Alison Booth
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Interview with SOTIRIS ANUNNAKI V. -SEPTICFLESH "Our dream was really demanding, this time it was on the next level of difficulty"
Posted by aliblackdiamond on May 27, 2022
Posted in: Int. News, Interviews. Tagged: Alison Booth, Blackdiamond's Metal Mayhem, Nuclear Blast, Septicflesh, Sotiris Anunnaki V., TotalRock. Leave a comment
Greek symphonic death metal titans SEPTICFLESH have been a force in the music world for more than thirty years, having formed back in 1990 and releasing their debut EP in 1991. They built a huge following of devoted fans over the years and are still gaining new generations of them, eleven studio albums later.
The brand new album "Modern Primitive" was released on 20th May via Nuclear Blast Records. A week before the album release, Metal Shock Finland's Alison Booth caught up with SOTIRIS ANUNNAKI V. for her radio show Blackdiamond's Metal Mayhem, which is broadcast every Tuesday from 6PM GMT on UK station TotalRock. The show with Sotiris can be heard here.
Much of the interview was of course about the new album and how it developed during difficult times, its production and also looking ahead to touring again and more! You can listen to the interview on the audio player and read some excerpts below:
On working with producer Jens Bogren, Sotiris explained:
"Well, we were really happy with the result that he managed to produce with Codex Omega, it was our first collaboration. And so he was the first on our list for the next album and fortunately he had also the time. He's a really powerful producer, with understanding not only for metal, but also for music in general.
So, from the point of production, it's essential to have someone that can digest the magnitude of channels that we provide, we provide more than one hundred channels of recordings. So we needed someone that will be really clever and he's a master in his field. He was really open minded – we wanted that. We didn't want someone to enforce an opinion you know. We wanted to discuss and listen to the options. He also had a lot of patience with us, we are really difficult [laughs]."
Discussing recording the album during the pandemic:
"Yes and actually it affected us as musicians and composers and so you can say that a lot of our experiences enforced from the lockdowns, from the situation, one way or another were incorporated on this album, so it's a special album.
Also, all this time that we had in our hands, we had the chance to reflect on our direction as a band and everything and also to reflect I think about the direction generally, philosophical point of view, the direction of mankind. And that influenced me to write a lot of lyrics that are dealing with things that are involved around today. And so the majority of the songs are down to earth you can say, but it's not an earth healthy, but an earth that declines.
So you can say that this album has this ominous atmosphere, all the way from the start to the ending song and it defines its character.
We had a female choir, male choir and children choir. So as I told you from the start, we had to find solutions, because our dream was really demanding. The whole creation we had in our mind evolved around many people, many musicians. We had also a lot of traditional instruments and we had to record for instance some Greek traditional instruments like a bouzouki, also we had to record a mandolin and a lot of other instruments. We had to communicate and we had to use the different studios. We had in some cases to be allowed to have a lot of people together, perform together and it was a really giant step for us. Of course, in the past we always had this symphonic element, but this time it was on the next level of difficulty."
On the upcoming European tour with HYPOCRISY:
"Hypocrisy is a great band and the people that listen to Hypocrisy and the people that listen to Septicflesh have a lot of common ground – there is something that unites us. We have the opportunity to play a longer setlist, that is important for us. And I think as you said the mix is really good and the people that come will be really satisfied.
The next two years for us will be full of touring around the world."
SEPTICFLESH are:
Seth Siro Anton | Vocals, Bass
Christos Antoniou | Guitar, Orchestra
Sotiris Anunnaki V | Clean Vocals, Guitar, 12 String Guitar
Psychon | Guitar
Kerim 'Krimh' Lechner | Drums
More info on SEPTICFLESH:
Facebook.com/septicfleshband
Twitter.com/septicfleshband
Instagram.com/septicflesh_band
Septicflesh.com
Interview with Peter Tägtgren, HYPOCRISY: "This is Hypocrisy and this is how it will always sound, so take it or leave it"
Posted by aliblackdiamond on November 5, 2021
Posted in: Interviews. Tagged: Alison Booth, Blackdiamond's Metal Mayhem, Hypocrisy, Nuclear Blast, Peter Tägtgren, WORSHIP. Leave a comment
Swedish death metal legends HYPOCRISY are celebrating their 30th anniversary – and what better way to celebrate than by releasing their highly anticipated new album "Worship"! The band's thirteenth album, the first in eight years, is due for release on November 26th via Nuclear Blast.
