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Gorefest are a death metal band from Holland who formed in the early 90s to release a string of well-received albums. They reformed in 2005 and now, their new album is due out. I had the opportunity to interview Gorefest founding member and guitarist Frank Harthoorn on the eve of the release of their new album “Rise To Ruin” on August 3rd 2007. This is what Frank had to say...
Tell us how the Gorefest re-union came about.
Ed got approached by a guy from Transmission Records about re-issuing some of the old stuff, and doing a DVD. He took it to the rest of us, and at one point we were quite close to signing all material over to Hans, and thus, for the last time, making some money off of those songs. We never even considered reforming until, for the sake of discussing some of the logistics of all of this, Boudewijn and JC met and patched things up between them. We kind of thought, hey, if we’re all on good terms again, why not try and do something we all enjoyed doing together, i.e. make some music? None of us were very sure if it made any sense until after the first couple of rehearsals. I mean, a month before all of this, ‘reforming Gorefest’ was out of the question. Something we all joked about once in a while, but never thought of actually doing.
Can you tell us what the band members were doing between the time Gorefest split up and your re-union?
Not that much really. JC had a little elektropop thing going on called Coldpop Culture, which had nothing to do with Metal whatsoever, but which he enjoyed a lot. Boudewijn studied classical guitar, and graduated on that as well. Ed did quite a bit of studio-work, and worked a lot with Arjen Lucassen, most notably on the Star One thing. Ed and Boudewijn also had/have a Thin Lizzy tribute band called Live & Dangerous, which was/is pretty excellent. I played in a band called The Hollow Men, which was a guitarbased band in the Husker Du/ Foo Fighters vein.
How has your experience been with Nuclear Blast so far?
Excellent. NB is run by people who actually LIKE Metal, and know how to deal with it. They've always been fair and open to us, and that's something in this day and age.
Did you ever consider another label?
No, not really. NB offered us a good deal right from the start. Since we’d been with them for quite a while in the 90’s, we knew they have their shit together, and are a decent bunch of guys who like their Metal, and know how to handle it. That’s basically all we want, so what are you gonna do? Tell them to wait in case someone else shows interest? If the shoe fits, wear it!
How was the touring for "La Muerte"?
We actually haven't done that much touring for La Muerte. We were supposed to go out there on 3 occasions, but all of them got cancelled for different reasons. On top of that, we had several smaller tours cancelled as well, trips to Turkey, Scandinavia, South America. Just a LOT of bad luck, I guess. We did get to play quite a few festivals in the summer of 2006, so at least some people got to see us.
The band became a lot heavier with "La Muerte." Was this a conscious decision?
Not really. I think we just realized the heavier stuff agrees with us better these days. It's what got us going in the first place, and it gets us to focus that much better on the songwriting. Which is pretty important to us.
When you started Gorefest what were your chief influences and is that still the driving influence behind your music?
I'd say bands like Autopsy, Death, Carcass and Bolt Thrower. I still love those bands to death, and once in a while you'll find yourself writing stuff that sounds quite a bit like them. But it's hardly a 'driving influence'. We mostly get inspired by the sound of heavy, downtuned guitars. Just plug in, and start writing riffs.
Today, a lot of bands incorporate many different sounds from the metal sub genres into their music while Gorefest was one of the first death metal bands to do so. Did you ever face any resistance from the older fans?
Yeah, sure. It never really bothered me though. If you don't like it, don't listen to it. I don't believe in catering to people's opinions of what you should sound like. If you start writing songs just to please your fans, you might as well pack it in, because you'll be writing shit. You write music to please yourself, and if other people happen to enjoy it as well, that's great, because that gives you the means to record and release your music. But that's about as far as it goes with us.
The new album is set for release on the 3rd of August. Can you tell us something about the recording process behind "Rise To Ruin?"
Yeah, well, basically we did what we always do. Set up your stuff, try and find some good sounds, and start recording your songs. Hardly groundbreaking processes, but it gets the job done.
This one for the guitar geeks. What sort of equipment do you use ? Your setup and guitar tunings that you use.
Both Boudewijn and me use Gibson Les Pauls. There's a Custom, a Classic, a couple of Standards, and a Flying V. All tuned down to the mighty B, of course. A wise man once said: 'Just tune down to B, and everything will fall into place". He was right. All of that stuff goes through an array of Marshalls and a Mesa Dual Rectifier. Quite a bit of mid in there. Thick sounds. Metal.
The lyrics seem to be taking on a more angry social/ political context while the name Gorefest brings to mind gore-grind or cannibal corpse type lyrics. Did the band ever consider a name change as you shifted styles and lyrical content?
I think we did once, for about five minutes, back in '92. We don't put any thought to it anymore, to us it's just a name under which we write, release and perform our songs. It's a catchy name, people aren't quick to forget it. That's good. If people think we can't use this name just because we don't write stuff they think we should, that shit just amuses us. Piss off and start your own band, you know?
Gorefest came back heavier than before and "Rise To Ruin" I think is your heaviest yet. How did that come about?
I guess I already told you that. It's what we started out with, what actually made us a band. We experimented with our sound quite a bit in the 90s, just because we were interested in that stuff. If you like music as much as we do, and you happen to be in a band with each other, you'll be wanting to try out certain things. I think we got most of the experiments out of our system, but still use a lot of the things we learned from them to kind of flesh out our songs.
