webzine

First of all, you seem to be quite busy. You’ve got your web design business [www.domainsunlimited.com], Malignancy, and, of course, Mortician.
- Yeah, I run Domains Unlimited, which is a web-hosting, e-commerce, everything - we do a ton of stuff for a lot of big companies. That’s my main work; all day, I am a computer nerd. I’ve got [side project band] Prosthetic Cunt. I’ve got Malignancy for a short while now - I’m going to do the last seven songs that were written and probably do a mini-cd for probably Unique Leader or somebody like that. Then, we’ve got Primitive Brutality, which is my solo stuff and that we’re about to re-press - we might be out. I think we finished the first thousand of that. We’re gonna re-press that and I’ll have new stuff out for that next year. I’ve got my record label also. My record label consumes a lot more time nowadays. We’re doing a lot more mail order and I’m looking to offer really good prices. I’m doing the more you buy, the more you get a discount.

What’s the name of your record label?
- Primitive Recordings. That has released Malignancy’s 'Ignorance is Bliss', the Primitive Brutality release, Prosthetic Cunt’s 'Fuckin’ your Daughter with a Frozen Vomit Fuck Stick'. we’ll see how much of that gets printed. The end of the year is gonna see a lot of stuff from Primitive - we’ve got over eight releases that we’re gonna be putting out and a bunch of splits. We’re releasing the Decomposed - from Spring Valley, New York - demos; Bile from Holland’s CD; Severed Head from Maryland CD. We’ve got 'Final Bloodbath', which is a Mortician release that we just put out. It’s 27 old songs, all re-done with the current line-up we have now, which is Ron from Malignancy on guitar, me on drums, Will on bass/vocals, and I did some guitar tracks. Ron did the studio guitar on his tracks. It was cool. It was a fun session to do. Everybody always bitches, saying [in whining voice], eeewwww, a drum machine. So, we gave them what they wanted.

Prob'ly the good thing about having your own business is that you don’t have to be concerned about arguing with your boss to let you leave for six weeks on the road.
- It’s a misconception. A lot of people think that because you run your own business and there’s no boss that you have nobody to answer to and no responsibilities. Actually, it is quite tough. It does hurt my business every time I leave. This time though, at least. I bring my laptop with me. I can get on line for emergencies, but there are certain things that only I can do because I’m the main coder for all our applications. Things kind of fall apart when I’m gone, but I’m never gone that long and I’m never that far out of reach. If worse comes to worse, I could jump on a flight for a day and do what I have to do. The company is getting to the point now where it’s very self-sustaining - our applications run themselves. I’ve got everything in the house; my T1s are in the house and it’s running smooth. I’m taking a big break - we’re [Mortician] not gonna do shit for at least four or five months.We did a lot this year. I did a Malignancy tour also in Europe and then we did Mortician the end of last year and the beginning of this year, two new albums; it’s been nuts. I need a break to just relax, kick back, and enjoy the house.

As we talked about a little bit, you’re really supporting two albums on the tour, 'Final Bloodbath Session' and 'Darkest Day of Horror'. The latter is all new songs, while the former consists of 27 tracks re-done with live drums. Tell me about the two albums.
-'Final Bloodbath' was actually two years in the making. It went through two different line-up changes - drummers in, drummers out, Desmond in the band, Desmond not in the band, Ron in the band, Rog in the band it was a big mess. Everybody waited, waited, and waited, and I started advertising it a million years ago, so everybody was talking about it and anticipating new Mortician albums. It finally got done at the beginning of this year, and end of last year we did tracks, half-and-half like right after the Europe tour. It’s 27 old tracks, everything from the beginning up to 'Domain of Death'. 'Darkest Day or Horror' is our new one, which is back with the drum machine. It’s just straight, old school Mortician - me and Will doing what we do with a drum machine. We wrote it in a couple days and it came out sick. It’s really good. I like it a lot. It’s gonna be our last release for Relapse. After that, we’re gonna start Mortician Records, which will be solely for releasing Mortician albums until we’re done releasing Mortician albums.

There was a time when you were concerned about making the change from programmed to live drums. What made you change your mind?
- We’ve always wanted to do it. We went through a few cool drummers. George [Torres] from Dehumanize was great with us; we wish it worked out. He had a lot of personal stuff he had to tend to at the end of the tour, and then he left the tour and went with Skinless and all that. We had Vic who was in the band for a while, but he had some drug problems and he went to tend to that. It just seemed like every time we got a drummer, it flaked out. Then I ended up playing drums about three years ago - I went from guitar to drums just for the fact that nobody was around to do it and nobody was responding. People who were responding were not up to par - they weren’t able to do the blasts or anything like that. I’m having fun doing it, but it’s not easy.