Metal Shock Finland's Alison Booth caught up with Peter Tägtgren for the Halloween edition of her radio show Blackdiamond's Metal Mayhem, which is broadcast every Tuesday from 6PM GMT on UK station TotalRock. The show with Peter can be heard here.
Of course the chat centred around the forthcoming album, but also some other subjects and Peter had plenty of interesting things to say! You can listen to the interview on the audio player and read some excerpts below:
On the positive feedback to the new singles already release, Peter expressed:
"You never know what to expect, I mean generations come and generation goes. But you know, it seems like people stuck to us which I am very grateful to and yeah, it's amazing I would say, it's more than we thought."
Discussing the first single 'Chemical Whore', Peter explained:
"Yeah it's kind of ironic I would say. Because I mean, when you see a few comments going 'Oh is this an anti-vaxx song?' I'm like 'Come on man!' We did the video in September 2019 so there's no way.
It's definitely about how I see doctors and the pharma industries are in cahoots. You know like 'if you force pills down the throat, we will give you some percentage', so to say, you know just in a wider simple aspect. So, doctors don't really need to prescribe you these pills, but if they do, they will make a couple of bucks more, so they'd rather do that – some of them. I'm not saying everybody, I'm just saying, you know sometimes instead of taking a pill, maybe it's better to go to a psychologist to talk about it, you know.
I mean, the whole reason why I wrote this song from the beginning was actually I have a lot of friends that I've seen going down on pills. You know, this Benzyl that's in the pills, that's really addictive. Yeah, it becomes a very bad circle of needs so to speak, so I just felt I needed to open up about it."
Describing "Worship":
"I would say my whole idea of this album or writing this, is mainly just to write better Hypocrisy songs and a fatter production, that is the goal. And I think it has all the elements you need in there – there's a lot of sad songs, a lot of slow songs, a lot of mid tempo songs, a lot of epic songs, you know like you float away on it. So, I hope people will be happy with it. To be honest, I really never know what Hypocrisy fans want from Hypocrisy [laughs]. 'Cause I mean in the past, there's been so many different kinda styles of albums, but you still have this feeling of Hypocrisy in it. So I guess it's in my DNA when I write music, I think in a certain way and yeah, it becomes Hypocrisy no matter what. But I definitely feel it's closer to maybe the end of the nineties albums, you know in the way of the style of songs so to speak, I would say. But still, it's Hypocrisy today. It's nothing I wanted to clone myself or anything with the songs, it's just what comes up in my mind.
Mikael and Horgh, they contribute with a couple of riffs each as well. So I mean it's important to write with your heart I think and not look around and see what's popular and what is not,. You know it's this is Hypocrisy and this is how it always will sound, so take it or leave it."
Discussing the album cover art:
"Yeah, it was actually an idea that I came up with when I was in a hotel in 2017 in LA. I was just laying in bed and got an epiphany or whatever you wanna call it, like 'wow' and I just start finding paper to write on. I was drawing on a piece of napkin and shit, you know with the pyramids and the cross, it looked like hell 'cause I'm not a good drawer. Then I took a picture and sent it over to Nuclear Blast, the CEO, I was like 'I got this great idea about this shit you know and if he can help me develop it with someone that knows what to do'. And that's what Blake did and he did a fantastic job.
