Gorefest
War On Stupidity

18.09.2007

Just a few years back this seemed to be one of the most unlikely reunions. Dutch death metallers Gorefest split in 1998 because, as singer/bassist Jan-Chris de Koeijer puts it, “we hated each other’s guts”, and every band member was busy with his own career for the following few years. But then the news struck the media and the fans – the cult death metal act is back, and their reunion album “La Muerte” (2005) is their heaviest since 1992. What’s even more surprising, it wasn’t a one-time reunion, and two years later the band unleashed another record called “Rise To Ruin”, which is once again a solid piece of work, a musical development and a new page in the Gorefest history. We caught up with Jan-Chris by phone shortly before the release of the CD, and had one of the nicest chats we’ve ever done with a death metal musician…

“Rise To Ruin” is your second album after the reunion. How much was the work on it different from the way you wrote “La Muerte”? Did you feel more confident this time, or did you know from the very beginning of the reunion where you’re heading to and what you want to do?

Oh, a good question! The recording was quite different from “La Muete”, because we finally embraced digital technology at home. We got ourselves a little Pro-Tools set-up each. So this was the very first time that we never spent any time together in a rehearsal room. Everything was written at home, turned into mp3, mailed to other buddies in the band, and everybody would give you comments 10 minutes later. We would visit each other quite a lot to record at home, but it was not difficult. We actually recorded a demo version of every song on this album this way. When the reunion started, when we started to write songs for “La Muerte”, we knew it was in a heavier direction. And this album is even heavier. It came easily. We worked very hard – don’t get me wrong, I think we’d never been as focused as we were on this album, but it came easily. The reason it came so easy is that we get along real fine. We don’t have to walk on our toes as if we were walking on eggs, to watch our backs and to think, “Mmm, maybe he’s gonna say this or that.” We were very comfortable among each other, and that helps.

As you said, the new album is even heavier that the stuff on “La Muerte”. What is the reason for it? Is it a kind of return to the music you started with back in the early 1990s?

I don’t know, I wish I could tell you. We honestly tried to write fast material, and we couldn’t. Every fast riff we tried to write in 1995-1996 just sounded incredibly silly to us, they were bullshit riffs. When we got back - I mean, I’m 40 now, and we were all in our late 30s when we started to write for “La Muerte” – it turned out that we could do this fast stuff again. Now with this one, at one point we actually told each other, “Let’s make sure we’ve got some groovy mid-paced stuff in there as well, ‘cause otherwise it’s gonna be too fast.”

How was it like working with producer Tue Madsen?

It was really nice. On “La Muerte” we didn’t really work with him. He only mixed the album, and we actually met him when we flew him over to Holland towards the end of the recording sessions. This time he got involved a bit more, we got him in the studio for the first four days where he was responsible for miking the drumkit, for the guitar and bass sound. He also asked me if he could record my vocals at his own studio in Denmark, and I said, “Fine, let’s do that.” When we finished the basic recordings, I drove to Denmark, took the hard drives with me, and recorded the vocals basically in two days – about eight or nine hours. That was a great experience, because Tue is a great producer, he’s the guy I like, he doesn’t think about things long. If he wants to use an effect, he takes one – ready! He’s not gonna say, “Yeah, maybe this effect, or maybe a little bit more of this…” If he likes it, he likes it, and I’m very much the same like that. Why we spend a lot of time? If you think it’s good, it’s good. You end up with the first sound anyway after six hours of trying.

Can you compare the work in the studio nowadays and the way you recorded your albums 10 years ago?

There’s a major difference. There’s even a difference to the way we worked two years ago. Normally we were a band that would write songs in a rehearsal room, and we wouldn’t even record them, maybe just a little bit on an old four-track machine, but mostly we would remember everything. In the studio we would do the drums first, then the guitars and the bass, and at the very last week we would start working on the vocals. I would have written a lot of lyrics, but we wouldn’t have necessarily sung them in the rehearsal room. I was always busy studying the bass and coming up with bass lines and I didn’t have time to sing as well. Doing vocals for Gorefest was always not something I particularly liked, because I had to make up everything in the last week. I had to think of all the lines and how I was going to sing them. This time, like I said, we recorded everything at home as a demo. So I just stood there like it was a live gig, it was perfect. It was the same with guitars and bass, we already knew what we were recording, so we were basically playing along the demos. It’s a lot of work upfront, but it makes studio a lot easier.

One of the most impressive tracks of the album is “Babylon’s Whores”, and it’s also one of the longest songs Gorefest have ever written. Where did the idea for this song come from?

