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PURGATORY: interview with René Kögel
by dalia
"gryphon_spirit" di giacomo ___
organized by Mr. René Kögel and dalia di giacomo
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THERE IS ONLY ONE MOTTO: NO PRISONERS!
Hails
René! First
off thank you for this opportunity to interview a founding member of
Purgatory, the German cult concerning pure uncorrupted Death Metal. By the
way cult… Purgatory has just celebrated 16 years of activity,
precisely on January 31. What does it mean for you , after all, 16 years
of extreme Metal? Dippoldiswalde
again, isn’ it? Hailz Dalia and thank you fort he opportunity to hold an interview with you! Yes we’ve celebrated our 16-year-anniversary on this years’ 31th of January. This took place in the course of the Break The Silence IX together with ASPHYX, DARKENED NOCTURN SLAUGHTERCULT, MUCUPURULENT and THRUDVANGAR in Dippoldiswalde. The event was very well visited with 600-700 people and a great success for all parties concerned! We’ve also played some older songs with former bandmembers, which made the whole thing really special for us and represented 16 years of PURGATORY. Altogether it was a great retrospect on the history of the band, although it’s about time now to look forward again.
René,
could you imagine a life without your guitar? Well,
what’s that supposed to mean, a life without a guitar… music and the
band take a big part of my life. Though you’re – when you’re not
doing this professionally – pretty limited, because there are some other
things in life like our jobs etc, which also have a high priority. But it
surely wouldn’t work without, because I would miss too much. I’m too
much involved in metal, that I could just let it go and leave it behind.
My
first contact with metal was pretty early with bands like AC/DC,
SCORPIONS, KISS, ACCEPT and MOTÖRHEAD. In the course of time I was more
and more interested in harder stuff and finally got to Death Metal. 1987 I
started to play the guitar more or less intensely. But it lasted until
1989, when I had my first band with MUSICAL MASSACRE. Honestly, I actually
can’t tell you, why I came to the decision of taking the guitarist’s
position. It was just the urge to make music and all the other instruments
were probably already taken… ha,ha,ha. No, seriously: I came to playing
the guitar through a friend, who played in a local Thrash cover band
called HELION, which we supported back then. At that time you didn’t
have such possibilities in visiting concerts like it’s the case today.
It was also pretty difficult to get a hold of sound carriers of any kind
in the east of Germany before the unification of the country, but we
compensated that by active tape-trading. A hard but intensive time for the
scene! When
I saw Purgatory live, in the far 2002 (Wärchof-Luzern), I was impressed
both by the great technicality of the band and by the incredible authentic
force and pressure of the relentless sound put on the stage. Listening to
your latest albums and watching the live videos on youtube I don’t get
the impression that something in the band’s temperament has changed with
the time… Which are the most common comments and feed back you get from
the audience today? The
reactions about our concerts are mostly very positive and it’s of course
a privilege to hear, that we leave such an impression with our live
presence. We ourselves have always seen us primarily as a live band and it
has always been the philosophy of PURGATORY to play energetic and
intensive gigs. And we don’t care how many people are present, because
we will always give 100% and when the tank rolls, there is only one
motto: no prisoners! You
may believe it or not, but a picture vinyl of Purgatory, bought after the
show at Wärchof, still hangs on a wall at my home… how many vinyls from
Purgatory were released? Which
are the less known details about Purgatory’s discography? Vinyl
is and has always been a huge constituent of our history, because we’re
all big fans of the good ol’ vinyl. That’s why we’ll also try to
release all our releases in this form in the future. -
1993 LivePerversion tape -
1994 Psychopathia Sexualis Ep -
1995 Sadistic Spell Ep -
1996 Damage Done By Worms Cd/ PicLp -
1997 Split Ep with SEIRIM -
1997 Bestial Cd/ Lp -
2000 Blessed With Flames Of Hate Cd/ DigiCd/ Lp -
2003 Split Ep with POLYMORPH -
2004 Luciferianism Cd/ Lp/ DigiCd+Bonus DVD -
2008 Cultus Luciferi – The Splendour Of Chaos Cd/ Lp/ Digi Cd
Among
the many concerts you regularly deliver each year, the festivals/open
air’s take a large portion, for example Fuck The Commerce, Party_San,
Obscene Extreme, Zabbaduschder, Walpurgis Metal Days, just to name few of
them. I suppose Purgatory feel at ease in events like Festivals… As
I’ve already told you, we see ourselves as a live band and thus we’re
naturally most comfortable on stage. Of course it’s always something
special playing on several festivals, since there is a certain atmosphere
that pervades festivals and you can reach and get to know a lot of people.