So, the album cover was done before the album was written and the videos were done before all the album was done, I mean all the songs on the album were done. So we did pretty much everything backwards than we normally do. We did photo session in April in 2019, we did a video in LA that's not out yet and then we did Chemical Whore in September 2019, so everything was done before actually all the material was done. Which is good though, 'cause otherwise we'd have had to wait a little longer, because normally you only focus on writing good songs and record it and boom! Then the company goes 'You have any photo?' 'No.' 'Do you have any videos?' 'No'. [laughs] 'Later maybe later'.
So it was good to have this kind of set up for once. You know, these things that you don't think about, that will come eventually and becomes very important, is done before you're done with the album."
On the tour situation, Peter revealed:
"I'm afraid it's gonna be another wait. Actually, we had a tour for October/November this year, but we never announced it because we were just watching how things were going bad during the summer. Because actually, the album was I think supposed to come out at the end of the summer so we would have a month before the tour start. But the pandemic, it made it hard to get all the vinyls and things because the factories doing vinyls were under the Covid thing, so not everybody could work and things like that. So you know, to get a vinyl in three months actually became seven months, then eight months and nine months waiting because of this whole pandemic stuff. So yeah, what can you do and so suddenly now we're here in November for the release. So yeah, I was glad we didn't announce it at all.
So right now we pretty much have a new European tour done for September/October next year and I can tell you there's some UK shows, not only one, only go to London of course that everybody do, but we're gonna do a couple more I think, that's what they're working on."
To pre-save the album and for more details, visit the official HYPOCRISY website here.
HYPOCRISY is:
Peter Tägtgren | Vocals, Guitars
Mikael Hedlund | Bass
Reidar Horghagen | Drums
Thomas Elofsson | Session Guitarist
Interview with Nameless, GHOST BATH: "It felt like the right time to make that change"
Posted in: Interviews. Tagged: "Self Loather", Alison Booth, Blackdiamond's Metal Mayhem, Ghost Bath, Nameless, Nuclear Blast. Leave a comment
Us depressive black metallers GHOST BATH have unleashed their fourth album "Self Loather" on the world today – October 29th! The album, released via Nuclear Blast, closes out the trilogy – tragedy, ecstasy, and dread/hatred – and hosts the band's most devastating and dark music to date.
Metal Shock Finland's Alison Booth caught up with frontman Nameless for her radio show Blackdiamond's Metal Mayhem, which is broadcast every Tuesday from 6PM GMT on UK station TotalRock. The show featuring GHOST BATH will soon be available to listen to here.
The new album and its recording was discussed, along with a few more topics. You can check out the audio interview below, along with some written excerpts from the chat.
Discussing "Self Loather", Nameless explained:
"I had this trilogy planned before I even recorded Moonlover, back in 2015.So the overall theme was dread and hatred, it was always supposed to be the darkest and heaviest album that we've done and there's a few things that were kinda major changes for this album. In particular, one of the biggest ones was the entire band helped write the album, whereas every previous Ghost Bath album, it was just me writing all the music, doing all the vocals by myself. And with this one, all five members were incorporated and we all wrote it together.
I think the second biggest change, at least on my part, was the vocal style and I really changed things up and I did more of a black metal vocals, I did more of lower death metal growls and I also do sort of a depressive black metal high pitch vocals as well and I mix it up a lot more."
On the subject of the change of vocals:
"You know, I think first and foremost, they just fit with the theme of the album a bit more – it just made it heavier in my opinion. And then second of all, I think it was just time for a change. I don't wanna record the same album over and over and do the same things over and over, so you know, it was time for me to push myself. I had to figure out how to do these types of vocals, it wasn't just something that came naturally to me.
I had to really prepare my throat and make sure I was hydrated and I was warming up and all of that, just to make sure it could sound right. It just felt right, it felt like the right time to make that change and I also definitely wanted to keep the high pitched Ghost Bath vocals in there, because that's I think part of our sound and part of the depressive black metal sound. It's kind of an experimentation and moving forward as a band."
Photo By Austin Scherzberg
Looking ahead to the future:
"It's just a passion project for me, you know I'm not trying to get rich or anything. I think experiences are very important for me and putting out the music I create and the creation process. Those are all the most important things for me and so I think the main things are touring, to be able to get back on the road and travel, I love doing that. I love playing live and then also to continue to write music.