How do you just pick up the drums all of a sudden?
- Well, I played with Malignancy before that for a few years. I was a little bit of a seasoned drummer. I still consider myself more of a guitar player, although I haven’t played guitar much in the last few years, but I’m still a guitar player at heart. Being a drum programmer too, I have the drummer mentality. I know what I want to do; I just can’t always do it. Mortician drums are pretty cut and dry. Once I get the hang of it, I get the hang of it. We said fuck it, let’s do it; let’s do it with this line-up. This is the best line-up we’ve ever had that’s been stable. Of course, it’s gonna end now because Ron’s gonna be moving on to do full-time Malignancy stuff, and his other and, Dirty Brown Eye. We’re gonna be back looking for a drummer because I want to get back on guitar. I think I’m done with the drums. I’ll maybe do one more tour if I have to, but I’d like to get back on guitar.

Did you run into a lot of resistance from certain segments of the metal community over your use of drum programming?
- Mortician has always been one of those bands where people either. You’re gonna lose a whole bunch of people because they’re like [in whiny voice], oh I don’t like drum machine bands, and they won’t even listen to it, which is retarded; music’s music. If it’s an electronic drummer, it’s the same as putting distortion on your guitar - it’s just altering something different. I like a lot of drum machine bands. There’s a lot of cool shit out there. Primitive Brutality is all drum machine. I never feel that a lack of a drummer should impede the progress of music, of a band. I tell kids all the time, especially out in areas that are a little remote where nobody even knows what metal is, get a drum machine, get a bass, get a guitar, and do it yourself. A lot of kids I’ve inspired to do that, which is really cool. I’m going to be a doing something on the web site soon - like a little workshop - to get people into recording more, and multi-tracking, and learning how to do it. I think it is cool and I’ve gotten a lot of demos sent to me by kids that are just 14, 15 years old, in their room with a drum machine. It reminds me of me when I was younger.

Do you feel like pioneers in the metal community based on the way you make albums?
-Sort of. We’re probably the biggest band that has taken a drum machine to the level that we’re at. There are not many bands that - to put it bluntly - sell as many albums as we do and use a drum machine.

You’re making 'Darkest Day of Horror' available at the shows a couple of months before it’s release date. Is that a gift to the fans?
- We didn’t have the artwork yet and we wanted to get it out for the tour. It’s a little something for the fans. It’s just got the black cover now - it’s the limited tour edition. When the real deal comes out, it will come out in February on Relapse.

Any surprises on 'Darkest Day of Horror 'or is it what one would expect from Mortician?
- It’s the same old Mortician a little bit of change. Like the same progression that we had from 'Chainsaw Dismemberment' to 'Domain of Death', but not much. You still know what you’re gonna get - we’re not gonna gay out on everybody or be weak. It’s brutal. I really like it. Personally, it’s my favorite.

Are you gonna stay with the horror movie theme? I know that you are a big science fiction guy.
- I’m personally a sci-fi guy and when I write my own stuff I write about that. I pretty much do the music and Will does the lyrics, and it’s Will’s themes.

You’ve been going at this for over 10 years now. Has each album and tour been more successful than the previous one?
- Every year is just ridiculously more successful CD sales wise and tour wise. It’s bigger and better opportunities, better tours. This tour has been phenomenal. Tonight was kinda light. Georgia was light too, but other than that it’s been killer. It’s really been a kick ass tour.

'Darkest Day of Horror' is your last album on Relapse. You wanted more control. What’s doing it yourselves going to give you that Relapse couldn’t?
- We just want to do the artwork ourselves, work at our own schedule, not have to meet any deadlines, deal with the artist directly, etc. We’re all gonna be pumping things out for a few more years and we just want to do everything our own way. I don’t want to dis’ Relapse or anything but there has been some lack of communication errors that resulted in things not being done on time and that kinda shit. We really like those guys and wouldn’t want anything like business to get in the way of friendships with people over there. Once we leave Relapse, we can only blame ourselves if we screw anything up.

