Photo by Samira Chahboub.
Lord of D-Beat
(Nb. Please bear in mind this interview was made in late 2017. Lots of things happened since, Gasmask Terrör split up, Sexplosion went on hold, Bombardement underwent a lineup change but is still going strong... Luc and I also started a mixtape trading ring called @metalpunktapeexchange)
For those of you who’ve been lingering in or out the French punk or metal scenes of the last four (!) decades, Luc Ardilouze/Akerbeltz feels like a household name. You’ve either seen him on the thanks list of a cult record, read one of his fanzines, seen his artwork, heard a band or two he’s playing drums in, bought a record that he’s released himself, read his blog, downloaded one of his cool tape rips, listened to his podcasts, subscribed to his instagram account or just spent the night drinking beer, shooting breeze and talking about music or whathaveyou at a cool festival... I’m lucky enough to have met Luc around 1990 when we both were teens - literally begging him for tapes after tapes of some of the best metal and punk I’d never heard. Just before he moved out of Paris before the turn of the century, we managed to edit one issue together of a weird little fanzine called Faith? which was in poor taste but a fun ride nonetheless. I tried with this interview to cover as much ground as possible...
Hello Luc, thanks for taking the time to answer this interview. First of all, I’d like you to… describe your surroundings. Where are you as you type this? What do you see in front of you? Think of it as an exercise in visualization, the bird’s eye view to help put readers in your mindset...
Hi Max, thanks for the questions, it's a real honor to be featured in the first issue of your new zine. Right now I'm sitting at home, typing this on my desktop. Facing me on the wall is a framed poster of the movie Warriors, and tons of crap scattered on my desk—DVDRs of rare Japanese hardcore live videos, a case full of black ink pens, mailing supplies… Behind me are record shelves taking most of the opposite wall. I'm sipping a hipster IPA beer and eating raw black radish as a snack. The combination of which makes for superb burp fodder.
What music are you playing right now?
MINDLESS SINNER is blasting from the stereo. Catchy Swedish heavy metal from the days of old.
You’ve become a fairly prolific drummer over the years. GASMASK TERRÖR, SEXPLOSION, DIKTAT, BOMBARDEMENT… Am I missing anything?
DIKTAT just broke up but the other ones you mentioned are still going. I'm also in a more metal-sounding, yet unnamed studio project that's mostly lifting riffs and beats from early METALLICA, VENOM and POISON IDEA, but since all members are busy with their main bands it's really slow at the moment.
How do you keep all your current bands separate? How/where/how often do you set up rehearsals and gigs?
Sometimes it's exhausting and requires a lot of planning ahead. There seems to be a shortage of drummers, so a lot of us end up being in multiple bands. We're trying to practice once a week with each band, and gigs are frequent, but since most people I play with are also in several other bands, it's all pretty random and you constantly need to adapt to everyone's schedules, touring plans… and long distance relationships. Thankfully we all share the same practice space, so no need to run back and forth all the time.
Do you have more bands in the works? Are there any unfinished projects or failed attempts you’d like to share?
As previously mentioned, we have this studio project that's pretty quiet at the moment. There's been plenty of failed attempts over the years—too many to mention, really. Some played live a couple of times, some never got past the practice room. I played in a couple of one-off tribute bands too (MISFITS, DISCHARGE, and an all US hardcore cover band.) I really liked that band BRÛLURES, we had a bunch of really killer tunes that we never got to record unfortunately, only a couple ended up on a comp tape.
With hindsight, how do you view your first drumming stint in FACE UP TO IT!? Is there anything you regret doing, missed opportunities etc. How did the band fold? We’d lost touch back in the mid-2000s so I did not follow that particular story around that time, unfortunately.
I was late to the game with the band thing. I pretty much started from scratch with FACE UP TO IT!, I was 25 and had never played an instrument before… The band was never tight nor very good live, but in hindsight it was a great experience that allowed me to learn a couple of basics. Playing live was terrifying at the beginning but it totally challenged my utter shyness and social maladjustment. We lasted for 14 years, not too bad for a sloppy hardcore band.
When you moved from Paris to Saint-Jean-De-Luz then Bordeaux, did you notice a change in mentalities in the various underground communities you hung around with? Did you see them change over the years? How would you qualify 2017 Bordeaux now compared to other places?
