I entered this interview with a tad of hesitation. I had thoroughly enjoyed Whiskey Ritual’s first full-length In Goat We Trust, but there were questions in my head that made me doubt of the band’s trueness. I am not one to be preoccupied with such silliness, but my worries arose from a couple of valid points. First of all, the album came with a sticker citing the typical ‘For Fans of Venom and Bathory’ sales line. In reality, In Goat We Trust sounds nothing like either. Secondly, pictures of the band show a look that many in the metal community may reject. With doubts in my head I approached the band. I was glad I did. I am now convinced that Whiskey Ritual are in it for all the right reasons. At the other end is vocalist Dorian Bones. Read on and spread the word…
DS - Whiskey Ritual is based in Parma. Can you please talk a little bit about the beginning of the band?
Whiskey Ritual are born in 2008 from an idea of mine (Dorian Bones-vocals) and Plague (bass). We wanted to put up an old-school black metal band like Venom, the first Bathory, Hellhammer etc. It was our intention to create something rotten, dirty and violent, without compromises or any kind of claims. We didn't care about how much we would have to play around, or what the senior members of the scene would have to say about us, this is why our project is so raw, because we don't care about other people's opinion. Towards mid-2008 we met our future guitarist A. He entered immediately, with his body and soul in the project, beginning to write the first songs. The whole picture came together when Asher (Forgotten Tomb) decided to join the band to take his place as drummer, attracted by the attitude that was coming out from the first songs of the band. We meet each other during rehearsals and we also hang out a lot together, more than a band we prefer to call ourselves a gang, we're basically always getting drunk and smashing things
DS - Is there a good metal scene in your city?
Until a couple of years ago the metal scene in our city sucked, you know. It's a small city full of trendy idiots. Luckily, this has changed in these last years, and the metal scene is growing, also thanks to Moonlight Agency, who is doing a lot to promote underground music by organizing lots of good gigs in our city, with bands such as Saint Vitus, Swallow the Sun, Electric wizard, Impaled Nazarene, Belphegor, Shining (Swe), Weedeater, and many others.
DS - Has the band been gigging around?
We play both in our city than in other places, but we prefer to play out of Parma, so to let more people know who we are. Unfortunately, there aren't many black metal bands in our city, besides us and Inner, who are more Norwegian-oriented. Other bands worthy of notice are Noise of Creation (Death-Thrash Metal), Calendula (Post-Hardcore with southern influences) and Avant Gardener (Stoner Metal).
DS - Apparently one of your topics of choice is ‘drunkenness’ as it is included in your Metal Archives page. The name of the band is Whiskey Ritual. My question is, what is a Whiskey Ritual?
The name comes from a theory. The unconscious state of man, the alteration of his mind brings man it's self to enrise (sic) his spirit and to magnify it, reacting this way to primordial instincts and impulses. During some rituals, conscience is present due to the morality that has been engaged in our brain since we were children, for this reason people use drugs, to let the past evaporate and be able to act in the absolute. Whiskey is used to remove the brakes that are always very weak in an independent person. It is used to to get to a true consciousness of the being. It is our ritual who reminds us who we are, and who makes us able to act. Besides Whiskey is our favorite companion during shows, actually I could almost say he is our Roadie.
DS - I did not know anything about the band. And my first impression when I saw pictures of Whiskey Ritual was one of doubt. I found a similar reaction in a couple of blogs, in which they criticized the look of the band. More specifically, the look of vocalist Dorian Bones, who sports an eye patch. Some think that’s silly. Can you please elaborate on this?
Nowadays people are so closed inside their tiny little world that they can't see thing beyond the surface. Do they really think the eye patch was a stupid or forced choice, or even that it's cool? Just spend a night with us, and you'll see how cool it is. Ha ha ha! Guys, really, do you realize that there are people going around with huge upside down crosses, with panda-like face painting and with nails on their legs? Once I've said this, I was aware of the effect that this would have had amongst many people inside the scene, just because I know my chickens (as we say here in Italy). The idea of the patch comes from buccaneers. Amongst the features of buccaneers was democracy: the captain was elected by the crew, who could eventually replace him. He had to demonstrate to be a worthy leader and combatant: he had to fight with his men and not give orders from far away. The loot was divided into equal parts, the more worthy you were the bigger part of the loot you received. I see myself with my band in this tale, and I am ready to lead them throughout the seven seas, against all these assholes who think they have the keys to reading the "Black Flame" and who are, at the end, just a bunch of idiots without attitude who spend their days on blogs, instead of seriously supporting the scene.
DS - When I first got In Goat We Trust I immediately thought of two artists,Venom and Bathory. This because of the cover artwork. The CD came with a sticker that cited both bands I believe. However, when I got to listen to it, the styles between Whiskey Ritual and those two was pretty different. How would you describe the black metal of Whiskey Ritual?
