To me, there's 3 essential releases coming out in October, naturally you'll read about all in these pages... Two are coming from the States but first for today is Ritual Death and Funeral Rites - debut album by british evil Doom band UNCOFFINED !!! Haven't heard yet of this sinister quartet and their about to be registered trademark "DOOM METAL OF DEATH" ??? well, follow the guide, enjoy their creepy journey into Doom like you've never heard it before, heavy as a ton of sated zombies and as morbid and terrifying as 95% of the blackened Sludge bands all together !!! Check out the album NOW and not in three months when the masses will put it as the best overlooked album of 2013;)
Hail Kat, welcome in the Temple and thanx for answering the following
questions !
Hails Steph! Many thanks for this interview and the opportunity to reach
more unsuspecting souls via the Temple!.
You tagged your style as “Doom Metal of Death”, how could you
describe it to innocent ears?
Well I would basically describe it as a cross between old school
Traditional Doom Metal and old school Doom/Death with some nihilistic
misanthropic Sludge influences (Grief) and also the spectre of Hellhammer
and early Celtic Frost looming over some parts. The Trad Doom Metal influences
are more prominent musically overall, for example you could easily put normal
sung melodic vocals over a lot of the riffs on our album and it would just
sound like Heavy Traditional Doom Metal but we chose to utilise harsher more
sinister sounding death growls and screams instead throughout the album as they
help to create a more evil atmosphere. There is some faster picked deathy sounding
parts musically aswell as some uptempo Frostian parts but the Trad Doom Metal
influence from bands such as Early Black Sabbath, Saint Vitus,
80'S Candlemass is the most prominent musically overall. DOOM METAL
OF DEATH is a perfect description of our mix of styles and influences and I
have never seen another band call their music that.
Lots of bands think
they play death/doom because there’s some melancholy and slower moments in a
few of their songs but to me it often still remains Death metal… I think there
aren’t that many bands who mix true Doom and Death or death and true doom…
hahaha! in any cases you’re the doomiest and heaviest at the same time I know
and of corpse the most brutal vocally wise… even Hooded Menace is
faster and softer than you !!! what’s your opinion on this and what
are the main characters that you wanna highlight in your music ?
Thank you for the kind words and the compliments! I must say though I am
personally a HUGE fan of Hooded Menace and have a lot of respect for Lasse and
his musical work and they were one of the first doom/death bands of more recent
times to bring in obvious influences from Candlemass, early Cathedral
etc..which definetly did not go un-noticed by myself. Some people do seem to
think just because a death metal band has some slow or doomy parts that they
are "doom/death" but to me a true doom/death band has way more
slower-mid paced parts and less faster death metal sounding riffs, 3 of us in
the band are longtime fans of Traditional Doom Metal and that love for such
music is very obvious in our own music and songwriting and is
definetly the main influence overall as I said before you could easily put
normal sung vocals over a lot of our riffs and it would just sound like Trad
Doom Metal. That is where we are different from quite a lot of so called
"doom/death" bands..we are not a death metal band just playing some
slow parts here and there, we are more MUCH more Doom Metal than
Death Metal musically it is just the vocals that really make us sound more
death metal. Musically we just want to create an evil morbid sinister eerie
cold dark atmosphere....the aural equivalent of a dark haunting sinister figure
lurking amongst the shadows and graves of an old untendered graveyard that no
one dares to enter especially at night!!. Someone described us more more or
less as "Evil Doom", that is also a perfect description.
It is true that a great part of the album consists in trad’ Doom
mixed with death growls and incantations, are you satisfied with the way you
sing on the album ? can we imagine at some point some normal singing
(exceptionally or not) in the future ? do you think this would imply some
different kind of lyrics?
I am VERY satisified overall with how the vocals turned out on the debut
studio recording they help to create the dark, morbid and evil atmosphere we
were looking to create. There is no plans to start using normal sung vocals
anytime soon even though I do have the ability to sing normal sung vocals but I
do not think they would be appropriate in Uncoffined. But time will tell...I
can safelt say that for the forseeable future I will just stick with doing
morbid death growls and possessed screams.
There’s regular horror movies samples in the album which enhance the creepy
atmospheres, where did you extract them from ? was it a collective work on this
?
