Interview with Tomas Skogsberg (Sunlight Studios) and Dan Swanö (Unisound Studios and many bands)

"People from all over Sweden (and beyond) travelled for hours upon hours to see Merciless, Grave, Entombed, Sepultura...you name it. And I honestly spent a lot more outside trading demos than I did looking at the bands. And by the time I got like 20 letters a day and recorded death metal demos every weekend in my small 4 track studio...well...I knew something unique had happened to me!" - Swano

"I started the (Sunlight) studio in a pro-way around 86-87 at the age of 26." - Skogsberg

"I love working with the “elders“ like Asphyx and Hail Of Bullets. Most of them are family fathers and this is their one true style of music that they “fall back“ to. Most elders fall back to country or blues or some other stuff. These guys go banging their skulls to pieces armed to their teeth with pointy axes and HM-2 pedals in their forties! Respect!" - Swano

"Edge Of Sanity - “The Spectral Sorrows”: Sounds fucked up in everyway, yet it broke the band into a bigger market. Chris from Therion once told me: “How come you have the worst and the best sounding snare on the same album???“ - Swano

"Death Metal is for me is an unexpected twist in my musicality that has been the key to the life I live now." - Swano

- Conducted by guest writer Sascha Beselt (Mandatory)

Interview with Robert, vocalist and guitarist, of the Brutal Death Metal band FERMENTO

"I believe in the hard side of the way, values, sacrifice, discipline, everything is live is a test, real people should be straight and face everything with courage."

"I can't be blamed for people's ignorance. I wrote about elitism, anti system, individualist ideologies and not about NS."

"I hate the business in music, I only believe in the dignity of the musician and their beliefs but most of musicians don't have any dignity or brains."

"We are the most impractical band on earth. Next year it is going to be 20 years since we started as a band and we aren't superstars.. Tell me how many bands with 20 years talk and make facts like us, then call it honour or dignity, call it impractical or whatever you want but we are the truest in our own eyes."

- Conducted by Kunal N. Choksi

Interview with Daniel Corchado, vocalist and guitarist, of the Death Metal band THE CHASM

"If there is another Chasm album in the future I'm almost sure that there won't be any vocals at all. Shouldn't be saying this right now, but there is a very good chance it will happen"

"to be honest I didn't push it enough to keep the band on Earache, there was a point that we just simply didn't care about being signed. Nothing against Wicked World, in fact they did a decent job distributing The Spell, and Dan Tobin, manager of Wicked World, really likes/understands our music, but also they knew/realized that we were not very successful commercially"

"we took some long breaks, we were fed up with all the circus that is the "scene" nowadays, gotta say we were pretty close to disbanding, but we just relaxed and realized that we should keep minding our own business and keep writing music"

"I'm still a stubborn guy when it comes to Death Metal and this music, I still believe this music has to be done with some degree of class, a lot of atmosphere and feeling, a menacing tone and darkened sound"

- Conducted by Hamano Kyousuke

Interview with Blaze Bayley of the UK Heavy Metal band BLAZE BAYLEY

"I've had a lot of record deals, I've been with Geffen, I've been with Warners, I've been with Phonogram, I've been with Def American, I've been with EMI, I've been with Bronze, so I have a vast amount of experience and mostly I'd say they're all crap. "

"I don't give a fuck what venue I'm in if there're fans there and we have our equipment we can play at our best, we don't care where we are, we don't care if we can't put our back drop up, we don't care how small it is, if you can fit 100 people in the room, or you can fit 100,000, it doesn't matter to us, we just don't give a fuck what anybody thinks about what is supposed to be the conventional wisdom in the music business: appear big and you will become big - to me is absolute bollocks."

"I've just tried to write the best that I can, the best that I know how and put as much of my emotion, if that is happy, or dark, or angry, into those songs to try and make them come to life, that's the way I've worked"

"Be great! Be great, play your fucking heart out, show people what you have, show people that your music is your life, and then perhaps you will be worthy of their support."

- Conducted by Ewan Gibb

Interview with Chris Reifert of the Death Metal bands ABSCESS, AUTOPSY, etc.

"Autopsy is actually playing Maryland Death Fest this year, so we're not dead again yet!"

"I spoke with Killjoy the first time in '86 when I was staying in Florida with Chuck Schuldiner. We talked on the phone and he seemed really cool. That was great since I thought Necrophagia was killer and totally sick."

"The beauty of Abscess is we can incorporate anything that fits the demented vibe we're searching for. It's gotta be heavy and ugly though otherwise it just won't work."

"The new album 'Dawn of Inhumanity' has the sound we were looking for and we are very happy with it. "

- Conducted by Baz

Interview with Fred of the French Death/Grind band INHUMATE

"Inviting people on stage is also something we do since 1998 I think. It's something we were almost the first to do in the underground scene I think… We accept people on stage because we consider that the stage is not reserved for “artists”, but it belongs to all the united underground sickos present that evening."

