Faceless Burial Interview
With the recently released ‘Multiversal Abbatoir’ EP, our UK correspondent Goth Mark decided to pick the collective brains of Alex, Fuj and Max from up and coming Antipodean death metallers Faceless Burial – as he felt much more needed to be known about the band, their future plans, and what makes them tick.
– Relatively little is known about you guys outside of Australia, and we feel that at Blessed Altar Zine the world needs to know more about the band after being quite impressed with your ‘Multiversal Abattoir’ EP recently. How did you guys originally meet up and form the band?
Alex: Fuj and I went to high school together, I’d played in a band with Max briefly called Cut Sick. We decided to form the group as we all liked metal a lot and were not in a metal band at the time.
– What are your musical influences, and what helped to shape the band’s sound?
Alex: As you could assume, there is nothing too out of the ordinary in terms of what death metal influenced us, Death, Obituary, Suffocation, Immolation, Gorguts, Morbid Angel etc. We are all fans of a wide range of tunes outside of the boundaries of death metal. I think that has perhaps influenced the sound equally. While we strictly keep those influences out of our material, it has certainly affected the way we play as individuals and as a group.
– Extreme metal due to its underground nature often doesn’t pay the bills as easily as mainstream acts. What is it you guys do as day jobs?
Alex: That’s true. Fuj and I work in an office together, we were mailmen for 7 or so years together at this same organisation that shan’t be named, but I think our superiors have now pushed us into other roles due to the shame they felt from having two similar looking dudes in their late 20s delivering mail on their behalf.
Max is the owner/operator of a great record store here in Melbourne called The Searchers.
– Do you have any eventual plans to tour outside of Australia?
Alex: We are actually looking into it right now, stay tuned.
– Do you have plans for another full length album? It feels like the ‘Multiversal Abattoir’ EP is a small teaser for bigger things to come in the pipeline.
Alex: Very astute, yes! We are currently deep in writing for the next full length.
– Do you have any amusing or weird tour stories?
Alex: I suppose it’s weird that we have in fact never toured…
– If you guys were stuck on a desert island with infinite supplies, but you were only allowed 5 albums per band member – what would you pick?
– Alex: That is really difficult. I’d probably want some amazing albums I had never heard before. Right now I’ll take:
Sandy by Sandy Denny
Katy Lied by Steely Dan
Split by Groundhogs
Undercurrent by Bill Evans and Jim Hall
and Three Friends by Gentle Giant
Fuj: Yep extremely difficult decision but I think I’d have to go with some absolute classics to keep morale high / freakout to on FB Island…
Neil Young – Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Thin Lizzy – Live and Dangerous
Yes – Close To The Edge
Tears For Fears – Songs From The Big Chair
Black Sabbath – Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
Max:
Ice-T – Power
Ash Ra Tempel – Starring Rosi
Excruciating Terror – Divided We Fall
SSD – Get It Away
Roc Marciano – Reloaded
– If you had the ability to jump in a time machine and to see any band of your choosing, what would it be? In fact, would there be a particular decade you wished that you lived through?
Alex: While I think that most of the movements I love the most started in the 60’s, many achieved perfection in the 70s.
I suppose I would like to have been in my 20s throughout the 70s. I would love to have seen progressive rock peaking and electronic music elements entering the mainstream, I think the studio experimentation during that decade is/was the most exciting for me and the diversity in attitudes even within particular movements was so broad… I wouldn’t know where I would want to be though in that period, I suppose I could move around a bit.
That being said, living before recorded music would perhaps be the most interesting as the sounds would be less familiar and you’d hear a lot of songs perhaps not heard by anyone living today. I love the crumhorn so maybe just chuck me back to whenever that was the hot ticket.
Are there any particular things that you like, and dislike about the current state of the metal scene?
Alex: I think there is so much incredible death metal coming out at the moment. It’s really the only super specific genre that I keep up with, and get regularly excited about new releases therein.
We at Blessed Altar Zine appreciate the time and patience you’ve taken to answer these questions. Do you have any final closing words?
– Thanks for having us, keep up the good work.
Interview by Goth Mark
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