The samples are taken
from the old Hammer Horror films "PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES" and
"THE DEVIL RIDES OUT". It was my idea to use these samples as I am a
very big fan of old Hammer movies and have always liked bands who use samples
from such movies as they do as you said "enhance the creepy
atmospheres" and fit the lyrical subjects perfectly too for example
"Twisted Shape Of Creeping Terror" is about undead zombies rising up
from their graves and "Ritual Death And Funeral Rites" is very
influenced by The Devil Rides Out and the subject of clandestine satanic
rituals, ritual sacrifice and summoning dark evil forces from beyond this
world.
The cover artwork is pretty much alike the album : terrifying ! who did
work on this and which of his previous works did decide you ?
A Swedish guy called
Ola Sjoberg is responsible for the very striking album cover, he took the
lyrical concepts and album title and that is what he came up with and we
were collectively blown away when we first saw what he had came up with! He has
desgined the whole album inlay aswell as the front and back covers and we
couldn't be more satisified with the overall final result! Ola has done design
work for my other band Winds Of Genocide and I have always really liked what he
has came up with design wise so I asked him if he would be interested in
designing our album cover and fortunately for us he was and we have have
PERFECT album cover now!. Tack så mycket Ola!!.
How did you come to sign this deal with Memento Mori rds ? were the label’s
attitude and bands roaster as much important as financial and release
conditions for you ?
Well, our debut studio
recording was actually originally intended to only be a PROMO DEMO we didn't go
into the studio expecting it to be released as a full length album but a couple
days after we got back from the studio I sent Raul an unmastered track that we
had put online with the help of a friend, Raul really liked it so asked to here
more so I sent him the whole recording and he got back to me saying he really
liked it and thought it is good enough and long enough in length to be released
as a full length album and then offered us a deal to release it as an album and
also offered to get it fully mastered propely so it would sound more like an
album. We immediately accepted his offer and here we are only a couple weeks
from the album coming back from the pressing plant at the time of typing these
answers! I was already aware of some of Raul's releases having done some
trading with him aswell as following his labels/release activities for a little
while. The album was mastered by Javier Felez (also guitarist in death
metal band Graveyard) at Moontower Studios in Barcelona Spain and he
did a GREAT job with that! The album was recorded/mixed by Bri Doom at Studio
1in12 Bradford England and he did an awesome job too!
I know you’re a big Trouble fan, so why did you choose to cover
Revelation’s “frustrations” (from Never comes Silence), was that a more
difficult challenge ? will you send a link or CD to John Brenner?
3 of us in the band
namely myself, Jonny Rot (Lead guitar) and Gory Sugden (Bass) have been HUGE
fans of Revelation since the early 1990's, in fact the old Doom band which all
3 of us were involved Blessed Realm was named after a Revelation song. We were
discussing about doing a cover and Gory suggested that song and so we all
agreed and it turned out really well. It took a little while until we got the
cover "nailed" so to speak but I am very happy with how our recorded
version sounds. I asked John for permission to record it which he was totally
cool with. He has heard the cover and said he is very flattered by it and
thinks we have stayed very true to the spirit of the original musically
although the vocals are harsher of corpse. I will send John a CD copy of our
album too. He also said our Revelation cover is the first he has heard so
that's pretty cool!. Revelation have always been quite an underrated band in my
opinion and hopefully this cover might make some more people check them out!?!.
So many bands have done Trouble covers but not covers of Revelation songs so
again it is something abit different.
How do you manage to share your time between Uncoffined, Winds of Genocide,
Terrorizer blog and yours “a blog in the northern sky”… ?
I currently do not have
a full time paid job so I have plenty of time on my hands right now!. Also
both bands rehearse different weeks sometimes or at least a few days apart
so there is no problem with both bands getting in the way of each other at the
moment. I guess there will be times when one band is more busier and
active than the other that will demand more focus and attention but that won't
create any problems.
In the mid 90’s you were playing in a band called Blessed Realm, some kind
of Doom Rock as we can hear it regularly for a few years now… if I remember
well, you told me that there should be released a compilation of all your demo
recordings, right ?
There is no
official plans for a demo compilation at the moment but it would be cool
to see some of those old demos reach more people as Blessed Realm remains a
very obscure entity even within the Doom scene..there will be alot of newer
Doom metal fans that will not even be aware of that bands existence due to the
very underground status of the band. One of our demos that was recorded in
early 1998 "Return To Zero" has just had abit of a sound overall,
some slight mastering done by the guy who originally recorded it and it does
sound better than the original recording. Uncoffined currently features 3
ex members of Blessed Realm and I must say it is so great to be playing in a
band alongside Jonny Rot and Gory Sugden again..we go back a long way as
friends aswell as bandmates and things have never sounded better between us
musically!
