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Interviews
Benighted - Julien Truchan
22/02/08 || Global Domination
Global Domination: Fuck intros. First of all, thanks for agreeing to be interviewed by the fucken site of all sites, the mighty Global Domination. For those of our readers and staff who haven’t had the displeasure of being introduced to Benighted, give us a description of what you violent frog-eaters sound like, so that we all get the idea.
Julien: Our music could be compared with a schizophrenic mix of extreme influences around a brutal death spine, crossing the lines of grindcore, hardcore, trash, black metal or punk. Our tracks lead you inside of the head of the psychotic where anguish, hallucinations, violence and fear torture him.
The way I see it, Benighted is some very enjoyable and groovy death-grind, with some fucked up grunting and borderline pig vocals. Is my take on your sound correct, or do you see yourselves fitting some other style in your own delusional heads?
I think it’s a good way to see that, groovy is really important in our
way to compose extreme music and we have to need to break our neck on
that when we play it!
I must say I quite enjoyed “Identisick”; it is an album that I listen to on a regular basis. Pretty exciting, grinding business there, congratulations on that one. I just heard yer newest effort, “Icon”, and was fucken impressed again. I’m not sure it’s a huge improvement, but it is a good follow-up effort definitely. How do you feel about it?
“Identisick” is an album we still are very proud of, it was a big step in the history of the band and received amazing returns from the entire world. So we knew that we had to push all the limits on the new album to show that “Identisick” was just a beginning in what we are capable of. For “Icon”, I would say that it contains the best tracks we’ve never composed, with a very powerful and organic sound, and the concept like the artwork of this album have a deep meaning.
Damn! I was just listening to that track “Grind Wit” from “Icon”, and it fucken cracked me up! You don’t seem to take yourselves too seriously, sometimes your tunes give the impression that a lot of wicked humor goes hand in hand with the brutality, right?
Exactly! “Grind Wit” is a song lots of people speak about because of this strange hip hop part near the end… and I think it’s cool for an extreme band to try different things if it’s according to its musical identity. Our tracks have to be surprising, and we really like to experiment some new things, even if it’s not in the hard extreme metal line… Each song on the album contains strange breaks, riffs or arrangements, which keep it interesting from the firsts notes to the last riff. If a track doesn’t satisfy us at 100%, we’ll never record it.
I like the way you keep songs short and to the point, at decent lengths, no 20 second premature ejaculation, just solid slabs of death with the grind molesting all over it. Do you make it a point to compose yer stuff that way?
Yes, but we keep at the ear that each track has to different form another and easily recognizable in an album.
Which bands would you say have been an influence in your songwriting? I hear a bit of Nasum and Napalm Death here and there, is that correct? By the way, who writes the music in the band? How’s the writing process taken care of? What about your personal influences?
Napalm still is our biggest influence, as bands like Dying Fetus, Cryptopsy or Nasum as you told. Most of the music in the band is written by Liem, he prepares some riffs fro a track and after we have the habit to create a song all together from these riffs, try different things, as our musical influences are not the same from a member to another. I think it’s by this way of composition that we obtain often the best and most surprising result. Personally my biggest vocals influences could be the singers of Dying Fetus or Suffocation.
Death-grind as a genre is pretty much a dead, beaten, molested and rotten horse by now. How does Benighted try to separate themselves from the crap bands populating the genre and stay fresh? Writing good songs helps, and in my opinion, you’ve got that figured out. Your songs are catchy as a venereal disease most of the time, even though they’re hardly groundbreaking in any way.
I don’t really know… we play what we like and a track is never finished before we really feel the need to spurt out our entrails as we play it!
And
what’s up with those pig vocals? They seem to be a point of contention
over here at GD. Some people like me dig them (up to a point, not all
the fucken time!), but the overall consensus is that they are quite
boring and distasteful, even for grind standards. A mix between grunting
styles seems more appropriate, don’t you agree?
I totally agree, I find very boring when a singer keeps exactly the same voice on all his songs… My way to sing is to give the impress that there are several singers at the same time, changing the vocals very fast, as voices in the head of a delirious man, which is the concept of our band.
I noticed you changed drummers not too long ago. A fucken shame, I quite liked the style of your original drummer, Fred. In any case, this Kikou dude you’ve got now is fucken ace too, judging by his playing on “Icon”. Do you have any dirt or hateful feelings about the departed? How difficult was to find a new drummer?
