- Like I have said in the earlier question, we can only look forward to finishing up the new album that we already intended to do. We will only talk about the future of the band after the new album.
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9) Calvin, who are your influences? Musically � bands, guitarists?
- I still remember very well how Morbid Angel�s first album �Altars Of Madness� had a huge impact on me. Blasphemous themes done the real way and not fake, unlike some of the bands that do it for the sake of doing it. Unfortunately Morbid Angel has become philosophical in a weird way but they will always be the band I respect a lot. Pantera�s Dimebag Darrell has also shaped my playing when I started learning guitar. Dmebag was definitely an innovator and he had his own style and sound that so many others try to imitate. Testament was probably the biggest influence when I started playing and learning guitar more seriously. I love what Alex Skolnick was doing and his playing always had better phrasing and melody. James Murphy had more aggression and balls to his playing but nevertheless he fitted in to Testament very well. I had my fair share of listening to guitar virtuosos like Steve Vai, Jason Becker, Akira Takasaki, Greg Howe, etc. The only band that I personally think that has excellent songwriting as well as great playing is Carcass. The album �Heartwork� sounds timeless even until today. Even the ideas injected into this album sounds 1000 times better than what some of the Metal bands are doing.
10) As for the Menghitung Ajal EP, how is the writing process went by? Did all of u or simply a few contributed to the making of the EP?
- When we recorded �Menghitung Ajal�, basically all the songs were written by the original guitar player Ermie. But unfortunately he had to quit halfway throughout the recording process and things went to a standstill. What is even worse is that Ah Boy from TNT Studio accidentally erased the previous 2 songs that we have recorded. The guys in the band was pretty much stuck with no song in hand. So the best way to keep things moving for the band was that I join Raspatul as I was already jamming with them for fun back then. So naturally I was roped in as the guitar player and continue to finish what we have started. We realized that some of the songs that were written were way too long and unnecessary in some parts, so we have to sit down and analyze all the 5 songs over again. We cut down and modified the songs that we think is for the good of the songs, although hearing back the �Menghitung Ajal� EP now, I wished we had done more modifications.
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11) You guys have received quite a number of favorable reviews from Influential mags like METAL MANIACS & TERRORIZER, and also was named Most Promising Band and Top 10 Albums in 2003 by Vampire Magazine from Holland. Any plans to make Raspatul break into the international scene this year or next?
- Seems like you do read up on Raspatul! Hahaha! Yes it has been a good experience ever since I started doing promotion and I also made a lot of friends along the way. My contact with Terrorizer Magazine was pretty much a business-like deal, I just send over the Raspatul EP and they did a review for us, but only after months later did we actually get a review. I only found out about us being reviewed in the magazine when another guy who writes for another big magazine contacted me and told me that he is interested to have a copy of our EP when he saw our review in Terrorizer Magazine! The guys from Metal Maniacs were very cool though. Dave Brenner, who writes reviews for unsigned bands in Metal Maniacs, was extremely cool to us. He replied almost immediately when I sent him an email about Raspatul, asking to be reviewed in the �Firing Squad� section. I remembered when the tsunami struck South East Asia last year; Dave sent me an email and asking if we were alright. It came as a shock to me when I recently found out Raspatul was voted Most Promising Band and Top 10 Albums in 2003 by Vampire Magazine. I was in contact with Vampire Magazine back in 2003 and the guy who reviewed Raspatul was Danny Bosters. He loved what Raspatul was doing and he gave us a great review as well as an interview. I guess Raspatul really did make an impact on him because he actually voted us out of all the bands he had reviewed. Well, if you typed �Raspatul� in a yahoo search engine, you can find out almost everything the band had been involved in, so it�s not hard for a band to break into the international scene if you have the focus and the determination. I have stopped doing promotion for the new promo CD now as Raspatul is somewhere in the recording process right now. Once the new album is done, I will start doing some intense promotion again, hopefully to get something even better than we had before.
12) Name your all time top 5 records?
Carcass �Heartwork�, Morbid Angel �Altars Of Madness�, Testament �The Gathering�, Sepultura �Beneath The Remains�, Death �The Sound Of Perseverance