QNA with ELECTRICJEZUS

ELECTRICJEZUS are a two man band from Dmitrov, Russia. They play the dirtiest kind of metal combining influences from all kinds of music into one fine piece of old school noise. Oleg (drums) and Ruslan (guitar\bass\vocals) answered some questions to me for this blog. Thanks a lot!

Hey guys! First of all congrats on your debut "Грязь поколений". It reminded me of the good old metal days when metal was still raw and hard instead of over produced digital copy and paste music some newer bands are playing these days!

Hi Chris, and thanks for inspiring words!

Please, tell us something about your musical influences and how you combined them to what we're hearing on  "Грязь поколений".

Yes, our album was pretty diverse and nonuniform, everything from what we listen to various music and you will agree that it is not very interesting to do a whole album such as the title track. In doing so, we are inspired by the examples of Melvins, which during its existence, played in all territories. In the album we tried to combine all that we love: Grindcore, Thrash, '80s, Doom riffs, and even mocking Pop motifs and put all under the roof of fuzz sludge and of course blackened vocals, the songs do not sing in another.

You recorded the album with all kinds of analog equipment to create that special sound.

Yes, we tried to make an analog recording, we were so interested to use the analog equipment and when turned up such an opportunity, we did not refuse. Of course we were not Abby Road and we had to use modern technology, but this percentage was negligible. We recorded album fully live, and other embodiments could not have be, because such music should be closer to the live sound - aggressive emotional and maximum vividness as if we are playing in your home.


Since I unfortunately don't speak any Russian, can you please give us a hint what your lyrics are about?

Texts were quite thoughtful and even selfish. They have their place in the world, no populist slogans that we need to all get together and all change here to see prices rather the thoughts that come to people before going to bed (good or bad).

By the way we also have a humorous song. Lyrics for it completely taken from a Russian television series about police from the 90's.

Dmitrov isn't too far away from Moscow (about 70 km according to Google). Do you have a big metal scene where you come from?  

Yes, Google is not lying.

Since we are fairly new and the strange group the big scene do not take us seriously and we are far from her. Basically we play concerts for a small circle of lovers, who just formed and friends.

For us as a new group organizing concerts difficult exercise, yet so many connections inside underground. We have a lot of plans, we will try to do something like the tour and play as many gigs but unfortunately not everything depends on us.

What are your plans for the near or far future?

We have a lot of plans. Unfortunately we could not make edition on vinyl albums, none of the publishers were interested in our idea, and attempts to solve this problem by ourselves are not successful.

By the way, we have 4 songs for the next release. Not so long ago, we visited again in the studio and did a rough recording instruments. We do not know in what format it will be poured (EP or LP) but we can say that the overall theme of records will be the atmosphere of the book Andrei Platonov's "The Foundation Pit" (among themselves we call her Russian death). Well, and accordingly, all the songs will be about death

and of course want to go on a tour in different cities and countries, but so far we do not know how to manage it. We hope the project will live for a long time, we have enough enthusiasm.

Yeah, I hope that, too. It's the kind of enthusiasm that is so important for our scene! Thank you so much so answering my questions.

You can download  Грязь поколений for free on Bandcamp.


Check out this cool Electricjezus live video:
Electricjezus - live in Little Rock, Moscow (2013.04.29)

And if you happen to be interested in the Russian Metal underground here are some recommendations by Ruslan and Oleg ("Our favorite bands of the grim scene of Russia!")

Löd

The Fall of Mammoth ("Unfortunately the group has disbanded.") 

Grave Disgrace

Pincher

QNA with DEAD NEANDERTHALS

Dutch jazz-grinding duo DEAD NEANDERTHALS have been mincing music for quite a while now. Their new album POLARIS will be released via Utech records on March 23rd.
Otto (sax) and René (drums) agreed to answer some questions for this blog. Thanks a lot!

Photo by Thijmen Sietsma

Hey guys, congratulations on the new album Polaris. You really accomplish to surprise your audience with every new output you release!

Hi Chris, thanks so much man! Good to hear you like it and nice that we can keep people on their toes with our releases.

The first thing that struck me is that you resigned from the multilayered saxophone sounds and got back to basics: just one saxophone and drums.
That's right. We listen to a bunch of different stuff and it all inspires us: Grindcore, Noise, Drone, Jazz. In this case, the latter probably got more dominant. But hey, we're still Dead Neanderthals even in a more stripped-down version. POLARIS is no easy listening, it's more like acoustic noise. A nice little experiment we would say!

Instead of a baritone sax you used a tenor sax on Polaris. Any special reasons for that?

(Otto) Because I bought one! I was playing around with the idea of doing something on tenor sax because it's really quite a different thing (to us saxophone players at least) and that might be fun, not even specifically for Dead Neanderthals or anything, just noodling around. And then when we thought about doing this more acoustic stuff it was kind of an obvious choice for us. It really fits. I don't think it would have been as nice if I'd done this on baritone sax.

How do you guys write your songs? How important is the freedom of improvising when recording?

That can be quite varied! The first album was almost completely improvised, while The V-Shaped Position, The Saw EP and Jazzhammer/Stormannsgalskap were much more structured and composed. There was still some room for improvisation, especially when we are playing shows. The new album POLARIS is almost completely improvised.

What's first? Songtitles you compose a song to or do you name the song when you finished composing? And what the hell is "Neck-AIDS"?

(Rene) Yeah, Otto, what the fuck IS Neck-AIDS?? :)
(Otto) It's a very serious affliction. Nothing to laugh about. For personal reasons I don't want to talk about this any further.

On your blog you offer two different technical riders.

We can offer venues two really different sets now. The 'hard set' is our Jazzhammer/Stormannsgalskap set involving a big-ass baritone sax, a big-ass amp and many bright lights. The 'jazz set' is our improvisation set which is more fitting to the POLARIS album. We will use no amp and a tenor sax. Also less lights are involved. It will be less harsh, but not less intense! It's cool we can offer venues and festivals both sides of the band, they can just pick whatever they like the most. We always had one set, so we're also really curious how this will turn out. It will probably keep things fresh for us.

You have played with a lot of different bands and musicians, you played with grind-bands as well as singer/songwriters. What are your experiences concerning acceptance by your audience? Have you ever been worried or even afraid of what might happen once you'd start playing?
Hehe, only a couple of times when we started doing live shows. In the end people seem to like us most of the time. Sometimes because they really like our sound and sometimes because they never heard something like it before. Whatever the reason, we never got boo-ed off the stage, which is good. So we're not so worried anymore. It's cool to play with a lot of different bands: You don't only play for different crowds, but also for crowds of different sizes, which is great.

What are your plans for Dead Neanderthals?

For now we'll keep on writing and recording the music we like to play. Actually, we already completed 2 (!!) new full length albums, which we are hopefully releasing later this year. One was a collaboration with British saxophone player Colin Webster and the other a collaboration with Dutch drone/noise artist Machinefabriek. For the rest: we're busy with a lot of shows at the moment. Hopefully we can confirm all of them. A lot with cool artists or in great venues. We definitely hope to play more shows abroad. If you want to book us, get in touch!

Thanks again for answering my questions! I hope you can make your way over to Germany some time soon. It's not that far, anyway.

For more informations on Dead Neanderthals visit their blog: http://deadneanderthals.wordpress.com/