I know you’re not really into the actual Doom scene, what does bore you the
most in it ? guys looking like old hippies from the end of the 60’s ? trendy
occult images ? … ?
I have a love/hate thing with the modern Doom scene...and I must admit
I do miss the days of the 90's Doom scene when it seemed more close knit
and a lot more friendlier even when everyone who was into such music seemingly
knew each other, all the Doom bands back then wrote and traded with each
other and there was no trend bullshit involved in the scene or trend followers
into such music as it was one of the most unfashionable and untrendy/unpopular
music scenes to be a part of back then and the scene was full of die hard
doomheads who were genuinely into such music for the right reasons plus it
was before this "drone" music which a lot of people have associated
with Doom since the early 2000's...where are the fucking RIFFS in that shit?!!
To me playing a 40 min long drone of the same chord is NOT DOOM!!! fuck those
bands...boring as fuck...I blame SunnO))) for starting that shit trend.
Anyway so yeah that drone stuff bores me to sleep, one of the things I
hate about the modern Doom scene, if it hasn't got interesting riffs
and tempos in it then I am not interested, same goes for a lot of this
"Funeral" Doom stuff...it's just this same slow tempo mostly, playing
slow for the sake of playing slow..shut up, slit your wrists and kill
yourselves already!!!...ALL THE BEST Doom bands throughout history have had mid
tempo and uptempo parts aswell as plenty of slow parts, Sabbath, Saint Vitus,
Trouble, Candlemass, Pentagram, Solitude Aeturnus, Cathedral, Revelation,
Penance etc... so yeah these modern bands that play slow for the sake of
playing slow bore me shitless. Also there is definetly a current trend of
"occult rock" bands and quite a few it seems with female
vocalists that the media and record labels seem to be tripping over each
other to either sign or feature and some bands are clearly exploiting that
fact...it seems that any band with a female vocalist who is posing with a
fucking skull and can play a flute or sing about the occult is being hyped....there
is a some good female fronted bands in this style that stand out, Blood
Ceremony being one but some of these bands do not do anything for me at
all as they are clearly just hopping on a current bandwagon and sound like lame
stoner rock bands with a female vocalist. I would rather listen to the Coven
album "Witchcraft Destroys Minds And Reaps Souls" anyday than some
modern flavour of the month trend band playing 3rd rate Sabbath riffs /
70's hardrock riffs trying to be overly 60's occult and
"retro" and "witchy"..another reason why I do the kind
of vocals I do as I do not want to be lumped in with most of these female
fronted "occult rock" bands. We stand apart from them, we are a
DOOM band not an "occult rock" band. I have always been heavily interested
in the occult and satanism and was writing about such subjects in my old death
metal band back in early 90's so this is not a subject I have recently just
started to flirt with because it is "cool" to do so. I am very much
interested in such subject matter on a personal level but I won't go into that.
As for modern "Doom" / hardrock hippies...again I remember
when wearing bellbottoms/flares back in the mid 90's was frowned upon by a lot
of people and those who wore them were looked at as some kind of social
outcasts and retro throwbacks by the majority of the music scene and society in
general... for example some of the looks I got from people in my hometown back
in the mid 90's when I was in Blessed Realm wearing Vitus/Pentagram etc
shirts and huge bellbottom flares were ones of "WTF....who is this
freak" people looked at me like I had been beamed down from another planet
but now...it is seemingly very cool and fashionable to dress and look like
you just stepped out of the late 60's/ early-mid 70's and that is
reflected in the modern music scene hence why even labels like Nuclear Blast
are jumping on the bandwagon and signing flare wearing
hippie-ish retro sounding bands when 15-20 years ago or so they would
not have touched them...a lot of stoner rock bands for instance have
also traded in their fuzz pedals for flutes and a cleaner sound
over the past decade...I do like some of these modern
retro hippie-ish bands like Witchcraft but Magnus was playing such music
back in 90's in another band long before it became remotely
cool but some of them are so fucking boring.....but trends come and
go in the music scene and outside of it, we don't care about following
trends, we just do what we do and the fact 3 of us were playing in another Doom
band years ago before such music became even remotely "cool" and
"fashionable" speaks for itself. Anyone who says we are jumping
on a Doom bandwagon clearly needs to research the roots of this band and it's
members.
