INTERVIEWS
1. After listening of Shame Yourself debut album, we can conclude that, despite your love to the old and classic stuff, you don’t mind to much modernize your music, diluting it with more modern elements. How justified this method? Maybe there’s no need to fix what isn’t broken? After all the old classics sounds good even today, and no worse than when it was created. Isn’t it?
Thanks for listening to our album. When it comes to older recordings it has to be noted that they were real masterpieces. Digital tricks weren’t available. Musicians just had to be able to play. That’s all. Now it’s all about the engineer’s work. Our recording may sound a bit old school like as we tried to do it in a way we usually do it live. Besides as music is far modernized now we received a mixture of old and new playing. We wanted to record an album, no matter how it sounds in terms of modernity. We are really satisfied with what we received.
2. How could you interest the listener who is not familiar with music of Shame Yourself? Give us a short description of your music and specify the main reason to pay attention to your band, or even better – to buy the CD.
As you already mentioned, we received quite untypical sound, a mixture of old and new music. Our music itself is very energetic and dynamic, kept in a medium thrash-groove pace. There are juicy riffs combined with catchy sounds, but never too sweet ones. Vocals are more deathmetal-like, not thrashy. Nonetheless, it’s truly interesting and has THAT sound, if you know what I mean. It’s heavy enough. The cover is also an important element that adds the whole work its character. You can really find many attention-grabbing details when looking closer into it.
3. Judging from the record, the music of Shame Yourself is very well suited for a wild slam and headbanging, which implies an active concert promotion of the album. As you can feel, Shame Yourself – is more studio or live band?
We hadn’t many adventures with studios yet. The recording process itself gave us much experience necessary for creating new stuff for the new album, but we’re still a gig band. We feel great at the stage. The public gives us a kick, the more we give the more the they give back. And the other way round the more they give us the more we give them, and so on.
4. Tell us about the musical preferences of the band members. How they are similar or different, and in this regard, how hard or, alternatively, you can easily find common ground in the process of writing material and recording?
Tastes to metal are like holes in the assess, each of us has one’s own. Hahahh!! To be serious, however, each of us likes different music, but we still have a few common music bands that we respect but we want to be different to them. The material itself is far something more than just the band’s work. We had a few changes in the line up so far and everybody was adding something from oneself to enrich the material. It may be said that the outcome is a combination of many musicians’ input also the ones who are not in the lineup anymore. We’re working on a new album (the number of tracks could be fair enough to record a new album I guess) and we all seem to know where to go next. We do enjoy creating new tracks or playing any riff. The new album undoubtedly will be our new baby.
5. Have you ever tried to look into the future? How do you think, what will happen with the band 15 years later, for example?
We don’t have such a long-term plan yet. We’re focusing on the current moment. We want to do it for as long time as possible maybe 15 or 25 yrs. That would be great! If we manage it would mean we still have that something.
6. Tell me honestly, what is most the important thing for you in all this metal bullshit? For what are you doing this? What are your main goals and incentives to move on?
First of all, it’s our hobby. We do what we like, and as we like rock’n’roll life we live as such. I don’t want to go too far in the future but I hope we won’t get bored of playing, recording, playing gigs, etc. And were are heading at? The further the better. It’s fun to play for big audience especially if it knows your music. It’s our aim to have fun of music and amuse our public.
You wanted thrash and burn? So got it! “Wonderfuck” – the debut album of a young Polish band SHAME YOURSELF can drive out your brains and smear them on the wall. Skillfully combining thrash, deep groove and death this band plays a very dynamic and provocative stuff. However, in real life guys from SHAME YOURSELF seems quite sensible. At least Klusek, vocalist of SHAME YOURSELF, seemed to me quite intelligence person during our communication, the results of which you can read in the interview below.
