Interview with death metal band from Canada - GRAVE INFESTATION.
Recenze/review - GRAVE INFESTATION - Carnage Gathers (2025):
Ave GRAVE INFESTATION! Greetings to the realm of Hades! I've had your new album "Carnage Gathers" at home for review for some time now and I have to say that it's a cool trip for me back to when I was young and starting out with death metal. Excellent hit! How did the record come about and where did you want to go from your previous releases?
That’s exactly it, the sound for the band is to create albums and music that we want to listen to and that made us remember what got us interested in this genre in the first place, I suppose going back to some of the basics and roots of this genre. Appreciate your comments about the record. The record came about because after our first LP “Persecution of the Living” we were ready to make a second record and for this one we really wanted to embody really specific production and raw sound for the album, and also to give GC the space to try some ideas he had for the vocals specifically around treatment and effects. So, this record was really about developing our production and sound and finding out exactly what we needed to release the record we all wanted to make. There was a lot of focus on making a cohesive record with some growth in the writing, but most definitely developing our production and sound.
I was introduced to the morbid game by the cover art from Misanthropic-Art. Awesome work! How did you choose the theme and how does it relate to the music and lyrics? How did you and Chris Kiesling get together and why him?
We have all been following Chris’ art for a long time, he has done a lot of cool work and art for bands and puts a lot of effort into his work, we had a specific concept for this record and after discussing as a band, we had a feeling that he would capture the concept really well. We wrote to him and he was really into it and then the back and forth between us to get the concept art to the right spot was super easy, he was very open to our adjustments/requests and ideas.
The cover art is related to a track on our album called “The Anthropophagus”, it's about a 17th century French cannibal hermit. That's the cave he lived in. People called him the Anthropophagus, which means cannibal, but he was just basically starved to madness, a starving hermit who murdered and ate people to feed himself. The cover art is his world in his cave.
The sound, that's what death metal is all about. Did you manage to achieve a sound that's straight out of the late 80s/early 90s? It strikes me as analogue. Am I right? Where did you record the album, who signed the mixing and mastering?
The album was recorded at Earhammer Studios in Oakland, CA with engineer Greg Wilkinson who plays in bands like Brainoil, Deathgrave, and now Autopsy. He recorded and mixed the record. We decided to work with Greg because we wanted someone experienced with playing, recording, and mixing death metal and it was clearly the correct choice. Greg is also our friend so the sessions were super friendly and easy to navigate. It’s interesting that you feel it sounds analog, because I think that’s the thing that Greg brings into his recordings, an organic sound. But the recording is digital, analogue is something we’d love to do one day but it isn’t in the budget/resources just yet.
The great thing about working with Greg is he's entrenched in the music we love and play. He could see our vision, and helped us make it happen. He had death metal solutions for death metal problems. He had great old cabinets and amps. Even the studio itself gives off deathly ambience. We definitely had old school stuff on the brain when we were going back and forth in the mixing process, and he worked really closely to hear our vision and make things happen when we expressed ideas, like for example, he was super receptive to our ideas for how for example the vocals should sound, be effected, be mixed, and be treated overall - and that took a lot of collaboration. Without that, the record would sound entirely different.
Death metal lyrics are often about bad and ugly things. What are they about on "Carnage Gathers"? Who is the author and where did you get the inspiration for them? What influenced you?
GC writes all of our lyrics, the lyrics for Carnage Gathers are about death. In this case, each song is a specific instance of murder or a story related to death or dying. The lyrics were focused on subjects maybe an 80’s metal band would write about. For example living inhumation is about falling asleep and being buried alive, black widow is about a woman grave robber who turns to murder to sell fresher cadavers to make money to feed her children. Most lyrics are from true stories researched from recent history or from as far back as a couple hundred years ago, like some are kind of late medieval true crime. A few are from literature about war or horror.
How is death metal perceived in Canada? You're from Vancouver and to be honest I'm not too familiar with your scene. How does it work for you, what about the fans, the bands? Like do you have a club where you hang out? What about other packs? Can you recommend anyone?
There is a strong commitment to death metal in Canada, as we write this we are on a European tour with fellow Canadian death metal band SEDIMENTUM who are from Quebec City, which is basically on the other side of Canada from where we are from, but they are a really incredible live band and have great records. Vancouver has a very strong death metal.
I think you'll agree with me that the best gigs are still the gigs. Nowadays you can listen to a band from the other side of the world, but when you go to a club and see them live, party under the stage, buy a CD, buy a t-shirt, you get a completely different relationship. Do you play often and do you like it? What about some tours, festivals? How do you feel about playing live as a musician?
We play live on a regular basis and tour at least a few times a year. I agree that it’s really different being in person and meeting people, especially when you get into the realm of international touring and start meeting people across language barriers and cultural differences and realize that we all have one thing in common, which is death metal. Festivals are obviously awesome because you meet tons of people in bands and in the audience, and it’s super condensed and always a big massive party and whirlwind. But individual shows, especially small gigs like the one we played in Slavonice CZ the other night during this tour we are on are still always really special because you get to meet people more one on one and have conversations and hang outs that you can’t at larger festivals. Sometimes you end up hanging out with someone for hours and you aren’t even really communicating in the same language. it’s super cool.
Death is an often quoted theme in death metal. Personally, I often think of old books and legends, the realm of Hades. How do you feel about death? Do you think there is something beyond? Another dimension, hell?