As a whole, I like the more laid back mentalities of provincial underground communities. I enjoy a little Paris every now and then, but I wouldn't live there again. Too stressful. Bordeaux isn't too bad for a Southern city located in a pretty rural region, remote from Paris and influential neighboring countries like Germany or Belgium. It's the right size, you can just walk or bike around and meet your friends anytime. Only a couple of hours drive from Spain. And it has a fairly rich history in rock'n'roll. Punk has always been a thing here, from its inception (70s bands like STRYCHNINE or STALAG left a mark) to second wave (CAMERA SILENS…) to 90s fastcore (ÖPSTAND…) to now. Metal was never too popular but the city has bred a few remarkable bands over the years, HIGH POWER and STEEL ANGEL being two obvious 80s heavy metal staples. Unfortunately the city has been gentrified to death in the past decade and rent has gone through the roof.
Let’s go back to THE fanzine that brought your name up front… As I mentioned, you and I go back a long way together and this new fanzine endeavour of mine brings back fond memories of me as a teenager being a huge fan of Poulet Basquaise obviously... What made you want to start a fanzine in the first place? Was there a specific moment where you sat down and said to yourself “fuck that, I’m doing it. Let’s get writing.”
Haha, thanks for the kind words. I can't really remember the specifics, I was 13 when we launched the first issue with a school mate, which was over 3 decades ago. I think I first heard about fanzines in a popular late night TV program called Les Enfants du Rock and it immediately struck a chord, made me really curious about that whole underground subculture / alternative press. Reading my first zines made me want to start one right away.
Poulet Basquaise got quite big. What’s your fondest memories of your death metal superstar days?
I grew up in a rural area remote from all things death metal so great memories were certainly not that of killer gigs. Thankfully I enjoyed the industrious aspect of working on a fanzine: spending hours writing mail, laying out pages, dubbing cassettes, etc. Most of my teen years were spent alternating between sitting in my bedroom doing this, and skateboarding. The excitement was all about coming home from school every day to a mailbox filled with letters and packages from countries afar, filled with incredible tapes, zines, flyers and whatnot. Much has been said and written about the golden era of tape trading and zine editing, and I'm glad to have taken part, albeit on a tiny level, in building that whole network.
I remember your name popping up on the thank lists of so many great albums! Which ones make you the proudest of?
I don't even own a lot of those albums anymore, to my greatest dismay. One of the earliest and proudest moments was when my name popped up on the NAPALM DEATH "From Enslavement To Obliteration" LP thanks list. I had sent Bill Steer a letter inquiring about CARCASS, I guess, and there I was, captured in print on one of the most influential records of its generation. It blew my 15 year old mind at the time, as you can guess.
When we did Faith? together, I remember us hating the second wave of black metal bands with a passion around the time our first (and only) issue was released (circa 1993)... I think it was my juvenile sense of humour that made us put a picture of the VILLAGE PEOPLE on the cover with the very witty *ahem* captions “San Francisco Hardcore / Gay Mayhem”. Some of our scandinavian acquaintances didn’t take it very well, remember those days?
I had no recollection of that specific beef until you unearthed that Metalion letter recently! I've always loved a little off-the-beaten-path goofiness in my zines, and the Faith? cover matched this mindset perfectly. The early 90s black metal explosion was so uptight and taking itself seriously, that's one of the aspects I definitely loathed. And confronting a very homophobic / sexually repressed metal scene with gay imagery was a pretty punk move, wasn't it? I still stand by these standards. I gotta admit we were up-nosed little brats though, often quick to make fun of everything and everyone. I certainly regret writing some of the things I did back then and have a different insight on things today. Oh well, we were young, naive, and inexperienced, right?
The last time I read a fanzine of your making was the great newsletter Carry On Screaming… Were you aware back then that E.N.T. had probably picked the title from the insanely popular british show Carry On! whose 12th (!) cinematographic output was a parody of Hammer Horror films called… “Carry On Screaming”? - sorry, that was just me being a nerd - More importantly, did you keep on writing after that?
I had no idea, I'm not as well versed in cinema culture as you are. Carry On Screaming eventually morphed into Scream (deffo NOT a movie reference here, haha!) after a few issues and went on until the late 90s. I think there were 9 issues of various shapes and sizes in all. Then I started a one-pager entitled Kängnäve in 2002-03, but only released two issues. I've written a few columns, articles and reviews for other people's zines over the years too.