Interview was prepared by Alias
1. Hi! Shame Yourself is a young band, so, please, introduce your band and tell us when, how and why the band was created, and so on…
The idea of creating a band itself was like in any other case; we wanted to play metal in our free time. Originally, we played just covers, but we also wrote some song. Then the line up changed a few times. It’s common among fresh bands, isn’t it?
2. Recently the band released their first album called “Wonderfuck”. Can you tell, what will be waiting for the listeners on this album for those who still have not heard the album?
‘Wonderfuck’ is a thrashy dish spiced with groove and death metal vocals as well as ironic texts. You can hear not only some elements of thrash metal old school but also a new approach to that subject, the average pace and rock’n’roll feeling. What is characteristic for this album is specific melody for each song.
3. And why was signed a contract exactly with Ukrainian Metal Scrap Records? Is Europe have no record labels, which willing to cooperate with you?
Only after entering the studio in October 2011 we received an invitation for 2 gigs in Ukraine from our friend Alex ov Hell:on. One of them was “In Thrash We Trust” fest In Kiev. As we then found out there were some people form Metal Scrap Records. They liked our show and offered to release our album. We’ve quickly decided to agree as the conditions were really satisfying. After some short negotiations we’ve started cooperation, what truly makes us happy.
4. Tell us about your plans for the nearest future. Have you planned a lot of shows?
Our main task was to record professional video clip and play European tour promoting our debutant album. We’ve already started playing gigs in Poland. We’ve also planned some bigger shows, a jubilee gig, it’s five years already, among others. In the meantime, we work on our second album so as not to slow down.
5. How important for you to do live performances?
Performing live is very important for us especially when we play for alive hahahah even though they tend to lay down as dead on hearing “death wall”. Each gig is an unusual experience that’s why we’re still trying to give as many shows as possible before the end of world. We’ve been labeled to be a great band to be seen live (I would like to see it myself though) heheeh.
6. How strong you are ambitious, as a band?
It’s a bit strange question, I recon. Each band wants to release some great albums, travel around the World and give great shows, just to become popular in the ‘metal world’ and leave a peace of good art, even if it would be just one song! I don’t think we’re far from it, but you can’t say we’re too much into it. It’s quite natural, what makes us happy as it doesn’t create useless tension.
7. I have noticed that sometimes your music is very ironic and you do not mind to have some fun. What place do you attach for an irony in your music, and how serious you are to yourself about that?
Music reflects our personalities. We all like joking even if we make fun of ourselves. We treat music rather seriously spending a lot of time arranging songs till they are satisfying for us. We’re doing our best to combine riffs in a way they correspond to each other in terms of the atmosphere. It all has to be professional. When it comes to texts themselves, it’s another thing. We allow ourselves to be ironic. We shoot with the mixture of grotesque and paradox straight to your face, so as not to leave any misunderstandings. But it can not be denied, however, that there are also some serious matters touched in our texts. Those are usually subjects you don’t talk about when you drink coffee in the morning.
8. Do you feel a mental connection with the classical thrash metal bands? And if the conversation went about it, tell us about your musical preferences.
We’re sentimental when it comes to classical thrash metal bands, but not solely. We like music band playing heavy through death or black metal. We’re also trying to become familiar with every new thing that appears within metal music and not only. We seem to have similar tastes to music differing to some extend, at the same time. It also has an influence on thing we create and the whole process of making music.
9. Thanks to bands such as Vader and Behemoth, Polish metal stage has international recognition. I also know of many other lesser-known Polish bands. Tell us, the Polish scene is a single movement for today, or every band for itself? Do you feel support of other Polish musicians?
It’s hard to say In The name of the whole metal scene. We’ve received a lot of support from many bands we had a chance to play with. We are friends partying together. For example Seth (Behemoth, Nomad) and Maniek (Halucynogen) performed as guests in our songs at “Wonderfuck”. Bands are promoting and cooperating with each other when it comes to organizing shows, which is truly nice and allows us to feel happy.
