Interview with old school death metal band EXTREMITY from USA.
Answered Shelby Lermo.
Translated by Duzl, thank you!
Questions prepared Jakub Asphyx.
Questions prepared Jakub Asphyx.
Ave EXTREMITY! I wish you a nice day in California. I hope you're well. With your band I first came into contact in concert. It was in the old times. A friend came to me, he was really excited, and he told me, "Look, you might like it, that's old school death metal, like from an old coffin." He was right, your last year's EP "Extremely Fucking Dead" got me to my knees. Excellent material. Perhaps it would be nice to introduce your band first. What I've been looking at on the Internet, you really have a lot of musicians behind in the Underground. Who are EXTREMITY?
Thanks. Extremity consists of myself, Shelby Lermo, on guitar and vocals (bass on the album), Marissa Martinez-Hoadley also on guitar and vocals, and Aesop Dekker on drums.
Somewhere I read that the songs for the first release "Extremely Fucking Dead" have been preparing by Shelby and Aesop for eight years? It look like that EXTREMITY is more like a side project or is not it right? One year after your debut, you will be releasing the long length album "Coffin Birth". Did the gentlemen still have some songs in stock or are they brand new songs? How long does it take to prepare material for „Coffin Birth“?
All of the songs on Extremely Fucking Dead were a long time in the making, as we worked very slow in a side-project capacity. All of the songs on Coffin Birth were written since the release of EFD, so just under a year. We were getting together more often and working a lot faster leading up to the recording of the full-length.
Everyone who hears your music must think about the sound. It is unusually moldy, gruesome and sick. It looks as if you were recording somewhere in an old analogue studio. Somewhere where the bands as PESTILENCE, ASPHYX, OBITUARY recorded their first albums. But in one interview I read that everything on the album is digital. How am I supposed to understand that? Did you really get the old sound "just" with new technologies?
The analog sound of the album is owed 100% to our friend Greg Wilkinson at Earhammer Studios in Oakland. Through a vast roster of bands he manages to get organic, earthy sounds while still working within the digital confines of ProTools. Greg is a wizard.
Between 2016 and 2018 Erika Osterhout played on bass with you. But now she is not in the line-up, even not on the pictures, who plays now with you and who has recorded that instrument? Shelby? Why did Erika actually leave? Having two pretty girls in my death metal band is unique to me. Now Marrissa is the most beautiful member of band.
Thanks? I guess?
Erika moved away to Los Angeles, and is now in Colorado. I recorded the bass on this album.
Marissa and Shelby are featured on album as vocalists. You both sing so sickly that I really cannot recognize who is who? How do you divide the song and how do you decide who will sing? By the way, Marissa has a proper rot in the throat, is she eating nails for breakfast?
I’m not sure of Marissa’s dietary routines, but I do know she drinks a lot of beer?
After I wrote the lyrics, Marissa and I sat down together to decide who would sing which parts. We never really practiced with the vocal parts before entering the studio to record.
I really like the cover of the new album. Cover is signed by the Belarusian artist Andrei Bouzikov. Really great work! How did you get together with Andrei? I admit that I always take the album as a whole, including the cover and text, but I have not found anywhere something another from him. Can you introduce him a bit please?
Andrei is an old friend that used to reside in the San Francisco Bay Area. In recent years he lived in Texas, Scotland, and now, I think, Berlin. He used to play in local punk and hardcore bands, and over the last decade and a half has done artwork for tons of bands, including Skeletonwitch, Municipal Waste, Autopsy, and Cannabis Corpse.
An integral part of every honest record are the lyrics. I wonder where do you get inspiration for them? I would have guessed from the horrors of the eighties, but maybe I'm wrong. For me, when I heard the novelty for the first time, it reminded me by the mood the famous films about living corpses. What are the lyrics to "Coffin Birth" about?
Coffin Birth is a horror story about the death of a family—father, mother, and child. If you want to look deeper into the story I recommend reading the lyrics while you listen and letting your imagination fill in the blanks.
You play music that is as old as death metal itself. How do you perceive new directions in death metal? His mixing with death core or technical death metal? Do you have any favorite bands in "modern death metal"?
I mostly listen to old death metal if I listen at all—classic stuff like Cannibal Corpse, Suffocation, and Morbid Angel. If I’m going to listen to something more modern I’ll put on Dead Congregation, Succumb, or Defeated Sanity. I think technical death metal is cool if it’s used sparingly, but deathcore vocals really keep me away from that genre altogether. I honestly don’t listen to metal very much these days--mostly ambient, classical, or electronic.
You're from California. Every metaller immediately think about Bay Area thrash. When I was thirteen and I started with metal, so this music for me was sacred ( and we did not have in easy with approach to the music in the socialist block at all). But what about death metal? Was death metal there in the same "position"? And are people going to death metal concerts, how underground works there and are fans supporting the bands, etc.?
Death metal is definitely the most popular subgenre of metal in the Bay Area right now. I’m sure OSDM’s time is nearly up, and another type of metal will get popular for awhile, which is fine with me. Thrash is still around here, I guess, with long-running bands like Testament and Exodus, but I’ve never really had much interest in it. I try to listen to a little bit of everything, I don’t know. I think weird black metal is going to be the next wave here.
When we're at that California. Try for us a little to remember your beginnings. Was there a band in your youth that you walked to see them, you loved they were not so familiar? And how did you actually start with the music? What instrument was first and do you have a musical education?
I was first inspired to play music by listening to Nirvana as a teenager, and after that discovered punk and post-punk in the mid-90s. The first death metal albums I heard were Cannibal Corpse Butchered At Birth and Deicide Legion, with quite a bit of Sepultura and Slayer on the side. I started playing guitar around age 14, and started my first metal band by the late 90s. I took lessons for about 6 months, but they never seemed very useful to me. I liked studying music on my own better.
When I look at the Internet profiles of Shelby and Aesop, they are full of references of publishing. They both write about music, promote it, even find a mention about radio. It means you must literally live music. I've read some reviews. I write about music as well and I cannot imagine that I should have a band as well. On the one hand, I would not have the time because of my job and on the other hand I do not have the talent and above all; are there some "conflict of interest"? You know it, you're going to write about some band that they do not play so good, and they're immediately offended and say that you play "just plain old death metal".
I don’t really write about music anymore. I think people’s opinions just cloud up the purity of the art itself, and I’d rather not read about something I’m listening to. I guess my outlook has changed a lot over the years.
What about EXTREMITY and concerts? Are you playing a lot? Are you touring or are you choosing only bigger festivals? And what about Europe? What plan do EXTREMITY have in the upcoming months?
No concerts or tours are currently planned.
On the end one question a bit about philosophy. What does death metal mean for you? I do not mean the technique of playing, but I mean what does it mean directly to you, to your personally, how do you feel it?
Death metal to me is a constructive expression of pure nihilism. It is somehow a positive expulsion of all the hate, frustration, and pain we feel on a daily basis.
Thank you very much for the interview. I wish EXTREMITY all good, lots of sold media, sold out concerts and inspiration for the future. I firmly believe I'm going to dream and I'll see you live some time. All good to you in your personal lives as well.
Thank you very much.
about EXTREMITY on DEADLY STORM ZINE/ o EXTREMITY na DEADLY STORM ZINE:
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