Will you continue to take Mortician in the same direction, and use vehicles like Malignancy to explore different types of music?
- Always. That’s why I have Prosthetic and had Malignancy and still will do Primitive Brutality. I’ll probably end up with something else too [laughing]. Now that I’m out of Malignancy, I’ll be looking to do some drumming. I’ll probably be leaving drums from Mortician, hopefully soon and get back on guitar. I like to keep busy and creative when it comes to music. Mortician will always be Mortician. From the very beginning when I joined, I’ll told Will that I’m never going to change this band. I’ll write stuff that is Mortician. If I wanna write other shit, I’ll write other shit, and go on and do something else, and he’ll probably do something else eventually too.

I didn’t realize that you also have a distribution company until I saw the rows of CDs at the merchandise table tonight.
- Yeah, both of us carry a huge distro with us. Between the two us, we’ve probably got at least 700 different titles of CDs, which is great for coming out to the rural areas because most of these kids know what they can get at Sam Goody and Tower Records, but they’ve never heard of half the shit we bring. It’s cool because we trade with guys all over the world. When we play Europe, both of us go over there with hundreds of CDs, trade, and bring them back. We really open up a lot of music to a lot of kids, which is what it’s all about.

If you had it to do it all over again, would you change anything?
- Probably not. I like the way we’ve done it. We were kinda half-assed at the beginning because we never took it too seriously, which was cool. I never wanted to make it a business. I have my own business and I don’t need another business headache. We still try to keep it fun, but now it’s a hell of a lot more organized and there’s more money now to do things right, more hotels, proper vehicles, etc. When you’re struggling and you’re young guys in the van and you’re making piss every night. I mean, we did that for years and years, but eventually you get a little bit more people listening to ya. I like the way we did it. I think the way we did it is very natural. It’s how most bands should be. A lot of bands that go from one day nobody to one-day success, look at ‘em now. Half of ‘em become heroin addicts, drop dead, don’t know how to handle the money. Not that we’re making millions or anything like that, but if we ever did, there’s no fuckin’ way that it would ever go to our heads. We’ve been too long on the street with the people for that.

MARTYR OF NOWADAYS - Autumn 02

Demo/Disco-graphy:

-Demo #1 (89)
-Mortal Massacre (Mini - 93)
-House by the Cemetary (Mini - 95)
-Hacked up for Barbecue (96)
-Zombie Apocalypse (Mini - 98)
-Chainsaw Dismemberment (99)
-Domain of Death (2001)
-Final Bloodbath Session (2002)
-Darkest Day of Horror (2003)