It’s one of the songs by Boudewyn (Bonebakker, guitarist), it has two pieces now, and originally there were three, clocking at a total of 11 or 12 minutes. He played it two us, he was like, “I think they’re gonna hate it!” (everybody laughs) But all of us really liked it, because there was a lot of good stuff in it, but at that time it was too long. There were some riffs that didn’t need to be in there, so we said, “Hey, great, but make it a little more compact!” I think he got rid of the first section and rearranged some of the rest. I think it’s great, and it doesn’t sound like a nine-minute song. We knew from the very first moment it had to be the song in the middle of the album.

We’ve read the lyrics to “Rise To Ruin”, and we must say that we’re very much impressed. But what inspires you to write – do you watch news on TV regularly? Are you interested in politics?

I am very much interested in politics, absolutely! I am very much interested in modern history, say, of the past 50-100 years. I do watch television, but, like you said, I’d rather watch the news or a good documentary on BBC that any other program. The state of the world bothers me, and it’s great to see how history repeats itself. Come on, when the Russians invaded Afghanistan, the Americans trained and armed the mujahedeen, and now the Americans are fighting the mujahedeen they trained themselves. It’s great! They think that they can use a nation to fight in the Cold War, and they don’t give a fuck about it, they’re only there it in their own interests. And how can you try to liberate a country like Afghanistan when it’s not even a country, it’s made up of tribes. But we in the Western world did it in the early 1900s – we drew a bunch of lines and said, “OK, this is a country now, and this is another country now.” Only because we thought that this should be a country, we were putting together major groups of people that had been at war for 1,000 years. We just think we can do everything, and we’re getting the bill for this. We haven’t even received a half of what, I think, we should get. I think there’s a lot of people that have no idea what they’re starting, they think they can get away with this. They know they’re only there for their own profits, and they’re only there for a couple of years. Some people paid a lot of money to get one or two persons into power, so they need to be repaid in those four or eight years. That bothers me, I think the world would be a better place if a lot of so-called democratic leaders were taken out and shot.

In the song “A Question of Terror” you sing, “Can you please explain how an act of terror is defined?” What’s your own definition of terrorism? Is there any solution to this problem?

What is an act of terror? It’s only an act of terror in the eyes of those who are harmed by it, but it’s not an act of terror when they do it themselves. (sighs) Speaking about the solution, if I had it, I would have told it. But of course, I don’t know. It’s different everywhere, but I think that if we try to understand a little bit about each other – about religions, about habits – we will find out that something that we might not consider offensive might be very offensive to other people. But we don’t know it, and without realizing it, we are sticking a dagger into their hearts. If we would learn a lot more from each other, that would solve a lot.

In some cases, the situation is very simple – some countries are being occupied. And when Holland, where I’m from, was being occupied by the Germans back in the 1940s, there were people that didn’t mind sacrificing their lives for the cause. There are always people like that, they are seen as freedom fighters by their own country and looked upon as terrorists by the other party.

In some other cases, the situation is a bit more difficult. Can you imagine how rich the Palestinians and Israelis could be if they worked together? That could be such a prosperous area. But Hamas would lose its power among the population, if there was nothing to fight for. On the one hand, they say, “We are fighting the country that oppresses us.”  But on the other hand, they need people to believe that there’s no possibility of living in peace, because they would lose their power. Anyway, these are very well-known facts. If you and I, the three of us, can figure them out (laughs), everybody else can do it as well, but why doesn’t anybody do it?

We know that the Netherlands is a very liberal country, but in Russia, if a band sings in Russian and has lyrics like you do, they will definitely have problems with authorities. What you sing can be very easily interpreted as a direct call for an armed uprising, don’t you think so?

We’re gonna play Moscow on December 1, so we’ll see what happens…

Wow, it’s the first time we’re hearing about such a concert!

I think it’s December 1. Some of us have to get new passports, because they have to be valid six months after you travel to Russia. We all will have to send passport scans to get visas. I’m pretty sure it’s all going to happen, because otherwise there’s so no reason for local promoters to apply for visas, they have to pay money for visas.

We just hope they won’t arrest you here for singing the lyrics that you have! (everybody laughs)

