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California trio Merciless Death
is one of the most promising young metal bands belonging to the
first wave of thrash metal revivalists. After checking out their
great debut Evil in the Night (out on Heavy Artillery),
with its mosh-friendly music, awesome Repka artwork and killer
liner notes, it was clear, we had to get in touch with them.
Drummer Cesar Torres took the lead and answered a few of our
questions. Read on and spread the word....
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First of all, congratulations on the
record. It’s great. The first thing that struck me is how
well made it was and how perfectly it fits with releases of the
time. You guys are playing old school thrash metal and sticking
to the style so my first question is: What musical parameters do
you have in mind when composing? I mean, if you build a riff,
how do you judge whether it fits your style or if it sounds too
new?
In actuality, I don’t think we’ve ever not used a riff because
it sounded “new”. Dan and Andy just come up with awesome
sounding riffs. They are usually inspired by the thrash music
they are listening at the time. Recently, they have been in a
Nasty Savage and Venom binge – so our next riffs might reflect
some of that. Once we do come up with riffs – we make sure the
riffs have not been previously used by any band before us. You’d
be surprised how many bands out there totally rip-off riffs from
other bands and pass them as their own. ‘Previously used riffs’
is perhaps the only reason why we discard some of our music.
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Style wise, do you
consider an evolution (read: change/progression in style) as a
viable possibility for Merciless Death? Or will you always keep
the style within the current parameters of your music?
We will still stay true to the rawness that our music has but at
the same time we will get heavier and the song structure a bit
more complex – but we won’t turn our music into something
completely different! We won’t turn into a progressive
experimental band like others have. If we do decide to change,
we made an oath to disband Merciless Death and leave it as it is
till that point. Until then, we will continue to write the
satanic thrash metal that we do!
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You guys are Latin. Being Latin
myself I grew up surrounded by non-metal music. How is it that
you guys get to thrash/speed metal?
Well, I got into metal in general around middle school back in
L.A. My older brother, Victor, introduced me to Danzig,
Metallica, Pantera, White Zombie and every other 90’s metal band
out there. After that, Andy bought earlier Metallica records and
some Megadeth. Eventually I started to listen to Iron Maiden a
lot and when we moved to Canyon Country, I met Dan and I began
to listen to Slayer, Exodus, Venom and Death Angel. At first, I
only liked the higher pitched vocal styles like Maiden or Death
Angel but eventually I was drawn to Venom by the rawness of
their music. I remember listening to Venom not knowing much
about them but only knowing that I liked them.
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What was the situation with Jason Kivi, with whom you recorded
some songs but never got any recordings? What was his reason for
dicking you over?
Before recording the Annihilate the Masses demo, we
originally recorded a six song demo with Jason. That recording
had our original line-up with two guitarists. After two weeks of
recording he said he was going to finish mixing the tracks and
give us the final product, but after days turned into weeks – he
never spoke to us again and ended up giving us nothing! He
probably erased the music and was too afraid to tell us. We
haven’t spoken to him ever since.
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How did you guys hook up with Heavy Artillery? Are you staying
with them for future releases, or are you talking to other
labels?
After self-releasing our debut album Evil in the Night,
Heavy Artillery contacted us to be involved with their Speed
Kills…Again compilation. After working with them for a
couple of months, they eventually offered us a record contract.
We aren’t talking to other record labels mostly due to the fact
that Heavy Artillery is a cool label to work with and they
aren’t trying to take control or change the band to be more
commercial or anything like that. We are going to be releasing
more material in the future; we are currently working on our
follow up LP!
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The cover is awesome. How did you get Ed Repka to work on it?
Heavy Artillery was actually able to get Ed Repka to redraw our
album cover for Evil in the Night. In our self-release,
Andy and I drew the original cover with the zombie attacking the
chick in the swamp. When we signed to Heavy Artillery – they
contacted Repka and he agreed to redo it! It’s the same concept,
just Repka’ed out!
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One thing about old thrash and speed metal is that some of the
recordings haven’t aged well. The sound of Evil in the Night
is excellent. It’s got an old school feeling, but it sounds
potent and modern too, when recording it, what was it that you
had in mind?