So, if we can't really get any good tours or anything, we'll probably just start writing the next album right away. Even if we do start touring, we've already been talking about another album, that's kinda the plan."
Order your copy of "Self Loather" here: http://nblast.de/GhostBath-SelfLoather
Interview with DORO: "We already have six songs for the new album"
Posted by aliblackdiamond on December 10, 2020
Posted in: Interviews. Tagged: Alison Booth, "Magic Diamonds – Best Of Rock, Ballads & Rare Treasures", Blackdiamond's Metal Mayhem, DORO, Doro Pesch, Rare Diamonds Productions. 7 Comments
Metal Queen DORO has certainly earned that title, with a career spanning over more than three decades. From the first album release with her band WARLOCK in 1984, Doro paved the way for women in metal and has long been an inspiration, empowering so many artists in the rock and metal industry.
After releasing her first album post-WARLOCK in 1989, Doro has never looked back, with a steady stream of albums and collaborations with many artists over the years.
Just a few weeks ago, Doro released a best of album, "Magic Diamonds – Best Of Rock, Ballads & Rare Treasures", via her own label Rare Diamonds Productions. The album contains a fantastic collection of 56 songs with 20 rock songs, 18 ballads and 18 rare treasures!
Metal Shock Finland Senior Manager Alison Booth, recently caught up Doro who was the special guest on the 8th anniversary of her radio show Blackdiamond's Metal Mayhem at TotalRock. The whole show can be heard at this location. You can hear the chat on the audio player below, along with a selection of excerpts to read:
Discussing the new album, Doro explained:
"There's another box set and it has two double vinyl, one is white, the other is clear. It all looks nice, sounds great.
I did it because it was impossible to tour this year and we had two European tours and two American tours, Australia, South America. Everything was lined up, tons of great festivals and everything got cancelled or postponed. So I thought yeah I wanna go back into the studio, working on some new songs, which I did. And then I thought, maybe I want to put out a best of record. At first I started with like fifteen songs, then it was twenty five, thirty five, forty five and now fifty six songs!
And there's still some songs I would love to put on maybe volume two in the next couple of years or something. There are so many songs that deserve to be heard in a different arrangement or live. That's what I miss the most. There's tons of live versions on there, so even if people can't come to the concerts, they can definitely get the excitement and the power when you listen to it."
Doro expressed her thoughts about the pandemic:
"It was a big shock. My last normal gig was actually March and we celebrated the fortieth anniversary of Saxon in my former hometown in Düsseldorf, Germany. And there was Saxon and Diamond Head, Tygers Of Pan Tang and us and we had a great, great night – it was awesome!
Then, two days later they announced only a thousand people allowed in the venue, then it went down to five hundred people, then nobody and yeah, so March was our last normal gig. Then we thought maybe we can hang in there till the summer festivals. Yeah and then summer festivals one by one got cancelled or postponed, it was shocking, it was shocking.
I did a couple of things which was like totally different, was a big challenge. We did some drive-in shows. For the first time it was weird, because it felt exactly like our All We Are video that was shot in 1987, where everybody was in their cars and we were performing on top of the tour bus and then with the magic of metal and you know and Warlock, it came to life and we were rocking out together and it felt exactly like that. I hopped on stage and I saw only cars, it was so surreal but it was fun. We made it I think that everybody had a great time, it was exciting! And we actually recorded some songs and one song is on the Magic Diamonds album, which I like so much. It's Love Me In Black and you don't see any audience participation but you can feel there's a good vibe going, a nice, magical version.
It was a rough year I think for everybody and we try to stay positive, but it's hard when you've nothing to do – especially for the band and the crew. But we're hoping next year we'll get back to normal kind of, it would be awesome. And if not, then we'll work on a new album."