When Fred left the band, it was very hard for each of us, as he was the original drummer of the band, and we played together during 8 years. But we had the luck to meet Kevin just a month after and he was so motivated and amazing behind his drums that he’s quickly become the new official drummer of Benighted.
You’ve also had quite a few bass players. What’s the matter with that, is the bass at Benighted too hot to handle? Do the rest of you make life difficult for the bassist just like Lars Gayrich and Jamie Homofield did with Newsteed at Metallica?
He he! I don’t think so, but it was hard to find the good one! When we found Eric, we was a bit in despair to find a bassist who could stay for a long time in the band… but when we played the first concerts with him, we knew he was this one! He gives so much energy on stage, and his technical possibilities are great, so the long travel to find the bassist for Benighted was finally over!
Who would you all agree to say is the best individual musician in the band? Who would you say would be irreplaceable? Mind you, that not only refers to musical skills.
As he’s the principal writer of our music, I would say Liem, maybe…
Your lyrics are kind of weirder than usual for a grind band. What’s up with all that pathology and psychology babble? Can’t we have some Satan, gore, murder and some other happy subjects, please? What is Benighted about? Make sure you don’t answer anything like “world peace” or “animal rights”, or your metal-credibility would be seriously harmed, you know?
Ah ah! Our concept has always turned about the mental diseases as I work in a psychiatric hospital, and it’s a theme I know quite well. We give to the sickness in our lyrics a very big dimension of reality, and I think it more extreme than speaking about gore scenes or bad horror movies. Be sure reality is always crueler than fiction!
While we are at this band image subject, let me add that the cover for “Identisick” is fucken awesome. What does it means and who did it? The “Icon” cover is also pretty good, by the way. “Insane Cephalic Production” on the other hand is fucked up, and not in a good way. Your thoughts on this?
The “Identisick” cover was about the track with the same name in the album, which talks about a hallucinated patient who believes being the psychiatrist and doesn’t understand why the man he’s got in front of him doesn’t answer his questions… but his delirium becomes more and more invading and he understands that all that was spoken was in his head. “Icon” cover is about the central man of the album each song’s speaking about, lost in his own representation of the external world. And “Insane Cephalic Production” cover was not a classical cover, just a prison like in solitary for a very sick mind. This cover has been released for its symbol, not for aesthetic. It has been made like the “Identisick” one by the tattooist of all the members of the band Nicko, and the last one has been done by Phlegeton (Avulsed, Mortician…). For us, the most important is the meaning of a cover and how it can represent the entire concept of an album.
Tell our readers about Benighted live. What’s the experience like? Any decent tours you’ve been in? Any decent tours coming up? By the way, you should make it to the US one of these days. I’ll buy you beers when you do so or fucken croissants if you like. Your music would be well received over here, that style being always popular with the US crowds.
Thank you, bro! Be sure we’ll make it with pleasure when it will be possible! At this moment, we only have toured in Europe and we are supposed to make a European Tour with Dying Fetus in June. We even have made a French tour at the end of 2007 with our friends of Kronos and Recueil Morbide which was just fantastic! We’ve even also played during our career with bands like Morbid Angel, Nile, Slipknot, Immolation, Aborted, Gojira, Napalm Death…We’ve stopped to count our live performances, but they are lots, and our best way of expression stays the stage, where we can spill all our rage and give the entire energy we have in us. Somebody told me once that a Benighted gig looks like a pig’s truck accident! It bleeds, it growls and it hurts! I really like this picture!
Tours
are normally good occasions for getting drunk and retarded. Any fun
stories, band fights, stage fuckups? Which bands that you toured with
have been the coolest, which ones the stupidest? Spill some shit, it’s
all good press, you know?
My best remember stays our tour with Kronos and Recueil Morbide that I consider like brothers! The entire tour was great and in a very cool atmosphere. I have no story about bad experiences to tell… sorry…
What’s the biggest crowd you’ve played to so far? And the smallest? Did you ever hooked up with a fangirl at one of your shows? Or at least a transvestite, if no one else was willing. You must have at least 20 devoted fans wiling to do you for the good of grind and La France, right?
I think it was the Fury Fest in France (5000 people) for the biggest, and I don’t remember the town, but at our beginning in 2000 or something like this, we often have played before 50 people or less! And I’ve nothing to tell about fangirls… you want my wife to throw me out of my home??!! He he!
Any band you’d like to tour with? You might be a fanboy of some of death metal’s finest bands out there, right? Since we know jack-shit about your musical taste, go ahead and let us know what you’re into. Make sure you don’t mention HIM or the Backstreet Boys; we might have to send some envelope full of anthrax in your direction if you do so.
Please don’t do that! Lol! I will soon play with them as my favourite band is Dying Fetus! But it would be great to tour with Napalm Death, Suffocation or Cryptopsy too!
Now, I was trying to find that hellhole called Balbigny where you come from according to internet sources, but no map of France on the net seems to know where the fuck that town is located. Tell us about it, and how Benighted originated. Did you all of a sudden decided it was time to stop raping cows in the rural countryside and play some hateful death metal?
It’s close to the real story man! We all live far from big towns in France, except from the bassist which lives in Lyon (you should find that I think). And we all met at some gigs at the beginning. We already were playing in other bands and Benighted was created as a side-project but it’s quickly become our top-priority! All our precedent bands don’t exist anymore at this time.
Tell us a bit about the French metal scene. Is there such a thing? On the last few years I’ve heard quite a few black metal acts coming from France, some decent, some terribly crappy. Death and grind, on the other hand, I haven’t noticed many, except Gojira, Gorod and yourselves. What’s happening on the French underground? Enlighten us, will you?
Things move in France in the extreme metal scene and I can tell you that you won’t be disappointed if you listen to Kronos, Destinity, Hacride, Goryptic, Blockheads or Sublime Cadaveric Decomposition! These guys play fantastic stuff! I think you’ll hear about them soon! I think French bands became more serious, and more important, tried to develop a very personal identity instead of following a band which even exists. And it’s only a beginning, I trust in the French underground!
Well, at least there are some good bands trying to put France on the metal map. The one thing I truly love about France is the football team. Allez Les Bleus! Surely someone in the band is into it? Sports are fucken metal, and Zizou is the greatest footballer that ever played the game in the last 15 years, just so you know!
Heu… sorry but even if it’s a very famous sport in our country, nobody in the band plays it. I’m the only one to play a sport, and that’s rugby.
Lets do some rating and slating now. Go ahead and give us your rating and comments on these fuckers, 0 equaling merde and 10 magnifique:
Anorexia Nervosa: 8
Arkhon Infaustus: 7
Blut Aus Nord: 4
Deathspell Omega: 2
Dirge: I don’t know this band
Gojira: 9
Gorod: 8
Seth: 6
Now, while we are still at this silly business of rating stuff, rate and comment on all your albums too:
“Benighted”: 5, it was our first self-produced album, and he was more black metal orientated that the music we play today.
“Psychose”: 6, we were more searching our identity on this album and
even if there are some tracks I still really like, maybe we’ve recorded
it to soon…
“Insane Cephalic Production”: 7, the serious things have begun with this
one, and for the fisrt time, we really knew where we were going. Things
have started there! And I won’t throw a single track of this album.
“Identisick”: 8, an album we’re very proud of, which broke lots of doors
on the extreme scene for us and helped us to have a new level of
promotion.
“Icon”: 9, our best album anyway, in terms of track’s impact, sound and concept.
Which Benighted song is your favorite and the one you think represents better what the band is all about? Which one you like the least, and recommend we should avoid like an ugly French girl with unshaved and smelly armpits?
My favorite song is “Collapse” from the “Identisick” album, but I think “Foetus” on “ICP” and “Slut” on “Icon” could be very good representations of the music we play. And a track to forget could be “Aversion Fanatique” on the “Psychose” album…
What can we expect from Benighted in the future then? I reckon after “Identisick” and “Icon”, two pretty good albums in a row, the word must be spreading around. Tell us you plan on becoming huge emo stars, wear eyeliner and become known to every single Evanescence fanboy. You know you want it, don’t you? Seriously now, what are you aiming at?
Lol! I think we’ll continue to promote the new album with touring; we planned to make a video clip for the track “Slut” very soon too! We’ve been confirmed for great festivals like the Inferno Fest in Norway, The Houten Death Fest and The Neurotic Death Fest in Netherlands, The Reperkusound Fest and The Hell Fest in France, and The Rock Area Fest in Germany… and others must be confirmed, we’ll be busy as you can see, so everything is cool!
We’re at the end, and I’ve got to say it’s been a pleasure. Let there be said there are at least five frenchies in Benighted that are not about prancing around Les Champs Elysees with gay berets on their heads. You’re all though, bald grind dudes with attitude. You have the last word, use it wisely, praise the Global Domination and commit to kick some ass!
Thank you for this very cool interview, bro! It was a pleasure too! We’re very impatient to come to the US to show you what Benighted is capable of on stage! Thanks to all who support us and of course, stay brutal!!!!