Was there a change in your approach to the songwriting for the new album as compared to "La Muerte?"
Well, Eddie got a lot more songs in this time. It's the first time I haven't pitched in with some songs, and it's just been Ed and Boudewijn writing music. That gave this album a lot more focus, I think. I guess it's pretty obvious if you listen to both albums back to back. La Muerte was a bit all over the place, Rise To Ruin is more clear cut.
What are your touring plans to promote "Rise To Ruin?"
I think we'll be going out in September, finally. Like I said, we didn't do much touring for La Muerte, and it kind of feels like we'll be promoting two albums at once, so that'll be interesting. So much songs you want to play, but you don't want to bore people to death with two hour sets, you know?
Are there any new bands that you like?
Sure, there's loads. Not all of them Metal by any means, but if I stick to the genre, there's bands like Deathspell Omega, Swarrrm, God Among Insects, Torture Killer and Anaal Nathrakh that get me going. But I usually stick with the earlier bands. It comforts me, hahaha
What do you make of the whole metal-core trend?
None of my concern. If that's your thing, then more power to you.
Is Gorefest your full time job? Can you live off the music so to speak?
No. We did live off the band for a large part of the nineties, but in the end that was one of the reasons for us breaking up, in a way. It's kind of a paradox. When you start out, one of your main goals will be to be able to live off your music. When you eventually do, you realize you're just stuck in a different kind of job, which was something you wanted to avoid when you started out. Not all bands go through this, of course, there's plenty of examples where bands do live off their music to their full contentment. I think we got a bit jaded, and couldn't really appreciate the situation we were in, because we didn't appreciate each other any more. That has thankfully changed, even though we had to split up for 6 years first.
When you released "The Eindhoven Insanity" in 1994, you were one of the first death metal bands to do a live album. What was the idea behind it ?
Correction, we were the first Death Metal band to release a live album. Many people thought it was kind of silly, you know, releasing a live album after two studio albums. It was just one of those split second decisions. It was a really cool show, a definite landmark for us, we had the tapes, why not release them? Even if people wouldn't like it, we'd still have a nice reminder of that day, which for us was the main reason to release it in the first place.
Is there any plans for another live album?
I doubt that very much. For some reason, the warts 'n all approach worked on Eindhoven Insanity, basically because it was such a spontaneous thing to do. You know, 'awesome show, and oh yeah, here's the album we cut of it'. Usually though, live albums are little more then boring Best Of compilations, with not much added value to songs that sound better in their studio-incarnations anyway. We ARE thinking of a DVD though, that would be nice. There's some really well done DVDs out there, it'd be interesting to try and do one for ourselves.
Cliched question, but I'd like to use the Internet (p2p) to download and check out bands. I of course then buy the album if I like it and when I can. (For the record, I've bought over 500 cds in the past 3 years and most of this wouldn't have happened without p2p). I also spread the word (on the Internet and otherwise) about any new discoveries and those guys do the same. It's kind of a PR, like the underground tape trading from the 80s. I can understand when people are against it, If I could afford to take the risk and spend money and buy whatever I want to check out before listening to it, I would. But right now this is the way to go for a lot of us. What is your stand on this issue? Are we doing ok or are we ripping you guys off?
No, I don't think you're ripping us off. To me, the most important thing is to get our music heard. Like you say, it's not that different to tapetrading in the 80's, even though most of that was based on demo's, intended for that very thing. But I recorded a lot of LPs and CDs from my friends in those days as well, since you just don't have the money to buy everything, yet you do want to keep up with new bands. The record-companies had this slogan, 'Hometaping Is Killing Music'. It didn't, in fact it probably made a lot of bands much bigger then they could ever dream of.
It does, of course, mean quite a bit to the labels. Lesser sales means less income, which will obviously reflect on the studio budgets labels are willing to offer. Not necessarily a bad thing mind you, it just means a band has to work that little bit harder, prepare themselves better, and won't be able to sit around in studios doing drugs for months on end.
Now for the very cliched desert island question. if you were stranded on an uninhabited island but had access to a stereo (and electricity) what 5 CDs would you wish to have with you?
The very cliched answer to this would be 'well, that changes almost every day'. And it's true, it DOES change from day to day. Right now, I'd choose the following:
Thin Lizzy - Live & Dangerous
Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine (the early cut)
The Pine Box Boys - Stab
Carcass - Symphonies of Sickness
The Ennio Morricone Anthology: A Fistful of Film Music
If you could play guitar for any classic heavy metal/hard rock band from the 70s and 80s which one would you pick?
From the 70's: Most definitely Thin Lizzy. Flares 'n' all.
From the 80's: Probably Burton-era Metallica. Bell-bottoms 'n' all.
Finally, thanks for your time and please feel free to say anything you would like to the people who will be reading this.
Oh, you know, I just hope some of your readers will check out this band. Try our new one. If you like your Metal really heavy with tons of sexy groove, chances are big you might like us!
cheers,
Frank Harthoorn, Gorefest
Also read:
Gorefest - Erase
Gorefest - False
Gorefest - Mindloss
Gorefest - La Muerte
Gorefest - Rise To Ruin
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