Interview Excruciation

A second interview I had about Excruciation, with Hannes (guitar) and Eugenio (vocals); a previous one I had last year which is published here same. Check them out, they have got a killer album!

Greetings Hannes , my pleasure talking with you again and hello to you aswell Eugenio, how things are going?
Eugenio: Hi Carla! Glad to talk to you! We’re pretty busy right now doing the promo stuff and organizing the release show!

In the first interview we had some months ago we spoke general things about the band’s foundation and a few things about some releases. You have signed a deal with WormHoleDeath records and let’s focus on the newest release, ”[c]rust”. All I can say that this album is a masterpiece, I’ve listened to it more than 15 times, no joke, my review score for it *10/10, how the recordings went and where these took place?
Hannes: Thank you for those kind words, we truly appreciate this! First, we did a preproduction in Obscure Sacral Audio Crypt in Greifensee Switzerland, where Bölzer, Deathcult or Antiversum recorded some of their releases. There we defined the final shape of the songs we worked on in the last 2 years. So we were prepared pretty well to enter the studio for the final recordings. The recordings themselves we’re very comfortable as we recorded in the highly professional Realsound Studios in Langhirano, Italy. We worked for 9-10 hours a day with some small breaks. Wahoomi, who took care of the mix and production and Cristian, the engineer were both very helpful and efficient so we managed to record and premix everything in 3 weeks. Still, we worked hard everyday and some parts took hours until everybody was content.

What is suppose to be the story of this album?
Eugenio: If you mean the title, you know, sometimes the real beauty lies under the surface. Even if it’s shiny from the outside, if you start to take a look deeper and see those imperfections that grew over the time, small fractures, some rusty pieces, that’s what tells you the story, that’s the beauty that lies within even if it’s disturbing sometimes. That is worth being told.

Also there is an EP called ”Twenty Four Hours” which includes the Joy Division cover.
Hannes: Yes. We wanted to shorten the waiting time for the full length album through this. Joy Division as well as 80s Wave and Punk stuff have always been a big influence on Excruciation. That influence became even bigger on [C] R U S T, so we decided to do again a cover song. We did the “Worship” 7” already, where we covered Kiss and Mercyful Fate. We like to do cover songs but prefer to release it separately as it’s some kind of tribute to those artists we admire. So we decided to release that cover song separately together with two “appetizers” for [ C ] R U S T.

Comparing this album with the old releases, definitely the sound have changed a lot.
Hannes: If you speak about the 80s era you’re pretty right although I see a fluent development from the Thrash/Doom stuff to our current sound.
Eugenio: That’s true! We always had a lot of doomy elements in our music which got more important from one release to another. Just listen to songs like “Damnation” from our first demo or “Mankind’s End” on the “First Assault” or most of the songs of the “Abyss of Time” and “Act of Despair”-MC’s from the 80ies and you’ll see what I mean. It just evolved over time to what we do today and I think the new album is covering aspects from our very roots to new territories that we just started to explore.

Are going on tour soon as well to promote the new album?
Hannes: No, we are not a touring band. We prefer to do single shows. But we currently are booking shows for 2016 so if you’re interested in booking us, don’t hesitate to write us on booking@excruciation.net.

You are a Swiss metal band, what is your opinion about the metal scene from Switzerland?
Hannes: In the late nineties and early 2000 years there was a strong separation between Death Metal, Black Metal, Thrash and all the other styles and everybody did his own thing. Nowadays people seem to be more open minded and interested in collaborations over genre “borders”, speaking of the bands and fans as well. I appreciate this very much. Speaking for the swiss german speaking part there are a lot of concerts going on and we have some very cool clubs like Gaswerk in Winterthur and the “Meh Suff”-Crew and Artes Musicae Tristis who do a lot of great extreme metal shows in our area. On the other hand, the high prices in Switzerland forced some nice clubs to close as they couldn’t afford the rent anymore. Especially for underground shows this heavily handicaps the booking of shows: You need to earn about 1800 Euros with your concert to pay the club alone, without paying bands and all the other fees. That’s a lot of money for somebody who just started… Speaking of the bands there are many great ones who started recently for example the brutal Deathcult, Antiversum, Moonfrost, Goatfukk, Ashtar, Wacht or the maniacs of Funeralopolis or Zatokrev. All of them are highly recommended. And of course there are Bölzer and Schammasch who rightly became pretty famous during the last years. On the other hand the French speaking western part of Switzerland does it’s own thing and there isn’t a lot of collaboration or exchange between the german and French speaking part of Switzerland. Lately we had a great time with Rorcal and Wardhill from Geneva here in Zurich. We hope to do more stuff like this.

Is there anything else would you like to mention about Excruciation?
Eugenio: To cite Brother Dege, we’re too old to die young, but for sure not too old for this world! Get prepared to have us some many years around!

Thank you again for this interview. Hope to see you very soon! Stay metal!
Thank you Carla for your support! Forever doooooomed!

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