Doro had lots to say on the topic of duets:
"Actually, all my duet partners were always great because we stayed great friends. Like there's one song on this album with Udo Dirkschneider and it's a cover version of Breaking The Law, because Judas Priest was my first band I've toured with in 1986 and I always wanted to say thank you to Priest, so we recorded Breaking The Law and I was just working with Udo Dirkschneider on his album and said 'hey Udo you wanna work on my album as well?' with an orchestra, it was really nice, came out so great. We always love to play Breaking The Law.
There's another duet with Tarja Turunen who sang for Nightwish and this song's called Walking With The Angels – something that fits so perfectly because she has such an angelic voice.
And then there's one song, Bad Blood, that's with Blaze Bayley. We are great friends for a long time. And Descent, that's another song with Pete Steele and unfortunately he is not any more with us, but he was a great guy. He was the tallest guy I ever met, he was such a gentle giant.
And then my favourite duet is Love Me Forever with Lemmy. That was my first time that I did a duet and it was in 2000. We recorded it for my Calling The Wild album. We did two songs, one was Alone Again and the other one was Love Me Forever and Eric Singer is playing drums on it, the KISS drummer and Bob Kulick, he played guitar on it and it was in his studio. And Bob, he passed away a couple of months ago, I couldn't believe it. We always stayed friends. So these duets, they mean a lot to me, especially Love Me Forever with Lemmy and Descent with Pete Steele, because you know – I feel we're very connected in heart and soul, but it's kinda tough to live without them. Lemmy was my best friend, I loved him so much.
On the "Ace Of Spades" anniversary:
"Somebody sent me the nice box set, oh it's awesome! If people want to get something really special, this is wow, it's so nice. Yeah Ace Of Spades was my favourite album. I had my first band in 1980 and when this one came out, like wow, it was so inspiring. I still love that song Ace Of Spades, oh my God. And Love Me Like A Reptile was the second song on Ace Of Spades and it was by coincidence that Dave Ellefson said 'hey you want to sing a MOTÖRHEAD song?' And it was oh yeah! Maybe it was meant to be, it was a lot of fun!"
Looking ahead to the future, Doro revealed:
"If I could do ten or twenty more records it would be awesome. I love people and that's I guess what I'm here for and yeah, I just wanna make people feel great and get inspiration, motivation and positive metal power – that's what I would love to continue doing. There's not much, I don't have any other dreams – I'm definitely living the dream, making music. I always wanted to become a singer since I was three years old.
But I love animals too, that's my other passion and I just wrote a song for the new album and it's called Heavenly Creatures, that's a work title.
Yeah next year and hopefully a tour behind the new album, but we'll see. But we already have six songs so I think middle of next year the album will be done."
Official DORO Facebook
Official DORO Website
Interview with WOLF HOFFMANN: "I'm sure we can all meet again"
Posted by aliblackdiamond on November 25, 2020
Posted in: Interviews. Tagged: "Too Mean To Die", accept, Alison Booth, Blackdiamond's Metal Mayhem, Nuclear Blast, wolf hoffmann. 7 Comments
During these difficult times, there is always some positivity to be found when it comes to music. So, we are very lucky that metal giants ACCEPT were not going to let a pandemic stop them and have created their forthcoming 16th studio album "Too Mean To Die" over this last year! The album is set for release on 15th January 2021 via Nuclear Blast.
Metal Shock Finland Senior Manager Alison Booth, recently caught up with ACCEPT mastermind and guitar legend Wolf Hoffmann, who was a guest on her radio show Blackdiamond's Metal Mayhem at TotalRock. The whole show can be heard at this location. Of course the new album was discussed, plus lots more! You can hear the chat on the audio player below, along with a few excerpts to read:
Discussing the recording of the album, Wolf explained:
"Yeah it's crazy, we couldn't finish. We had about half of it recorded and we all went back home to regroup and write the rest of the material and we wanted to meet again later in the year and all of a sudden the countries were closing down and nobody could come or leave. I mean, we could travel within the U.S. but Andy couldn't come back. So we had no choice but to try to find a remote solution and after lots of trial and error, we found a solution that seemed to work technically quite well. Unfortunately, my internet connection broke down the whole time. But we made it work in the end and when the connection was stable, it worked surprisingly okay. You know, it's not your first choice, but it worked. It was almost like a Zoom call, it's kind of okay. It's not perfect, but it's still better than nothing if it gets the job done. But you would still want to be in the same room with people you talk to basically.