	Intie with Roger Beaujard



	First of all, you seem to be quite busy. You’ve got your web design business [www.domainsunlimited.com], Malignancy, and, of course, Mortician. - Yeah, I run Domains Unlimited, which is a web-hosting, e-commerce, everything - we do a ton of stuff for a lot of big companies. That’s my main work; all day, I am a computer nerd. I’ve got [side project band] Prosthetic Cunt. I’ve got Malignancy for a short while now - I’m going to do the last seven songs that were written and probably do a mini-cd for probably Unique Leader or somebody like that. Then, we’ve got Primitive Brutality, which is my solo stuff and that we’re about to re-press - we might be out. I think we finished the first thousand of that. We’re gonna re-press that and I’ll have new stuff out for that next year. I’ve got my record label also. My record label consumes a lot more time nowadays. We’re doing a lot more mail order and I’m looking to offer really good prices. I’m doing the more you buy, the more you get a discount. What’s the name of your record label? - Primitive Recordings. That has released Malignancy’s 'Ignorance is Bliss', the Primitive Brutality release, Prosthetic Cunt’s 'Fuckin’ your Daughter with a Frozen Vomit Fuck Stick'. we’ll see how much of that gets printed. The end of the year is gonna see a lot of stuff from Primitive - we’ve got over eight releases that we’re gonna be putting out and a bunch of splits. We’re releasing the Decomposed - from Spring Valley, New York - demos; Bile from Holland’s CD; Severed Head from Maryland CD. We’ve got 'Final Bloodbath', which is a Mortician release that we just put out. It’s 27 old songs, all re-done with the current line-up we have now, which is Ron from Malignancy on guitar, me on drums, Will on bass/vocals, and I did some guitar tracks. Ron did the studio guitar on his tracks. It was cool. It was a fun session to do. Everybody always bitches, saying [in whining voice], eeewwww, a drum machine. So, we gave them what they wanted. Prob'ly the good thing about having your own business is that you don’t have to be concerned about arguing with your boss to let you leave for six weeks on the road. - It’s a misconception. A lot of people think that because you run your own business and there’s no boss that you have nobody to answer to and no responsibilities. Actually, it is quite tough. It does hurt my business every time I leave. This time though, at least. I bring my laptop with me. I can get on line for emergencies, but there are certain things that only I can do because I’m the main coder for all our applications. Things kind of fall apart when I’m gone, but I’m never gone that long and I’m never that far out of reach. If worse comes to worse, I could jump on a flight for a day and do what I have to do. The company is getting to the point now where it’s very self-sustaining - our applications run themselves. I’ve got everything in the house; my T1s are in the house and it’s running smooth. I’m taking a big break - we’re [Mortician] not gonna do shit for at least four or five months.We did a lot this year. I did a Malignancy tour also in Europe and then we did Mortician the end of last year and the beginning of this year, two new albums; it’s been nuts. I need a break to just relax, kick back, and enjoy the house. As we talked about a little bit, you’re really supporting two albums on the tour, 'Final Bloodbath Session' and 'Darkest Day of Horror'. The latter is all new songs, while the former consists of 27 tracks re-done with live drums. Tell me about the two albums. -'Final Bloodbath' was actually two years in the making. It went through two different line-up changes - drummers in, drummers out, Desmond in the band, Desmond not in the band, Ron in the band, Rog in the band it was a big mess. Everybody waited, waited, and waited, and I started advertising it a million years ago, so everybody was talking about it and anticipating new Mortician albums. It finally got done at the beginning of this year, and end of last year we did tracks, half-and-half like right after the Europe tour. It’s 27 old tracks, everything from the beginning up to 'Domain of Death'. 'Darkest Day or Horror' is our new one, which is back with the drum machine. It’s just straight, old school Mortician - me and Will doing what we do with a drum machine. We wrote it in a couple days and it came out sick. It’s really good. I like it a lot. It’s gonna be our last release for Relapse. After that, we’re gonna start Mortician Records, which will be solely for releasing Mortician albums until we’re done releasing Mortician albums. There was a time when you were concerned about making the change from programmed to live drums. What made you change your mind? - We’ve always wanted to do it. We went through a few cool drummers. George [Torres] from Dehumanize was great with us; we wish it worked out. He had a lot of personal stuff he had to tend to at the end of the tour, and then he left the tour and went with Skinless and all that. We had Vic who was in the band for a while, but he had some drug problems and he went to tend to that. It just seemed like every time we got a drummer, it flaked out. Then I ended up playing drums about three years ago - I went from guitar to drums just for the fact that nobody was around to do it and nobody was responding. People who were responding were not up to par - they weren’t able to do the blasts or anything like that. I’m having fun doing it, but it’s not easy. How do you just pick up the drums all of a sudden? - Well, I played with Malignancy before that for a few years. I was a little bit of a seasoned drummer. I still consider myself more of a guitar player, although I haven’t played guitar much in the last few years, but I’m still a guitar player at heart. Being a drum programmer too, I have the drummer mentality. I know what I want to do; I just can’t always do it. Mortician drums are pretty cut and dry. Once I get the hang of it, I get the hang of it. We said fuck it, let’s do it; let’s do it with this line-up. This is the best line-up we’ve ever had that’s been stable. Of course, it’s gonna end now because Ron’s gonna be moving on to do full-time Malignancy stuff, and his other and, Dirty Brown Eye. We’re gonna be back looking for a drummer because I want to get back on guitar. I think I’m done with the drums. I’ll maybe do one more tour if I have to, but I’d like to get back on guitar. Did you run into a lot of resistance from certain segments of the metal community over