Burial
Wywiad przeprowadził Marcin HilarowiczBURIAL
Burial is one of the newest signings with American based Lost Disciple. As you could probably imagine, looking at this label's profile, they play awesome brutal death metal. Their second CD, entitled "Enlightened with Pain", kicked my ass very hard, so I decided quickly to contact Ian and talk about his band. Enjoy the reading.On the beginning Burial was existing as Legion. Why have you changed a name to such a exploited one? I know at least 2 Burials...
Burial started off in 1995 under the name Burial. At the time, nobody they (I joined the band in 1997) knew was using that name. Other bands have and some I guess still do, but I haven't seen any other signed artists with that name--at all. Burial switched their name to Legion in order to avoid all sorts of hassles, but when it came time to record "Mourning the Millenium," the name Legion was not quite appropriate and so we switched in back to Burial. Burial is a telling name. It just screams "death metal." That's we are, that's what we play, and that's how we want people to recognize us. For us, there's only one Burial--us.
Tell me please about the music on MCD "Mourning the Millennium". Was it released by yourself? Haven't you had any offers from labels?
"Mourning the Millenium" was our first mini-CD. It was self-financed 100%. We only made 1000 of them, and they are mostly gone at this point, but we plan on getting them repressed in the near future. The music on "Mourning...." is a lot different than our latest CD "Enlightened With Pain." It's slower, more traditional death metal and the vocals are much different, due to the fact that Donnie left the band between the 2 cds and was replaced by Devin Doherty. Donnie left to go into the pornography business out in LA.
So how did you come up with Lost Disciple? Were there any funny stories while signing with them, like signing with blood or under a gun?
We signed with Lost Disciple in January of this year. We knew Rich from his work with Pessimist and later, Noctuary. So he had a reputation for signing the best of the underground scene, and we felt that signing with LD would mean an advancement for both parties. No real funny stories surrounding that, it was business-like, but we were all very psyched to get signed. It was a really big step.
Shortly after that Don Marhefka (carrot in Polish hehe) left the band, and it might seem it is not very important, but his name sound very familiar to Poles. Moreover 2 other Burial musicians have Polish names. Could you tell us something about that?
Haha. That is hysterical. We had no idea his name meant carrot. Yes, both of our guitarists are of Polish descent, Nick Lecrenski and Matt Rogalski. There is a sizable Polish-American community in Western
Massachusetts, where we live. We don't really make much of a fuss over our ethnic backgrounds, but they are happy to be Polish, I assume. There's lots of Polish-Americans in death metal. I don't know why. Maybe Poland is just a naturally brutal country. Sometimes we'll come across a videotape of a death metal band playing in Poland and it looks awesome! A show that would bring 1000 people there might only bring 100-200 people here. There is absolutely no coverage of death metal music on TV. We don't have MTV Headbanger's Ball anymore. They stopped that about 5 years ago. There's just been a concerted effort by the American media to squash metal in all it's forms. And while metal may not be as prominent in this country as it once was, the fans are
still there, still demanding quality music. I hope we can tour Poland and the rest of Europe some day. We can't wait.
Going back the music, recently we received the debut album from Burial and needless to say it is very good brutal death metal album. Does that kind of description satisfy you as a musician?
It is very satisfying to hear our music described as such. We are purposefully setting out to write the best possible death metal we can, without regard to whether it's old style or new. It's gotta be heavy, brutal and death metal. When you are listening to death metal, you want to get that certain feeling, like the music is so brutal you could hurt people to it. That's what we're going after, that feeling.
"Enlightened with Pain" is influenced by some famous American bands, no doubt about it. Suffocation and Cannibal Corpse are the biggest inspiration I guess. I'm curious whether you'll try to make some more own thing in the future? Is it possible after all to make original brutal death metal music nowadays, when almost everything was played before?
Of course we are very much inspired by the bigger death metal bands that you mentioned, they are old favorites of all of us. If you are saying that we sound too much like them, I disagree. And I definitely think you can write great, original brutal death metal. The key is not pussing out and just keep being metal. There are so many unexplored avenues within the music. Listen to Human Menagerie on "Enlightened..." that is a very non-standard tune, very dynamic.
