SPEWTILATOR (Eng.)

1- Hello, thanks for answering to our questions. What are you guys currently up to?

Ryan from Spewtilator here… Currently just wrapping up all the stuff for the new EP that Sam at the mighty Boris Records is being cool enough (or foolish enough haha) to put out for us! I coordinated the cover the art from Hand of Beaver, which turned out totally fucking killer, and I did the interior art and layout for the EP. Right now I’m knocking out one last piece of art that’ll be included on some cool extras that’ll come with the record. Other than that, personally, just writing a bunch of riffs and trying to stay out of jail. Rafay and Amos both have other bands, Mangled and Death of Kings respectively, that they’ve been killing it in lately since we’ve been taking it easy waiting for the EP to drop. Boris Records put out ripper EP’s from both bands in the last couple years so we’ve all been real busy.

2- First off, could you make some history of the band?

Well… I’d been smoking weed and barbecuing and listening to metal with my neighbor across the street, Chris, for a couple months since I moved into the house I was living in then. I was playing in a punk band at the time and I knew he was a rad drummer and I’d been wanting do something more along the lines of old Slayer n shit so I wrote a couple riffs and asked him if he’d be into playing some shit like that for fun and he was into it. He was trying to tour manage for big bands at the time and was out of town a good bit so it was kinda just something to do, figured we could play some house parties and drink free beer, so we wrote a couple songs. I’m not a very good guitar player haha so I knew we needed someone who could rip it up and I had known Rafay for years from our punk bands playing together so I asked him if he’d be down to play some shit like that and he was into it so I switched back to playing bass, which is what I’ve always played. That’s pretty much how it started, just a bunch of potheads wanting to play fast as shit. For the sake of space I’ll just summarize the rest but know that there was a lot of beers, weed, me getting naked at shows, ‘last’ shows, and other radical shit going on haha… so after that we recorded the stuff for the Thrash N Splash tape which The Reaper’s Grave put out, went on tour with Trasher, recorded the stuff for the Get Conjured tape that Grim Winds put out, went on tour again, then Chris got real busy with the tour managing shit so he split and Jake started playing drums, then we recorded all the one-off songs that eventually went on the Total East Coast Devastation tape, then we recorded all the stuff for the Inhale Awaits EP, split tape with Coffin Dust, and the new Goathrower EP, then Jake got real busy with work so he split and Amos started playing drums, then we actually put out the Total East Coast Devastation split tape with Death of Kings and went on tour with them, then Boris Records put out the Inhale Awaits EP, then Headsplit Rekords put out the Ancient Rites of Getting Conjured split tape with Coffin Dust, and now Boris Records is about to put out the Goathrower EP.

3- How could you describe your sound?

Total weed grinding beer soaked death thrashing cacophony… I guess. Basically punks playing blown out thrashy death grind. The Slayer influence throughout all the recordings is pretty apparent… from Altar of Snackrifice on the Thrash N Splash tape, to the Inhale Awaits album title and cover art, to the spoof bong pentagram logo I did. I actually saw some shit recently where Kerry King was bitching about everyone spoofing that logo saying “get your own logo” or some shit. What a fucking pussy, fuck him, and fuck his Slayer cover band. Everyone knows Jeff wrote all the best songs, shit… Angel of Death changed my fucking life at 11 years old. I will give Kerry ‘Praise of Death’ though, that shit rips… buuuuut half the reason it’s so rad is because of the lyrics that were written by, guess who, Jeff motherfucking Hanneman.

4- What are the band’s main musical influences?

Well we definitely don’t listen to Slayer haha… but uh, yeah other than them basically a bunch of old thrash metal, death metal, and grindcore. We all listen to a bunch of different shit so it kinda filters its way in here and there. The title track and Cherokee Curse from the forthcoming Goathrower EP actually have some black metal influence which is kinda new. We actually had a “no black metal” rule for years but that’s Rafay’s shit and he did a great job of incorporating those elements while still keeping the sound true to what we’ve always done so it was a no brainer. Rafay and Jake actually wrote both of those songs while I was on hiatus after my first kid was born so when I came back to practice they sprung that shit on me haha. I think I actually said “that’s cool and all but I dunno if it’ll really work for Spew” about Goathrower but they weren’t gonna give up and the more we jammed it and once I kinda figured out my parts for it I knew it was way too rad a song not to play. I think that one might actually be Rafay’s crown jewel so to speak, he’s real proud of that one, which he should be because it’s one of the best songs we’ve done.

