GRAVEHILL (Eng.)
– Hello and first of all thanks for your time. What is GRAVEHILL currently up to?
MIKE: HAILS to You and our Spanish Hordes! We are currently getting ready for the Central Illinois Metal Fest Massacre in July. It will be a killer time and we get to slay the stage with the likes of Nunslaughter, Exhumed, Cardiac Arrest, Hod, Macabre, Insanity, Embalmer, Maax, Drogheda, Call The Paramedics, Morgue Supplier and many more! We have played the mid west a few times now and we have developed a good following and some GREAT friends there. Shall be an INSANE time!!!!!!!!!!!!
– To start, why did you choose «Gravehill»? What does it mean to you?
MIKE: Throgrimm and the original members B. Demon and Mike Apocalypse thought the ancient pre-Hellhammer name fit perfectly for what they wanted to spew forth with the olden tradition of death metal. It was a tribute to the likes of Hellhammer, Matas/Death, Massacre, Master, Genocide, Slaughter, Savage Death, Possessed and the forefathers of this deadly death noise. We actually got the infernal blessing of Tom G. Warrior himself to use the name. True story. Gravehill to me means no bullshit death metal terror. Think back to 1985 and listen to it, feel it. It is the ancient way. It is ugly and raw, primitive, cave man style! Stripped down and back to the basics. No fancy shit! Just pure relentless and crushing metal of fucking death!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
– Your brand new «When all Roads Lead to hell» is out. How does the album represent you and your music?
MIKE: Being our 2nd album, we decided to move forward and start experimenting to make our fans “think” and use their heads! BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA YEAH RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!! FUCK THAT POSER SHIT!!!!!!! It is the same ugly ass, raw as fuck death fucking metal! If you liked “Rites…” you will like “When All Roads…” It is our first album to have our addition of Matt Harvey to the death team. But it has the same simplistic death metal anthems to bang your head and your fist to! We don’t put ourselves on a pedestal and look down upon our fans. WE ARE ALL THE SAME! We are all on the same level and we know what the hordes want! It is the same thing that we WANT! It has fast bangers, mid paced bangers, we slow it down a bit with the doom crush.
– And what are your expectations? Are you satisfied with the final result or is there anything you would like to change?
MIKE: The vocals are a little bit changed up to include some deep growls and I have more variation there. Matt has some ripping solos to add and some killer riffs, as did Rob and Jason. Thorgrimm kind of conducts the whole death noise process from behind the coffins, as I do with the last perspective. The 2 old farts(Thorgrimm and I) KNOW the sound, as do the 3 other maniacs. So we stick with that “formula” so to speak. Our expectations are to spread this plague as much as we can. We want to even infect those who DO NOT get it, so we can change them into fans! But what matters are the true hordes that have been with us since the beginning and those other true hordes that we have not reached yet! We are satisfied with the final product, yes! There is nothing really to change. Maybe if we had a little more time with the samples. But once again, we were pressed for time and only had so many hours to work with. We had to pay for the recording ourselves. THAT needs to change! Bahahahaha.
– I could say sound on this album is more mature than on your debut. What are your feelings about it?
MIKE: Well, we don’t want to grow up! Bahahahaha. Mature huh? Well that’s OK I guess. We have gotten a couple of years older and wiser. We gained more experience in the studio. We weren’t drunk and stoned the whole time like we were on “Rites….” Hahaha. Having Matt in there with suggestions and Ryan Butler to work with helped BIG TIME with a better over all sound. We also worked better with our time. It’s all a learning experience for sure!
– «Rites of the Pentagram» got an amazing feedback. Due to this, did you put any kind of pressure in the band to got an even better result?
MIKE: Thank you! We felt it got OK feedback, but we really wanted to get out to more people. But we are happy to just be mentioned in anything that’s out there! It really pushed us to the next level in this death metal journey, so we look back on this record with HAILS! There was an enormous amount of pressure to come up with a strong set of songs for “When All Roads……” The material on “Rites…” is pretty damn strong! So YES, we felt that weight on our shoulders, to get that better result, as you mentioned.
– And, because of this, do you expect the same acceptance for «When all Roads Lead to Hell» or the contrary? As expectations may be higher.
MIKE: We want to keep raising the bar. As cocky as that sounds, if we stick with our formula and we are hungry to get out there and crush, we can do it! I expect the next album to be ever BETTER than “When All Roads…” Why put out mediocre shit. I don’t feel that we have released the perfect album yet. We may NEVER have that “perfect” album, or even a bonified “classic” album. But we are going to try. The expectations SHOULD be high for our next album. We relish the opportunity to prove we can do it!
– How went the production process for the album? Since (just as your previous one) sounds quite polished compared to the standard sound most old school Death Metal bands tend to have. Was this what you were looking for?
