Pyro: First of all, congratulations on 'Advance Australia Warfare'. It's an excellent album and for my money, it's a nice step up from 'Invert Absolute'.
Disaster: Thanks a lot. I'm/we're glad you enjoyed it.
Pyro: A bit of history. Can you tell me how and when The Furor came to be?Disaster: Warlock and myself started rehearsing in September 2002, after our previous bands (Pagan, Samain) had come to abrupt and premature end, leaving us unfulfilled and craving more. After writing 5 songs, we put the word out for a bass player and soon recruited Kill Machine. He was eager and capable so we continued writing material for what became our first CD 'Invert Absolute' and started gigging around Perth shortly after.
Pyro: The Furor have found themselves playing some big bills which has included shows in the east of Australia recently supporting Nile and Behemoth on separate tours, and soon you'll be back playing Brute Force Fest and doing a few side shows. Have you been pleased with crowd reactions over east?
Disaster: Yes. The crowd reactions have generally been pretty good. (sometimes surprising) A select few may not have been into it, but it's impossible to please everyone. It's just been so refreshing to get out and play in front of so many new, unsuspecting metalheads after going around in circles in Perth for the last 9 years. It's injected new life into the band.
Pyro: Do you find that people take a little adjusting to get used to the novelty of a band whose drummer is also its vocalist?
Disaster: Once they actually realize I'm doing vocals, which takes about 5mins, they're hip to it. It is hard though, from a stage presentation perspective, playing the role of the 'frontman' when you're buried up the back like that.
Pyro: [Laughter] Yeah, get the kit up right in front of the fold back.
Disaster: We've considered doing some stuff like that but it's a logistical nightmare as most stages are set up to cater for the standard band format, drum riser/drummers foldback at the rear/etc, and given the usual 20minute changeover time, we'd need a crew of 3 or more willing stagehands to make it happen. One day perhaps.
Pyro: Was Pagan the band in which you first attempted to sing and drum at the same time?
Disaster: Yes. That was in 1997.We played an impromptu set without our vocalist so I filled in and it felt pretty comfortable. He left the band shortly after and I took over on vocals from that point.
Pyro: The fact that you're singing seems to have no effect on your drumming at all. Is it just second nature now or still a bit of a struggle?
Disaster: It's always a bit of a struggle, but I've been doing it for years and I exercise and practice frequently to make it as seamless as possible.
I try to think of it as playing one instrument, as opposed to juggling two.
Pyro: Now, the stage get-up. You lads look both awesome and amusing when performing live but are deadly serious musically. Is the over-the-top, piss-taking makeup and clothing something you think is important to The Furor or all just a little bit of fun?Disaster: I think 'important' and 'fun' are the same thing. The way we look at it is, we're not guys up there just playing our music, we are our music, and in any genre, looks are consistent with sound and the attitude of the music. We are no different. Our look is consistent with our sound, and in my opinion, no more extreme or silly, but having said that, we can also laugh at it harder than anyone can! Like the saying goes, more is more.
Pyro: Mmm, I've posted photos from a few gigs you've done here and there and people have seen photos of Warlock with the cape and horns and some have said "Fuck! That's brilliant", others "What a dickhead"-
Disaster: If they were to see the haircut concealed beneath those robes, they'd think he's a dickhead x 10! We don't exist solely to be taken seriously, that is utterly boring. More importantly, we exist to make use of this wonderful metal disease we all carry, and spread it to as many people as we can.
Pyro: Well yeah, you're just putting on a good show.
Disaster: That's the intention. A complete show.
Pyro: Do you and the rest of the band listen to a lot of black metal or just happen to be excellent and writing and playing it?
Disaster: I don't really consider our music to be very black metal, at least not in the true sense of the word. I'd say our stuff is too produced, too technical and too musical to fit neatly into the black metal genre, which is the intention anyway, as black metal is not the style of band we intended to create. I was very much into black metal about 11 years ago but prefer now to listen to extreme war/thrash/black bands with more of an emphasis on musicality and brutality. The best of all worlds! Warlock listens to a lot of traditional 80's thrash, classical music and atmospheric soundtrack type stuff. Kill machine is the only one who listens to black metal 24/7 (and whatever else I can force feed him!)
Pyro: 'Advance Australia Warfare' is easily one of the best Black Metal releases I've heard in the last 12 months. Are you happy with the way it turned out?
Disaster: Overall yes. It's the best it could be, considering the knowledge and resources we had at the time. There may be a few minor details I would now like to change, but that has, and will always be the case with anything I do.
Pyro: Has it been selling well?
Disaster: At the moment we only have distribution in Australia (through MGM) but we're nearing the end of our second pressing and were happy with the feedback we've been getting on it. It's our first album to get distributed beyond Perth, so I think in a lot of peoples eyes we're still newbie's, but we intend on following this up again and again to keep up the momentum.