It was recorded back in late 2005 at Love Juice Labs located in
La Habra (which is now closed). We already knew we didn’t want
our recording to be crystal clear production – we wanted it to
sound raw like Venom or Sodom, plus our engineer was a metal fan
so he knew what we were looking for too. In the end, I was happy
with the results!
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What constitutes a Non-Thrash “Thrash” band? Is there any beef
with Legion of Death and/or Rattlehead?
Before we hit the LA scene and real Thrash bands starting
appearing, Rattlehead was labeled as the thrashiest “thrash”
band around. Once we actually went and saw them live, we labeled
them more progressive new metal than real thrash. The beef with
Legion of Death started when thrash was coming back. Legion of
Death saw that thrash was popular so they began to say they were
“a thrash band” to infiltrate the scene. The fact that Legion of
Death decided to jump onto the Thrash bandwagon really pissed
off Andy!
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Truth be told, and I don’t agree, Metallica are Gods and
Megadeth are demigods; what do you think was that made of these
two such huge icons in the metal community? Most people would
say the music, but I get the feeling they never impressed you.
Or is it the fact that their music changed radically in the
course of their career?
Both Metallica and Megadeth were huge back in the thrash days
but today their new stuff sucks. Personally, I get tired of
Metallica’s music. I did like it back when I was first
introduced to it in Middle School– but man, I get tired of
listening to them mainly because their songs are so damn long
and nothing hooks me in to stay entertained. And if a person is
into Metallica, they soon venture to Megadeth and like them too
because of Mustaine! I would rather listen to a billion other
bands than Metallica or Megadeth.
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Why is Razor better than Pantera?
I did listen to Pantera back in the day and I have to say I
still do like some of their songs like “Cemetery Gates” as well
as Power Metal. But back in 2006 we were in a huge
dispute with some dumbass online who said Razor were a bunch of
posers and that Pantera was real Metal! That really pissed us
off, ‘cause obviously this guy didn’t know anything about
Pantera back in the eighties, and he thought Pantera’s first
release was Cowboys From Hell! So we defended Razor by
saying they were into true raw metal while Pantera where dressed
like women wearing their mother’s make-up. Sheepdog was a way
better vocalist than dumbass Phil Anselmo!
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I haven’t looked for
them, but where can you find high-top Reeboks these days?
We found ours at Foot Locker, but you can actually find them
anywhere.
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Please describe the perfect circle pit…
The perfect circle pit would be one that continues through a
whole set during a show; a pit that doesn’t tire because the
fans are simply crazy. Then we add stage divers and that would
be the perfect circle pit!
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Have you really encountered many occasions of sound guys
changing Dan’s amp settings?
Constantly. Before, sound guys would always change his amp
settings because they were accustomed to muggy sounding guitars
for metal bands. So when Dan played his guitar which is nice
clean sounding – the sound guys would come up on stage and muggy
it! So when we began our performances Dan would always change
them back to his settings and piss off the sound guy.
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Give us a list of your favorite metal records.
Razor – Executioners Song
Mercyful Fate – Don’t Break the Oath
Infernal Majesty – None Shall Defy
Possessed – Beyond the Gates
Kind Diamond – Conspiracy
Celtic Frost – To Mega Therion
Coroner – R.I.P.
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Most underrated thrash/speed metal band? Most overrated
thrash/speed metal band?
Underrated – Infernal Majesty; their album is so evil and heavy,
but hardly anyone knows who they are.
Overrated – Metallica; I would rather listen to something else.
- Ever listen to non-metal
music?
My father brought us up on rock music so I like listening to
Journey and Scorpions. Throughout the whole “Evil Curse Tour
2007” we listened to nothing but Scorpions!! Other than that I
also listen to Orchestrated Movie Scores and Video game
soundtracks!
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There is this new wave of bands crafting old school thrash
metal; out of those, who do you like or would recommend?
I would recommend Execution from LA, Devastator from Northern
California and Savage Skull from New York because we party with
those guys and they have been totally cool with us!!
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Last words?
Thanks for this interview and I hope to see you at one of our
shows!
Merciless Death MySpace
Check
the Deaf Sparrow review of
Evil in the Night
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