Interview with death metal band from Australia - GUTLESS.
Answered Ollie Ballantyne (drums), thank you!
Recenze/review - GUTLESS - High Impact Violence (2024):
Ave GUTLESS! Hello to the Australian underground. Let's get straight to the important stuff. Your new album "High Impact Violence" is out and it is literally packed with honest, dirty death metal. How was the album made and how do you feel about it? What direction has GUTLESS moved in since the demo?
We started writing the record pretty much straight after we put out our split with Mortal Wound. Covid hit not long after that and the city we live in got locked down pretty hard so that kind of killed our momentum for a bit there. Eventually we got sick of not being able to do anything, so Tom and I started writing songs over Zoom together. It was an unconventional setup but we had to keep some sort of momentum up. I think we're all just more relieved to finally have it out after all this time. In terms of our direction, I think we've basically just tried to expand on the blueprint we laid with our earlier releases. We wanted a good mix of pure old school death metal and more groovy, brutal death inspired stuff.
I'm listening to the record right now and I have to write that this time it took a while to get into my blood. I put the album in my player, I'm listening to it in the car. I really like the sound of it. It's lively, organic, old school, and at the same time it's easy to hear. Where did you record it and who is responsible for the sound?
We recorded it at Goatsound Studios, which is run by Jason Fuller. We tracked the drums with him, and then our friends Jamie Colic and Noah Papworth came in and tracked the guitars and vocals with us. Joe tracked his bass at home and we re-amped it at Goatsound. Fuller mixed and mastered it for us - we put that man through the ringer in terms of making him do things he didn't want to do from an engineering and production standpoint (sorry Fuller!) but he killed it.
You'll probably agree with me that the cover sells. You guys have it pretty brutal this year. Who's the author? Personally I like the cover, I just wonder if it's "too" brutal. You know, there's an artificial intelligence on social media evaluating what's right and what's wrong. A lot of bands have gotten in trouble for covers like this. How did you and the author get together and what exactly is the theme supposed to convey in relation to the music?
Our good bud Jesse Webb (@jw.hardware) is responsible for the album cover and all of our other artwork. I feel like violent/brutal/off-putting covers in death metal are a dime a dozen these days and nothing really shocks me in that regard anymore but we wanted something that fit the music and a guy getting his head caved in with a brick felt pretty right. It's blunt and brutal and just a little bit dumb. I think it's still pretty gnarly even in a sea of hyper gory brutal death and goregrind covers but maybe I'm just biased. As for working with Jesse, we've been friends with him for a long time and he fully gets the brief of what artwork for this band should be, so that makes it really easy.
I put "High Impact Violence" over and over in my head and I think what I like most about the album is probably that hard to describe old school death metal feeling. We seem to be of the same blood. Who was and is your role model? Every musician started out somehow, there are role models that shaped their signature. What were yours?
In terms of early influences and role models, for me personally I'd say the early thrash bands were pretty big ones. I think just the fact that they were the first bands to kind of shed the grandiosity and theatrics of the metal that came before them and carry themselves with more of a DIY or punk ethos - just shithead kids playing the heaviest music they possibly could to whoever would listen.
How do you look at the current trend, widespread mostly among young bands, where they try to play as technically as possible, often putting into death metal, for example, saxophone, various keyboards and generally finding their way in a very complicated way. Do you enjoy such bands? I'm confused sometimes when I go to a gig and someone like that is performing. It seems like a jazz school exercise, but I end up not remembering anything at all. What about you and the current trends in death metal?
It's great that there are so many bands playing around with different takes on the style. I guess our only thing is that currently bands are either progging out hard, playing more cavernous death-doomy sort of stuff, doing squeaky clean tech-death or NSE-style brutal death, or just going full the knuckle-dragging hardcore inspired route. That's not to say we don't love any of that stuff because it's sick that there's such a diversity of sounds out there and there are plenty of bands we love doing that, but I guess we feel like our favourite styles of death metal are maybe currently under-represented. In terms of watching bands live, I'll take a more loose band that plays violently and energetically over a bunch of tech-death musicians standing still but playing flawlessly any day.
Going back to the beginning... What was the first impetus for you guys to put a band together in the first place? And why death metal? It's not exactly a style that would gain you much "fame".
Tom and I used to play together in a band called Sewercide back when we were younger. After that band ended Tom hit me up to try and write some songs together, and there were certain bands and styles that we'd always bonded over so we just tried to copy them, haha. And we just do it because we love the music, and love making this music together.
You come from Australia and play extreme death metal. I'm sure our readers would be interested to know how the death metal scene works in Australia? To be honest, I've been hearing nothing but great stuff from you guys lately. Does that mean the scene is very strong in your country at the moment? What about gigs, how many people are coming?
Yeah, we're really lucky that the scene in our city is so great. There's heaps of incredible bands we get to play shows and hang out with regularly, like Faceless Burial, Contaminated, Miserable Creature, Vile Apparition, Hormagaunt, Carcinoid, Algor Mortis, Aglo, Bludger and a whole heap more. It's really inspiring for us to be around so many talented and like-minded people. Gigs tend to do really well here, and we're pretty spoiled in terms of constantly having great shows on regularly.
From your music you can feel that you are influenced by the American death metal school as well as old European bands. How are you as fans? Do you prefer the original death metal of the 90s or do you draw inspiration from new records as well? If so, I'd be interested to know which bands had/have the biggest influence on GUTLESS.
We listen to heaps of different types of music (old and new) between us, but I'd say in regards to Gutless our biggest influences are the early American death metal bands, where thrash first became death metal. Bands like Demolition Hammer, Deicide, Cannibal Corpse, Solstice and Malevolent Creation were all pretty huge for us when we first started this band, as well as early brutal death bands like Suffocation and Cryptopsy.
We are coming to the end and that always makes me ask a slightly philosophical question. How would you define death metal and what does it mean to you? I don't mean now the technique of playing, but rather what it brings to you, takes, how you perceive it in relation to the fans. Did you grow up on it?
To me it's metal taken to its logical extreme - metal's a genre defined by its heaviness and death metal is people trying to make metal as heavy as it possibly can be, and pushing it as far as it can go in that regard. I think it's cool that it can be pushed in so many directions too - there are other styles that are maybe more limited in terms of where you can feasibly take it, but it's a genre that still seems to be evolving and that bands are still experimenting with. We are definitely not one of those bands, haha.
Thank you very much for the interview. I appreciate it. Now let the music do the talking. I'm gonna go play "High Impact Violence" really loud! I wish you all the best with the news and that all is well in your personal lives. Thank you!
Thank you!
Recenze/review - GUTLESS - High Impact Violence (2024):
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