Pyro: How would you say 'Advance Australia Warfare' compares to 'Invert Absolute'?Disaster: I personally think it's better than 'Invert...' and more the kind of album I would want to listen to. Musically, it's more advanced. It's faster and the riffs and arrangements are more complex etc. It's not a massive sidestep from 'Invert...' as we like the core of our style, it's just a more refined version. We've tried to bump up everything that we liked about our music and were best at, while trying to weed out all the weaker aspects. As far as the production goes, 'Advance...' is intentionally harsher and more stripped back than 'Invert...'. Our previous album was very sensible, balanced and proper, which we decided was butting heads with our ravaging, claustrophobic style to an extent. Since recording 'Invert..' we've played a lot more shows and realized what we truly sound like. Chaos!!! We tried to capture that on this recording.
Pyro: As far as priorities go, what is your primary band at the moment?
Disaster: The Furor is my only band at the moment. Over the last 10 years, I've only ever been involved with 2 or more bands at one time but now it's all boiled down to The Furor. It's the style of metal I've always preferred and I now want to give it my full attention.
I was playing drums in Pathogen up until recently, as I love playing drums, but I had no genuine interest in the music and they wanted to shift into second gear, so I had to leave and concentrate on my own thing while they replace me with someone who has the willingness and passion to go on with them.
Pyro: Are there any other projects currently underway?
Disaster: A couple of little things may be coming up in the 'goat metal' and 'alcoholic thrash metal' department, I'll be sure to get a copy to you (and many others) as soon as it comes to hand.
Pyro: Has writing commenced yet?
Disaster: Yes we've got a decent slab of new stuff done, and I'll say, if people liked the old stuff, they'll like this as much, maybe more. It's very intense.
Pyro: Have you got a specific time you'd like it out by or are you just going to write record and see how it goes?
Disaster: Ultimately, it will take as long as it takes to be perfect and complete. The beginning of 2007 perhaps?
We like to be as productive as possible, because our minds are constantly active (the musical side at least), we're always curious as to what we can do next and we like to fill peoples CD players with our avalanche deathstorms!!!!
Pyro: How much time was spent writing 'Advance Australia Warfare'?
Disaster: The actual songs were put together over about 11 months and the recording process happened in pieces over a three month period.
Pyro: So who contributes what in terms of songwriting and lyrics?Disaster: We all have input into the guitar parts, which is usually the first thing to be put down. Kill Machine writes all his bass parts and I write all drums and vocals/lyrics.
Pyro: What plans do you have for The Furor in the future? Are you hoping that the band will become a long lasting part of the Australian scene and is any consideration going into really breaking into the overseas market?
Disaster: Our plans include basically being as productive as possible on every level. Writing, recording, shows/touring and generally getting our music to as many people as we can. Going over to Europe is definitely on our to-do list, the sooner the better as we're not getting any younger. We've being doing this for many years now, being from Perth has hidden us somewhat due to our isolation, if any of us had second thoughts about playing metal we would have moved on 15 years ago. We're here for good.
Pyro: I have to say that surprisingly (to me at least) 'Hell' is one of my favourite tracks on the album. It's so hypnotic and such a well-executed divider. How did the track come about? Was an instrumental of a similar nature planned in the early stages of the writing process for 'Advance Australia Warfare' to break up the otherwise relentless aural assault or did it happen in later stages of writing/recording? [For those that haven't heard the album, 'Hell' is a very somber instrumental interlude with very few drums and vocal-free].
Disaster: That song was written entirely by Warlock due to his love affair with 80s-esque glam ambience. Myself and Kill Machine stood back and let him do his thing. The inclination would be to put it as an outro to the album but we thought that was too typical and decided to stick it smack bang in the middle to separate the two halves of the intense material. The first half consisted of mainly shorter sledgehammer attack songs while the second half spreads out a bit and breathes a bit more. Warlock created the track around halfway through the writing process for the album but we didn't really decide what to do with it until all the songs were complete and it came time to arranging them.
Pyro: Well, it came off a treat! Do you personally have a favourite track on the album?
Disaster: It's hard to narrow it down to one and it's also hard to enjoy your own music after 10 billion listens but I can narrow it down to 'Hellfire Massacre' and 'Storming Heaven' for the speed, punchiness, arrangement and technicality.
Pyro: At over an hour in length, 'Advance Australia Warfare' is quite a hefty album and in fact, the longest track is almost 10 minutes. Is the next album likely to feature similarly length songs and run for close to, or more than an hour?
Disaster: Likely not. We're going to get the point across a bit quicker next time. We didn't realize how much material we had until assembling the whole album. We were just focusing on one song at a time, and at times would get lost in how many riffs we were creating without realizing how long the songs were getting. I have no problem with lengthy albums though, as long as they're quality. It may be hard to listen to all in one go, but there's always more for tomorrow.