I bet the Mankind and Poison Waves podcasts were a continuation of that. Are you going to do more in the near future? Hard to not repeat yourself after a while/not lose interest, isn’t it?
Yeah, the Poison Waves podcast is basically the lazy continuation of zine making. The aim is the same, to share the music I love. I'm constantly toying with the idea of starting a new zine, but I can't seem to be focused enough these days, which is frustrating. Every time I get a new inspiring zine in the mail it makes me want to get involved again, and then I get distracted by other projects.
What’s the current state of punk in a Macron-ized France?
You'd expect the Trump administration to generate myriads of radical punk bands in return, like it did in the Reagan / Thatcher era, but different times and context mean different reactions. The same applies to France I'm afraid. Punk has seemingly lost a lot of its political edge over the years and become a commodified movement. And there's so many separate little niches too, punk has a thousand different meanings these days. This being said, this country has offered a wide variety of excellent bands in the past few years--SYNDROME 81, YOUTH AVOIDERS, DELETÄR… I'd be hard-pressed to list them all. A lot of killer metal too: TENTATION, HEXECUTOR, CADAVERIC FUMES, PERVERSIFIER, SKELETHAL, FALL OF SERAPHS, etc. and some bands combining the best of both worlds, like LUST FOR DEATH.
Would you agree with me if I said the culture of the 2010s seems to be frozen in time, as if all music/literature/movie etc. currently being produced was floating in a weird kind of perpetual post-modern stasis and that the last creative decade (as in, new things/sounds being invented) were the 90s? What 2017 bands would you recommend to prove me wrong? Bands that made you go, “wow, I’d never heard that before!” either in a good or bad way?
Truthfully, I can't say I am blown away by current bands the same way I was 15 or 20 years ago. More often than not I'm impressed by old music I had never checked out before. Maybe that's just me being an old jaded fuck, I don't know. I may be totally wrong here, but it seems current subcultures mostly rely on (fake) nostalgia and rehash. Since the early '00s, all the popular trends seem to be revivals of sorts. Don't get me wrong, I still love a lot of new music coming out today, and I'm trying to stay afloat as much as I can. I don't want to become that old dad who thinks things were better before… though I may be one already. The last band I can think of that had a major impact was TRAGEDY, maybe, but that was 15+ years ago already. Anyway, some current / recent bands relevant to me include LEBENDEN TOTEN (USA), DIRTY WOMBS and ANTIMOB (Hellas), KOHTI TUHOA (Suomi), SYNDROME 81 (Brittany), SANGRE DE MUERDAGO (Galicia by way of former East Germany)… Japanese hardcore is still the best, but most bands need to be experienced live on their home turf to really grasp the intensity—it really is something else. I like how an age-old band like DARKTHRONE keeps reinventing itself without ever selling out. And I miss a band like PAINTBOX (Japan) who kept breaking boundaries yet remained punk as fuck. I'm not ashamed to say I loved GHOST when the 7" and first LP came out. I predict MAGGOT HEART might be the next big thing, but I digress.
Wait-- What’s this? Up in the sky? Is it a plane? Is it a bird? Nooooo! It’s the Mad Wizard!! He’s taking over this interview now. Feel the command of the MAAAAD WIZAAAAAARD (to be pronounced in full John Cyriis mode).
First off, the Mad Wizard forces you to live inside a record sleeve artwork that you still get to choose (no NUCLEAR ASSAULT’s Game Over for you, then). Which one do you pick?
I've often fantasized over riding the horse on HAWKWIND’s "Warrior on the Edge of Time" cover. The atmosphere is so peaceful and out of this world… The Mad Wizard could come along too, he wouldn't be out of place on there.
Woosh! Abracadaver! The Mad Wizard (boy, does he hate your guts or what) makes you become tone deaf to all kinds of music but he lets you keep ONE SONG which still plays fine. What’s your pick?
You know that one is impossible to answer. Fuck you Mad Wizard, you're not allowed on my HAWKWIND journey anymore! I'll probably change my mind tomorrow, but for now I'd pick either SONIC’S RENDEZVOUS BAND's "City Slang" or RANDY's "The Beast". Or a fucking SLAYER or ROKY ERICKSON song, for goat's sake!
Thanks to his mad wizardry, the Mad Wizard makes you travel back in time to change one thing from your past, what would it be? (You cannot invest in a 1950-2000 Grays Sports Almanac)
Not wimping out when I had the opportunity to see BOLT THROWER.
In a last, desperate attempt to drive you insane, the Mad Wizard makes you re-record DISCHARGE’s Grave New World. The old fool lets you pick your own line-up from any bands of any genres, any time periods. Who do you consider for the job?
I wouldn't play on it and let my team of experts do the job. It would include Dave Lombardo. He's still the greatest. I watched a video of him filling in for the MISFITS reunion and I loved how he played the songs exactly the way they were meant to be played, without adding any useless fills or random double bass parts. Just straight up, simple punk drumming the way MISFITS should sound. Any other metal drummer of his rank would have turned this into a technical prowess contest, which would have ruined the songs. On guitar, I'd bring Pig Champion back to life by injecting him a mix of adrenalin, whiskey, and chicken curry. Bass duties courtesy of Scott Carlson (REPULSION). And last but not least, I'd force Cal from DISCHARGE to sing again in his early voice. Of course everything would be sped up and played in the 1982 DISCHARGE style.
Relax, you’re safe now. Wimps and mad wizards have left the hall. What’s the question you’ve never been asked before that you wish someone would ask?
"Are you morbid?"
PLAYLISTS! I know you love a good playlist. What’s yours like these days?
Lately, plenty of AGGRESSION PACT, LONG KNIFE, LEBENDEN TOTEN, URCHIN (NYC), IRON MAIDEN, SORTILEGE, OMEN, WARLORD, PROTECTOR, ZOETROPE, HEAVY SENTENCE, STORM (NOR), SATAN’S HALLOW, PROCESSION (just saw them live again, they were phenomenal), NIGHT, EXPLODING EYES, PAT BENATAR, FONKY FAMILY, DR. SHRINKER, AUTOPSY, KLAUS SCHULZE, SANGRE DE MUERDAGO… Call me an emo wimp, but I've just listened to HOT WATER MUSIC's "Forever and Counting" for the first time in ages. Total guilty pleasure here.
Thank you Emo Wimp! I hope you enjoyed doing this exercise in silliness with me. Last question (but not least): what’s the thing you’ve done that you’re most proud of?
Quitting smoking. Thank you Max for putting up with my nonsense.
For those of you who’ve been lingering in or out the French punk or metal scenes of the last four (!) decades, Luc Ardilouze/Akerbeltz feels like a household name. You’ve either seen him on the thanks list of a cult record, read one of his fanzines, seen his artwork, heard a band or two he’s playing drums in, bought a record that he’s released himself, read his blog, downloaded one of his cool tape rips, listened to his podcasts, subscribed to his instagram account or just spent the night drinking beer, shooting breeze and talking about music or whathaveyou at a cool festival... I’m lucky enough to have met Luc around 1990 when we both were teens - literally begging him for tapes after tapes of some of the best metal and punk I’d never heard. Just before he moved out of Paris before the turn of the century, we managed to edit one issue together of a weird little fanzine called Faith? which was in poor taste but a fun ride nonetheless. I tried with this interview to cover as much ground as possible...
Hello Luc, thanks for taking the time to answer this interview. First of all, I’d like you to… describe your surroundings. Where are you as you type this? What do you see in front of you? Think of it as an exercise in visualization, the bird’s eye view to help put readers in your mindset...
Hi Max, thanks for the questions, it's a real honor to be featured in the first issue of your new zine. Right now I'm sitting at home, typing this on my desktop. Facing me on the wall is a framed poster of the movie Warriors, and tons of crap scattered on my desk—DVDRs of rare Japanese hardcore live videos, a case full of black ink pens, mailing supplies… Behind me are record shelves taking most of the opposite wall. I'm sipping a hipster IPA beer and eating raw black radish as a snack. The combination of which makes for superb burp fodder.
What music are you playing right now?
MINDLESS SINNER is blasting from the stereo. Catchy Swedish heavy metal from the days of old.
You’ve become a fairly prolific drummer over the years. GASMASK TERRÖR, SEXPLOSION, DIKTAT, BOMBARDEMENT… Am I missing anything?