Wolf discussed how the pandemic has affected ACCEPT:
"Tell me about it, it's been terrible for us. We had all of last summer's festivals cancelled and pushed back to 2021. So everything was pushed back to next year for the festivals and then our headline tour was to coincide with the release of the album in January, but that won't happen. It's all been pushed back one complete year to 2022. Yeah it's a long time, so we have to wait and see how things are going.
A lot of bands have been postponing their releases, but we decided that it's probably not a bad idea to just go ahead and release it now, give the fans at least something to listen to. I'm sure we can all meet again basically, but it serves nobody's interest if we just wait with the release until we can tour again, because who knows when that is."
Talking about the new songs:
"'Symphony Of Pain' was one of the songs that was actually written first. I had that sort of more or less finished, just sitting there waiting to be performed. And then one of the other earlier songs I did was 'Undertaker' which was based on some lyrics Mark wrote. Mark gave me these lyrics and he wrote 'em sort of like a poem without any music in mind, just a bunch of words about an undertaker. I thought it's kind of a cool subject title and I wrote the music sort of to fit the lyrics and you know, with that little intro it turned out quite a little eery and spooky, which kinda fits the subject obviously and turned out alright.
It's nice to see people's reaction. But I'm getting different reactions from journalists and big fans all over the board. Some people like the more moderate songs like 'Undertaker' and 'Overnight Sensation' and then other people go for the kill basically, with 'Zombie Apocalypse' and 'Too Mean To Die' – the more in your face metal kinda riffs and songs."
Wolf talked about the changes in the band:
"Yeah it's crazy – we lost one guy but gained two new guys, two for one (laughs). I mean with Peter, it's just sad. It just killed me at the time but I'm sort of over it now, because it's just after all these forty years, it was a sad departure. But I have to respect it and I mean, people move on and he made the decision. He no longer wanted to be in the band and what can I do? I just move on and move forward. I wouldn't say Martin stepped right in his footsteps, that would be ridiculous because hey, I played with Peter for forty years. But Martin really is doing his best and he's doing a tremendous job filling in, he's great. He even contributed a lot to the songwriting, which took me completely by surprise. He wrote some great songs for this album and that was a blessing, he's awesome. I really didn't want the album to be all mine, mine, mine – I didn't want it to be like a solo album, so I welcomed input from everybody and Martin was the guy who really stepped forward and delivered some cool stuff."
We discovered what a great player, nice guy and easy going and perfect fit for the band Phil is. You know, when we toured with him on this orchestra tour last year, Headbanger's Symphony, Symphonic Terror tour and we found out what a great guy he is. We basically didn't want to let him go after this tour, it's as simple as that. And we decided, why not have three guitar players? We did some shows together and it worked brilliantly. I gotta say I was not one hundred percent sure it would be as good as it is, but I was actually pleasantly surprised how well it sounds and how well it looks and how well it works on stage. It's a good camaraderie in the band and yeah, it's just one more guy, awesome! And he plays a lot of lead on the album too, so we deliberately made enough space for him to be on the album and especially with that in mind for live shows. We gave him enough space to play leads and with trading licks and we do a lot of twin leads together – so there's a lot of room for Phil on this album."
Order "Too Mean To Die" here
Official ACCEPT Website
Interview With Rob The Witch, NECRONOMICON: "As long as I play my music I'm happy"
Posted by aliblackdiamond on August 24, 2020
Posted in: Interviews. Tagged: Alison Booth, Blackdiamond's Metal Mayhem, Necronomicon, Rob the Witch, SEASON OF MIST. Leave a comment
Rob The Witch
Since their incarnation in 1988, the Lovecraftian inspired pioneer of blackened death metal, NECRONOMICON, has certainly established itself as one of the hardest working bands in the industry. Founded by composer, guitarist and frontman Rob The Witch in Quebec Province, Canada and following an early demo and EP, the band released its first full length album "Pharaoh Of Gods" in 1999.