It would be good publicity! (laughs) But to come back to your question – I would do it anyway. It’s easier said than done, but I’m 40 now, and I always thought that being 40 you’re old and you’re like your dad… It’s frigging old when you’re 20. But now I think that the main advantage of being 40 is that you know exactly what you want in life, you know exactly what you don’t want, and it’s very easy to say no. Yes, Holland is liberal, but keep in mind that Holland is not just Amsterdam, like America is not just the “Bible Belt”, there are a lot of great liberal people in New York that hate frigging George W. Bush’s ass. There are quite big portions of Holland that are sort of a Bible Belt, they are against gay marriage and stuff like that. But I think it’s something that we all should fight for. Now that Europe is getting more standardized, Brussels wants every country to be the same, but why should somebody from Germany and somebody from Holland be the same? Why should somebody from Russia and somebody from Spain be the same? What’s wrong with having an identity? Nothing, I think. But Brussels wants to take away quite a bit of our freedoms, legalization of drugs included. That’s what “War On Stupidity” is about. We in Holland don’t have a real drug problem, because a lot of people don’t find it very interesting if it’s legal. People that have gone beyond the point of using heroin and are relying on heroin get free methadone, so they don’t end up in the gutter, they don’t have to go out and steal every night, steal car radios and stuff like that. OK, send everybody to jail, that’s gonna solve a lot, right? No, it’s gonna solve nothing, because by sending people to jail you’re basically creating criminals. When they come out, nobody’s gonna give them a job, because they’ve been in jail. You send them to jail for five years, but you give them a life sentence on the social level. So what do they have to do? Go out and steal or deal drugs. It’s stupid.

Unlike most of the singers in death metal, you sing in the way that the listener can understand everything you say even without using a booklet. Do you especially focus on delivering the lyrical message to the audience, or did this singing style come naturally?

(laughs) No, it didn’t necessarily come naturally. I remember that when we were recording the second album (“False”, 1992), which was the first album on which I had socially-aware lyrics, Colin Richardson, the producer we had at that time, said, “You should be more intelligible, people should be able to understand you”. And it made a lot of sense. There are a lot of people who don’t like my voice, because they think it’s not a real death grunt. I don’t mind it, because there are also a lot of people that like it, and it’s better to be hated than to be somewhere in the middle where nobody cares. I put a lot of efforts in writing lyrics, it takes me months, I’m doing it when I’m lying in bed and constantly going through my head. I like to be intelligible, and I put a lot of effort in being heavy yet understandable.

We’ve seen the cover of the new album, and also the cover of “La Muerte”. Don’t you think that it’s quite a contrast to the lyrical content you have? Some people might think you’re another band singing about zombies and serial killers…

No-no-no! On “Rise To Ruin” the twisted jester basically represents the people in charge. They’re a big joke, they’re ruling the world where nothing is left, surrounded by rats. It’s a big metaphor for the White House, you could say, or any leader that doesn’t give a shit about people that chose him. And “La Muerte”… In Spanish “la muerte” means “death”. There’s a pretty bleak message on “La Muerte”, we just thought it was a great cover.

Everybody knows that after Gorefest broke up, you created a band called Coldpop Culture, which has more to do with electronics than with rock or metal. Do you still listen to metal nowadays? Or do you prefer EBM and other electronic styles?

No-no-no! When Gorefest broke up I was so sick of the business, and there was no reason to start another metal band, because I honestly don’t think I could be in a better band than Gorefest. I just got tired of it, after so many years loud music just made me tired. And I’m born in 1966, so when I started to go out in the early 1980s, new wave and electro-pop was the big thing - Joy Division, Depeche Mode. It was just fun doing something completely different. It was never meant to be a live band, we actually did a couple of gigs because people wanted it from us, but it took away all the fun. When all of a sudden you find yourself on the stage with a lot of pre-programmed tracks, playing to a clicktrack, that’s no fun at all. At that point I realized how important metal music was for me.

I’ve listened to a lot of music all my life, a lot of different music, and I still do. One of the latest albums I bought was by Grinderman, a new project by Nick Cave, it’s brilliant. And this afternoon I bought a remaster of “Symphonies Of Sickness” by Carcass, as well as Autopsy’s “Severed Survival” – I’d never had it on CD. I listen to a lot of different music, whatever is needed for the moment. I’m a big Placebo fan, I’m a fan of Ministry, Killing Joke, Nine Inch Nails…

What is the current situation with Coldpop Culture? Do you continue this project, or do you focus on Gorefest?

We stopped it, at least I stopped it when we were talking about doing Gorefest. I knew it was going to take a lot of energy and a lot of time, and I didn’t wanna do another project. I felt bad for the other guys because of it, they tried a couple of other musicians and called it quits soon afterwards. But they’re all busy as well.

Is it possible to survive in Holland nowadays by doing only metal music? Or do each of you have some sort of day job as well?

You can survive if you’re either Epica or After Forever, the so-called female-fronted metal, I think they can at the moment. And of course, Within Temptation are selling half a million of their albums. We could survive in the 1990s for about six years, but the first thing we said to each other when we got together is that we’re never gonna make a living out of the band. Everybody’s got his own job, little careers, and we just look at music as a hobby. To be honest with you, it’s a hobby that makes quite a bit of money, but even though it’s great to be together, and we still enjoy being together, it’s equally good to say, “Hey boys, I’ll see you in a month!” (laughs) We go away and we communicate by mail, and I would never want to do a full-time band again. Now we do it only when we want to. We split up because we hated each other’s guts, we were so fed up with each other, and we will never let that happen again.