DIKTAT just broke up but the other ones you mentioned are still going. I'm also in a more metal-sounding, yet unnamed studio project that's mostly lifting riffs and beats from early METALLICA, VENOM and POISON IDEA, but since all members are busy with their main bands it's really slow at the moment.
How do you keep all your current bands separate? How/where/how often do you set up rehearsals and gigs?
Sometimes it's exhausting and requires a lot of planning ahead. There seems to be a shortage of drummers, so a lot of us end up being in multiple bands. We're trying to practice once a week with each band, and gigs are frequent, but since most people I play with are also in several other bands, it's all pretty random and you constantly need to adapt to everyone's schedules, touring plans… and long distance relationships. Thankfully we all share the same practice space, so no need to run back and forth all the time.
Do you have more bands in the works? Are there any unfinished projects or failed attempts you’d like to share?
As previously mentioned, we have this studio project that's pretty quiet at the moment. There's been plenty of failed attempts over the years—too many to mention, really. Some played live a couple of times, some never got past the practice room. I played in a couple of one-off tribute bands too (MISFITS, DISCHARGE, and an all US hardcore cover band.) I really liked that band BRÛLURES, we had a bunch of really killer tunes that we never got to record unfortunately, only a couple ended up on a comp tape.
With hindsight, how do you view your first drumming stint in FACE UP TO IT!? Is there anything you regret doing, missed opportunities etc. How did the band fold? We’d lost touch back in the mid-2000s so I did not follow that particular story around that time, unfortunately.
I was late to the game with the band thing. I pretty much started from scratch with FACE UP TO IT!, I was 25 and had never played an instrument before… The band was never tight nor very good live, but in hindsight it was a great experience that allowed me to learn a couple of basics. Playing live was terrifying at the beginning but it totally challenged my utter shyness and social maladjustment. We lasted for 14 years, not too bad for a sloppy hardcore band.
When you moved from Paris to Saint-Jean-De-Luz then Bordeaux, did you notice a change in mentalities in the various underground communities you hung around with? Did you see them change over the years? How would you qualify 2017 Bordeaux now compared to other places?
As a whole, I like the more laid back mentalities of provincial underground communities. I enjoy a little Paris every now and then, but I wouldn't live there again. Too stressful. Bordeaux isn't too bad for a Southern city located in a pretty rural region, remote from Paris and influential neighboring countries like Germany or Belgium. It's the right size, you can just walk or bike around and meet your friends anytime. Only a couple of hours drive from Spain. And it has a fairly rich history in rock'n'roll. Punk has always been a thing here, from its inception (70s bands like STRYCHNINE or STALAG left a mark) to second wave (CAMERA SILENS…) to 90s fastcore (ÖPSTAND…) to now. Metal was never too popular but the city has bred a few remarkable bands over the years, HIGH POWER and STEEL ANGEL being two obvious 80s heavy metal staples. Unfortunately the city has been gentrified to death in the past decade and rent has gone through the roof.
Let’s go back to THE fanzine that brought your name up front… As I mentioned, you and I go back a long way together and this new fanzine endeavour of mine brings back fond memories of me as a teenager being a huge fan of Poulet Basquaise obviously... What made you want to start a fanzine in the first place? Was there a specific moment where you sat down and said to yourself “fuck that, I’m doing it. Let’s get writing.”
Haha, thanks for the kind words. I can't really remember the specifics, I was 13 when we launched the first issue with a school mate, which was over 3 decades ago. I think I first heard about fanzines in a popular late night TV program called Les Enfants du Rock and it immediately struck a chord, made me really curious about that whole underground subculture / alternative press. Reading my first zines made me want to start one right away.
Poulet Basquaise got quite big. What’s your fondest memories of your death metal superstar days?
I grew up in a rural area remote from all things death metal so great memories were certainly not that of killer gigs. Thankfully I enjoyed the industrious aspect of working on a fanzine: spending hours writing mail, laying out pages, dubbing cassettes, etc. Most of my teen years were spent alternating between sitting in my bedroom doing this, and skateboarding. The excitement was all about coming home from school every day to a mailbox filled with letters and packages from countries afar, filled with incredible tapes, zines, flyers and whatnot. Much has been said and written about the golden era of tape trading and zine editing, and I'm glad to have taken part, albeit on a tiny level, in building that whole network.
I remember your name popping up on the thank lists of so many great albums! Which ones make you the proudest of?
