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Interviews
Wormrot - Arif, Rasyid & Fitri
13/12/10 || Habakuk
So I basically figured, since I’m in Kuala Lumpur anyway, I might as well check out if Singapore’s finest, Wormrot, play a show anytime during my stay and have time for an interview. Turns out they do. A bit of emailing back and forth with their band manager Azean (whom I have to thank for her great support) and a five hour bus ride later I met the guys at Scape, Singapore, we sat down at the nearest powersocket and recorded an interview. Here’s what I had to ask and they had to say.
Global Domination: Thanks a lot for taking the time for an interview. First of all I’d like you to give a short introduction, who are you, who does what, since when has the band been going and since when have you been playing your instruments?
Rasyid: Okay, my name is Rasyid, I play guitar, I’m
the only child in my family. We’ve started this band in 2007, and we’re
still new to this. I’ve been playing guitar since I was in secondary
school, I think, yeah and I still don’t know my chords.
Arif: My name is Arif, I do the vocals, my family is only me and my little sister.
Fitri: My name is Fitri, I play drums, I’m 23 years old young, last child in the family. As for me, I’ve been playing drums for like 10 years, but I’m still not good.
Your album “Abuse” has been praised as one of the best grind albums of the last years all over the Internet, including Global Domination – what do you think about the album yourselves?
Rasyid: We initially thought that it wasn’t that
good… I mean, we’re just playing simple stuff, like, simple riffs and
patterns. It just caught us by surprise, but we really appreciate it.
Arif: I’d like to add, “Abuse” actually was quite a
rushed kind of album, because we didn’t actually plan to … we just did
the album for the release of our music, and that’s it. But somehow – we
have a friend who released our stuff, who does Scrotum Jus Records from
Singapore, and he has done an amazing job spreading our stuff, so from
there, the response was quite awesome.
I was wondering about the title “Abuse”, what does it refer to? The first song on the album has kind of a semi-political intro, what’s that about?
Arif: No actually, we are not concentrated on only
politics. There are politics in our lyrics, but they are not a major
part like with other grindcore bands, but we are focusing on our tour
experiences, also the good times on tour, and some social issues we’ve
experienced before. The intro of the first track off “Abuse” was someone
getting tazered, and we personally like it because he mentioned the
word “abuse” there.
Rasyid: It was quite a surprise find because we just went on YouTube and searched for “abuse” and in ten minutes we got it.
Arif: It was random, really.
So why did you choose the word “abuse” in the first place?
Arif: Actually, the first album title was not “Abuse”, it was longer. It was … “Abuse to confuse” or some shit like that. But Rasyid decided, “why make it long” – make it short, to the point. And I had tried to incorporate into our songs and our lyrics our past experiences, which sort of related to abuse.
Who’s your main songwriter?
Arif: Rasyid writes the riffs, and then we just brainstorm in the rehearsal studio and Fitri brings in the drums, and then I just come in and make some modifications, you know like “What the hell are they doing?”
One thing I found on “Abuse” was, while I loved basically everything, partly, there were these constipated sounding Hardcore vocals – are these a joke, or what’s that all about?
Arif: That was a joke, actually, it’s a random
thing, because we heard a track from the band Ingrowing, they have that
exact same style of vocals, and at point in time we kind of liked it,
so…
Rasyid: Nah, we find it cool though.
Well, I think it sucks.
Rasyid: Then fuck you!!
Arif: No, but we get that a lot as well from reviews
from some zines, they’re kind of like, “we fucking hate that shit”, but
we enjoy it.
Fair enough – so what bands do you consider major influences to your sound?
Arif: I have to say Magrudergrind.
Rasyid: Guitar-wise its Magrudergrind, Insect Warfare, Phobia, Cripple Bastards…
Fitri: For drums it’s the same, Insect Warfare, Phobia, Magrudergrind.
How did you handle the band before you got signed by Earache in 2009 in terms of distribution, management and so forth?
Arif: Apart from “Abuse” on Scrotum Jus, Everything was DIY. We actually went on tour before we signed with Earache, and everything was our money, basically.
Did you lose money, or did you get even?
Rasyid: Barely even, yes.
You guys have toured Europe and the US already, just give us the best thing and the worst thing about touring.
