Rockezine.com interview with SauroN on Jun 05, 2003

with the whole band on Jun 05, 2003

SauroN is a young band from the Netherlands, who recently released their debut-album Universe Of Filth. In my review I was very positive about the album, so I took the opportunity of having a conversation with these misanthropic lads. Since all band members were speaking as one, I will write down this interview as if I talked with only one. Let me introduce to you this four-headed beast called SauroN…
		Can you introduce yourselves to our readers, and tell a little about the history of SauroN? We started with Sunless, Eclipse and Demster in 1997. In 1998 Ludas joined us on drums, and in 1999 we released our first demo Death Tyranny War Blasphemy, which we recorded in the Double Noise Studios. In 2000 we released our second demo, True Hate Embodiment, after which we did a lot of shows. And now in 2003 we released Universe Of Filth on Dark Horizon!
		Yes, you recently released your debut-album Universe Of Filth, how are the reactions until now? Positive, negative? Until now they are all very positive, in fact we received the score 8.5 three times! (Sjoerd: That can’t be a coincidence…) But we haven’t received that many reactions until now, Dark Horizon is just starting with its promotion. But until now, everything looks positive!
		How did you get the deal with Dark Horizon Records? And what do you expect of your cooperation? Well, the record deal is a reaction on True Hate Embodiment. We sent the demo to a lot of magazines to review and about a year after its release, we got a review in Terrorizer (UK) by Stewart. He liked it so much that he thought we needed a record deal. So he made a few phone-calls and we ended up with a deal with Dark Horizon! He just liked it so much he probably wanted to hear more from us! (laughs) He is still busy promoting us! He even had some ideas about a re-release of Universe Of Filth, in a metal box or something… We don’t expect that much of Dark Horizon, since it’s a rather small label. We just hope that we get some recognition with this one, after that we’ll see. We have only signed for one record, so we will see what happens.
		You guys played as a support-act for Satyricon a couple of months ago. I have seen the show, and thought it was a good concert.
Satan is a lie purely made up by Christians.		I met up with your drummer Ludas and heard from him that not everything was organised that well, can you tell us anything about that? We just think that this was a really shitty concert, and that’s all because of the stress caused by Satyricon, the most arrogant fuckers we have ever met! As we arrived we had to leave the hall, because Satyricon had to sound check and they didn’t want anyone in the hall. We had a maximum of maybe 10 minutes for our own sound check, everything just went so fast, only afterwards we had the time to think about it. We weren’t allowed to have a backstage-room, etc. Mojo-concerts didn’t tell Satyricon that we would play as a support-act. The venue knew about it, but the rest of the organisation was just one big miscommunication!
		How do you write your songs? What are your influences? I think that there’s a lot of variation in your songs, is that an explicit goal you’re trying to accomplish? We listen to a lot of black metal. Underground black metal as well as the more known bands like Behemoth, Zyklon, Taake, Mayhem, Bathory, Watain, Craft, Shining, Burzum. I think we make a mix between more primitive black metal and more modern black metal. We take ingredients from these to make it more powerful. It’s not as if we listen to anything to write a song afterwards, our music is really straight from the heart. The basics are established at home, mainly by the guitarists, and then the rest is being arranged in the rehearsal-room, by the whole band.
		How the hell did you guys ended up in the Excess Studio’s? I mean, that’s more a death metal studio (Sinister, Pyaemia, Disavowed…), isn’t it?
		I do think you made an excellent choice, because the sound is very powerful and very brutal, especially for a black metal record!! We recorded our two demos in the Double Noise Studios, but for the album we wanted something different. The albums from Pyaemia and Disavowed had just been released, and we were impressed by the sound of these albums. A whole lot of the Excess recordings sound really good, so we contacted Hans from Excess Studios about prices and stuff. We just decided to go for it in the Excess Studios. And for the studio-engineers, because of its death metal character, this would be a whole different approach to the recording process. We paid for all these recordings ourselves, so if we had a larger budget things would have been a lot better. We’re absolutely happy with this recording, but we know that this can also be done a whole lot better! We’ve only been there for 7 days, including the mixing-process. We actually produced this record ourselves, they engineered it, so this way we really got what we wanted, a good production with a raw edge!
		Your guitarist Twan (Sunless) also plays in Flesh Made Sin, who also just released a new mini-cd. Can he still combine these two bands? For concerts it’s real easy, first come first go. And for the rest, we all know each other, we’re all friends of each other, so most of the time these deals are made real easy. The only problem is that with SauroN we rehearse on Saturday evenings, but we have a lot of shows with Flesh Made Sin on the same evenings, so that’s annoying. We will have to find a solution for that. For the rest, everything runs smoothly.
		Your lyrics are purely nihilistic; all people have to be killed… I can’t find the word Satan in your lyrics, not even once (which I think is great)!
Bands that only have this shitty sound because it is true black metal may fuck off!		Are you just like me tired of the whole concept of Satanism? And who exactly is responsible for the lyrics? We don’t believe in God, so we don’t believe in the devil either. Satan is a lie purely made up by Christians. We are a misanthropic, nihilistic band, not a satanic one. A lot of our lyrics are anti-Christian, but not satanic, more anti-religion in general. The lyrics are written by Demster, Sunless and Eclipse. They are very important to us and are to be taken very seriously. To us, they are like a mirror of everyday reality. It’s this feeling, this hate you just have against everything. The lyrics are more symbolic for our hate, it’s not as if we go out to kill everybody and of course there are people we like, but if we had the choice between everything and nothing, then it would be very simple; absolutely nothing!
		What are your opinions on the bad-sound-fetishists in the underground? You make a very clear choice for good sound. How do you look towards these bands? We hate bands that have a shitty sound because they think they need that shitty sound to be “true” black metal. These are the bands that may die first! There are also bands that have this really raw sound, but find their strength in that. Some bands just have this somewhat raw production which seems to be a part of their sound. They just want to create a certain atmosphere, and their raw sound is a part of that. Like Darkthrone, they just need that sound, because of their music. Bands that only have this shitty sound because it is true black metal may fuck off!
		Why do you guys use corpse-paint, do you have a certain reason to wear it? And why didn’t you use it on your tour with Carpathian Forest? At that time, during the tour with Carpathian Forest, we were really sick of it. All those bands that emerged out of nowhere using corpse-paint and even people in the audience walking around with corpse-paint, we were just really sick and tired of it. We use it to express our grim and hateful feelings on stage, to obtain a certain atmosphere that fits to our music. We now decided to use the corpse-paint as a consequent part of our live-shows.
		What are your future plans, on a long or a short term? We’re just gonna continue as it is now, keep an eye on how the album is accepted. The reviews are dropping in now, so that’s cool. We do hope that with our next studio-recording the finances are better taken care of. Dark Horizon is a really good start, but now we have to continue. True Hate Embodiment is going to be released on vinyl in a couple of months. And in the meantime the writing process continues! Everything just falls in its place, in a more fluent way.
		Thank you very much for your time, and the last words (recommendations, worshippings, commandments, thank-you’s, …) are yours!! Humanity is a disease, we are the cure! You are the filth that breeds!!
(Sjoerd van den Berg)