I don't even own a lot of those albums anymore, to my greatest dismay. One of the earliest and proudest moments was when my name popped up on the NAPALM DEATH "From Enslavement To Obliteration" LP thanks list. I had sent Bill Steer a letter inquiring about CARCASS, I guess, and there I was, captured in print on one of the most influential records of its generation. It blew my 15 year old mind at the time, as you can guess.
When we did Faith? together, I remember us hating the second wave of black metal bands with a passion around the time our first (and only) issue was released (circa 1993)... I think it was my juvenile sense of humour that made us put a picture of the VILLAGE PEOPLE on the cover with the very witty *ahem* captions “San Francisco Hardcore / Gay Mayhem”. Some of our scandinavian acquaintances didn’t take it very well, remember those days?
I had no recollection of that specific beef until you unearthed that Metalion letter recently! I've always loved a little off-the-beaten-path goofiness in my zines, and the Faith? cover matched this mindset perfectly. The early 90s black metal explosion was so uptight and taking itself seriously, that's one of the aspects I definitely loathed. And confronting a very homophobic / sexually repressed metal scene with gay imagery was a pretty punk move, wasn't it? I still stand by these standards. I gotta admit we were up-nosed little brats though, often quick to make fun of everything and everyone. I certainly regret writing some of the things I did back then and have a different insight on things today. Oh well, we were young, naive, and inexperienced, right?
The last time I read a fanzine of your making was the great newsletter Carry On Screaming… Were you aware back then that E.N.T. had probably picked the title from the insanely popular british show Carry On! whose 12th (!) cinematographic output was a parody of Hammer Horror films called… “Carry On Screaming”? - sorry, that was just me being a nerd - More importantly, did you keep on writing after that?
I had no idea, I'm not as well versed in cinema culture as you are. Carry On Screaming eventually morphed into Scream (deffo NOT a movie reference here, haha!) after a few issues and went on until the late 90s. I think there were 9 issues of various shapes and sizes in all. Then I started a one-pager entitled Kängnäve in 2002-03, but only released two issues. I've written a few columns, articles and reviews for other people's zines over the years too.
I bet the Mankind and Poison Waves podcasts were a continuation of that. Are you going to do more in the near future? Hard to not repeat yourself after a while/not lose interest, isn’t it?
Yeah, the Poison Waves podcast is basically the lazy continuation of zine making. The aim is the same, to share the music I love. I'm constantly toying with the idea of starting a new zine, but I can't seem to be focused enough these days, which is frustrating. Every time I get a new inspiring zine in the mail it makes me want to get involved again, and then I get distracted by other projects.
What’s the current state of punk in a Macron-ized France?
You'd expect the Trump administration to generate myriads of radical punk bands in return, like it did in the Reagan / Thatcher era, but different times and context mean different reactions. The same applies to France I'm afraid. Punk has seemingly lost a lot of its political edge over the years and become a commodified movement. And there's so many separate little niches too, punk has a thousand different meanings these days. This being said, this country has offered a wide variety of excellent bands in the past few years--SYNDROME 81, YOUTH AVOIDERS, DELETÄR… I'd be hard-pressed to list them all. A lot of killer metal too: TENTATION, HEXECUTOR, CADAVERIC FUMES, PERVERSIFIER, SKELETHAL, FALL OF SERAPHS, etc. and some bands combining the best of both worlds, like LUST FOR DEATH.
Would you agree with me if I said the culture of the 2010s seems to be frozen in time, as if all music/literature/movie etc. currently being produced was floating in a weird kind of perpetual post-modern stasis and that the last creative decade (as in, new things/sounds being invented) were the 90s? What 2017 bands would you recommend to prove me wrong? Bands that made you go, “wow, I’d never heard that before!” either in a good or bad way?
