Interviews

Interviews: Diabolic

Jeremy discusses Death Metal and Diabolic's blistering new record, "Vengeance Ascending", with Jerry and Brian before they take the stage at the Springfield, VA stop of their tour with Krisiun, Cryptopsy, and Dimmu Borgir.

Jeremy: From the older material to Vengeance Ascending, the songs are a lot more powerful and so is the writing in general. Is there any change that you think brought that on?

Brian: Just experience. The longer we write together, the better we get. We're growing as musicians and songwriters together. The other change would be Jerry. For the first time, we have four members writing the album. It's always been me, Paul, and Aantar writing. We know what we want to go for with arrangement and stuff. The songs kinda write themselves. We just get in there and get out, don't write a twenty fucking minute song. Just get in there and say what we gotta say and go with it.

Jeremy: I saw you guys with Cannibal Corpse and God Dethroned and others on the Death Metal Massacre tour a few years ago. It was great, but the new record really blew me away.

Brian: Thanks. We really hit it with this album. This is the album we were going for and we knew what we wanted with this one. It's a very angry record that just reflected our mood at the time.

Jeremy: How is Olympic treating you?

Brian: Excellent. Conquest didn't pick up the option for the rest of the contract, so we just chopped it and went with Olympic. It's nice to have a label finally that works as hard as we do. We've been wanting to tour, we've been willing to work our asses off and dedicate everything.

Jeremy: What was the deal with Subterraneal Magnitude? It was released…

Brian: …A week after Vengeance Ascending. That's our second record. That's because Conquest music sucks and didn't do a damned thing for us. Not only that, they did negative for us. Not only did they not do anything, they actually held us back. A lot of the anger for [Vengeance Ascending] comes from that. We recorded that album in June of 2000 and it took them over a year and a half to release. They said some bullshit like we asked them to hold the record. That's total bullshit. One, it's absurd that a band would ask a label to hold their record for any length of time before release and two, they got it up on the website and it never said that. I don't even want to get into it.

Jeremy: So do any of the fans know anything from Subterraneal Magnitude?

Brian: Some do. I hooked up with a distributor in Detroit since Conquest sucks and they don't give us any albums to sell. I hate not having things for the kids and the fans that want to get them. I explain it's our second album.

Jeremy: How do you think Death Metal is doing in general these days? You're a pretty up and coming band. You're still fighting your way up in the ranks.

Brian: Yeah, we're still trying to crack the American market. It's pretty tough here. Over in Europe we're kicking ass. We're setting up a tour over there. It'll be pretty big. There's really a big demand now. The new album's doing excellent. We can't wait to get over there. This is our third tour in America in a row. We're trying to hit it hard for this market. It depends on the region as far as Death Metal. It's doing okay in my eyes. I think the Internet has a lot to do with it. If you want information, you just go on the Internet for it whereas before, it was all underground.

Jeremy: How is this tour working out for you?

Brian: It's great. The places are packed. It's a great bill, Dimmu Borgir, Krisiun, Cryptopsy, Diabolic. It's packed from when the doors open until they when they close. It's good to see some of my favorite bands every night.

Jeremy: What was the craziest Diabolic show ever?

Brian: Detroit's a good city for us. The southwest is great. El Paso, when we played there, that was a pretty huge pit. Tampa gets a little crazy. We had guys being thrown on stage last time we played there.

Jerry: Texas!

Brian: Yeah, Texas is amazing. Anything near the Mexican border. The Mexicans are really into their Metal. I think it's because it's a pretty poor country and, you know, the rebellion and anger, they can take out in their music and their Metal.

Jeremy: Anything coming up or any last comments?

Brian: Thanks for the support and we'll see you on one of these tours. We're going to tour Europe after this tour. This is our third tour, so we're going to take a little break from America, tour Europe, work on some new material in the meanwhile, and hit Europe once at least, maybe twice, and we're also going to do another summer tour for "Vengeance…" for the U.S. Check the website if you want any more info, diabolicblastmasters.com.