CEPHALIC CARNAGE (Eng.)
– Hello, thanks for taking the time. What’s currently going on in the CEPHALIC CARNAGE’s camp?
We just got off of the west coast leg of the Exhumed tour and are about to head over to Europe for a 2 week run with Exhumed as well. Really looking forward to getting over there and rockin, not to mention get away from all this excess political crap that is going on over on this side of the planet haha!
– First off, hope you don’t mind starting giving some history of the band…
Cephalic has been around for about 15 years or so and been signed on to Relaspe records for about 10. Started in Colorado and was dubbed rocky mountain hydro grind for reasons i’m sure you can guess and we’ve been blazin and brutalizin ever since. We put out our sixth studio album last Sept called «Misled by Certainty» after going through a member change with myself (Brian Hopp) on guitar.
– And what are the band’s main musical influences?
It really depends on who you talk to, Len likes to try and bring back the old school Euro-metal like Scorpions and Dio, Steve is really into debtmetal, and Nick really likes Lady Gaga
– Though your latest «Misled by Certainty» was released past 2010, I would like to git a bit into it so, first of all; how was the response it got?
It got great reviews everywhere which was really good to see. It was good to see the positive response to it seeing how Cephalic just went through a member change with myself and we really were in crunch time to write a new album, but it was a lot of fun!
– For this album lyrics broke a bit with your usual patterns; could you please shed some light on this?
Nick really worked a lot with Len on this one and they came up with some really good and creative patterns and lyrics. Its follows the music really well and still isn’t your typical bland patterns i would say. They both have a lot of ideas floating around so usually they settle the deal by indian leg wrestling each other.
– Each song in the album (as always) have different details and approaches so; how’s like the songwriting process for CEPHALIC CARNAGE? Is an spontaneous effort or do you consciously try to be that diverse?
I think that for this one it was the collective contribution by everyone that made it this way. We would all just come down to practice with bits and pieces of songs and then smoke a few bowls and flesh the rest of the songs out. I definitely don’t like to listen to the same song over and over on any albums and so we do want to make sure each one has its own identity.
– I have always thought guitars in the band bring such a technical sound to CEPHALIC CARNAGE; is this an important part of the band?
I would say that every part of Cephalic is definitely important, but with the guitars we just try and make interesting riffs and songs. I like making riffs interesting and complex but you don’t want to overdue it and loose your listener.
– I could say since «Xenosapien» your covers look way more futuristic; what could you comment on the artwork for «Misled by Certainty»?
Orion from relapse is the artist that did the last few covers and i think he is getting much more creative as time goes on. The art on this cover is really cool because each part has something to do with concepts in all of the songs. Len gets really creative with his lyrics and it is cool to see an image arise from his ideas in the lyrics.
– We can find in your music elements from Death, Grind… and in lyrical terms we can also find certain Grind influence, as they tend to deal with social issues; could you please comment a bit some of the themes covered in «Misled by Certainty»?
Like i said Len really goes off when it comes to the lyrics that he rights. We have songs that are political such as Raped by an Orb, which deals with the concept of the immaculate conception and how Mary was impregnated by aliens. But there are also a lot of sci-fi type stories that Len writes that deal with all sorts of other topics. It really covers a wide variety of topics and is as diverse as all of the music on the album.
– And how do they fit the album’s name or with your thoughts on current society?
The idea behind the album name was pretty much the notion of being led on by false pretenses. Society in general really is driven by this concept as well as the human perception of reality. People think that they know everything and we are so advanced blah blah, but really in the scheme of things we don’t hardly know anything other then what we think we do. So you are led by this certainty that such and such is the way it is or is that is going to happen when in fact you very well could be wrong.
– You guys certainly are a breath of fresh air into a scene that seems to be more saturated each day; do you think this is something important both for your as artists and for the so called «scene»?
You know the whole «scene» thing is a pretty ridiculous notion these days. Because of this over-saturation of bands the walls of genres are disappearing and creating dozens of other styles. We just write music we like and not worry about what «scene» it is going to fit into.
– We could say you are a touring band; is this tough when it comes to create new songs? And don’t you ever get tired of touring?
Touring does make it a lot more difficult to write songs, when your on the road you don’t have a whole lot of time where you can be writing new material. But we always have down time between tours and we really sit down and try and get the ball rollin, we do like to procrastinate though haha
– And finally, what are your near-future plans?
Well we do have to stop procrastinating and start getting the new album done. After this Europe run, we might do a couple small tours but I think we are gonna lay low and start the creative process back up
– That’s all from my side, thanks agian for your time. Now feel free to add some final words.
Thanks to all the fans for listening and can’t wait to rage back in Europe!
