26 : OCT : 06
ANGELSPIT Interview in Music-Discovery.de
Interview by Peter Gutmann-Barta.

First of all for all the readers that didn´t know you, please tell a little bit about your band and the people behind Angelspit.

ZooG: There's two of us in the riot squad.
DestroyX = vox, production and visual design.
me = vox, production and programming.

We both brainstorm the concepts, write the music/lyrics, come up with the ideas for the imagry. She angsts over the images, I angst over the sounds.

You are from Australia. Some weeks ago I have made an interview with the Australian band Tourettes (Tourettes Syndrom in Europe). Do you know each other and how does it look like in Australia, is the Industrial scene splitted from the Metal scene too or are those put more together?

We know those guys! THEY ROCK!

The industrial scene and metal scene are 'related'…many people who are into one are into the other.

The important thing to realise is that Australia has a small population spread over a HUGE area. Cities with a population of over one million are spread about 12 hours apart.
Each city has a small goth/industrial scene. If a club gets over 200 people it's doing well!
We set up www.australiangothic.com about 6 years ago to try and connect people.
The weird thing is that goth/industrial/fetish gets thrown into the same basket….this has a really cool effect in that Australians have become more musically open minded…although having said that, we've found some DJs don't take Australian music seriously. We're also involved in a BRILLIANT band collective called Crash Frequency (www.crashfrequency.com). Crash Frequency recently put out a compilation (which was brilliant)…we sent a copy to every DJ we knew in Australia and the world. It gets played all over the world, but I rarely hear any of the tracks when we go clubbing….all we hear is the same shit the DJs have been playing for the last 12 months.

The metal scene is A LOT bigger than the goth scene.

Please tell me a little bit more about the scene for Industrial and Electro Music in Australia. Do you like it or are you missing something, that can be found in the USA or Europe?

As much as I bitch about it…I actually LOVE IT (I just wish they'd play more Australian bands!!). Due to the scene's size, you get to know everyone.

The other bands are AWESOME! Bands like Tankt, The Crystalline Effect, The Tenth Stage, IKON, The Process Void are very supportive. There are many bands here, many styles - it's brilliant.

To come to your actual CD, how are the reactions so far?

People like it - which is a surprise. We actually thought they'd say "what the fuck is this?"…and throw it in the 'too hard' bin. We've got a heap of emails form people saying that it has inspired them to make music, art or videos - this is the greatest compliment for us.

People spend too much time wasting away in front of the TV or on the internet - I fear we have forgotten how to be creative…now we just passively sit in front of a monitor and practice being dead.

"Krankhaus" sounds like the German word "Krankenhaus" (hospital). Why you used this word as CD-name and is it based on the German word? Is someone of you speaking German?

The title is based on the word 'Krank' - which is German for 'Sick'.
'Krank' also refers to volume, ie: 'Krank It Up" (meaning 'turn it up')

We're moving to Berlin next year for 12 months - we're really excited about it!!
We're learning German - DestroyX is brilliant, I completely suck.

If I listen to the songs of the new CD and to the old songs on your homepage, I would say your new songs are much more aggressive and heavier than the old stuff. How do you think about this?

Yes. When we wrote 'Nurse Grenade' we were very pissed-off people. When we wrote 'Krankhaus' we were dangerous.

Krankhaus took 18 months to write, it was a very hard 18 months. A very close family member died, one of our fans were killed, many of our friends had relationship breakdowns, friends lives went to hell. It was horrible.…plus we managed to completely fuck the planet a little more. Plus we managed to turn our entire species into mindless consuming drones who desire money more than they need air.

We've killed god. We've made the most evil thing we have (greed) our new God. We're scarring the goddess so we can have more god.

I have seen that you have made some remixes with some other bands. How was this work for you and is there something like this on "Krankhaus" too?

We're working on this right now.
It will be released in January as a Special Edition with Krankhaus.
Confirmed are:
Combichrist, The Tenth Stage, Angel Theory, Tankt, The Mercy Cage, The Crystalline Effect, Diverje, The Process Void, n0nplus, Ego Likeness, Stromkern, Ego Likeness and more to be announced.
The remixes are very diverse…from EBM to hard industrial to cyber punk.

I am not so deep in the Industrial scene, because I am more a metalhead that likes Industrial music too. How is you status in the scene, are you still more based in the Underground or are you a bigger name in the scene? How important is the Underground for you as a band?

We're definitely an underground band. The underground is very important - it keeps going and supporting a genre even when the mainstream deems that genre 'uncool'.
We've got a lot of positive feed back from people outside the goth/industrial scene. People seem to connect with our harder sound and lyrics. We put a lot of work into recording the guitars - they are played by Graeme Charles Kent from the Australian band The Grand Fatal (www.grandfatal.com) and Val Core. Both these guitars are highly regarded for their phat and brutal sound.

I have found you on mySpace, where you have an account, to promote some of your songs. How important is a community like mySpace for your promotion and fan-work?

Myspace and the web in general are extremely important to us. Our fans are always online.
It's a great way of talking to people and finding people who our outside our genre. We're made contact with a lot of punk fans - we're also big Sonic Youth/Black Flag fans!

About promotion: have you planed some shows to promote your new CD and are there some dates in the USA or Europe planned too?

Definitely - we're very excited about playing shows in the USA and Europe. We'll be moving to Berlin for 12 months in March 2007 - we plan on playing as much as we can while we're over there. We're going to try and fly over to the USA - maybe in August.

Australia is near to Asia (APAC). How important is Asia for you, or are you more oriented to the US or Europe? How about Germany?

We really want to go to Japan! We've had a few opportunities with several Japanese clubs/DJs/bands and we're looking forward to playing there at some stage. For other countries like China, it will obviously be far more difficult.

We're probably not orientated particularly to the USA or to Europe, as we would like our music to be as widely played as possible. However considering our move next year Germany is definitely going to be a focus for us. Similarly, our sound is not geared towards any particular market. We are inspired by a variety of music and our sound reflects this.

You told that you will move to Berlin next year for around 12 months. What are your plans behind this movement and what can we expect if you are in Germany?

Germany is the goth/industrial hub of the world - we are looking forward to being inspired by the cities, the people and the art. Besides playing, we'll be doing loads of remixes and working on the next album.

What other plans do you have for the future so far?

Our main focus now is the January release of Krankhaus in Europe/USA. We're in the planning stages of making music videos for some of the songs from Krankhaus, plus working on a conceptual website for the album.

Some last words?

KRANK IT UP!

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