Ibex Moon Artist Avulsed Interview is up 1/31/2010

www.avulsed.com

1. Tell us a bit about Avulsed and how they came to work with Ibex Moon?

Hum… I dunno what to say about AVULSED… we’ve been together since 1991, so I guess more or less every Death Metal fan should have heard about us in one way or another and if any still hasn’t, then I guess he’s not such a real Death Metal fan. In that case, the easiest and quickest way to know about is to visit our website www.avulsed.com and there he can find anything he needs to know about AVULSED.

As for how came our collaboration with Ibex Moon Rec., well, I already knew John McEntee from INCANTATION since many years, in fact I released their “Forsaken mourning…” mini CD back in ’97 as well as we did an European tour with them the same year, so when the new album “Nullo” was about to come out, I was looking for a reliable label in the US who could handle the album in terms of distribution and promotion. I asked John about the possibility and he was immediately into it, so the rest is what you see and so far we’re happy with it despite some fuck ups in the CD release.

2. Dave what is the major difference between Avulsed and the other projects you create?

The main difference is that AVULSED is the only REAL band which I regularly practice, play live, answer interviews, release albums… The other projects are just that, projects that every now and then I do with one friend or another, normally trying to do something different than what I do with AVULSED. It’ not that the projects are not important for me, it’s just that I don’t have more time to practice with other bands and running my label at the same time. Also, normally these projects are done with guys from other cities/countries, so the practicing is not possible in any way. So let’s mention some of these projects with whom I have already recorded some albums: CHRIST DENIED, GOLGOTHA, PUTREVORE, ANAEMIA, YSKELGROTH, UNWOM, SAD EYES…

3. Avulsed reminds me of the good old days of powerful Death Metal. What are your thoughts on the more guttural and ultra gore Death Metal?

Haha… well, most probably it reminds you that, because we started playing right during these good old times, so it’s natural that we got that sound & feeling, and we have always kept this, we didn’t want to adapt our riffing to the modern tendencies like for example bands like ABORTED did, neither we wanted to get into the brutal Death field. AVULSED means Death Metal and this, in our opinion, must be related to brutal vocals, brutal lyrics and brutal imagery.

4. Will Avulsed be coming to USA to perform at all?

We already did that, although it was long time ago. We played two shows in Los Angeles in 2000 and two shows in New Jersey in 2001. Anyway, the US seems to be a difficult country to play unless you pay the flight tickets yourself, of course, and since we have our own lives & jobs, we don’t have money enough to afford that. We already talked to some festivals, but they can’t offer us basically anything.

5. You seem to have released you CD on your own label in Europe Xtreem Music. Do you find it better for bands in this day and age to self release their material?

Well, the fact that I have my own label doesn’t mean that AVULSED has released the album itself. Many bands release their albums themselves without any label behind, but in this case, Xtreem Music wasn’t created to release AVULSED stuff. I’m running the label since 1990 although under different previous monickers, so it’s already a well established label with a proper distribution and promotion.

I don’t find good for bands to release the stuff themselves, basically because a band doesn’t have any experience in promoting and distributing CD’s, so they finally end up giving their CD’s for free to their friends and pilling them under their beds. Also, they’re loosing that special feeling that means to be signed to a label and having someone helping you to spread your music. In the past it was even a miracle to get a deal for a 7”EP, not to mention an album!! But on the other hand, today there are thousands of bands around and they can’t all get a deal, although there are also thousands of labels. In general there’s a saturation of bands & labels and it’s very difficult to outstand.

The reason why we decided to release the new album on Xtreem Music it’s because we weren’t sure about the work that our previous label Metal Age was going to be good enough, so we decided to directly license the album to other labels in different territories to ensure a proper distribution & promotion.

6. How is an Avulsed show like, and do you perform live often?

It’s funny, but still to this date, an AVULSED show seems something different and many people gets surprised to see such a violent & energetic band on stage. For us is this is something normal, we’ve always been like this, and we think that if you play brutal music, you should also express yourself the same way on stage. I still see 20-years-old boys playing like a statue on stage, they have no feeling at all and of course after the 2^nd song, you know how it’s going to be, because they don’t transmit anything. We play around 20-30 shows every year, not too much, not too less. This depends on our jobs, you know, but even with this we’ve managed to play all over the world from Japan to America (North, Central & South).

7. On “Nullo” CD you seem to have a few covers on the Promo I received is there a reason for so many cover tracks???

Like I said before, this was a fuck-up from Ibex Moon, because there are 4 pages missing on the booklet, the ones containing all the info & artwork about the 6 bonus tracks which are taken from the “Reanimations” CD and also the 6 bonus tracks are on reverse order on the disc… Now, anyone getting this release, will find 6 tracks after the album just marked with an asterisk with absolutely on info about where these tracks come from!! And even they’re not in the same order as listed on the back of the CD. It’s quite frustrating, to be honest, but well, john told me that will be fixe don the next pressing.

8. What are your thoughts on the digital age do you it hurts the artist or do you find it a strong way to get new bands out there?

I don’t know if other kind of music, but in Metal and specially underground bands & labels, this is totally hurting us. If it wasn’t cheap enough to get your music recorded on CD-R’s, the internet offers you, through all these nice blogger-bastards, to get music totally for free. They think they’re on their right to destroy others job by offering for free the hard work and hard-earned money to create music. In some way, the positive thing if for example that on MySpace you can get your band promoted easily, but on the other hand people is losing the essence.

9. Is there a running theme on “Nullo”?

Well, it’s basically the same theme we’ve always spread since our beginnings, which is gore, blood and macabre subjects. If you read the definition of “Nullo” in our CD, then you’ll perfectly understand the concept about the album.

10. How have you seen Avulsed progress over 5 releases?

Yes, of course!! Anyone can see it, not only us. Our music although still keeping the same spirit as always, has become much heavier and intense as well as our shows are definitely more crushing that before. We still keep the same blend of brutality & melody as always, thing that’s not done by many bands by the way. In general, bands tend to keep it or totally brutal or totally melodic, becoming quite predictably after all. But in AVULSED, our stuff is quite varied in terms of composition and keeping the listener interested in what’s coming next, and if you see these songs performed live, then everything gets total sense!!

11. Thank you for your time any closing thoughts place here...

Thanx to you for the interview and support, it’s highly appreciated!! Anyone interested in listening to some real Death Metal, please, check our new album “Nullo”. You can listen to some songs from that album as well as some older tunes ay www.myspace.com/avulsed

Death Metal rules!! Keep it gore!!