your use of drum programming? - Mortician has always been one of those bands where people either. You’re gonna lose a whole bunch of people because they’re like [in whiny voice], oh I don’t like drum machine bands, and they won’t even listen to it, which is retarded; music’s music. If it’s an electronic drummer, it’s the same as putting distortion on your guitar - it’s just altering something different. I like a lot of drum machine bands. There’s a lot of cool shit out there. Primitive Brutality is all drum machine. I never feel that a lack of a drummer should impede the progress of music, of a band. I tell kids all the time, especially out in areas that are a little remote where nobody even knows what metal is, get a drum machine, get a bass, get a guitar, and do it yourself. A lot of kids I’ve inspired to do that, which is really cool. I’m going to be a doing something on the web site soon - like a little workshop - to get people into recording more, and multi-tracking, and learning how to do it. I think it is cool and I’ve gotten a lot of demos sent to me by kids that are just 14, 15 years old, in their room with a drum machine. It reminds me of me when I was younger. Do you feel like pioneers in the metal community based on the way you make albums? -Sort of. We’re probably the biggest band that has taken a drum machine to the level that we’re at. There are not many bands that - to put it bluntly - sell as many albums as we do and use a drum machine. You’re making 'Darkest Day of Horror' available at the shows a couple of months before it’s release date. Is that a gift to the fans? - We didn’t have the artwork yet and we wanted to get it out for the tour. It’s a little something for the fans. It’s just got the black cover now - it’s the limited tour edition. When the real deal comes out, it will come out in February on Relapse. Any surprises on 'Darkest Day of Horror 'or is it what one would expect from Mortician? - It’s the same old Mortician a little bit of change. Like the same progression that we had from 'Chainsaw Dismemberment' to 'Domain of Death', but not much. You still know what you’re gonna get - we’re not gonna gay out on everybody or be weak. It’s brutal. I really like it. Personally, it’s my favorite. Are you gonna stay with the horror movie theme? I know that you are a big science fiction guy. - I’m personally a sci-fi guy and when I write my own stuff I write about that. I pretty much do the music and Will does the lyrics, and it’s Will’s themes. You’ve been going at this for over 10 years now. Has each album and tour been more successful than the previous one? - Every year is just ridiculously more successful CD sales wise and tour wise. It’s bigger and better opportunities, better tours. This tour has been phenomenal. Tonight was kinda light. Georgia was light too, but other than that it’s been killer. It’s really been a kick ass tour. 'Darkest Day of Horror' is your last album on Relapse. You wanted more control. What’s doing it yourselves going to give you that Relapse couldn’t? - We just want to do the artwork ourselves, work at our own schedule, not have to meet any deadlines, deal with the artist directly, etc. We’re all gonna be pumping things out for a few more years and we just want to do everything our own way. I don’t want to dis’ Relapse or anything but there has been some lack of communication errors that resulted in things not being done on time and that kinda shit. We really like those guys and wouldn’t want anything like business to get in the way of friendships with people over there. Once we leave Relapse, we can only blame ourselves if we screw anything up. Will you continue to take Mortician in the same direction, and use vehicles like Malignancy to explore different types of music? - Always. That’s why I have Prosthetic and had Malignancy and still will do Primitive Brutality. I’ll probably end up with something else too [laughing]. Now that I’m out of Malignancy, I’ll be looking to do some drumming. I’ll probably be leaving drums from Mortician, hopefully soon and get back on guitar. I like to keep busy and creative when it comes to music. Mortician will always be Mortician. From the very beginning when I joined, I’ll told Will that I’m never going to change this band. I’ll write stuff that is Mortician. If I wanna write other shit, I’ll write other shit, and go on and do something else, and he’ll probably do something else eventually too. I didn’t realize that you also have a distribution company until I saw the rows of CDs at the merchandise table tonight. - Yeah, both of us carry a huge distro with us. Between the two us, we’ve probably got at least 700 different titles of CDs, which is great for coming out to the rural areas because most of these kids know what they can get at Sam Goody and Tower Records, but they’ve never heard of half the shit we bring. It’s cool because we trade with guys all over the world. When we play Europe, both of us go over there with hundreds of CDs, trade, and bring them back. We really open up a lot of music to a lot of kids, which is what it’s all about. If you had it to do it all over again, would you change anything? - Probably not. I like the way we’ve done it. We were kinda half-assed at the beginning because we never took it too seriously, which was cool. I never wanted to make it a business. I have my own business and I don’t need another business headache. We still try to keep it fun, but now it’s a hell of a lot more organized and there’s more money now to do things right, more hotels, proper vehicles, etc. When you’re struggling and you’re young guys in the van and you’re making piss every night. I mean, we did that for years and years, but eventually you get a little bit more people listening to ya. I like the way we did it. I think the way we did it is very natural. It’s how most bands should be. A lot of bands that go from one day nobody to one-day success, look at ‘em now. Half of ‘em become heroin addicts, drop dead, don’t know how to handle the money. Not that we’re making millions or anything like that, but if we ever did, there’s no fuckin’ way that it would ever go to our heads. We’ve been too long on the street with the people for that. MARTYR OF NOWADAYS - Autumn 02 Demo/Disco-graphy: -Demo #1 (89) -Mortal Massacre (Mini - 93) -House by the Cemetary (Mini - 95) -Hacked up for Barbecue (96) -Zombie Apocalypse (Mini - 98) -Chainsaw Dismemberment (99) -Domain of Death (2001) -Final Bloodbath Session (2002) -Darkest Day of Horror (2003)