I think we all have different interpretations of it, but the interesting thing about death is that so many fear it, but it is really the most knowable thing - everything dies. The fear therefore of death is the fear of the unknown, or the void, or the abyss, however you want to describe it, so this unknowability is really the horrifying thing. And when you think of classic death metal lyrics, or like the lyrics in our track Living Inhumation, or Edgar Allan Poe works, there is an intense fear of being buried alive or in another sense, meeting death before you feel it is your time, and being trapped in this place between life and death, like a coma or something. This constant decay is an important theme for all death metal.
You play death metal influenced by the old school. Nowadays, the band can't really avoid comparison, but I'm curious how the idea to form GRAVE INFESTATION came about, who was and is your role model and where do you want to take your band? Are you tempted by big festivals abroad, for example, are you willing to tour with a more famous pack?
We have so many influences, but definitely Swedish/Finnish bands like NIHILIST, ABHORRENCE, RIPPIKOULU to name a few, and obviously bands like AUTOPSY, REPULSION and DEATH are huge for us. We are also influenced heavily by bands outside of our exact genre, like for example BLASPHEMY, TEITAN BLOOD, and someone at the gig last night pointed out some HELLHAMMER/CELTIC FROST influence they could hear which is totally correct in our opinion, because it all seeps in.
We just want to be able to continue to make records and tour as much as possible, ideally it would be nice for it to be sustainable enough that our jobs wouldn’t get in the way, but we just want to be able to do as much as we can within our financial reach. We all dedicate vacation time from work and our own money into this band.
Big festivals are cool if we are a good fit, we don’t need to prove anything and play a big festival or join a big touring package. If it fits, makes sense, and would be a good experience for us as musicians, it’s an option. But playing to a bigger audience for the sake of JUST playing to a bigger audience, with nothing else that means anything to us isn’t interesting to us. We need to have something we give a fuck about when we do this.
Personally I see GRAVE INFESTATION as a great old school death metal band. I'd be interested to know what is your goal, direction, base, where you want to get to. Is it a big label? A festival? Or maybe a tour with POSSESSED?
Thanks for the words here. Our goal is to be able to tour and play cool gigs as much as possible with like-minded bands to an audience of dedicated metal maniacs. Travelling the world and playing music is a crazy opportunity and we want to continue this. And we want to have enough resources and time to continue to make killer records. So. really we just want to make records and play gigs all over the world with our friend’s bands and see people we’ve met everywhere at fests and stuff at our gigs. In terms of labels, i’m not sure what a big label is exactly for a band like us. Darragh (Invictus) and Matt (Dark Descent) run two killer underground metal labels and there is something really cool about working closely with a label just run by metal maniacs. It’s a really cool and friendly relationship and they do their best to support us. And we of course always want to keep playing festivals, they can be big or small but most importantly the lineup including cool bands we like and friends is always a huge bonus.
Interesting you mention Possessed because they keep coming up a lot in reviews about Carnage Gathers as comparison, and of course that would be super cool to tour with them. We like touring with cool bands who play good music and are cool to hang out with of course.
How did you get into death metal in the first place? When did you first pick up an instrument and start playing? Who was your role model? And what was it like growing up in metal Canada? First gig?
We all got into death metal in different ways, GC was listening to death metal since his teenage years when he’d hear old school bands on the radio with their new releases, for example Obituary’s Slowly We Rot, and he actually started as a bassist and then moved towards guitar eventually. The drummer was first introduced to death metal also in her teenage years through Much Music metal shows where they would play metal music videos online. In her hometown of Toronto, bands like Morbid Angel would go through and do interviews in the downtown core and then would be replayed on the music video shows. TS comes to death metal through hardcore punk but also noting the similarities in approach by Swedish and Finnish hardcore punk bands to the death metal scenes. And BC has always been a metal head, and has been dedicated to various forms of metal throughout his life. When he joined Grave Infestation he shared that he had a specific interest in doing a death metal band in this style and genre specifically. Growing up with death metal in Canada means being part of punk, harsh noise, and black metal communities too, as our gigs are often cross-genre. In many Canadian cities, it’s a bit too small to get specific about particular genres, so mixed genre bills but that still share basic aesthetics, are the best attended and coolest shows.
I like to ask musicians what death metal means to them. How would they define it, is it more of a philosophy and lifestyle for them or "just" relaxation. What does it mean to you? How do you perceive and experience it?
For us, we see it as an opportunity to practice expression with a focus on how things hit you on gut-level impact, like without things becoming overly cerebral or intellectualized. So we bring our ideas and interests in the organic, human, and honest parts of life including questions we have around the complications of morality (for example in the lyrical content it’s not just death is bad, but rather in some cases some stories share stories about death/murder etc being part of survival, social illness, mental illness). The disgusting parts of life are brought to the forefront for us to dissect and witness.
What are GRAVE INFESTATION planning in the next few months? What can fans look forward to?
We are currently on a European tour, but after this we will be performing live in Seattle at Disembowled God Fest, then in Toronto and Montreal to promote our record and we are planning some tours coming up. But our priority for the next few months is to get back to writing, since we are all eager to start working on our 3rd LP.
Thank you very much for the interview. I appreciate it. I'm going to listen to "Carnage Gathers" again. It's excellent! Thank you so much for your new record, too. I wish you the best sales and good luck in your private life!
Recenze/review - GRAVE INFESTATION - Carnage Gathers (2025):
Recenze/review - GRAVE INFESTATION - Persecution Of The Living (2022):
https://www.deadlystormzine.com/2022/07/recenzereview-grave-infestation.html
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