Malta
2006. Why Malta? How is the scene there? Did you visit anything particular
in Malta extra-concert? Is it still possible
to order a couple of Malta
Shirts (they were limited,
isn’t it)? It
was something really special for us, when we got the first opportunity to
play a show in Malta in 2006. Most of all it was interesting to get to
know the domestic scene there. We have a lot of fans there and the scene
is actually very distinctive. There are rather many pretty good bands like
for instance THY LEGION, BEHEADED, SLIT, ABYSMAL TORMENT, ANGEL CRYPT and
MARTYRIUM to name a few. Because of the very positive feedback, which we
got in 2006, we gave another show in Malta in July 2008. In cooperation
with our label ANIMATE REC. we also created the limited Malta shirt you
mentioned for this event, especially to thank our fans there. And yes, we
still have a very few number of these left. After
many years of collaboration, Purgatory left
the label Perverted Taste changing to Animate Records (that has
released the band’s 2 latest albums “Luciferianism” and
“Cultus Luciferi - The Splendour Of Chaos”). Why
this change? We
had several reasons for our label change to ANIMATE RECORDS. There were
some changes on the premises of PERVERTED TASTE, which made a further
cooperation in the usual way not possible anymore. They were still
interested in us, but they also felt, that a change would be the best for
the band. And so we agreed on a break-up. But we still have their support
in various things. We’ve decided for ANIMATE RECORDS, because we already
knew the guys for a long time and Andy the label boss held the position of
the bass in our band at that time. We
have many readers in America: how could you invite an American metalhead
to listen to Purgatory’s music? Which are the main differences , in your
opinion, between Purgatory’s Pure Fuc*ing Deth Metal and the American
Death schools? I
think PURGATORY feature some influences of the American old school Death
Metal scene, whereas bands like IMMOLATION, INCANTATION, SADISTIC INTENT,
MALEVOLENT CREATION or VITAL REMAINS are to name here most of all. But
still we see ourselves more deeply rooted in European old school Death
Metal than in American Brutal Death. Since taste in music is of course
always differing everybody has to decide for themselves, which kind of
music he or she prefers. 2004:
Luciferianism, 2008 “Cultus Luciferi”…are maybe these
albums the very first 2 parts of a possible trilogy? It
could be possible that we will let those two albums follow another one
with a similar lyrical concept. But we will see, what is going to develop
in the future, since we’re already intent upon writing some new songs.
What we can say is that our next album will be by all means also very dark
and filled with hatred. “Cultus Luciferi” is thematically a seamless
continuation of “Luciferianism” and the idea of a trilogy does
actually sound pretty interesting to tell the truth. Although
I am more for Melodic expressions of Death Metals, I find these albums
brilliant. Brutal yet enjoyable and appealing, Rare things for bands who
make pure death as their flag. Which
is your key of success? We
are of course proud to get such a feedback on our records, but I can’t
tell you any reason for that. I suppose our fans appreciate our
long-lasting and honest work. We are always working hard on our songs and
we trust our gut feeling for that matter. We attach great importance to a
very dark feeling, which the songs should convey. I think, that nowadays a
lot of bands lack this old school character because of extremely high
technical ambitions. But basically the listener should rate our records
for himself. Which songs of Cultus Luciferi, once born, truly impressed their creator itself: Purgatory ? and why? Every
band member has probably his own faves on „Cultus Luciferi“, but seen
as a whole we are very pleased with the final result of the record. We
have to some extent worked differently on this album and put more emphasis
on details than on the preceeding ones during its developing process.
Finally a song will only land on the record, when every member of the band
is totally satisfied with it. In
which extension Purgatory mix fast palm muting with fast picking, if ever? The
degree and the types of several techniques are dependent of the particular
overall picture of every song, which it shall have at the end. The two
mentioned techniques take of course a huge part in the song writing
process, because PURGATORY stand for fast and brutal Death Metal. But the
atmosphere and the feeling is always above technical ambitions.
If
you yourself take a part in metal, then you automatically follow its
evolution independently from seeing it negatively or positively. The
German Death Metal scene e.g. has improved qualitatively in the last years
and can seriously compete internationally. Since we’re also supporting
several organizers and bands outside of our band, we get to know its’
development very closely (e.g. new bands in all of the differing genres of
metal) What
do you think about samples? It
depends on how the samples are used. The Polish HATE work really well with
it and use this method to create a cold and dark atmosphere. We’ve also
used some samples on “Cultus Luciferi”, which were created by an
artist called REIREA from Canada. How
is a typical Purgatory backstage? Huge
amounts of beer, blood, leather, spikes and lightly clothed women…
ha,ha,ha. No, we think that a backstage must be most of all a quiet place
for the respective band to absolutely concentrate on their following
concert. So it’s not really important how it looks as long as it’s
clean and dry. Our
last question is the Game: for the bands we interview for the first time
we propose the Game of the Tower. On the top of a very high tower 3 bands
wait for you. You can kick down 2 of them , saving only one. The
3 bands for you are DISTURBED
- MORBID ANGEL
- CANNIBAL
CORPSE MORBID
ANGEL would definitely be left on the tower, because “Altars of
Madness” was a groundbreaking album, which fundamentally coined the
Death Metal scene. |
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When
did you begin to play and why this choice? Which was your road to metal?
How
do you perceive the evolution of metal during these 16 years?
Niederrohrdorf
- Switzerland