NY’s Batillus perfectly embody the ebullient and diverse metal scene of the Big Apple. Their sound is diverse, bold, aggressive and forever expansive. Concocting massive and provocative doom metal is no hard task. In this day and age, while the subgenre thrives and technology allows, every doom record sound peachy. The difficult part is actually crafting a distinctive and personal sound. Batillus have achieved just that. German label Vendetta Records recently issued a split between Batillus and Hallowed Butchery. It must not be overlooked. And the band recently inked a deal with Seventh Rule Recordings. By this time next year, absolutely everyone in the underground will be in the know. It is only a matter of time. Read on and spread the word…

DS -Batillus started as an instrumental band. Was that because you could not find a suitable vocalist or was that the original idea of the band?

Greg Peterson (guitars): We weren't really thinking about vocals when Willi and I first started playing and writing; It was only about the riff.

DS -How happy were you with that first recording? I thought it was great, but when I hear what the band has recorded since there is quite a stretch.

Geoff Summers (drums): We were very happy with that recording at the time. It sounds a bit raw and unrefined to us now, but I think that's part of its charm. We recorded almost 60 minutes of music in that session in two days for about three hundred bucks. So you might say it's a very utilitarian recording. The three of us tracked live without a click track, so what you hear is more or less a live recording of the band at that time. My favorite product of that session is the track "Tunguska."

DS -How did the Batillus form? Casually or was someone actively looking for people to form a band?

Willi Stabenau (bass): Greg and I used to work together at a record store in Manhattan several years ago. Geoff we pulled off of Craigslist. His ad was the 1st and only one we looked at; one of those one-in-100,000 type things. At that point, DØØM was definitely what we had on the brain.

DS -Why did you guys choose Batillus as a name? Meaning and significance to the band?

Greg: I stole the name Batillus from a french-built oil tanker assembled in 1976 and dismantled in 1985. Though slightly smaller than the biggest ship ever built, the Batillus did have the largest capacity of any vessel, and I felt some sort of connection between the ship and what we were pursuing with our music.

Geoff: It's analogous to our sound-- slow, lumbering, heavy. Massive ships displace a shitload of water, our speaker cabinets displace a shitload of air. Also, the name (pronounced buh-TILL-us) has a nice ring to it.

DS -I am very curious about the New York metal scene. I may be wrong but it seems as if in the last three or four years there have been some great bands forming in Brooklyn. Besides the obvious bands (Type O, Biohazard, Anthrax, zzzzzzzzz, sorry fell asleep for a second there), I do not recall many extreme music bands that were coming out from that area before then. Can you please talk about the current scene? What do you think is it that triggered this new breed of artists?

Geoff: I've only been in New York since 2006, so I can't speak to the heavy music scene before that, but it does seem like there's been a flurry of new heavy bands hitting the scene lately. Unearthly Trance, Tombs, Black Anvil, Castevet, Hull, Naam, The Austerity Program, A Storm of Light, Bloody Panda, Liturgy, Mutilation Rites, Inswarm, Wetnurse. There is a critical mass of good bands in our town, and it motivates us to work harder every day than if we lived in a less saturated market. There is definitely a camaraderie between artists. People help each other out, organize shows together, support each other.

Fade Kainer (vocals): The current scene is getting stronger. All the bands are, for the most part, doing their own thing; not a lot of people are trying to copy each other which keeps the scene diverse and everyone is really cool with each other. Some awesome bands in NYC right now are Unearthly Trance, Hull...

Willi: Metal was pretty dead here in the later 90's. I feel like all the bands I listened to growing up were from the south or from the west coast, other than Helmet, Prong, Unsane and White Zombie, which count among the elder and the obvious. It seems that after those two scenes died down a bit in the mid 2000’s that there was room here for bands to start out and get some attention. It's still NY, it's still tough to get anyone to care about anything, but I do feel like I see a lot of familiar faces at shows, and that there is some enthusiasm going around.

DS -I have a question, it is a bit of a stupid question. I lived in New York for a while, and you know how all the apartments are tiny and expensive, my girlfriend’s sister used to live in St Marks Place and her apartment was as crammed as the living arrangements in Auschwitz in the 40’s if you know what I mean. You are a drummer, if you want to practice, where do you practice? Or do you have one of those silent drums that look like the electronic drums that look like the shit that the dude from Kajagoogoo used to play?

Geoff: Well, if and when I practice, I do it at the school where I teach lessons. But my drums live in the band's rehearsal studio in Brooklyn which we share with two or three other bands. It's a good facility and a good location, but it's not cheap. Fuck electronic drums.

DS -Have you ever seen the guitarist of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs peeking in, as if trying to steal a few metal riffs?

The guitarist of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs has never poked his head in, but Blonde Redhead do rehearse in the room next door to us. I think they have to schedule their rehearsals around ours, because no amount of insulation can contain our massive sound.

DS -I hear a lot of public talking about hipster metal this and that and it is all referring to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I am very ignorant when it comes down to this stuff, but what are they talking about? Or do you think that hipsters still support a scene and hence, are important to the survival of it so no one should come down on them?

Geoff: 'Hipster metal' is just any metal that 'hipsters' decide they like. It's not a genre in that you can identify by specific musical traits, so 'hipster metal' as an idea isn't really very substantive.

Fade: I am thankful people support the bands and the metal scene. I can’t judge them, only be grateful that people come to us.

DS -When the vocalist was added to Batillus what did you hope your music would gain from it? How did you learn from him? Was he what you were you looking for?

