Rockezine.com interview with The Red Death on May 10, 2005

with Graham Mitchell on May 10, 2005


		As a starter, congratulations with your great debut album. How have the reactions been so far? Thanks for the congratulations, we feel quite honored to be on a label of such stature. All of our friends have liked the album thus far and we`ve gotten good reviews on it, too. Decibel Magazine gave us an interesting review involving a lot of talk about coffee... So that`s good, we assume? Coffee is pretty sweet so we figure they liked our album, haha.
		Can you tell the readers that don’t know The Red Death something about the band? We like kitties. Except for Aaron, he has a passionate disdain for all things feline. So don`t throw cats at Aaron...
		Metal Blade is one of the bigger metal labels. How is the cooperation with your record label so far? We`re quite happy with Metal Blade. Being a new band to the `scene` we have no experience whatsoever in the business end of the industry and, resultantly, we`re looking forward to improving our relationship with Metal Blade. We had a shit load of fun at Metal Fest hanging out with everyone at Metal Blade; lots of drinking and stupid jokes. And lots of metal, of course.
		Did Brian Slagel sign you guys? Or does he have other employees for that sort of job? Brian has the final say in all signings, so yeah he did, if you`d like to be technical about it. But we got `in` through our friend Metal Jake. He knew some people at Metal Blade, jocked our name, we sent stuff in, and we got lucky and they signed us. That`s the story in short.
		Since I received the promo version of ‘External Frames Of Reference’ I wasn’t able to read the lyrics. What are they about? And who writes them? Paul (Hamblin, vocals) writes 99% of the lyrics. There`s only one song that he didn`t write the lyrics for which was "Aftertaste of the Emaciated". Seeing as I`m not Paul I can`t fully answer this question but to generalize his lyrical content Paul writes about metaphysics, philosophy, existentialism, and for instance "Twilight of the Idols" is about the writings of Friedrich Nietschze.
		What are the band’s main influences? Our influences are across the board. We listen to a lot of varying genres of music. My main drumming influences are Van Halen, Jimi Hendrix, and Lamb of God. Musically, there`s a ton of stuff I`m in to. My girlfriend has gotten me into a lot of indie rock-ish stuff lately like Murder By Death, Interpol, Rilo Kiley, The Shins. Stuff like that. A lot of bands that start with "The..." Metal-wise I was listening to Kill the Slavemaster all day yesterday. They were never a huge band but they were fucking brutal! Cryptopsy are a favorite of mine, Death were amazing. There`s a lot of hardcore we listen to, also. Buried Alive are one of our favorites in that genre. It`s hard to say what our main influences are. There is just so much great music out there to enjoy. We try not to limit ourselves to anything.
		What can we expect from a The Red Death live show? Fun, hopefully?! Haha, we try and put on as energetic of a show as we possibly can without being lame and fake. You can tell when a band is just putting on a show rather than actucally being passionate about what they`re doing. We love what we do, we love the music we play, and we just do our thing on stage. The less technical difficulties we have, the better.
		Where did you guys found the band name? And what does it mean something special? Our name comes from Edgar Allen Poe`s short story entitled "The Masque of the Red Death". We decided upon "The Red Death", mainly because it sounds sweet. We figured `Masque` would be misspelled on fliers and all that stuff and it would`ve been too long of a name just to call ourselves "Masque of the Red Death". There`s no deep, hidden meaning behind it but I think we can all agree on how interesting of a story it is. I mean shit, people die from a plague in it. How metal is that?
		What was the first album you bought? And was the first concert you visited? Jeez... I don`t even remember anymore, I THINK the first album I bought was a Van Halen tape. Either their first or second album. There`s the possibility it was a Def Leppard tape, too... their "Hysteria" album. I hope not, though. I`m definitely not a huge Def Leppard fan, haha. I`d rather it be Van Halen. The first ACTUAL concert I went to was Steve Winwood and Joe Cocker. I went to a performing arts center with my mom and dad to see that shit. At the time I was pretty obsessed with Joe Cocker. "Unchain My Heart" is a pretty solid song, you have to admit it.
		Can you remember how the first show with The Red Death was? And how long is it ago? Our first show was awkward as hell. We were more concerned with playing our parts perfectly than putting on a good, entertaining show for everyone. That show was in February of 2002, if I remember correctly. We hadn`t practiced in three weeks or so, due to me being on tour. So, on top of it being our first show, we were a little rusty.
		Any last words to our readers? Keep it grim.
		(Lars van Bergen)