What has pushed you to play that particular kind of music? Why haven't you, for example, started as Pet Shop Boys cover band? Seriously, why death metal? Did you want to throw the frustration out of you?
That's funny, I remember the Pet Shop Boys. What gaylords!!! We've all been listening to death metal for many years, it's more than just music to us, it's a passion and a mission. It's a mission to brutally wake people up and acknowledge their own feelings of anger, frustration and aggression. It's an outlet for the release of all of these emotions as well as a natural result of the way we live our lives in this world. Life in general sucks. You have to do something to spice it up, I guess.
You have very gore lyrics and you have had some "problem" with the editor of Berzerker... Could you tell this interesting story to our readers with your own comment?
Well, most of the songs on the new CD are not very gory, lyrically speaking, they are more about dark emotions, thought processes and horrific situations. Mourning the Millenium's lyrics were written long before the cd was released by previous vocalists, and our first vocalist Dan leaned toward the satanic. The song "Skullfucked" caught us some flack when we sent it out to be reviewed by Berzerker Zine. They singled that song out as way to extreme and crude because it was about torturing and raping a woman. The reviewer said that a band like us should not be supported because we support this behavior, which we don't, we're just writing about it. That is definitely not new in death metal. So here they are, cursing us out for writing about that shit, telling people not to support us, yet they are featuring an interview of Cannibal Corpse! Shit, they invented writing about raping chicks!!! I guess they have no problem supporting them by interviewing that band. So what makes us so different? Fuck those assholes. If you are offended by extreme lyrics, then don't listen to or read the lyrics. If that's the case, you shouldn't be listening to heavy shit.
Do you think death metal, both from musical and lyrical point of view, could be dangerous for people, especially younger ones?
No, I don't think there's any problem with kids listening to death metal. I mean, as long as they are mentally well adjusted and realize the difference between reality and fantasy. People read horror novels and see horror movies all the time. Yeah, sometimes they copy shit they see, but those people are nutballs. In this country, it's against the law to censor music, and it's a right we don't take for granted. You can't stifle someone's creativity by banning shit. It doesn't work anyway. I think people should be able to listen to what every they want to listen to.
And what about inspiration from metal lyrics? What would you do, if some kid will commit a crime and tell that he did it after reading Burial lyrics?
I would say to that kid that he was a nutjob and he should get mental help, because this is music, not life. It's like that whole black metal deal in Norway, with Euronymous and Grishnackh. It's just being juvenile and trying to do something to make you feel important, then trying to remove personal accountability by blaming someone else.
There're 2 guest on the new album. Is it some kind of a friendship action? To be honest I don't see their growls very different from Burial vocalist's ones...
Yes, we are friends with both Sherwood from Skinless and Rich from Fleshgrind, they are just two really cool people from two really awesome death metal bands. If you've heard their respective bands, you can tell the vocals they do are different from Devin's vocals. Sherwood sings on Entropy, Bitter Taste...and Skullfucked. Rich sings on Pale Shade...Entropy, Bitter Taste...and Skullfucked.
Are your local scene strong? What about the condition of metal music in USA in general? Are there a lot of kids listening to crap like Korn or Marilyn Manson?
The local scene in Western Massachusetts is getting alot better. In the early 90s, the death metal scene was very strong, but it died out around 1996, when the last of the local bands around here died out. Then people were into straight edge hardcore, which was gay, but we stuck to our guns and just kept playing death metal, because that's what we like to do. Yes, a lot of the younger kids like shit stuff like Slipknot and Korn, it's really ridiculous that they think that's as heavy as it gets. Metal is not really big in the U.S. for reasons I mentioned earlier. It's sad, but the true fans are really a devoted bunch, so that kinda makes up for it.
Thanks Ian for the interview and another great death metal album this year. Do you want to add anything to this?
Thanks for the awesome interview, Marcin!! Poland rules!! For all the metal fans over there, check our new CD "Enlightened With Pain" available from Lost Disciple Records, USA. Visit our webpage at www.burial666.com and drop us a line!!
www.burial666.com
