Interview with VOMITHEIST

Hi! Your music draws from classic death metal bands, but also has a unique twist of its own. Can you tell us more about the musical influences that inspired Vomitheist’s sound?
We have various influences. Obviously, it’s the Swedish bands like Entombed and Dismember. But also Autopsy, Obituary, Discharge, Morgoth, Disfear and Nirvana 2002. We had the idea for the Stockholm sound at a Grave concert and were very influenced by their and Bloodbath’s sound in the beginning.

Your debut full-length album is a complete package of excellent songwriting, sound, and aesthetics. What was the creative process like in putting together this release?
After our first release “Graveyard Flesh Orgy” we started to write new songs without knowing where this would lead us to in the end. After about two years we had enough material go aim for our first full – length so we also started to think about artworks and recording options.
A friend of ours (the guy behind Aesthetisk Art) had already offered us earlier to draw something so we asked him if he would do an artwork for our full–length. Because he already knew us and our music, we just gave him free rein to draw whatever his twisted mind could come up with. And he delivered big time!
The studio we found through the mighty warriors of Niraleth in Megaton Sword. Back then they just had released their first EP and we liked the sound a lot even though it’s quite different to ours. We checked where they recorded it and wrote to the studio. Yvo, the owner, understood very well what we wanted and did one hell of a job to make the sound as nasty as possible.

NekroFvneral artwork by Aesthetisk Art is equally sickening and perfectly complements the music. Can you discuss the importance of visual aesthetics in death metal and how it relates to your music?
Do you remember the first time you had a death metal release in your hands and before even listening to it you feasted your eyes upon the artwork and were like… fuck this is going to be good! That’s what we wanted to achieve. We all love that old, rotten, hand-drawn artwork style which is oozing filth out of every pore of his nasty existence and Aesthetisk Art delivered that just perfectly.
So even if you run by our album by accident, you just look at the artwork and you know, that this thing probably won’t caress your eardrums. This will hurt on a bone-crushing level! And we believe, that’s just what this album does.

“Strangled by Entrails” is the first track on your album and sets the tone for the rest of the release. Can you talk about the inspiration behind this song and how it fits into the overall theme of the album?
“Strangled by Entrails” was one of the first songs we wrote for the album after our EP. We don’t remember exactly, but we wanted to write a punky song that had a good flow. I think we managed to do that. Lyrically we just had the title of the song and wrote lyrics around it. Normally when a brutal title comes to mind, we write it down so we can use it at some point.

Your lyrics and song titles contain themes of gore and horror. What draws you to these topics and how do they relate to your music and creative vision?
Some themes surely come from the horror movies our guitarist used to watch a lot. The rest of the themes come from our sick thoughts about everything that exists or could exist.
Our music should be horrible, disturbing, puking and disgusting and so should the lyrics. That’s why we always come up with title ideas and write lyrics that pick up exactly on that.

In what ways can the exploration of dark and morbid themes through art and music provide a cathartic release for individuals, and how can this relate to broader societal and cultural issues?
This is a difficult question to answer. In case of our music, we can imagine it to be cathartic to the point where you can just turn it up loud and forget about everything around you. From the lyrical side, we hope of course that this is not taken too seriously, which is why it can also have a humorous approach.
We think, through our music not much will change socially or culturally. However, you can see the social aspects in the scene and the people who are in it. We think this has a positive impact.

Can torture ever be justified in any circumstances, or is it always morally wrong?
That depends on the purpose. In our opinion, if torture is used to harm people, it is always morally wrong.
But there are also certain sexual practices that are based on it. These people should be allowed to have fun, as long as it is consensual, and no one is harmed.

The HM-2 driven Swedish death metal sound is a prominent influence in your music. Can you tell us more about your love for this particular subgenre and how it informs your songwriting?
The idea to make this sound came as mentioned at a Grave concert. We then discovered and listened to more and more Swedish Death and found the Hm-2 sound just great! That’s why we decided to use this sound. It stayed that way until today and we still love it. Songwriting-wise we are of course influenced by these bands. The HM-2 sound is chaotic and very distorted so not all riffs work well with it. We pay a lot of attention to that in our songwriting.

Your music is incredibly heavy and aggressive, yet also has moments of melody. Can you discuss how you balance these elements in your songwriting?
We don’t actively try to balance these elements. When we write songs it’s always about how it feels to play them. If we rehearse a new song and something doesn’t feel right about it then we have to change something until all three of us are satisfied. Sometimes this means to include melodic parts as well and sometimes it just means to pummel your existence even harder into the dust.

Can you tell us more about the recording and production process for this release?
The Album was recorded and mixed by Yvo Petrzilek at Verwaltzen Productions in Switzerland. As you can hear he did a really good job. At least we think so. We tried to record everything live and then just did a second run for guitar and bass with the idea that it should sound like you would experience it at one of our live shows.

After the mixing was done, the files were sent to Trakworx Studios where they were mastered. All together we are really satisfied with the result.

Your music has been (of course) compared to other death metal bands. What sets Vomitheist apart from other bands in the genre?
Well, there are countless bands that have this HM-2 sound and play music similar to ours. We don’t want to stand out from that.
We want to be authentic and make death metal that we like ourselves. Of course, we always try to take other influences, for example from American Death Metal or Crust. If we have to take something that makes us stand out from the rest, it’s our band name and maybe the concept (which came up more by accident) with all the puking, guts and so on that fits very well with the overall sound and vocals. However, this is also not new.

Your band name, Vomitheist, is unique and memorable. Can you tell us about the origins of the name and what it represents for the band?
Our goal was actually to achieve uniqueness and memorability and it seems like it’s working. In the beginning we had other names running around like “Desecration” but yeah… just google it and see how many bands you can find with that name haha. Vomitheist is a combination between the words vomit and atheist which is not necessarily obvious at first sight. That is why we have experienced a lot of misreading like vomit – heist but as long as you remember we don’t really care how you read it. Our guitar player was the one who came into our rehearsal crypt with the idea for the name one day and after a beer ridden night the deal was sealed.