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| If you don't already know, I'm a big CxDx fan. It only took seeing them live one time to get me officially hooked! Travis was nice enough to let me do this interview. CxDx started out Locust-esque Grindcore, then went to Goregrind, then Death Metal. Oh, and they're vegetarian. Cattle Decapitation |
| First of all, how is the band doing? The band has been through several line up changes, how is this one doing? Does it seem like it'll work for a good while? Good question. The band seems to be doing fine. We just did a ton of touring that could kill most bands, but we came out unscathed and did a split record real quick with this band Caninus. Our stuff is very different on this record which is kind of cool cause we're looking at the band in a different light at the time being. Whereas we wanted to kill each other when we got home, we now are eager to write more stuff, which is cool. With this new line up, what can we expect in the future? Many different styles of music, but still staying brutal? More splits? well. it's the lineup we had for Humanure, so it will still be Cattle, but we're switching some shit up. That's all I can really say about it. Still brutal of course, or it wouldn't be us... but it's our brand of brutal, very unlike other brutal death metal. I'd say the brutality we exude is more grinding, frantic. Not chuggy or anything like that. No more splits. We wanted to do this one because it's more up our alley than just doing any old split with any old friends band or whatever... there could be a million of those. Though we have talked with Cephalic Carnage to maybe one day do one. They're good buddies of ours. Nothing in the works though. The original line up was originally a side project for The Locust, and sounded almost the same. What are your thoughts on the original recordings? Do you think the band has become much more? I joined the week that 7" came out. I thought it sucked but they swore they wanted to go more brutal, and more death metal like, if it was even possible and knew I could do the vocals. That's why Human Jerky is so much more intense. We even did a few of those songs just to make them better and so we didn't have to write more songs for the record! haha.. We have been much more than that inception since right when I joined. Which is near enough to the beginning to say it was a significant neolithic point in the bands history. As a whole group, what bands influence you? Do you all have your own inspirations and it just comes together? Or do you mostly agree on the bands each other likes? As a group I'd say nothing influences. We have our own individual inspirations... Carcass had a great deal to do with our sound in the beginning,but I can't say the same for the rest of the stuff. We just have our own inspirations and it comes together, like you said.. WE mostly agree on each others favorites, though there are some that completely clash. Like Josh listens to alot of this alt country alt bluegrass stuff and I think it's shit, whereas he cannot stand it when I play Polyphonic Spree or Skinny Puppy. To each their own I guess. What are the processes of recording CxDx songs? I know that on Human Jerky, the music was written first, then you went and wrote fitting lyrics and added the vocals second. Is this process used for every time? Yeah that's how I always do it. They write the music, record it onto a tape and I burn it and write lyrics to it. For Human Jerky and most of Homovore, I actually wrote the lyrics first and then fit them to the music. Made little changes. It was easy to do that with songs under a minute long. What recording session for you is the most memorable? Humanure definitely. We tracked the drums in Burbank, CA and then had the legendary Bill Metoyer at our house tracking the rest in our practice space in my backyard! It was so cool. I'd go out there and say "what are you up to?" and he'd say shit like "oh, just remastering the D.R.I. Dealing With It album for the reissues...! I couldn't believe it. He was back there for a month working on our shit... Do you still keep in touch with Gabe and David? Any word lately on how they've been doing? Gabe I talk to once in a while.. probably will more now that we're back from tour and the locust isn't doing anything. Dave, we collectively hate, so no talking to his ass. Mike is excluded from that statement as he doesn't know Dave personally. But unfortunately, we do. What made you decided to go from Goregrind to Death Metal? Can we expect changes in the music with every release? when I started with them they wanted to do death metal. Human Jerky and Homovore were our actual attempts at trying to play death metal. it came out more "goregrind". It's a natural progression for us as far as playing death metal goes. Our new stuff is really weird. It's really quirky death metal. Grind. Whatever. If you know, about how many copies of the original Humanure where printed? I've still yet to see the edited version in stores, I'm always coming across the gore version. In fact, I've only seen Amazon.com carry copies of the edited version. Your takes on this? There are like 8,000 of those or something like that out there. I see the edited one all the time but I also see the gory one too. I'm done with this album. I just want to get onto the next one. What's it like, being a underground brutal music group, to be supported by such a big act like PETA? We're not affiliated with them really. They've done a little promotion for us before but we're not members. It's cool that we're separated from all other death metal bands cause of our theme. I'm into that. I see you guys seem to love cows. Any particular reason or story behind that? It's not that we have a love of cows(though you would think so cause people are always giving us cow related stuff), it's more of a metaphorical thing. Cattle in relation to the masses of people that are chipping away at this planet. Of course the imagery will have bovine related stuff. It's art, I don't know. What ever happened to the beef jerky mask? Do you have it hanging up in your pad with the cow head? fuck no! The last one I made, for the Metal Blade 20th anniversary was left in a merch bin for weeks after the show. I pulled it out one day and it stunk and was all sorts of really bright shades of green, yellow, purple.. it was insane. Since you're vegetarian, what's your favorite vegetarian dish? Any favorite place you like to go to get a veggie meal? Vegetarian Tikki Masala. Indian food is the best vegetarian food. Bombay in San Diego is THE BEST. What albums have been on your playlist the most lately? ALL of Silver Mt. Zion, and some choice Leviathan stuff. Along with Devendra Banhart and WIlliam Shatners "The Transformed Man". And finally, what is your favorite format? CD, CD-R, Cassette, Vinyl, 7"? I hate to say it, but CDs. I have thousands of em. I love vinyl to death and would prefer to have vinyl versions of stuff, but CDs are more practical nowadays. I don't want to see vinyl die though, that's for sure... But it's hard to transfer that into your ipod. I just got one and it's finally working so I'm going to go and let the addiction begin... thanks man! That's all I've got. Thanks for taking the time for this interview, as you know I'm a big fan. Any last comments for the people reading? You people suck. |
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