The only cover version Gorefest has recorded so far is “Autobahn” by Kraftwerk. But we know that you had serious problems with it, and only a demo version has been released. Can you say a few words about this story?

VPRO, which is a rather alternative Dutch radio station, were doing a program about traffic jams, and they thought it was a good idea that Gorefest would perform on a bridge over the road filled with cars in a traffic jam. We went into the studio, at 2 o’clock we unloaded the van, at 3 o’clock we closed the doors, and recorded this demo within an hour. We shot a video clip for it, early in the morning when all the cars were standing underneath the bridge, and they were handing out coffees and stuff. (laughs) Then we re-recorded it during a recording session for one of the albums and wanted to release it, but the Kraftwerk people didn’t give the permission. At that point there was the talk of a big Kraftwerk tribute album that obviously never happened, and there was the talk that Metallica would cover “Autobahn”. We never did anything with this track, it became a kind of cult thing, but we played it about five or six times in Germany in the early 1990s - everybody in Germany knows Kraftwerk, everybody knows “Autobahn”, it’s a big fucking anthem. I think we actually did a very nice version of it. Frank (Haarthorn, guitarist) leaked it on the Internet two years ago, and it was taken off by his provider after the track had been downloaded something like 6,000 times in two days. It generated too much traffic! (laughs)

Have you ever heard cover versions of Gorefest songs done by other artists?

Yes, I know two or three. One was done by a Spanish band, I don’t know their name, but when we played there last summer, somebody gave me the CD (the band is actually called Avulsed – ed.). Frank is the one that traces all that stuff. There are quite a few bands that have done it, but I only have two or three versions at home.

If there was a tribute to Gorefest, whom would you like to see participating?

Wow! (pause) It would be cool if there were young bands. There are a lot of bands that say we’ve inspired them, and that they see us as an example. Karl (Sanders) from Nile was here (at the Nuclear Blast office – ed.) this week as well, he actually told me a couple of years ago that when “False” came out, they took “False” as a blueprint for Nile. They’re hyper-hyper-hyper fast, but you can actually hear the influence. I know what he means, it’s actually the very open stuff they do. It would be nice Nile cover some of our slower songs, maybe something like “Reality – When You Die” from the “False” album, that would be great.

It would be cool to have some stuff done by a band like Born From Pain, I really like them, I did one track on their last album, and it would be great if they did one of our songs, maybe “War On Stupidity”.

By the way, since you’re into electronic music very much, have you considered remixing some of the Gorefest songs and adding an electronic edge to them?

You know, one song was done like that in the mid-1990s, and it’s on last year’s re-release of “Chapter 13” (1998). It was the work of one of our studio engineers, he did it just for the fun of it. Everybody in the band hated it, but I liked it, I thought it was a great idea.

Can you say a few more words about the work on re-releases of your classic albums which Nuclear Blast recently did? Where did you get all these bonus tracks from?

They are all basically from our own personal files. We collected everything we ever recorded, and they put it together in one box that you could only buy from the Nuclear Blast mailorder, even though I thought it was a shame. It was worth 30 euros, contained three double CDs, and there are great liner notes from a Dutch journalist. They are blatantly honest, though normally there’s only praise, “they’re so good, blah blah blah, hey man, hallelujah!” We had a sort of interview setting with him, and we were so honest that when I read it I was like, “Oh my god… We were a very dysfunctional band back then.” (everybody laughs) But we’ve always been like that, about getting the truth out. I think it’s a great way for people that never knew Gorefest to get everything for 30 euros. It’s also not too much for people that were into us to get all those little extras. And you also get the remix of “Chapter 13”, the one I just mentioned.

By they way, what do you feel when Gorefest are called something like “veterans of the death metal scene”? Do you feel proud and honored, or do you go like, “Hey, we’re not old at all, we still have a lot to offer”?

I feel old when they say that. (laughs) Hey, it’s the truth, we were there in the very beginning. We were there with the first wave of European death metal, so of course, we are veterans. But we still matter, and at the gigs we’ve done since the reunion there’s about 30 or 40 percent of really young kids that were probably 8 or 10 years old when the band split up. That tells me that we still matter… and that makes me proud.

Thank you very much for the interview, Jan-Chris!

It wasn’t an interview, it was a conversation. And that’s what makes a good interview!

Gorefest on the Internet: http://www.gorefest.nl

Special thanks to Alexei “KIDd” Kuzovlev (Irond Records) for arranging this interview

Roman “Maniac” Patrashov, Victoria “Ewigkeit” Bagautdinova
June 21, 2007
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