Truthfully, I can't say I am blown away by current bands the same way I was 15 or 20 years ago. More often than not I'm impressed by old music I had never checked out before. Maybe that's just me being an old jaded fuck, I don't know. I may be totally wrong here, but it seems current subcultures mostly rely on (fake) nostalgia and rehash. Since the early '00s, all the popular trends seem to be revivals of sorts. Don't get me wrong, I still love a lot of new music coming out today, and I'm trying to stay afloat as much as I can. I don't want to become that old dad who thinks things were better before… though I may be one already. The last band I can think of that had a major impact was TRAGEDY, maybe, but that was 15+ years ago already. Anyway, some current / recent bands relevant to me include LEBENDEN TOTEN (USA), DIRTY WOMBS and ANTIMOB (Hellas), KOHTI TUHOA (Suomi), SYNDROME 81 (Brittany), SANGRE DE MUERDAGO (Galicia by way of former East Germany)… Japanese hardcore is still the best, but most bands need to be experienced live on their home turf to really grasp the intensity—it really is something else. I like how an age-old band like DARKTHRONE keeps reinventing itself without ever selling out. And I miss a band like PAINTBOX (Japan) who kept breaking boundaries yet remained punk as fuck. I'm not ashamed to say I loved GHOST when the 7" and first LP came out. I predict MAGGOT HEART might be the next big thing, but I digress.
Wait-- What’s this? Up in the sky? Is it a plane? Is it a bird? Nooooo! It’s the Mad Wizard!! He’s taking over this interview now. Feel the command of the MAAAAD WIZAAAAAARD (to be pronounced in full John Cyriis mode).
First off, the Mad Wizard forces you to live inside a record sleeve artwork that you still get to choose (no NUCLEAR ASSAULT’s Game Over for you, then). Which one do you pick?
I've often fantasized over riding the horse on HAWKWIND’s "Warrior on the Edge of Time" cover. The atmosphere is so peaceful and out of this world… The Mad Wizard could come along too, he wouldn't be out of place on there.
Woosh! Abracadaver! The Mad Wizard (boy, does he hate your guts or what) makes you become tone deaf to all kinds of music but he lets you keep ONE SONG which still plays fine. What’s your pick?
You know that one is impossible to answer. Fuck you Mad Wizard, you're not allowed on my HAWKWIND journey anymore! I'll probably change my mind tomorrow, but for now I'd pick either SONIC’S RENDEZVOUS BAND's "City Slang" or RANDY's "The Beast". Or a fucking SLAYER or ROKY ERICKSON song, for goat's sake!
Thanks to his mad wizardry, the Mad Wizard makes you travel back in time to change one thing from your past, what would it be? (You cannot invest in a 1950-2000 Grays Sports Almanac)
Not wimping out when I had the opportunity to see BOLT THROWER.
In a last, desperate attempt to drive you insane, the Mad Wizard makes you re-record DISCHARGE’s Grave New World. The old fool lets you pick your own line-up from any bands of any genres, any time periods. Who do you consider for the job?
I wouldn't play on it and let my team of experts do the job. It would include Dave Lombardo. He's still the greatest. I watched a video of him filling in for the MISFITS reunion and I loved how he played the songs exactly the way they were meant to be played, without adding any useless fills or random double bass parts. Just straight up, simple punk drumming the way MISFITS should sound. Any other metal drummer of his rank would have turned this into a technical prowess contest, which would have ruined the songs. On guitar, I'd bring Pig Champion back to life by injecting him a mix of adrenalin, whiskey, and chicken curry. Bass duties courtesy of Scott Carlson (REPULSION). And last but not least, I'd force Cal from DISCHARGE to sing again in his early voice. Of course everything would be sped up and played in the 1982 DISCHARGE style.
Relax, you’re safe now. Wimps and mad wizards have left the hall. What’s the question you’ve never been asked before that you wish someone would ask?
"Are you morbid?"
PLAYLISTS! I know you love a good playlist. What’s yours like these days?
Lately, plenty of AGGRESSION PACT, LONG KNIFE, LEBENDEN TOTEN, URCHIN (NYC), IRON MAIDEN, SORTILEGE, OMEN, WARLORD, PROTECTOR, ZOETROPE, HEAVY SENTENCE, STORM (NOR), SATAN’S HALLOW, PROCESSION (just saw them live again, they were phenomenal), NIGHT, EXPLODING EYES, PAT BENATAR, FONKY FAMILY, DR. SHRINKER, AUTOPSY, KLAUS SCHULZE, SANGRE DE MUERDAGO… Call me an emo wimp, but I've just listened to HOT WATER MUSIC's "Forever and Counting" for the first time in ages. Total guilty pleasure here.
Thank you Emo Wimp! I hope you enjoyed doing this exercise in silliness with me. Last question (but not least): what’s the thing you’ve done that you’re most proud of?
Quitting smoking. Thank you Max for putting up with my nonsense.