with Nate (Gould, drums) when he chose Mayhem’s ‘Death-crush’. I’m a Mayhem fan but the song’s just out of time, badly structured in places. It’s from the early EP. It’s even before the bloke who shot himself was in the band, really rough recording. REALLY fucking rough.
With the new title Anarchogram and some of your songs there’s seems to be a political angle to it…
Yeah, I don’t see it as political at all, I see it more as a social thing. I’m not interested in politics whatsoever, I just say what I see. Everyone can see what’s going on in this country and the world in general, so I thought; “let’s fucking write about it”. If something pisses you off it gives you a more passionate delivery to what you're doing.
Anarchogram is a pentagram crossed with an anarchy symbol, partly it’s just to say; don’t put your faith in any fucking government; none of them are going to do fucking shit for you, just believe in yourself. It’s also an anarchy symbol from punk, pentagram’s from metal, put them together: The Rotted.
How do you feel about the current rather unusual new administration we’ve got in this country?
I voted Liberal because I wanted a change but I didn’t think this was going to happen, we’ll see how it plays out. They’re the ones that realistically had a chance of doing anything so a lot of people who had never voted before voted Liberal Democrat. I didn’t want the fucking Tories back in, I remember when they were last in, I lived through that. Labour have screwed things up as well, so time for a change.
The last time I saw you you were playing with Alestorm and Eden’s Curse, bit of a mixed line up…
It was cool, I mean we’ve played on various different bills with bands like Saxon, Napalm Death, Bolt Thrower; we’re metal heads. I guess our music is really death metal, but we’re metal and hard rock fans. We love anything from AC/DC to fucking Anaal Nathrakh, ZZ Top to Zyklon, it’s all good. So being on a mixed bill is a lot more interesting for us than playing with bands that all sound the same.
Then again of course, I don’t know that many bands that do what we do.
You mentioned a new album, could you tell me anything more about that?
At the moment the working title is Entering the Arena of the Unknown, it’s about balancing just before sliding completely over the edge. It’s the same sort of cynical take on things, slightly sarcastic sense of humour and quite negative too. Musically I’m fucking well pleased with what the guys are doing. Got some blast beats in it, a lot of skanky rock riffs, punk riffs, black metal riffs, death metal riffs… it’s going to be a fucking strong album.
Any newer or different aspects, no keyboards or anything?
No, no keyboards, we’re a four-piece now and it’s the same approach as on the first album. Tim’s a riff master you know? We don’t have a shredder in the band, I’d rather work with someone who writes great riffs. Don’t expect any self indulgent solos, just expect Discharge meets Entombed and fucking Napalm Death.
Do you have any further live dates lined up after this tour?
We’re doing a festival called Death Feast in Germany, which will be our main open-air festival appearance this summer. In Germany if they can’t tell exactly what you are they get a bit confused by it. There was this reviewer in Germany and he couldn’t decide whether we were hardcore, grind or a death metal band, and that was our whole review. He gave five out of ten because he couldn’t tell what we were and I just thought, does it matter?! I wouldn’t of called us hardcore, we’re hardcore influenced but we sit more part of the death metal scene to be honest, but we’ve never tried to fit in with anyone. We’re hoping to bring a band over from Israel called The Fading who were on tour with Evile recently and get out there, we’re speaking to another band from Scandinavia - gig swaps, that’s how we started out with Gorerotted in the late 90s swapping with other bands.
I’m aware Damnation Festival are announcing bands for November, do you know if you’ll be there or heard anything?
No, we haven’t. We know the guys, they put us on at the first ever Damnation, first ever Deathfest too and it’d be cool if we could get on there.
I love Dillinger Escape Plan, Anaal Nathrakh and the bands they’ve announced so it’d be just great if you guys were there.
Well get onto them man *laughs*.
