Rockezine.com interview with Deeds Of Flesh on Sep 26, 2003

with Jacoby Kingston on Sep 26, 2003

Deeds Of Flesh have been active in the extreme underground for more then ten years now and recently released a killer death metal record entitled "Reduced To Ashes". Time to give these death metal die hards some well earned attention
		You`ve been around for ten years now, readers can check out your biography at your website so there`s no use writing it here but can you name a few high lights and low points of ten years Deeds Of Flesh? The high points of the last ten years have been all the great tours we’ve done and all the traveling. If it wasn’t for this band, I’d never have seen a lot of the places I’ve seen. It all culminated with the Cannibal Corpse tour. It finally felt like we had accomplished something in getting that tour. That tour was so huge for us, and the amount of new fans we gained really made all that hard work worth it. The low point in this band is probably the fact that there is no money in it. Not like we’re in it for the money, but death metal is a hard and struggling business, and it makes it even harder when you have to work your ass off at a second job to make ends meet.
		In 10 years a lot must have changed. What is the most important change in the scene? Pirating, internet or something else? I would say innovation and speed. The youthful bands of today grew up on death metal, where as I grew up on old thrash metal. The music that is being written today is insane, and I believe that only strengthens the scene. Bands are getting sicker by the year and we’re just trying to add to that phenomenon.
		Did the sound of Deeds Of Flesh change dramatically? I figure it was always death metal but can you pinpoint a few changes? I don’t really think it has changed dramatically. We have messed around with the length of the songs and the arrangements, and the speed has increased with every new album. I would say the major change is in the production of our releases. Our studio skills improve with every release, and with Reduced To Ashes, I believe that our recorded sound has come a long way.
Since I am a partner in the record label, I’d have to say that I’m very satisfied		Are you satisfied with the support Unique Leader is giving you? Being on of their biggest bands sales wise do you think they spend enough on promoting Reduced To Ashes? Ha ha, that’s funny. Since I am a partner in the record label, I’d have to say that I’m very satisfied. Being non-bias, of course we are working on getting better promotion and becoming bigger. It just takes time and a lot of money. Unlike other labels, we didn’t have a bankroll to start this company. We started the whole label with only the sales from the Path Of The Weakening album. We’ve grown significantly over the past three years and will continue to grow as a label. I will say here that we do have the sickest fucking roster of bands on the planet. We also have Ruud running Unique Leader Europe full time, and after the next few releases we will see a break, which should give us time to recoup a lot of the money that we have fronted over the past two years.
		In my review of Reduced To Ashes I described your style as `blistering death metal with a groove` .
		What I meant was that; while you`re perfectly capable of playing at high speed all the time, you deliberately choose to, sometimes slow the song down to give it a recognizable touch.
		Do you have that intention, to make every song stand on it`s own as a song instead of just playing a 50 minute whirlwind of blastbeats? (not that there`s anything wrong with that!) Exactly, we wanted the songs to be memorable, yet brutal as hell at the same time. We will never play 4/4 timing, yet making the songs memorable is important. I love catchy, yet dark riffs that stick into your head. I think on this album especially, we definitely had it in mind to make sure every song had really catchy riffs. We knew that this album had to be very special and could possibly be our breakthrough album. So far it is totally exceeding all of our past albums in sales, so I think we did the right thing here.
		You did the production on the album yourself, why was that? Are you the only ones who can decide how Deeds Of Flesh should sound or is it cost reducing? It’s always been just us. That is how we operate and always will. If we brought in someone else, it would cease to be Deeds of Flesh and instead would be Deeds & our jackass producer who tells us what we should play. Fuck that! Instead, we just went to a new studio with a better engineer. In the past, we always had problems with the drum sound and the mix down. This time we went to Avalon Studios and the engineer KIP new exactly how to record the drums and had a really kick ass mixing room. I’m positive we’ll be going there for the next release.
		Are you guys still mad at the cancellation/delay of the European tour? Not mad, but really disappointed. I was really looking forward to coming to Europe in September. Now we are coming there in the fucking dead of winter. I just hope that the shows will be as good as they would have been in September.
We are working on a new release with cover songs of old thrash and death metal.		The tour is now planned for January/February; Reduced To Ashes will then be on the streets for half a year so the impact is gone a bit. Is it still worth the effort to come all the way to Europe to promote it? Hell yeah, it will be the biggest tour we’ve been on in Europe. The tour should be sick as hell, and if the timing is right, we might even have something new for that tour. We are working on a new release with cover songs of old thrash and death metal. We aren’t touring until January, so we could probably get that release done by then.
		Severe Torture will not take part in this tour for logistical reasons I heard (they’re a 5 piece outfit now and there`s only room for 4 people in the tour bus). Were you looking forward to playing with them? Of course, those are our bros and it really sucks that they won’t be on the tour. We were really looking forward to touring with them again. As you probably know, we brought them over for the Bloodletting N. America tour a few years back. We had a great time with those guys and I know they would have contributed enormously to the European tour package.
		I hope you’re coming to Holland in January, until then do you have any words to keep our spirit up? We’ll be there for sure, keep the green bowl fires burning, because we are coming to pillage the village! Thanks for the interview and keep it sick.
		(Roy van den Brink)