10. How comfortable feel musicians in Poland?
The majority of Polish metal bands (not to mention the top ones) treat music as their hobby. We all work hard just to play a few gigs at the weekend. To play music for a living is not an easy task in Poland. It’s possible but requires a lot of devotions and real dedication. Only a few bands may state they are satisfied in that context.
11. So the final words from the band at the end of the interview.
Check our album out! Come to see us and support your local bands, because they really need it!
1. Hello, thanks for answering to our questions. What are you guys currently up to?
We’re playing gigs and focus on promoting our first album, working on the new one at the same time.
2. First off, could you make some history of the band?
We’re not going to get back to old times. It’s a story like the one of any other band. A few guys met to play something together. It appeared to be quite nice and people enjoyed it too. We’ve quickly decided to record our demo version and then the whole album. We’ve been looking for the studio and were giving shows. In the meantime the line-up has been changing a few times. Fortunately, everything got right and in 2011 and we registered “Wonderfuck”.
3. How could you describe your sound?
It can be called trash metal with juicy riffs in a medium pace with groove metal elements, covered with death metal vocals. There may be found quite a lot of stuff as for trash melodies and choirs or even HC elements. Everyone can find there something for oneself.
4. What are the band’s main musical influences?
First of all, the titans of trash metal – Slayer, Megadeth, Metallica, Testament or Anthrax and Exodus, the early school of death metal Obituary, Gorefest, Carcass, Death, Swedish mad death metal – Entombed, Dismember, Grave, of course heavy Iron Maiden, Ozzy etc. but also classics like Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin or Deep Purple. It’s also Rammstein, Pantera who influenced us a lot, Vader, Acid Drinkers and Behemoth are also important for us. Generally speaking, I mentioned main bands playing concrete genres of metal. But if we were to inspire and learn something we would follow the top ones, which we’re trying to do.
5. How is the feedback for your new album being?
Feedback is something surprising, we’ve never encountered any bad opinions (maybe behind our back heheeh) fans often ask us for our albums. We usually, receive 6-8 out of 10 points when they write about us. I reckon it’s quite a lot.
6. And are your personally satisfied with the final outcome?
Totally!!! We’ve been searching for the right sound for quite a long time. Everything was carefully thought through and discussed with the engineer, except for drums. Maybe it’s not what we were expecting for in a 100% as for nowadays standards, but it’s ‘nice’ to hear after all and there’s nothing boring.
7. How could you describe this opus in just 3 words?
Dynamically, brutally, ironically.
8. How has the production process for your new release been?
It was a bit different in our case. We’ve decided to register drums ourselves, which cost us a few months of gathering equipment, recording and correcting. Fortunately, after great difficulties we received quite interesting effect. When it comes to the rest of instruments, vocals and mixes as well as mastering we entered the SPAART studio in Boguchwala near Rzeszow. The work itself was a pure pleasure. It took us a while to find appropriate sounds, etc. The process of recording was easy, but we had to hire the studio twice (because they had a lot of work with other bands). In September 2011 they gave us a completed album. We still hadn’t any cover though. In the meantime, we started a cooperation with Metal Scrap Records and a friend of ours helped us to make up quite appealing graphics.
9. And how do you use to work on the songwriting?
It starts with a riff or a rhythm. Then a skeleton of a track appears, arrangements, and something more bores in our minds. Sometimes one song changes a few times during weeks or even months. Vocals come as last, solos, melodies, details, etc. We’re doing our best to make it of as high-quality as possible.
10. Finally, what are you near-future?
We’re focusing on promoting our debut just to get to as wide audience as possible. We’re also working on some new stuff, playing gigs, drinking beer and having fun. The nearest future should flourish with a series of gigs, and in further time with our second album.
11. That’s all from our side, thanks again for taking your time to answer our questions. If you now want to add some final words; feel free to do it.
Come in crowds for our shows and have fun as F*** ]:> we’re playing for YOU!
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