The idea which stands at the base of the project, is to produce a merciless album and to piss off the generation of canonical, approved, and superficially ‘mean’ black metal. Black metal would have been our weapon, and rock 'n' roll would have been the vehicle to establish a breaking-point with the most of the bands which form the contemporary scene. We all live in a small city, where you always know what happens to everyone, when it happens, and why it happens. We wanted to create a sound that could express our uneasiness towards life and the world that surrounds us. We wanted to do whatever the fuck we wanted, without thinking. We all had other projects besides Whiskey Ritual, so in Whiskey Ritual if we like a rock 'n' roll riff, we just shove it in there, if we like an hardcore chorus we shove it in there, if we like something that sounds punk, we just simply shove it in the song! Everything has to be at the song's service. We've seen through the years how some exceptional black metal bands have become victims of themselves. I think that black metal is a lot more than a bunch of ideological rules. I believe that black metal is a weapon in each of its forms, but only if who holds that weapon has the right attitude. Black metal is attitude.
DS - What struck me about In Goat We Trust was how polished it sounded. Since the names Bathory and Venom had been mentioned I was expecting something a little bit more lo fi. Is this what you had in mind?
We personally followed the recordings and we all agree in saying that it sounds exactly how we wanted it to be. I think that since we worked hard to save money to do this album, and to make it sound precisely as what we had in mind, and since we had the tools to do all this, it would have been fake to make it sound lo fi on purpose. Anyway, Venom and Bathory remain an inspiration for us, but using their same sounds would have been excessive.
DS - The album has power. It sounds clean, but the songs are so catchy and the performances so effective that it still captures the essence of your music. Could you please talk a little bit about the recording process?
Recording this album was the most natural thing in the world. We entered the studio knowing exactly what we wanted to do, the album had to be powerful and at the same time obscure, and I think we succeeded in this. We wanted to avoid making it too lo fi. We had saved a bit of money with the gigs we
did, in order to be able to do exactly whatever we had in mind, not having to think about how much we were spending. We thought it was stupid to not treat the production with the due respect, mainly because we think it's a very important part of the work we're trying to do. Each of us cared about his instrument, both in the recording and in the mix and then all together we defined the details. It took about ten days of work in total, with the help of Moonlight Studios' sound engineer Carlo Izzo.
DS - All the performances are excellent. But I was taken aback by you approach to the vocals. They sound pretty tortured. Could you please elaborate a little bit about your style?
Thanks for the compliments. What I do with my voice comes quite natural, let’s just say that I have always tried to follow the dimension of the song and I mainly try to interpret the songs I write. I've had different experiences before Whiskey Ritual and my voice is quite variable. As I said before I mainly try to interpret the lyrics, which is the most important thing in my opinion. To make your soul come out, you have to be a part of what you write, this is why my lyrics are so personal, and full of misunderstandable things. My influences go from more classic black metal to black/thrash metal, all the way to rough and violent rock 'n' roll.
DS - In the song “One Million”, Appollyon from Aura Noir appears as a guest. How did this come about?*
Our bass player, who is always jerking around at festivals or concerts, met Apollyon during Festung Open Air in Germany in May 2009. Usually, when two drunk musicians meet each other at a concert, it's very easy for them to become friends, and this eventually happened this time too. In the following months Plague managed to keep in touch with Apollyon and so the collaboration began. In few words everything started thanks to a bit of booze. To record the song, we sent him the track and he did the vocals in his own studio. He was very happy to appear in “One Million”, due to the fact that he appreciated the lyrics.
DS - "One Million" is an excellent song. Could you please talk a little bit about it? What is it about?
Talkin' about “One Million”, the music is very simple, direct and arrogant, and so the lyrics: ‘It's like a one-night-fuck, hard and fast’. Of course, you can read the lyrics in different ways, it's just a metaphor of the
lowest human feelings. When we create a new song, we usually start with the music and then... whiskey does the rest.
DS - Do you guys have new songs written? If so, do they follow the same style of In Goat We Trust or is there a change or an evolution in sight?
Right now we have just finished recording a split with our friends Forgotten Tomb, it's a tribute album to GG Allin, since we believe that we too have a bit of the king of shit, or at least this is what we're trying to do. Eh eh. For the rest we're not writing any songs at the moment, let's say we're taking our time before starting to think about the next album, and in the meanwhile we're doing as many gigs as possible, looking forward in going to play also abroad.
DS - Finally, what are you listening to right now?
Volcanic Birth by Dragged into Sunlight.
DS - Last words?
To the readers: Do not believe people telling you what's ‘true’ or not, it means they fuck less than you. Gain fat, smoke and die with shit in your veins.
Read our review of In Goat We Trust here….
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