INTERVIEW WITH JAY CERAVOLO FROM LOOK AGAIN 'ZINE #4 (1991)
You obviously have a big Slayer influence. Can you see yourselves slowing down and/or becoming socially conscious like they did?
The Slayer infuence isn't as big as the hardcore influence, actually. We were into hardcore because out singer and drummer like it alot. We were into the Dead Kennedys and stuff like that. Kyle sings and phrases things really fast. People think he gets it from Tom Araya, but he actually gets it from the D.K.'s and Henry Rollins and stuff. Now, we are socially conscious, but I don't think that we'd bring it into our music. That's for the politicians We'd rather talk about the fucked up things. I mean, we dwell with the fuckin shit anyway.
How do you feel being classified as a death metal band? Especially when your singer can sing as opposed to just grunting - you're on that R/C compilation.
We don't mind, because we're not death metal. Anyone who hears us should know that. If someone wanted to call us "shit metal", we wouldn't care, as long as they like what we're doing. We'd put ourselves in any category.
Most of your songs are written quite well, expecially compared to alot of the other bands people call death metal.
Well, it all comes from living in Louisiana. For some reason people think Chicago is the blues capital of the world. They're wrong. Mississippi is where the blues were made. That's where the old black slaves were sittin' there on their front porch singin' about how fuckin' rough they had it. About how their wives were gettin' fucked by their masters... So growing up in this area gave us a really acute outlook on music and musicianship in general. It ends up coming out in our songs. It takes us a month or more to write songs sometimes. "Tragic Period" took us two months to write. We put alot of time into it. If we don't feel that it's right, we trash it and start another one. We have friends down here in bands - they're good bands, but they'll write a song in two hours. We might spend five hours just on one part, just trying to refine it.
What about "Anal Lust"?
Oh, that's like the first song we ever wrote and it's not meant to be serious. We went over and toured Europe and every show, everyone wanted Kyle to write down the lyrics to "Anal Lust". Roadracer and our singer talked and just decided that it'd be best if we let people try and figure them out for themselves. I kinda wish we had put them in there, because some fuckin people thought we were talkin about fags. It's not about homo dudes, it's about boffin chicks in the ass!
You guys are also seriously anti-religion, is there any reason for that?/u>
None of us were brought up in a religious fashion, and our singer and drummer both went to Catholic schools...and they saw all the hypocrisy of the catholic religion. We're anti-religion in general, though. If you can't dig within yourself to find something that'll keep you rolling, then fuck it man.
It's more than just "religion', the word, though. We don't like what it stands for. We're not satanic either - we're against anything organized. We just used the pope as a symbol. We figure he'd be the best, to get our point across.
I think it worked, what else are you against?
Well, I don't know how this country can have laws against drinking and driving when we've got politicians stealing money and being as fucking crooed as they are. WE hate politics. This world is fucked, expecially America. It's totally fucked. Just read the newspaper to figure that out. And we're just out to fuck it up even more; to play on the fact that things are fucked up. Instead of trying to make things better, and talk about the good things we feel more comfortable talking about the way things are...
If you could get away with it - do you think you'd actually kill the pope?
Oh no.... no. I'd like to fuckin' smack him around and maybe fuck him in his ass. I mean think about it...I mean I'm not a homo or nothin', but if I stuck my dick in the Pope's ass, that would be great! I bet people would kiss my dick! ... But no, I wouldn't kill the Pope.. I'd like to put a fuckin' hot rod on his face and I wouldn't mind some of his money...But if we could letally kill people we wouldn't be worrying about the Pop. I think the person who cuts me off on the highway would be the first to die. Alot of the violence you hear in our songs is actually violence we think of and feel. It's just that we can't do it. I'd rather be playin music than sittin in jail.
Oh, and who else would you like to kill>
Oh, nobody in particular. We just get sporadic feelings. You know, you don't feel like being hassled. I mean, it's not like we sit around thinking about who we want to fuck up. We just pretty much have a good time, and when people get on our nerves we start thinking these things. We don't acrually have that much hatred that we would want to kill a man, but like, the pope's rings on his fingers and the jewels he's got in his hat could fuckin' feed alot of people. That's one of the things we hate. It's so hypoctitical to talk about "give to others" and "help everybody out" but they don't . The Pope is living like a fucking king. That's bullshit.
Different topic- no tour for this record?
WE were going to do a tour with Deicide and Malevolent Creation but Deicide wanted too much money. Also, our bass player quit about a week after we got home from Europe - so we're working in a new bass player now.
Who did the intro to the title track?
Kyle did that. He sang with a chorus at one of the colleges here, so he wanted to use that bckground. He used to go to church and have to go to Catholic schools and that's one of the things they had to sing. It's with like 4 or 5 different keys.
What happened at the end of the song "Exhorder" on the LP? It ends abruptly.
Usually we fade that song out and it just carries out past a certain point and we fade it. Or drummer says "it's fading out anyway, right?". We just knew we had to keep that in the final mix. We want to get the point across that "hey, we're serious about the music, but we're not serious individuals."
Why'd you go to the ever popular Morrisound?
We had first recorded at a local studio and it sou nded like shit. When we left Mean Machine (Records - their old label) Roadracer made us go to Morrisound to fix a botched project. We did the demo here at Ultrasonic and we woud've went back there, but when we went to lay down the vocal tracks, the engineer kicked us out because of what Kyle was singing about. The engineer was really Christian. We had to record the leads and the vocals at Southlake. Even though the guy at Ultrasonic was real religious, he was a killer engineer. He was a Christian faggot, but good.