INHUMATE
We are proud to make this interview
to one of the best underground grind/death bands. This is a really cult
band that feels music and supports the underground. Now read what Fred
has to say to us
1. Hi Fred. First of all introduce INHUMATE
for all those who still don't know anything about you. Tell us how was
INHUMATE born and how you arrived till today
INHUMATE started as a death
metal band in the end of 1990 and is still playing in the underground
scène since that time. David (guitar) and me are in the bands
since the beginning, so the "spirit" of the formers is still
in our music, but the definitive line up was found in 1994 (10 years
now !!) and so we consider that INHUMATE has found its perfect equilibrium
now.
2.
You decided to make a heptalogy, seven CDs. It is quite ambitious in
the extreme metal scene to be determinated to make 7 CDs, most of the
bands can hardly produce one or two CDs. Why did you arrive to this
concept? What made you sure about making it this way?
Ah, ah… Nothing makes us sure to finish the whole concept,
but we will try to make it as we have the faith in what we do. We know
that our way of acting is original and we also think that maybe are
we an alternative to the "commercial" scène dealing
with labels that fuck the bands… Now about the concept itself the
idea came slowly after the first album when we thought to propose a
link between the 1st and the 2nd one. So when we were thinking to the
3rd one, we decided to go on linking the albums and finally the idea
to make a concept came….
3. The concept is about Life and The
Abolition of Time, from the antenatal life, to the ending of life on
earth, please, explain us what are your concept/lyrical influences,
what are your motivations in this way, explain us deeply your concept.
Ok, so be ready for something long… Here we go about our concept:
Those 7 albums will be 7 steps of a human life and will try to show
that life never ends, so if life never ends then there is no time left
and we arrive at what we call the abolition of time. Some people gonna
tell me that life ends when a guy dies, and to this I answer that in
the normal way of life all person should give birth to a child, in that
case life goes on through the child, ok? So when the parents gonna die,
life won't end because the child will carry it. And when that child
will die (in a normal age I mean) it should have been the same, that
child, when he'll be an adult, he should have given life to his own
child… So, when the try to understand what life is for the all
humanity, you can't understand when it begins and when it will end,
can you? And time cannot be counted into a so wide moment, is there
then a real time? Can't it be abolished? I think that yes, because he
human brain isn't strong enough to understand all those things. So,
that was for the whole concept. And we try to put this, to explain this
through our cover artworks (and a little bit through the lyrics). Our
first CD "Internal Life" was dealing with the life before
life, the life inside the mother. The second one, "Ex-Pulsion",
which means the moment of birth in French, is about that time. When
you got the whole complete CD, you can see the pictures of that moment,
maybe the biggest traumatism that all human people has to feel in its
life. The third one, called "Growth" tries to deal with all
the young years, the teen ages years. More precisely the moment when
you get higher and when you learn things... The moment of the beginning
of the knowledge. Our last one (out in February 2004) "Life"
is "dealing" with the middle of life, when the personality
is completed, then will follow "The Fifth Season", "Expulsed"
and "Eternal Life". With this last CD, we close the concept
and in the same way that the name sounds like the first CD, the story
begins again, and never ends as long as there will be human people on
Earth. Now the only thing we hope is to be able to finish this long
concept. Still three CDs to do, we know it won't be finished before
a couple of fucking years !!!
4. What will find, in your opinion a
metal-head who buys your last CD "Life"?
I won't tell you my opinion, I'll just tell what he'll find. So,
if he buys it soon he can have it as a digi pack coming with some cool
pictures (especially the one under the CD. He will also find a 16 pages
full colour booklet with crazy stage pictures. About the music itself
he will have about 45 minutes of grind / death music (I hope not too
bad) with a clear sound. And on the multimedia part he will be able
to check some photos galleries, some information about INHUMATE and
some video clips taken from our performance at the Obscene Extreme Festival
2003. And if you really want my opinion I'll say that for less than
13 € post paid he'll have something much more interesting in his
hands than many CD you can buy for much more expensive in all your usual
metal shops ;-)…
5.