Geoff: Nearly from the beginning, I was a vocal advocate of integrating the human voice into our sound. I didn't want to be 'just another instrumental metal band.' The idea with Batillus is that the voice is simply another instrument, like the guitar or the drums, to be layered into our sound and add energy and emotion and texture. The vocals aren't necessarily the focal point. The focal point shifts throughout our songs-- sometimes it's the riff, sometimes it's the synth patch, sometimes it's the bass line, sometimes it's the vocals. When we met Fade and saw his band Inswarm, I knew we had found our guy. I remember asking him to "play with us" and he misinterpreted me as wanting to set up a show for Batillus and Inswarm. "No, man," I clarified, "I want YOU to be in MY band." A few weeks later he came down to our space and jammed with us, and that was that.

DS -A few months ago Batillus released a tour-only EP. What was the reason behind only selling it to the public at the shows?

Geoff: That was September of last year when we toured with Salome and Hull. We sold them to the public at the shows, but we also sold them online via our website. The reason the release didn't go beyond this at the time was simply because we didn't have a label or a budget for a wider release. We definitely wanted to have something tangible, specifically a recording, to sell on the road. It would have been somewhat counterproductive to have toured without a single bit of recorded music available.

DS -Batillus just finished a tour with the excellent Kowloon Walled City. How was that?

Geoff: That tour was fantastic. Most of the shows were well-attended and we couldn't have asked for better tourmates than Kowloon Walled City. If you haven't heard or seen that band, remedy that as soon as possible. Their music is like a grimy, gritty diesel locomotive rumbling down the tracks at two hundred miles an hour without brakes.

DS -You guys just releases a split with Hallowed Butchery thru Vendetta Records, how did this come about? How did you get in touch with this label?

Geoff: If I recall correctly, Stefan from Vendetta reached out to us last fall. He was a fan of what we were doing and wanted to put out a split with us and Hallowed Butchery. As it turned out, while on tour with A Storm of Light I ended up in Berlin, where Stefan lives, and so had an opportunity to meet him in person. He's a solid dude and really into what we're doing, so it was a natural fit from the start. To clarify (because some people seem confused although the information we've put out is fairly straight-forward), the tracks on the Hallowed Butchery split are the exact same recordings as the tracks that were on the tour EP we released last September. The only difference is the track order and the mastering.

DS -Were you familiar with Hallowed Butchery before? The styles of the bands are pretty different. Usually, splits are between bands of similar styles, did you have any reservations about this?

Geoff: We were not. The hook up was through Stefan. The two bands are different, stylistically, but I think it works. Personally, I like it when splits or bills combine bands that don't obviously go together. If every split or every show combined bands that sound exactly the same, I'd probably kill myself.

DS -Your half of the split is awesome. Please talk a little bit about the recording? How is the end product compared to what you had envisioned?

Geoff: Thank you. Like our first recording, that recording was done very quickly and on a shoestring budget. We recorded it in the summer of 2009 with Brendan Tobin (who plays in Made Out of Babies). Tracked and mixed it in about three days. It didn't turn out exactly as we had hoped, but it shows a band that's evolving. We had only just added Fade to the band when we recorded this, so those songs are a bit like moonshine, whereas the material we've written since is more like a barrel-aged bourbon. The flavors hadn't quite had enough time to be properly incorporated when we made those recordings.

DS -How do you envision the music of Batillus evolving into the future? Do you foresee any changes in the sound?

Geoff: We are already two records past the stuff that's on the split. We wrote and recorded a full-length since, which will be released in April. That material is much more varied in its sound-- there are industrial influences, black metal influences, and other elements and it's a much more developed and mature sound than the material that's on that split. And we're already writing new music for future releases. I can only speculate, but our future material will perhaps be more dynamic and there may be more space and room to breath compared to our past recordings, which have tended to be very oppressive and claustrophobic.

Fade: We are constantly evolving. The foundation is heavy, dark doom, but we are adding more dynamics and noise a little more 'industrial' influence.

DS -What new music are you listening to?

Geoff: I've been really interested in David Eugene Edwards lately and his bands 16 Horsepower and Wovenhand. It's the heaviest music I've ever heard, but it's not metal at all. The 16 Horsepower album 'Secret South' would be a perfect alternate soundtrack to the film 'The Road,' or a reading of the book by the same name. But I suppose you mean music that's 'new to the world' and not 'new to me,' in which case I will have to mention U.S. Christmas' new album Run Thick in the Night and Sanford Parker's new band, Circle of Animals. I can't recommend those two bands highly enough.

Fade: Wovenhand, Lurker of Chalice. Very much into the mood of these bands.

DS -Geoff, I know you are a doom metal enthusiast, please tell me, in your opinion who are the most underrated band in that subgenre?

Geoff: Most underrated doom band would have to be Ufomammut, but perhaps they're not underrated but simply under-appreciated. They have a lot of interesting ideas.

DS -What are the next plans for the band? Touring? More recordings?

Geoff: We're doing some shows in November with this rad guy Author and Punisher who does a sort of industrial doom solo thing and builds his own instruments. After that, we're laying low until the spring, when our record comes out. After the album comes out-- and we'll be announcing details about this soon-- we'll be touring quite a bit. Can't announce anything yet, but we'll be hitting most of North America and, hopefully, Europe.

DS-What would someone who is familiar with the sound of Batillus be surprised to learn about the band?

Fade: We all love Depeche Mode.

Geoff: Especially "Policy of Truth."

DS -Last words…

Geoff: The end of the world is coming.

Read our review of Batillus’ split with Hallowed Butchery here…

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