Pyro: For the unaware, can you explain the overall lyrical content of 'Advance Australia Warfare'?
Disaster: The lyrics focus on death, life, war, destruction, catapults, carnage, good, evil, fishmen... on horses... power, and armageddon. The only things that matters in the end, really. Just timeless hellish metal topics that will always remain.
There is some truth and logic to them, but I try to mix it with the surreal and fantastic, leaving a bit for the reader to piece together.
I steer well away from writing about common, petty problems we encounter as men. I find that most depressing and non creative of all.
Pyro: If The Furor were able to share the stage with a few local/international bands of your choice (that you have yet to play with) who would they be?Disaster: Probably my favourite bands, just for the sake of being able to watch them perform alone. Angelcorpse (RIP), Slayer, Morbid Angel, Absu, Behemoth again, Immortal (RIP?), Darklord, Krisiun. I'd die happily the next day.
Pyro: I'd like to give you the opportunity to plug a few bands you feel readers may be interested in, and also may not already be aware of, whether they're local Perth bands, from elsewhere in Australia or international outfits.
Disaster: Internationals would include Nephast from Brazil (or 90% of Brazilian speed metal for that matter), Demilich, Belef, Demonized, Impiety, Katafalk, In Battle (Rage of the Northmen album). Locally (Australia); from Adelaide - Darklord, Beyond Mortal Dreams, Tzun Tzu. From Sydney - Daemon Foetal Harvest, Beyond Terror Beyond Grace, Pestilential Shadows, Nazxul, Zaebros, Vaticide, Inslain. From Brisbane - Invocation, Forn Valdyrheim, Soulscrape. From Perth - Wardaemonic, Impact Winter, Naetu, Psychonaut, Malignant Monster, Nexus, Hated by Humanity, Plague.
I'd add more to that list of Australian bands but chances are, everyone knows (or should know) who they are.
Pyro: Cheers for the comprehensive response. I ask this question a lot, but I'm always interested to know the answers as I get rather varied responses. What are your thoughts on people downloading music (full albums)? Firstly as a means of checking out bands, and buying albums they download an enjoy and secondly those that download albums and rarely buy the ones they do like?
Disaster: It's great as a listener to have the convenience of downloading at your fingertips, it brings every record store in the world to your bedroom and it's dirt cheap. As a band it's hard enough to keep financially afloat, even if you are selling a decent amount of your music. Commercial music always has the exposure, but I can see why they may complain about losing possible income they need to survive as full time professional musicians. On the metal side, it's great that any unknown upstarting band can readily get worldwide exposure and feedback at the push of a button. Fans of a niche market like metal also tend to be more serious about their music and often seem to want a copy of the real thing as it is not as disposable as commercial music. As long as these sales are high enough to keep a balanced portion of money coming back to bands, all will be swell. The only way to be sure is to destroy all computers, but then other problems arise...
Pyro: Do you expect that The Furor will remain a three-piece band indefinitely?
Disaster: As far as we can see, yes. I like the idea of playing in a tight knit three-piece, we all have our individual roles which we're 100% responsible for, and we are able to move forward with a fraction less scuffling compared to other bands I've been involved with. But who knows what the future holds, if we decide we need a second guitar player and the perfect person comes along, why not?
Pyro: Having been gigging for a few years now, would you like to share some memorable moments you've experienced at gigs and on the road (good or bad)?
Disaster: Every gig is a memorable one and every moment between gigs is totally forgettable in comparison. However, the last gig we played I wore a Bruce Lee - Game of Death outfit, Kill Machine was replaced by Suddam Hussein and Warlock was a 7 foot vulture. Black metal was never so evil. As far as being on the road goes, no wild stories of skinning prostitutes with butter knives, sorry. But alcohol, loud metal, rowdiness, mindless rambling and body odour always reigns supreme.
Pyro: Hahaha! Did you enjoy playing Brute Force Fest and were you happy with the crowd reaction?
Disaster: Yeah I enjoyed the gig. I'm happy with the way I performed aside from small technical difficulties regarding my headset. The crowd reaction was good for the small amount of people that were there.
We did expect a larger turnout though from such a sprawling metropolis as Sydney.
Pyro: Sydney's a bit like that it seems. Locals gigs can pull 50 people or hundreds. Turnouts festivals appear to be as random as local gigs unfortunately. Cheers mate. It's been cool talking to ya. If you have any final words, go for it.
Disaster: Thanks for the interview. All kneel and praise Pyro, God of Steel and Subterranean Nekromancy.
All interested parties keep an eye on www.thefuror.com for forewarnings of furoric battles to come. Rip!
- Pyro