MIKE: There seems to be a trend in trying to capture “that old sound” and going back to old formats in analog and recording and mastering that way. To be honest, we can’t afford to record and master in analog. Or go and hire some old school producer to “capture” that old era, or sound. We have a set group of friends that we work with and that we trust as far as recording goes. I don’t think that the sound is TOO polished though. It still has the dirty rawness to it. That comes out in the music. We don’t go in there and try and totally change up what our sound is. We are who we are. There are no fancy tricks with our recording process either. We go in, we record it, listen back, and then decide what is good and what needs to be re-done. We then listen to the rough mix as it gets mastered, and get all the levels up to par and even. Some of these “retro” bands, they might not sound so old school when you get them into the live environs. That will set them apart from a band like us. We are the same either way. We also didn’t want to get thrown into the whole “retro” thing, or that bullshit NWOSDM stuff. We are a current band. We didn’t want to do a “retro” album. We just wanted to do a good and solid metal record! Yes, we pay homage to the old way, but we keep in mind that we are a current band and don’t just dwell on the past.
– During the album I noticed an even wider mix of influences than on your previous work; some Thrash elements, details from Black Metal, a Death Metal vibe overall… So this makes me think your musical influences may be quite varied. Which are they?
MIKE: Gravehill, in the end, is influenced by Death Metal, Thrash Metal AND Black Metal. The ancient ones mentioned in question #2 of course are the main influences. But death metal like Autopsy, Necrovore and Nihilist, the German thrash of Sodom, Kreator and Destruction plus others like Razor, Morbid Saint, Devastation(Chi) and Slaughter Lord, fucking old Sadus! As far as black metal, the list is smaller, but we can’t deny some Craft, Immortal, Impaled Nazarene and Darkthrone creeps into our death noise. But it also boils down to 2 HUGE and important bands! If you REALLY want to know who are 2 MAIN influences are, it’s: VENOM and old SLAYER. Other stuff like Mercyful Fate, Black Sabbath, Motorhead, 
Voivod, and even crust/punk like Discharge, Mob 47, Siege, Amebix, Anti Cimex and others in that style. As long as it’s killer and brutal, I bet you we listen to it and LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
– During your career have been several changes in your line-up but, have you finally found a steady one?
MIKE: You know, people come and go. It may be that they can’t take being in a serious band, or they just don’t want the commitment or that type of “rock and roll” life. It happens. People change. Some remain the same douche bags that one wastes their time on. But life must go on! GRAVEHILL MUST GO ON! We have the unit now that we are comfortable with. Matt does get busy with Exhumed and we have to use hired guns at times. We call them our mercenaries. We have used Tom Knizner, our blood brother from the mighty Cardiac Arrest out in Chicago, to play with us when Matt was out in Europe. We are also using another friend, that we will make an OFFICIAL announcement shortly about, for the Wolves Of The Apocalypse Festival in Cheyenne, Wyoming August 19th. It will come up that we will need to use our pals from time to time to fill in for Matt. But we pick friends who we know and that can play the music, have a blast and rage on stage. In the end, we all need to be on the SAME PAGE. With attitude and with style of music. We tried having others in the band that just didn’t fit, and we tried to mold them. It just didn’t work. It was different with Jason and Matt. When those 2 came in, it fit like a fucking glove. And when the gloves fit, YOU DON’T HAVE TO AQUIT…… MEMBERS that is! Hahahahahaha.
– You split-up back in 2001. What prompted you to do so and what made you come back?
MIKE: There were a bunch of factors actually. Thorgrimm had a chance to go back to Morgion and play “keyboard bitch metal” again, hehehehe, so he jumped at that chance. The other guys Mike and Demon wanted to do other things themselves. That “same page” thing came into effect. And I guess they all just got burnt out on Gravehill at that time. Not 100% sure. I was an old friend of the guys back then. I would hang out with them at practices and do HUGE amounts of drugs and drink TONS of beer and whiskey with them fuckers. Mike and Demon used to work at Bionic Records too and I would go in there and talk music, sports and beer with them. I have known Thorgrimm for YEARS, since 1988 or before! It was
a great time and I thought Gravehill RULED. NO ONE was doing that style back then! It was a new thing. We had some great times. I lived up a few minutes from their studio so I was around a lot. Now the studio also caught on fire back then. There were other set backs that I have forgotten about. But it seemed both a doomed and dead project. Flash forward to 2006. Thorgrimm was out of a band, and I was about to leave mine at the time. We had talked about doing a death metal band in the ancient tradition, ala Gravehill, off and on for years. But now was the time to make it a reality. It was MY suggestion that we use the Gravehill name. I loved the name and the concept of the band. I got the blessing of Mike Apocalypse to take his spot he so brutally filled back in the day. And we had the drummer and I would do bass/vox. Now we needed a guitarist. I had a pal KK Reaper, that was a killer player and just like us attitude wise. Thorgrimm suggested we get Bodybag on 2nd guitar. Bodybag was also in the band that I left. He agreed to jam with us and see what happens. Well once the 4 of us got together and wrote “A Promise Made In Heresy”, we were ready to kill. The feeling we got that day, we knew we had some evil shit going on! We agreed with Mike Apocalypse to NOT play or release any of the old songs. So we just wrote all new stuff, in the same vein pretty much, as before! So it really wasn’t a “come back”, it was a hiatus, then a re-birth I guess! Hahaha.
