I caught up with SIBERIAN HELL SOUNDS‘ guitarist Daniel to serve you guys a propoer introduction to the band, backbite the G20 meeting, India, and reveal that I actually had a role in a Bollywood movie called… well, scroll down to reveal the classified information.
Oh, Fans of CONVERGE, PIG DESTROYER, and numerous different metal/hardcore hybrids will be entertained and blessed to have listened to this band. Highly recommended!
Hey there buddies! What’s up? How’s Brisbane doing this fine Winter. It’s freakin’ cold here in Warsaw, I’d give a lot to hang out with you lads down there :)
The weathers nice but there’s about 5000 G20 cops waiting to search your butthole the moment you step outside your door at the moment so I’d maybe prefer to be in Warsaw.
Oh shit, I forgot. Emerging economies, economist interested in the relief of poverty and stuff, right? I saw some nice anti-Putin shirts celebrating this party you’ve got there actually. How much do you follow politics? How do you think could the upcoming meeting and the like be an important forum for consideration of the really important problems?
I try to keep up with the news as much as possible, unfortunately most Australian news media is owned by Rupert Murdoch and is subsequently and obviously fucked because of this. All ‘news’ serves someone’s purpose so I try and keep up with a couple different sources (eg. RT and Aljazeera) and have a big grain of salt present but it could all be complete bullshit anyways. This response is written the day after the G20 finished and it seems that Tony Abbott did an excellent job embarrassing Australian’s everywhere. We’re not all racist, religious, heartless, climate change skeptics and it sucks to have that moron representing us. I hope the G20 was actually productive for the countries involved and I hope our government makes some serious changes to their sustainability policies. Besides that I plan on doing a Thoreau within the next 10 years and living in a shipping container in the bush somewhere in an effort to forget how fucked the world is.
Yeah, the more older I get, the more tempting it gets.
OK, but let’s dive into your recent work and the reasons why we are here. I’ve just watched your new crushing production called “By The Voice Of His Master A Cult Will Rise” and there are two reflections that come to my mind. Video-wise, what was the concept you were trying to convey and, audio-wise, how on earth did just the three of you manage to convert it into such an impressive wall of sound?
Yeah dude, I’ve already got the layout for my shipping container house planned and just waiting to save up enough money to make it all happen.
The explanation of the video’s concept sounds really fucking pretentious but here goes; the plotline contained within is part of a larger story arc with the other portions of the narrative contained within our other releases (we only have two at the moment, but there is more coming). We purposefully chose not to include any dialogue to keep it all a bit ambiguous, I’ve seen a heap of people trying to work out what it’s all about and it’s been very entertaining so far so I’m not going to give it away here. Besides that I think we successfully broke the Guiness World record for most cigarettes/beugs punched during a metal video and pioneered the inclusion of N64 Mario Kart gameplay into the same realm. I’m sure you’ll see some Wario Stadium action featuring in the next BEHEMOTH video.
In terms of our impressive wall of sound (thankyou for describing it as such) I would have to give most of the credit to the engineer that recorded it for us. It’s only two guitar tracks, one run through an Orange and one run through a bass cab (can’t remember what sort, think it was a Peavy) but I used an aluminium neck guitar and a Rat pedal (possibly a delay pedal as well) and it was all recorded in the middle of a massive warehouse for bulk natural reverb.
Is there some anecdotal story about the song, where it came from and of the times in which it was written? Tell us more about its source and the record it was placed on.
There is indeed. The video is actually two separate songs, both of which appeared on a split we did with a most excellent Brisbane band named NONE. We recorded the whole split (both bands) in one day at a warehouse in Brisbane.
What was your inspiration in the cover art for the split? Who did it?
That was me with my mate Photoshop. We wanted an individual cover for each band’s half but also wanted the covers to correlate with each other and provide a striking first impression that didn’t need text. Hands are fucking weird looking and if you stare at them for long enough they can become pretty much anything and the tab/pill are a pretty easy visual metaphor for the music being a trip or something like that.
Are you guys already working on your full length? What are your future recording plans?
That’s a little complicated. I’m off to India from mid January till an indefinite return date so we won’t be starting a full length until I get home from that. Also our drummer works in the mines in Western Australia and has a pretty fucked schedule at the moment so it’s hard to get anything big done. That being said we’re in the middle of another release; guitar and drums have been laid down, disagreements have been had with the recording engineer, threats have been made, files have been delayed and the whole thing has been an extremely arduous process thus far. Regardless it’ll be stoked when it finally comes out, whenever that ends up being.
Wow, nice. What are your plans in India? Have you been there before?
This’ll be my second time, didn’t get to see enough last time unfortunately so I’m headed back for another go. Flying into Kochi, in the south, and planning on making my way up the West coast all the way to Kashmir if my visa doesn’t run out before I get there. Last time I was India I was helping an aid company operating in Bihar with microfinancing for lower caste citizens and installation of water pumps in rural areas. I didn’t really get to do anything touristy last time, besides watching bodies burn in Varanasi and dead cows floating down the Ganges, so it’s going to be all party this time.
Sick. I’ve been to Mumbai and some of the Goa area a couple of years ago, and I can’t wait to go back there. The country is unreal.
Yeah it’s fucking awesome, everywhere else seems a bit bland and dull after India. What’d you think of Mumbai? I’m not really interested in visiting big cities but Mumbai seems pretty interesting. Shantaram made me want to go see the slums there.
I wish I was able to be more active, it’s kind of hard to get involved properly with something like a microfinancing operation when you’ve only got a couple weeks to spend in a place but I’d definitely like to do a lot more if possible. The entire thing was immensely rewarding and has made a really visible difference in the area I was working.
Oh, I kind of slipped through London without diving into the slums (I drove by bus through the area), but I have certainly seen the poverty of hundreds of Indian people. Anyway, Mumbai is certainly worth a few days’ stay! After all, it’s the most happening city in India when it comes to all kinds of entertainment experiences. Maybe you should examine their local hardcore punk scene and write a report or something? ;)
Might have to check it out then, apparently if you’re white and stay there for a longer than a couple days you’ll definitely end up in a Bollywood film so that wouldn’t be too bad. Our Bandcamp actually randomly gets a bunch of hits from India all the time so who knows, maybe I’ll be the coolest man in India (Peep show joke).
Haha, funny you should say that! I was actually hunted down by some crazy filmmaker while being in a taxi. He stopped off my taxi while charging on his bike, haha! The day spent in Bollywood was crazy. I played in this movie :)
Ok Daniel, so what else would you like to add here when it comes to SIBERIAN HELL SOUNDS? Do you have any live shows planned for the coming weeks? Or shall we expound more on India and forget the band? Haha
Fuck yeah, that looks like an absolutely terrible movie. That would’ve been awesome.
We won’t be having any more live shows till mid 2015 but we will have two releases during this period. I guess just follow us on Facebook if you give a shit and we’ll post everything on there. Thanks to anyone that has bought merch off us, you’ve completely cleaned us out but we should at least be doing some new shirts pretty soon. The vinyl pressing of our split with NONE is somewhere in the ether, apologies for how long it takes us to get shit done.
Great! Any last words you’d like to add here buddy?
Thank you for I typed all these between phone calls at work so sorry if it got a bit rambly.
Oh, not at all. Thanks for the quick chat and let’s keep in touch! Cheers!
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Photo by Sam Commens.