Rasyid Err…The worst thing is that we have to
manage our money. I think that the money question is a very big one in
our tours because there’s not one day that we don’t think about money.
Especially in Europe, on the first tour that we did all-DIY,
a lot of shit happened, like our driver running away from us, leaving
us stranded in Poland and stuff like that… I don’t know what the best
thing is, I guess the best thing comes when we’re playing.
Arif: We get to meet new cool friends, and enjoy some
beers with them, touring with bands like Phobia and Pretty Little Flower
who are big influences, that means a lot to us. That’s where most of
the enjoyment comes from.
Rasyid: You see that’s when you’ve been driving the
whole day for like nine hours, twelve hours, but at the end of the day,
you see people smiling, they appreciate it, and you get something back
from the fans.
The story of how you got signed is quite interesting, as it’s some sort of Internet phenomenon thing – can you elaborate a bit on that, how that came together?
Arif: One of our tracks was in an online music player on the blog “invisible oranges”, which kind of links with the grindandpunishment blog. I don’t know, Digby, the owner of Earache randomly listened to their tracks, and heard one of our tracks on there, “Born stupid”. He was kind of interested after listening to that song, so he immediately gave us a surprise attack on MySpace, asking to sign us.
How active are you guys as a band in terms of gigs and rehearsals? How often do you play together?
Rasyid: For rehearsals, we usually play like one to
two times a week, we just go in and play for like one and a half hours,
then we go back and refresh our ideas,
but for gigs, it’s quite an occasional thing. We do have gigs in
Singapore, it’s just that most of them are like the same people, the
same organizers, the same spaces.
So there’s not that many places that we can play. And we only had one
like “Punk” place, and that got closed down. So basically we don’t have
any of these anymore, but there are art spaces, youth centers like
here, and stuff like that.
Yeah, but that is basically more expensive in terms of renting stuff and so on.
Musically, how did you guys grow up? You’ve mentioned your influences but what bands did get you into metal or grind at all in the first place? Are there any eye-opening albums that got you into heavy music?
Rasyid: Well, heavy music… I guess it’s Metallica
for me. That was in secondary school, also every teenager’s stuff like
Slipknot,… but in terms of grind, like in 2006/2007, I met Arif after a
long time and he was selling Phobia: Cruel which I bought off him, and
then we started talking and stuff. So I guess for me, the main albums
would be that one and Pig Destroyer: “Terrifyer”.
Fitri: For me the first major artist that I really
looked up to was Sepultura, their first album. Then I went down to like
Punk rock stuff, and when I met Arif in Army camp, he introduced me to
some grindcore bands like Phobia.
So Arif, you’re the main influence for everyone else.
Arif: Yeah, I’m just realizing that now. I had forgotten about that, it’s quite a while back. But for me, the first pissed-off album I ever heard was Pantera: “The great southern trendkill”, so from there I started listening to more “angry” music. That was in secondary school. We are all the same age, and I think we all progressed in the same direction.
For me as an outsider, it’s pretty hard to imagine what the metal or grind scene in Singapore or South East Asia as a whole is like – is there a scene at all?
Rasyid: Like I said earlier, we have a scene, we just don’t have a place to play.
Singapore is a small country, and almost everyone knows each other,
especially in the scene, so we know who’s playing what, and sometimes we
listen to them, you know.
What role does the Internet play?
Rasyid: In Singapore, I guess MSN plays a big part, but like in overseas, MySpace and Facebook helps a lot. That’s the only way for us all to connect to each other and keep up to date with what we’re doing.
What are your favorite online sources for metal? Are there any blogs you follow, sites you read?
Arif: We don’t really follow any blogs, we just, I don’t know. Google is the shit.
Rasyid: YouTube is the shit.
A guy from our forums (hello Davedeath) sent me this link to this Singapore Crust compilation which had like thirty bands, and I just had the feeling, there’s gotta be something here that no-one knows of. So, does anyone make it out of Singapore?
Arif: They do, but only to neighboring countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, and they are very big in Indonesia, Singaporean Crust bands. I’m not sure about Thailand, maybe that too.
Are there any bands that you would like to spread the word about?
Arif: There’s another grindcore band actually, called Magnicide. They are awesome. We’re actually playing a show with them sometime at the end of this month, and there’s Fallen World. There’s like a few currently on-and-off grind bands, but for now I think the only active bands is us and Magnicide. So overall, there’s not much grind here.