– You played at the Maryland Deathfest and will soon play Central Illinois Metal Fest. How do you feel about it? How was the response at MDF and what can fans expect to see from GRAVEHILL at CIM?
MIKE: MDF was a RAGING success! It was an honor to play out there for the maniacs and to play with some of the best bands ever assembled! With a list containing the likes of Cianide, Voivod, Doom, Nuclear Assault, Blood Freak, Nunslaughter, Impaled Nazarene, Aura Noir, Exhumed, Marduk, Repugnant, Machetazo, Nokturnel, Funebrarum, Dropdead, Avulsed, Dead Congregation, Malignant Tumor, Miasmal, Inquisition and others was AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!! We hails those maniacs for braving the hot as fuck Baltimore heat, as well as the Sunday hangovers, with us! YOU ALL RULE! As I mentioned above, we are getting ready for the mighty CIM now! It is going to be an insane time. We have been bugging fucking Matt Bishop for the last few years to play. Now that we have sold millions of records, he FINALLY asked us, hahahaha, just fucking around. Matt runs a GREAT fest. And we know it will rule and we will have a great time. Thorgrimm and I came out to CIM in 2007 to see Impetigo there and we HAD A BLAST! A lot of the Illinois area hordes have seen us before as we have played the Chicago area 2 times and had 3 other shows in Dekalb, Milwaukee and Indy, so they know what to expect. But for those who haven’t witnessed a Gravehill live ritual, YOU ARE IN 
FOR IT! Prepare to meet you Unholy Executioner if you don’t Worship the fucking Devil with us! Our Decibel Rituals will leave you Bloodsoaked and Ravaged! Our Pentagram will make you Suffer during our HELL METAL HOLOCAUST! Hahahaha. You will bang your head, raise your horns and get fucking insane with us!
– Beside this, what are your future plans? Won’t be any tour?
MIKE: In the future, we have The Wolves Of The Apocalypse Festival August 19th in Cheyenne, Wyoming. We don’t care what anyone says or thinks, those Hordes in the Badlands asked for us, and they will get us! When there are enough maniacs that request the devastation, well, we aim to please those fuckers. So, CHEYENNE! WE ARE COMING!!!!!!!!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! We will also make a return trip to one of our 2nd homes, San Antonio, Texas to play our Brother Aaron’s Gore Growlers Ball in late November. This line up includes: Suffocation, Exhumed, Solstice, Deceased, Derketa, Impiety, Cardiac Arrest, Nokturnel, Sathanas, Hellwitch, Hod, Hirax and many, many more. This will also rule as San Antonio has some of the craziest metal heads around and we will NEVER forget that great show we had at the 10/11 Club back in Feb 2010. TOTAL MAYHEM!!!!!!! FIGHTS, BLOOD, SPEAKERS GOING OUT, MORE FIGHTS, BEER AND WHISKEY EVERYWHERE, MORE BLOOD, EVEN MORE FIGHTS! No tour plans rights now. We are in talks with some people right now about getting out to Europe next year. And WE WILL plan a Mexican Assault for next year as well. But those are just plans right now, so we will have to keep everyone posted! Stay in touch through our facebook page for more info on that. We will also have a .com sight coming soon!
– That’s all. Thanks once more for your time. If you want to add any last words to the interview, take the last lines.
MIKE: I HAIL TANIA AND THE SPANISH HORDES. We have been asked to play over there many times. And now 2012 is upon us, Gravehill must come over to slay for you maniacs! SALUDOS SPANISH FANATICOS!!!!!!!!!!! Hails to the mighty Spanish bands Avulsed, Graveyard, Unconsecrated, Altar Of Giallo, Omission, Decapitated Christ, Putrevore, Morbid Flesh, Machetazo, Aggression, Dantalion, Korgul The Exterminator and our infernal Brothers in Abrahel! Thank you for your time Tania! And your support of Gravehill. HAILS TO THE WORLD WIDE HORDE AS WELL! 666 HAILS!!!!!!!!! To get official Gravehill armor and death noise, go to the links below:
http://www.ibexmoonrecords.com/euro_catalog/index.php
http://www.warlordclothing.com/
https://www.facebook.com/gravehill