The picture of the cd is a shure mic. In the videos of the Obscene Extreme
included on the cd we can see your vocalist hitting his head with the
mic. What does he have against the mics? Heheh
He has nothing against mics, it's just that when we're on stage
we're possessed but the stage trance if the things are ok and in that
moment he doesn't feel anything else than sickness, that's why mics
usually have pain after the concert! We play music, yes, but we also
feel it !!! And I think that too many bands forgot that…
6. What do you think about the extreme
metal scene in general, which French UG bands would you recommend us?
I think that the extreme metal scène is really good nowadays.
Now I talk about the underground scène as I don't know anything
of the "commercial" one, I don't know what CRYPTOPSY, NILE
or REGURGITATE are doing now, sorry… So back to the underground
I find a cool friendship and that's really cool. Some cool French underground
bands I can recommend you should be BLOCKHEADS, IMPERIAL SODOMY, BLOODY
SIGN, HAPPY FACE, RECUEIL MORBIDE, WARSCARS, WHORETORN, SUBLIME CADAVERIC
DECOMPOSITION…
7. What about your distro? Tell us something
about your distro, in order to make it well known to our readers.
Our distro (Grind Your Soul Distro) is the solution we found to
stay self-produced. With this we never asked any label to make our releases
and we will go on producing our own stuffs by ourselves saying fuck
off to all those who would like to make money with INHUMATE's name.
So it's full of underground stuffs only and I think it's more interesting
for people who try to discover new or unknown band than for people who
want to buy well-known bands. We have no CANNIBAL CORPSE, NASUM, SIX
SHIT UNDER or MARDUK stuff of course. For all interested person, the
list (with hundreds of CD, vinyls, tapes…) is available for free
at professeur.burp@wanadoo.fr
8. What plans does INHUMATE have about
playing live? Is there anything booked now? Will INHUMATE come to Spain?
For our live performances we don't search anymore. We do just take
the propositions we have and then say "yes" or "no".
But as we have some professional and family lives it's not possible
for us to accept all propositions, and also because of our very brutal
stage attitude we can't make real tours… So we usually make single
gigs. And that's a big problem if we have propositions to play far away
like Spain. We live in the very North-East of France and Spain is at
more than 1100 kilometres, so you can understand that for one gig it's
too far and as we don't make tours there is really not many chances
that we will hit the Spanish ground… But let's be positive and
think that maybe one day it will be possible ;-) !!!
9. Tell me some "all time"
CDs that marked your way of understanding music
Hum, difficult… I'll say "Ace of Spades" (MOTORHEAD),
"Reign in Blood" (SLAYER), "Black Metal" (VENOM)
for the old ones and the last real shock I had was with "Sunrape"
from INGROWING. This band is killing everything with this incredible
album. If you don't have it yet, just buy it at www.obscene.cz
10. You are a band that usually let
the fans download a lot of mp3s and videos. What do you think about
the effect of piracy and p2p to the extreme metal scene (distros, labels
and bands)?
Personally I really don't care about those things. I understand
that it can be a problem for big companies, but for a band like us it's
not a problem. We're deep into the underground and I think that people
that really enjoy INHUMATE know that if they want to feel the complete
thing we propose they should download music but also get the booklet,
etc… An INHUMATE album is more than just music and globally I think
that the best thing is to have all albums to understand the progress
and to feel the concept, so people who download don't kill us, they
make us stronger as we're independent and we don't need to get thousand
of euros back to make the band staying alive !!!
11. Thanks for your time, now you can
tell whatever you want to your Spanish fans!!!! STAY SICK!!!!
Thanx a lot to you for according us this interview ! To all Spanish
maniax I'd like to say that they are always free to contact me for whatever
they want, all e-mail and letter will have an answer. No rip off here,
just pure underground support !!!
INHUMATE
c/o Fred ANTON
19 rue des paturages
67310 ZEINHEIM
FRANCE
DECEMBER 2004
Interview by Fran
inhumategrind@wanadoo.fr
www.inhumate.com