Singapore is probably most famous for its strict regulations, fines and whatnot – do you see a connection between that sort of environment and the sort of music that you play? Grindcore as a style is obviously quite uncontrolled.
Rasyid: I guess we’ve adapted early to how we live
in Singapore, so it’s not really a matter of restrictions…it doesn’t
really matter to us now.
Arif: We are born here and we are growing up in the
same strict restrictions, rules and regulations, so we’re kind of numb
to all this. We just live our lifestyle as a Singaporean.
We’ve spoken about it with your music, but what do you think in general – music and politics. Is it a good connection? What do you think about political bands?
Arif: You can be positive and negative about stuff,
but if you’re going to be so negative about politics and there are no
changes for like years and years, but you keep on spewing political
stuff in your music, I think … I don’t know. Most grind bands do that
political stuff, but for us it doesn’t have to be related.
Rasyid: I mean in Singapore it’s not always that the government does bad things…
Arif: It’s not that bad.
Rasyid: I mean, it provides us with a better living in
some sort, I think Singapore wouldn’t be what it is now if not for the
government. I mean, it’s evil, but it’s a necessary evil.
Okay, enough of that, back to music. Each of you, give me a few releases from the last few years that everyone should have heard.
Rasyid: “Magrudergrind” by Magrudergrind. Hmm. “Phantom Limb” by Pig Destroyer. That’s two.
Fitri: The same, I guess.
Give me a third then.
Fitri: “Terrifyer” by Pig Destroyer.
Arif*: Misery Index: “Traitors”. I liked that better than the newer
shit. Rotten Sound: “Exit” and currently, just released, Phobia:
“Unrelenting” EP.
What music do you guys listen to personally – just grind? Probably not.
Arif: Personally, surprisingly I listen to Soul and
RnB, I dig Malay RnB songs, pop hits sometimes. Boyz II Men, right –
that kind of shit.
Fitri: Mostly deathcore. One that I like is for example
Carnifex… Attack Attack, you know, crabcore. Nah, just playing around.
Some punk rock bands …
Rasyid: I listen to a lot of softer stuff, post rock like Red Sparowes, also Isis, a bit heavier stuff.
Okay, now I’ll give you a list of seven bands and you tell me what you think of them as short as you can.
Napalm Death: F: Awesome. R: Epic. A: Chaos.
Iron Maiden: R: Too slow. A/F: Who?
Motörhead: R: Okay. A: Boring. F: Okay.
Sodom: A: Not my taste. R: Errrm… F: No.
Insect Warfare: A/R/F: The shit.
Repulsion: R: Good. A: Legends. F: Kick-ass.
Misery Index: R: They’re alright. A: Sick. F: Adam Jarvis is the shit.
What’s next in stores in the Wormrot camp? Tours, releases, Hollywood?
Rasyid: We have an upcoming US tour in March, I think.
Are you still looking for gigs in the US?
Rasyid: I guess, yeah.
Arif: I think our label has something on for us for
dates, shows and roads and everything. Other than that, we are busy in
our studio for our new album entitled “Dirge”, hopefully to be released
17th of April next year. So yeah, we’re gonna tour and during the
release we are still touring with the new album and carry on. That’s the
plan, we’ll see.
How’s that for exclusive news on GD… Thanks for the interview guys, you have the last word, whatever you wanna say – do it.
Rasyid: I guess I just have to say thank you to
everyone that appreciates or doesn’t appreciate what we do. Whatever
happened to us brought us to where we are now.
Fitri: Thank you for all the support, the unexpected support, it amazed us that we got this far, to getting signed and everything.
Arif: What they said. Thank you. For everything, the
support. Even the littlest support we appreciate. It really means a lot
to us. Without the listeners we wouldn’t be doing what we are doing
right now. Just keep on grinding!
We shall. There was a gig after this interview, too, but terrible chronist that I am, I spent most of my time in the pit instead of observing my surroundings. I can only say that it was awesome from start to finish. The guys managed to get a crowd of about 50 people tear shit up for a good 30 minutes, so it can’t have been too bad. At least I snatched a setlist. Retarded double beer! I’ll finish this up by saying thanks to all the Wormrot crew for being awesome.