5- How is the feedback for your new album being?

Well… it hasn’t dropped yet, the planned release date is actually Valentine’s Day… so you can buy it for your sweetheart and declare your undying love and affection in the form of wax as black as your cold dead heart. Sam actually paid extra for blacker black… there will be none more black. In all seriousness though, the folks I’ve let hear the tracks have been nothing but stoked… so it’s either pretty good or they’re just too nice to tell me we suck.

6- And are your personally satisfied with the final outcome?

Definitely! There are always little things you’d like to go back and change after the fact but I think this is the best sounding shit we’ve ever done. Jack Control at Enormous Door did a killer job with the mastering and Josh Freemon at Dead Sound Studio cut us an unbelievable deal on recording and mixing it and gave us waaaaaaaaay more of his time than he should have… certainly way more than we paid him for haha! Aside from the couple of one-off songs we recorded in our practice space that went on the split with Death of Kings we’ve recorded everything we’ve ever done with Josh and every recording has sounded better than the last. He’s a super rad dude who also happens to play in a super rad black metal band called Hellgoat and I’d say he’s been just about as integral to our “sound” over the years as any of us in the band, so thanks dude if you’re reading this!

7- How could you describe this opus in just 3 words?

Total fucking idiocy

8- How has the production process for your new release been?

We never really practice before we record… which is a terrible idea but that’s just the way it has always worked out and thankfully, for the most part, it hasn’t hindered us in the studio. A lot of bands ‘demo’ songs by recording them first on their own and then scrutinize them or something before they go record them for real… I dunno, but we don’t do that either, never have. We’ve never gone into the studio with a brand new song or whatever, any time we’ve recorded it’s been songs that we’ve been playing for a while and are already comfortable with… which is probably why we have been able to get away with our shitty recording habits haha. So yeah, by the time we recorded all these songs we’d been playing some of them for over a year… shit, maybe two? I dunno, it’s hard to remember anymore but yeah the actual recording process for all the songs was real smooth. Rafay spent a lot of time screwing with different amps and sounds n shit which he hasn’t done in the past so the tone he ended up with on this thing is super burly and we spent a lot of time mixing the recordings prior to them being sent off for mastering and I think it really shows in the final product.

9- And how do you use to work on the songwriting?

I think our songwriting process is pretty typical, basically Rafay and I kinda write stuff independently and then bring whatever to practice to kinda feel out and see how it’s gonna work. We’ll usually have a general song structure in mind and we’ll kinda run through everything so Amos can write drum parts and see where the song goes. Rafay and I have talked about writing more stuff together but it never really works out that way, we’re both busy dudes and kinda on opposite schedules so I think the way we do things now is fine. Plus I kinda like the dual nature of the band, I think it keeps things a bit more varied than if the songs were all a mash up of our ideas. Rafay is real good at writing songs that have a bit more traditional structure… choruses n shit… some repeating parts haha… while I kinda end up writing shit that is just a line with no repeating parts at all. I really like the idea of just blazing though a bunch of riffs and maybe hitting a “chorus” right at the end and then that being it and on to the next song. Maybe if I wrote better riffs I might wanna play ‘em more than once haha!

10- Finally, what are you near-future plans?

First things first is getting the shit done for this EP and getting it out… but aside from this last piece I’m working on it’s pretty much done so that shouldn’t be too much of a hassle. I think Sam just approved the proofs for the folders so I’m pretty sure Feb 14th will be the day. Other than that just working on new material and maybe playing a show sometime sooner or later. Acid Redux Productions will be putting out a live split tape between us and deep south morbid intoxicators Grinchfinger sometime soon. Our side is a recording of the set we played opening for Despise You a while back and is absolutely ridiculous. I did all my vocals super weird that night and end up sounding like some sort of crazed swamp witch haha… so essential listening for anyone who hates their ears.

11-That’s all from our side, thanks again for taking your time to answer our questions. If you now want to add some final words; feel free to do it.

.Thanks for the interview! If people wanna keep up with us and hear our horrible racket they can lurch on over to http://spewtilator.bandcamp.com and http://facebook.com/spewtilator for all our latest stupidity. Also, make sure to check out all the gnarly shit that Boris Records is putting out and pick up the new EP and the rest of the killer records Sam has put out while you’re at it! http://boris-records.com // http://borisrecords.bandcamp.com Nuke your dome and listen to radical heavy metal and grindcore every day!