Answered Yuichi Kudo.
Translated by Duzl, thank you!
Questions prepared Jakub Asphyx.
Recenze/review - DESECRAVITY - Anathema (2019):
Ave DESECRAVITY! Greetings to Japan. I'm just listening to your new album "Anathema" and I have to say that it literally tears me apart. That's how I imagine a great technical death metal. Colorful and sharp at the same time. With lots of mood and interesting motifs. How that album was created? In 2016, the second guitarist Yuya Takeda joined you. How did he get involved in creating the process of the new album and how did you actually get together?
Thank you for your compliment. That new album “Anathema” is one of my favorites albums. I started working on the Anathema later in 2016, the first song I wrote was Impure Confrontation. The song made open the gate of Anathema. All of the songs I wrote comes from my imagination and story about something I want to express. I always do that. That way makes me more creativity in writing songs.
About Yuya, when I was looking for a guitar player, I heard about him from my friend, actually, I didn’t know him at all, then I went to see him soon. He said he has known about DESECRAVITY well and wished to join and play with us. So I started an audition for him and had a session a couple of times. He learned songs so fast and his picking is very accurate. Although I haven’t been satisfied with other guitar players in the past so much, I wanted him and let him join DESECRAVITY. Yuya and other members haven’t been involved in writing songs, but honestly, Yuya’s skill makes me created more ideas technically.
"Anathema" is your third full length album. Again, it's a bit different, I think it's darker. How do you see your development? Do you have any direction, determined in advance, how do you want to play - faster, madder, raw? And can you tell us how DESECRAVITY creating a new material?
Well, as I mentioned above, My writing songs are based on my imaginations and stories. It's like a novelist expresses with words, an artist expresses with art and in my case, a musician expression with tones. So imagination and story have been involved with anything in my life and all experienced things in the past. I’ve never thought to try a song faster, heavier or so on.
About recording itself. I know today lots of bands send ideas over the internet. Musicians will not even meet. Everyone uploads their part at the other end of the globe, and then put everything together in the studio. Is this your case, or have you kept up classics way and recorded together?
We are a musician, we need to know each other through their own sounds, what I feel, what your vibe, it’s like a conversation. It's not fun to play only the ones written on the score to me. I don’t know it is a classical way or not, but we have met every week and of course the recording as well. I care much their vibe and time spent together, So there are the meaning and value of what we play.
You've made a big move with DESECRAVITY again in the sound. This is exactly the sound that suits to me. Breakthrough, readable, dynamic and raw and rough. In this form it really fit to you. I know you recorded with Dan Swano. He is more known with another kind of death metal. How did the collaboration work?
I have worked with Mana Recording Studio past two albums, they worked great, still appreciated Erik and Brian so much. But I wanted to change something this time, so I asked Dan for mixing and mastering. Anathema is really fit for his engineering. I was so excited when I received the first version of mixing, it was a right sounding and excellent work. I had a good conversation to understand what we are saying exactly and good communication with him while working on it.
The author of the cover for "Anathema" is Ryohei Hase? I like his work very much. How did you choose the motif? The cover is very original, but I admit I do not know much about this artist. When I look at his website, his work with metal is not very common. Did he hear your record for inspiration? What did he say about your album?
He is a Japanese artist, have experienced working with Snow White and the Huntsman movie, lots of big name musicians and so on, but actually, he has stopped working as an artist now. He created all our cover art of albums. I only gave him a word of Anathema and some meaning I am thinking and another word I gave him Impure Confrontation, which is the song title track #2, then he mixed my idea and his idea to the art. It’s amazing art, right? I love it so much. He always expressed my feeling to an art.
In your band's description on Metal archives, we can read that you are dealing with nihilism, darkness, anti-religion in your texts. With us in Europe, where we are all influenced by Christianity, the death metal texts are often justified, but in Japan you cannot imagine the "resistance" against Buddhism and Shinto. I think those are peaceful religions. What are the texts of "Anathema" and who is their author?
I do everything in this band, the lyrics as well. I do not know who wrote it like that on the Metal Archive, but I do not think so. But lyrics are always connected with songs, wiring lyric is also the same way as writing songs. I often use words from myth and religious things, because I like that kind of thing. If I write about them, that does not necessarily need to be European. And I do not know much about Buddha and Shinto.
When I'm going through your work, you've really gone a long way. It's a lot to know that you're working on yourself as a band. How often DESECRAVITY meeting in rehearsal room? Are you an honest group that meets regularly, or are you punkers who leave it free?
We usually meet in a studio every week for practice. None of the guys do nothing for writing and management even I ask them to do something haha. I don’t care about that. I do whatever I want and they just follow me, it’s ok but it's not my ideal.
I recruited all members as permanent, but if I found they are lazy, having a mental problem or creating an adverse result in the band, I let them go out of my band immediately. I don’t want to have time to spend with those kinds of guys in my life, it’s useless and wastes time. Death is close to more than we expected.
Japan is very attractive to me as a tourist. I like your culture. Unfortunately, I have never been there before. But what about your land and death metal? I know from the media that Japanese fans are great, but I see only heavy metal, thrash. Is there an extreme underground, I talk now about support by media, fans, event attendance? And what about concerts, festivals? Somewhere I read that your scene is really small, what's the truth about it?
Well, I think it’s a good scene, I don’t know much about other extreme show in Japan, but the audience in DESECRAVITY show are usually watching us quietly, it’s like playing in front of a judge something like supermodel audition or so. I know our song using a lot of odd meters, it is difficult moshing with our song. But I know they have great passion and really love extreme metal.
I admit that only a few extreme bands are known from Japan. Can you recommend us some? I think that support and tips for good bands are always good.
I think you know more than me. I live in my own world too much, so I'm ignorant about the outside world so well.
What are plans for DESECRAVITY in the coming months? What about concerts? I know from your site that you are performing in Japan, that you had a tour in Asia in 2017 (it had to be very interesting how the tour was going, what about fans, the best concert, etc.?), But what about Europe, America? I want to see you live somewhere!
We will announce soon about this spring tour and fall tour. Unfortunately, it’s not for your area, but we will go to Europe and North America some time in the future.
Thank you for your interview, and I wish you a lot of CD's sales, crowds of crazy fans and a ton of good ideas.
about DESECRAVITY on DEADLY STORM ZINE:
Recenze/review - DESECRAVITY - Anathema (2019):
Recenze/review - DESECRAVITY – Orphic Signs (2014):
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