Severe Torture heeft zich in de loop der jaren zonder twijfel ontpopt tot de meeste interessante death metal band uit Nederland. Met iedere plaat die uitkwam lieten de heren horen wat bandevolutie is, en nu hebben ze met de nieuwe cd 'Slaughtered' de perfecte combinatie tussen het nieuwe en het oude werk gevonden. Over deze en andere zaken spraken we met bassist Patrick.
Hi Patrick, thanks for taking the time to do the interview. How are you doing? I am doing great. These are busy times for Severe Torture since we have to do a lot of interviews for the new album. But we are not complaining. At least we are getting interviews, which means that there are magazines willing to talk to us. We finished the album in the beginning of march so we had two months of time to prepare for the media frenzy.
First of all, I would like to congratulate you with the new album ‘Slaughtered’! I am really enjoying it! Thanx a lot, so far the reactions have been great. We had a really good feeling about this record so we are glad to see people are just as enthusiastic as we are. During the writing period we were starting to notice that this album could turn out into an awesome death metal record. But you always have to wait and see if people feel the same. I guess for a band that’s is the hard part of releasing a record. As a band you are delivered to the mercy of the dude that reviews your album. So if you have the luck that some frustrated musician or some death metal hating dickhead, that is only working for a magazine to be part of the metal scene, gives you a bad review you will have a bad start. Fans and people of the industry do read those reviews. But then again fuck it, haha.
You guys always succeeded in having a steady line-up. Nowadays it tends to be a fashion to switch line-up every record, yet this is not the case with Severe Torture, which basically must mean the recording process went quite smoothly, right? Au contraire my friend, it can make things actually harder. After so many years of playing together there is the risk of taking some irritations into the songwriting process. But everybody in the band knows what we are good at so it is easier to stay away for the stuff we suck at. For this record we managed quite well to focus on our strong points, I guess that is why the album turned out so well. But talking about a steady line up, I think it is awesome when a band consists of the same bandmembers for years. Of course it is hard to find five people all having the same vision about the band and the direction to take. So in some circumstances it’s very understandable for a band to have new members, but for me it doesn’t work that way. A band has it’s ups and downs, but during those downs it shows how strong the bond is in band. And it’s just wonderful to share the experiences and achievements with people who have been through the same situations as you have. If you ask me it would be very hard to be fan of a band that changes line up every year or record.
What do you think of the end result of the album? Totally satisfied? Was it exactly what you had in mind? We couldn’t be more happier about how the album turned out. During the writing process you get some sort of vision about how a song or how the entire album should turn out, but you always have to wait for the end result to see if everything turns out as expected. And man, this record turned out to be a real death metal monster. It captures the band at it’s prime. This is how a ST record should sound like. Brutal yet very catchy. We took the brutality of the first two combined with the songwriting skills of the last two, we added some dark melodies to top it all of. And the best thing is the songs really have become songs. For me that is what is wrong with most new bands in the genre, they suck at songwriting, of course they sound brutal and look very handsome, but they should put more effort in songwriting.
I noticed that the gore theme is back on the cover again after the more ‘middle of the road CD cover of 'Sworn Vengeance'. Any particular reasons for that or just plain fun? We figured that this album needed artwork that captures the music and the vibe of the record the best. For the last two records we used different artwork than people were used from us. The thing is we had a gory cover for ‘FOTD’ but it didn’t feel good so we had someone else make another one. For ‘Sworn Vengeance’ we used the same guy again. We love the artwork for the last two records but ‘Slaugthered’ “screamed” for a gory cover. I guess we went back to our roots, haha.
On the new album I hear a steady combination between the earlier records and the new works. Was this the intention or did it just "happen" so to say? Well you are totally correct about that. We went with what felt good and that was brutal but catchy death metal. We simply can not write an album as the first two but we wanted to show that brutal death metal can be catchy. After ‘Misanthropic Carnage’ we figured that we couldn’t be more brutal than that so we needed to explore other areas in death metal. On the last two records we were looking for a way to combine our brutality and our wish to write memorable songs. On this album I think we found our way of doing just that.
I am truly of the opinion that Severe Torture is the most talented, underestimated death metal bands around world-wide and definitely the best death metal band from The Netherlands. In what country do you guys receive the best response from the crowd? Thanx. Being underestimated is a strange thing. When are you underestimated? Maybe we are as popular as we deserve to be. I don’t know. Outside Holland we seem to do quite well in France. Of all the shows we played there I can remember only one bad show. The thing is we almost always have good shows outside of Holland. We always make sure we don’t overstay our welcome so if we do play a show people are anxious to see us. The shows keep getting better for us all over the world, so we must being doing something right.
Talking about crowds, what is the weirdest thing you have experienced during tours? Wow, that is really hard to name something. Let me see.. I remember seeing tits and cunts in the US, naked dudes in the pit In France, cocks in sandwiches in Denmark, crazy motherfuckers in Mexcio, Dennis being arrested on our tour with Cannibal Corpse for getting into a fight. You get the idea. So may weird things happen, but I always seem to forget a lot, we have beer, whiskey and vodka on our rider hahaha.
Any tours coming up by the way? And with whom? We are still working on finding a tour that makes sense. We all have jobs so the tour needs to be worth it to do. We have a headlining tour in Mexico in November, and we are doing some shows in Holland, Germany, Bulgaria, Portugal later this year. Most of our shows are headlining shows nowadays so I don’t know yet which bands we will be on the bill.
About death metal; you are part of this musical niche for more than ten years now as a band, and even more as fans. A lot of things have happened during those days. How do you guys see the death metal scene nowadays? Is it better then ever before, with the Internet bringing every band in the world within everybody’s grasp and cool bands playing all of the time in clubs and festivals? Or do you still crave for the good old tapetrading days and all its charms? The scene now is weird. There are all these new brutal bands that seem to be more a trend than something that is here to stay. My guess is that most of those bands will be gone in a few years, along with most of the fans they bring with them. Of course the good old days were awesome. Buying records and seeing bands play was something to look forward too. Now most people download music and bands are playing too much, But that’s how it is. The Internet is a good tool to get your name out and bands that use it wisely will gain popularity very fast. But that doesn’t mean the band is any good. I also hate seeing all the same bands on tour and all the summer festivals having the same bands every year, fuck that. The good news is that there are also new bands being formed that have the old death metal bands as inspiration as we had, so there still is hope for the death metal scene.
Besides a tour, what does the future hold for Severe Torture? Indeed we will be playing shows in support of ‘Slaughtered’. If you ask me we are a real live band. There are a lot of bands that suck live, we always deliver! Besides that we still have some cool tunes up our sleeves, so we will start working on that as soon as possible. Of course I can’t predict the future but my guess is that we will be around for a while. Bands come and go but we have been here for over a decade. We are doing this for the right reason, we are doing this for the love of death metal and man do we still love death metal.
Alright, that’s it for now. I would like to wish you good luck for the future and thank you very much again for the interview. Any famous last words? Please listen to our new record and if you like it then buy it. Make sure to come to our shows you won’t be disappointed.
Hi Patrick, thanks for taking the time to do the interview. How are you doing?
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