"I'm listening to the hits on our vocalist Christophe's forehead and every time I hear the mic crushing I feel like a thrill, like it was hurting me and he also drives me mad, thinking of the crowd seeing that and getting amazed by such a violent scene... And yes we had some problems with gig organizers, we had to pay several times for the microphone."

"If a big label like Relapse came and proposed us a deal, we'd refuse it. We managed to stay self produced for 20 years, and wouldn't accept to bow to commercialism after such a long time! We'll fight for our status until the end."

"I think we will stop (after the seventh album), that should be the best end for INHUMATE, programming its own death several years before, very far away from all those so called bands made of known musicians that only try to get a job through music..."

- Conducted by Kunal N. Choksi

Interview with Mike Smith of the legendary New York Death Metal band SUFFOCATION

"I think at this point in our career most know what to expect from Suffocation. We don’t strive to change the formula we know works."

"We recorded ‘Effigy of the Forgotten' in 2 weeks and could play it in our sleep in 89'. That album is still over the top for today's standards. It's the industry that prevented us from sprouting our wings fully."

"‘Effigy…' is the blueprint for all that is Suffocation. ‘Breeding the Spawn' was the next level of our growth that needed to be. Unfortunately it was put in the wrong hands for production. The bad production set us back a lot mentally. A lot of work went into writing that style at that time."

"Suffocation will always be a band of unfinished business. Major tours have come and gone without us. Until the kids see us up against what they think is extreme and aggressive, they will never know the truth. We are never the weak link on any tour or stage; the new generation has been sheltered."

- Conducted by Ewan Gibb

Interview with Beau Beasley of the US Grindcore band INSECT WARFARE

This is our first time in Europe ever, and probably the last time ever here, but it's been great, I like it a lot."

"There's no doubt we're 100% broken up, all that stuff that came out like the Agoraphobic Nosebleed split, the 12", and some other stuff, that stuff's all been recorded since we were active, it just now came out."

"I got contacts already from the US offices of Earache, I was like "not interested", kinda blew 'em off. I kinda jokingly said, "well if Digby contacts me I'll think about it" and he did, the next day I literally got an email from him and that kinda sealed the deal for us, I was like "well, fuck, awesome". "

"I'd only do interviews with foreign magazines all the time, I'd love to do things for Swedish magazines or Japanese magazines or Australian - I'd always do those, that was like an honour, but like America, I'd be like pffft, like whatever, y'know?"

- Conducted by Ewan Gibb

Interview with Mors Dalos Ra of the German Death Metal band NECROS CHRISTOS

"Music can work just for the dumb entertainment factor feeding the brainless amongst us, but in fact, it is the most spiritual medium one can think of."

"I don`t think that the Metal scene in general, and especially Death Metal, has reached its limits although the classics might have been already written, yes. My sincere belief is, that this form of audiomantic worship goes beyond the ordinary music understanding and therefore boundaries do not exist."

"My main musical inspiration is rooted in middle eastern folklore as those of Persia, India and the Arabian world."

"Right now, we`re getting material together for the next full length record, completely entitled “The 9 branched candelabrum of mystical lights, leading into Doom of the Occult”. Again it shall be a deep conceptual structure"

- Conducted by Nate Poblete

Interview with Famine of the French Black Metal band PESTE NOIRE

French / English

"The last thing I want is to become popular; my music, in its essence and form, can NOT be popular, it is impossible and would be a contradiction. We do everything to make our music horrible and vile, it can only please to ugly hermits, I never understood the buzz around Peste Noire (and I agree with those who don't get it)"

"Recreating a typically Black Metal atmosphere is very difficult, especially when it comes to finding the right sound and place to perform such a gig. In a live setting we are forced to bring out the METAL, rock'n'roll, and punk elements to the detriment of the BLACK and mystical elements of our music."

"This whole system of defective downloading and immediate consumption truly makes me puke. The CD, as an object, is no longer a sacred item which one would have to wait for, which one worked hard to be able to purchase and listen to on a good stereo system also purchased after time and effort."

- Conducted by Travis

Interview with Jan of the legendary Belgian Mincecore/Grindcore band AGATHOCLES

" MINCE CORE is the same as old school grindcore, the way it was in the 80's, raw, minimalistic and socially and politically involved."

"I make the songs on an acoustic guitar, record them and write them down and at the rehearsal I explain the song to the others. It's a fast way of working."

"Writing the music takes not that much energy, writing the lyrics for all these songs is much more difficult."

"I myself have been working as a social worker for 14 years now, for an organisation for and with people with a disability."

- Conducted by Kunal Choksi

Interview with Lille Gruber of the German Brutal Death Metal band DEFEATED SANITY

"''Chapters of Repugnance' will be a concept album dealing with some of humanity's darkest chapters."

"(On our new material) we have found our perfect balance between tradition and avant-garde."

"As a musician you don't wanna sit at home all week and have one rehearsal a week/month, you wanna go out there and play every night."

"I would rather like to see fans supporting young, fresh bands! Nostalgia is bullshit!"

- Conducted by Ewan Gibb