A steady release of five further albums and a high level of commitment to touring and performing on stage has been a constant in the life of NECRONOMICON, all the while establishing an ever growing fan base around the globe. Changes in line up and other issues haven't been a deterrent for the charismatic Witch King, resulting in the sixth brutally dark album "Unus" being unleashed in October 2019, via Season Of Mist Records.
Alison recently caught up with Rob The Witch for her Blackdiamond's Metal Mayhem radio show on UK station TotalRock. The whole show can be heard on Mixcloud at this location, but the audio interview (split into two parts for radio) can be listened to below. Many topics were discussed with the eloquent frontman, from the worldwide pandemic to Dean guitars and more in between! Check out a few excerpts from the chat, followed by the audio:
Discussing touring, Rob stated:
"Touring is what I like the most, it's being on the road – I don't get enough of that. I did like around twelve hundred shows in my career, I lost count, I know it's over a thousand. It's just doing my music you know – recording albums, going on tour and just rocking the stage you know. That's just what I want to do. When I started Necronomicon, I was seventeen, now I'm almost fifty, I never stop. As long as I play my music, I'm happy, I'm satisfied with that."
Regarding the Coronavirus pandemic and getting back to touring in 2021, Rob expressed:
"Really, really not easy, that's one thing. I think that pretty much any artist that does this mostly for a living will feel the impact pretty well. When you're going on full tours like months at a time and spend many, many, many, many hours you know practice by yourself, but I mean like many hours per week – days per week literally practising with your band, you have situations like that coming out of nowhere in a way, it's pretty challenging actually. For example, our drummer is stuck in California, can't come to practice and it's been months, so it's really not easy.
Of course we're trying to see what we can do now. Nothing is certain at this point how it's going, it's totally out of control, especially in the U.S. I mean in Canada we're doing really good, they responded really quick, I don't know how it is in Europe. I really don't know how we're going to do that, because when we finished the U.S. tour we were already planning to go in Europe and something happened and we had to pull out. And that tour started without us and the tour went to hell because Covid started. So, at first I wasn't really happy because we had to pull out of the tour, then I realised after it was almost a blessing. These bands that were on tour in Europe were in a really shitty situation because of that. They're having some major financial problems due to what happened there. If we'd been on that tour it would've really fucked us, really in a bad way. So, the fact that we'd been forced to pull out of that tour and not going, saved our ass in a way. That's the irony of that."
On videos and being creative, Rob had lots to say:
"I don't wanna bash any of my friends or other bands – there's a lot of bands I respect musically and stuff like that. But if you have to shoot your band in an abandoned warehouse, stay home come on, I mean be more creative. It's supposed to be art.
I don't get the people going on stage with their flip flops and Cannibal Corpse shirts, even their glasses. Even fucking Judas Priest, they go on stage with outfits and stage clothes. Even Metallica, ok they don't have armour and stuff like that – but if you see James Hetfield or Kirk Hammett in the street, they're not dressed like they're dressed on stage, it's totally different. Music is art, so why don't you do it properly you know?
When you go to see a show, you need to see something, you need to have a visual of it. I'm going to take a band that's really shitty music to me right now – that's Ghost, I really don't like what they're doing. The first album was really good, I really liked it, the rest – ugh! But they would never have succeeded if they didn't have the image. The same for Slipknot and the same for Dimmu Borgir or any bands that had success with that, it's a part of the game. You sell a product and the image of a band is fifty percent of the job, if not more."
https://metalshockfinland.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/rob-the-witch-interview-pt1.mp3
If you're lucky, you can see the uncensored video of 'The Thousand Masks' – unfortunately some countries have blocked it:
Some live NECRONOMICON with 'The Time Is Now':
NECRONOMICON: