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The Dutch scene has always been a rather
brutal one, with quite many good Death Metal bands through the times (who
can forget Pestilence ?). Today there aren't many left, but Severe Torture
is one of the clearly better ones, and did with their Earache debut
"Fall of the Despised", one of the best Death Metal albums in
2005. Quite impressive, so I had a chat with Seth, who could tell me some
more of the new album.
First off I guess it's a good start to praise your new album
"Fall of the
Despised" as one of the better brutal death metal albums of
2005. Really
good job there guys, especially after listening to a few other Dutch
DM
bands this fall that were far from that impressive. How do you see
yourself
now in the Dutch Death Metal scene from your creation and until
today ?
First off all, thank you for the kind words on
our album.
We built up a strong name in the Dutch metal scene but we don't
consider
ourselves a big band or something. We are very proud of all the
things we
did so far but we still look up to bands like Pestilence and
Gorefest. We
still feel like there's much more inside.
How do you currently find your other partners in crime in Holland,
do
you feel there is a good quality among the bands ?
Yes, I think there is. There's a lot of
diverse, good quality bands playing
in Holland. Like Disavowed, Putrified, Arsebreed, God Dethroned etc.
"Fall of the Despised" is your third studio album, do you
see it already
as your better work and a natural development of the bands sound ?
Yes, I think there's an obvious change on this
one. Not only in
song structures but also because we added an extra guitarist to the
band
(Marvin Vriesde). Marvin wrote the whole album together with us and
everything was a bit different from the start.
It's also the first time you have used the Excess Studios for the
recording of this album, and the sound has a very good punch in it.
Why did
you select to use this studio this time around ?
Marvin had some good experiences with Hans
Pieters from Excess with his
other band Blo-torch. We checked the studio out by mixing our Live
album
Bloodletting there. For what we wanted that was the best studio to
go to at
that time.
Something that I felt was very interesting with "Fall of the
Despised"
was the fact that some of the vocals reminds me a lot of Pestilence
glorious
works from the early 90s. And I notice that you also do a cover of
Pestilence on your live album. Am I wrong if I guess the band has
had a
certain impact on the band from before ?
We are all huge Pestilence fans. Dennis likes
old-school a lot including
Death, Obituary, Gorguts etc.. So this is his way of doing this kind
of
voice. He also wanted to show more diversity.
It's a quite cool artwork for the new album I must say, still very
different and with a lot less typical gore than your previous
releases. Why
did it turn out like this? Also, how did the albums title come along
?
We wanted the cd to look a bit more mature so
we chose this artwork. Thijs
came up with the title, we all liked it. We wanted a title that
would fit
the ''Misanthropic'' aspect of the band.
You also this year released a live album, something which not many
death
metal bands actually are able to do. Why, and do you in general
think live
albums is a necessity for a band as yours?
We had to release this, to fulfill our
contract with
Hammerheart/Karmageddon media. We did not want to release Fall of
the
Despised there.
You are now signed with Earache Records which surely is one of the
stronger forces within the extreme metal scene, all when it comes to
promotion until distribution. Must be great to be on a company which
can
ensure you the right handling, or what?
We are honoured to be on Earache, because off
all the great bands that are
and were on that label. They show a really big interest in the band.
You also changed from Karmageddon over to Earache for this album,
was it
due to the fact to move to a more established label?
Yes. We were always treated good by
Karmageddon but we wanted to have decent
distribution worldwide.
And this time around you'll also get your album released in the US
in
February. Still some time since the European version has been
released. How
do you feel about a own US version, and do you think that the fact
it is
already available in Europe will have some effect on the albums
impact over
there?
I think it doesn't really effect the albums
impact because promotion in the
us starts later too. I think a US version is quite common.
In the past there has also been a number of vinyls available from
the
band, will we ever see a vinyl version of "Fall of the
Despised"? Are the
guys in the band vinyl junkies, therefore all your previous vinyl
releases?
We've been talking about it again, I hope we
can do it again. Vinyls are
nice because of the big cover. I barely play them. My favourites are
picture
vinyls.
Over the years you've done quite much touring, but I guess now with
a
stronger backup from a label this will increase further, mostly I
guess in
territories you've never played before. What do you think of
touring? Any
plans, and most of all, will we ever see Severe Torture to do a gig
in
Norway?
We are doing a tour starting February 24th
with Krisiun and Hate. It will be
the first time for us in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia
and
Hungary. So we are really excited about it. It will be our first
tour as a
five-piece band. Cant wait to play..
What's your greatest memory from touring?
There's too many to mention. Just the fact of
being on tour with bands like
Cannibal Corpse and Macabre is great!
For the more underground bands the typical cycle for a band is to do
2-3 albums, tour a lot and then be buried six feet under, after the
members
have had their share of wear and tear. Do you also see this within
Severe
Torture, that the members develop over the years, and it gets harder
and
harder to make things go on?
I hope we can continue this for some time
cause we all are very dedicated to
it and we like this too much to do something else. If you play in a
band and
want to achieve something you have to work hard for it and make
choices.
2005 is coming to and end here now, what will you remember from the
year, both according to what Severe Torture has done, and also for
music in
general? Was there something from 2005 worth remembering in the
future?
Of course releasing our album together with
the Earache deal.
So what comes next in line now for Severe Torture? Touring, more
albums? Will 2006 be a real Severe Torture year?
As said before we'll do a European tour with
Krisiun and Hate from Feb 24th
to Mar 27th. In May we'll fly to the US to play the Maryland
Deathfest.
Kaltenbach open air in Austria and PartySan open air in Germany.
There will
be added more I hope. We will start writing new stuff of course. We
just
can't wait.
Thanx a lot for this interview!
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