But in closing....We play DOOM METAL OF DEATH not some trendy
retro stuff. In league with
Satan not Saturn!.
Well I have just turned
37 years old so I dare say you are not TOOO much older than me Steph (hum, I'll be 45 in November!) but yeah I
remember our meeting each other, fond memories of hanging out with yourself and
the Astral Rising guys for a few days, getting drunk etc... I was in Germany at
that time visiting my old friend Jochen Fopp the guitarist in Mirror Of
Deception for a week or so...Those couple of shows were a lot of fun to be at,
even though I do cringe at the time I got up on stage with Astral Rising and
tried to sing a Black Sabbath song but was so drunk I forgot the fucking words!
hahaha! I do also remember a tambourine was involved at the 2nd gig in
Heidelberg (I think it was?!) - Fun times!.
If you allow me, let’s speak about your (old and new) self… About ten years
ago Steve became Kat Shevil , I presume that you’ve had to face hard
days, starting by certainly a long process to make it happen ? From
whom look have you had the most to suffer ?
Did this mature in your mind for a very long time ? Do you feel just simply
happy and blooming now ?
No problem to talk about this at all although I do not bring it up in
interviews unless prompted to do so as I do not want my gender being the main
focus of the band, I would rather we let the music do the talking and be the
main focus but I guess it will come up as a subject from time to time. Anyway
Yes it has been a long process from initially "coming out" to
transitioning from male to female to where I am in my life now and the
whole process is not complete but I am currently much more happier, comfortable
and more confident in and with myself. I have had to face some shit like
predjudice from people both within and outside the music scene but those people
do not matter to me, they just make my will and determination even stronger and
more resilient. But I am much more happier living life as a female now...no
doubts about that!!!
my gender identity issues stem from a
very early age when I was 4/5 years old. I was very aware of the fact I felt I
should have been.born female since I was a kid it just took me a while to
confront it/deal with it properly.
Now that the album is about to be released, hopefully Uncoffined should be
more active on the LIVE front… starting with 2 dates this month in Scotland !
Are there other dates or a tour in the works ?
Well those two shows
are the only ones we have planned/booked outside of the local area right now
but we do want to play more across the UK and also in Europe and other
places...so hopefully the album being released will help to bring about more
opportunities to play live further afield and in other countries and even
possibly continents. We also have our album release party/show here in Durham
City in November (16th) which should be a fun night of drinking and doom!
Are you cumfortable with playing drums and singing in Live conditions ? one
could easily think about Chris Reifert, but as drummer/vocalist do you have a
kind of model or special influence ?
Yes definetly, We have
only played 2 live shows so far with myself doing both drums and lead vocals at
the same time but it has worked out fine so far and I have felt very
comfortable (I have practiced this a lot in rehearsals too)..I am still
learning and it is something I can only get better at doing the more we play
live and the more experience I have at handling both in a live environment.
Chris Reifert is definetly a HUGE influence on me when it comes to
drummer/vocalists. I have always been fascinated by his ability to be able to
do both live, same goes for drummers like King Fowley from Deceased... I
remember seeing pics of him drumming/singing in old zines like
Putrefaction Zine and thinking it looked really cool and was just
fascinated by that whole concept of playing drums whilst doing lead vocals
at the same time so those two guys are drummer/vocalists I have respected
for a long time and have most definetly had a big influence on me when it
comes to playing drums and doing vocals together. But I can't forget to
mention people like Dopi from Machetazo, Dino Somesse from Dystopia, Ventor
from Kreator to name a few who I admire a lot when it comes to
drummer/vocalists.
Time to end now Kat, what bands have you been listening to, when answering
this interview ? Any French stuff played sometimes ?
I have been listening
to various stuff on my MP3 player whilst typing out this interview on a
computer at the local library everything from Anti Cimex to Saint Vitus has
been playing in my ears! French bands...hmm...recently my friend copied me an album
by the old French heavy metal band Nightmare, good stuff!!.
Please remind us all purchase details for the album and add something if
you want !!! thanx
Our album "Ritual
Death And Funeral Rites" will be out on CD via the Spanish deathcult
Memento Mori by mid October...www.memento-mori-es ...the pro cassette tape
version will be coming out also via Underground Movement in Ireland. We will
have copies to sell aswell sometime in October. Many thanks for the cool
interview Steph appreciate it!
DOOM OR BE DOOMED...TO DEATH!!!!!
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