Sanatorium is a brutal death metal band from Slovakia. I caught up with Martin, the vocalist of the band for an interview.
Hails and Greetings Martin!! What’s the latest from the Sanatorium camp?
Hello there! We are currently working on a new album due to out fall 2006, probably October or something. We are playing some shows, next weekend in Holland in a great fesival called Neurotic Deathfest (ex-Rotterdam Deathfest) with some killer bands like Disavowed, Infected Malignity or Gorerotted… and preparing some more merchandise for summer etc.
Having heard Internal Womb Cannibalism,Celebration of Exhumation and Goresoaked Reincarnation, I find that you guys have incorporated various elements of Death/Grind and Gore in your music. Your sound seems to have changed quite a bit from what it was when you started out.How would you classify your music in your words??
We call it “brutal guttural sickness”. I think we have each alum different, we try to make catchy, brutal and really sick musick… it is 90% brutal death metal, but we mix together some gore grind and maybe some old school death metal elements… Our “Internal Womb Cannibalism” album was quite primitive, more gore grind, but after that album we do care more about technical elements and intense sound… “Goresoaked Reincarnation” was more technical, just sound is not vey good due to some studio issues… and then our latest effort “Celebration of exhumation” is probably our best recording so far and we are still with that. But the new album will be the next step into more brutal and technical death metal with sick slam parts and very extreme blast beats.
You have had some changes in your line up; do you think that Sanatoriun has finally found a consistent and killer line up now?
Oh man, we suffer from line up changes all thetime… but now from Summer 2005 we have strong line up and hope we will not need to change it anymore… the biggest problem was always with the drummer post and as we play something really extreme and technical, it is pretty hard to find a good drummer… there are a lot of bands here, but playing not so extreme metal, so we have a drummer living some 150 km from us… but it is not big problem. Same goes for bassist, he is from Czech Republic, but it is not so far as we are near borders…
You guys just released the video of “Fetus Rape”. Tell us more about the same, and would you be including this as a part of your next release?
I know guy who was doing professional videos for varous rock and nu-metal bands, he is my neighbour from childhood, so I asked him to try to make something brutal… we will put that video for the repress of “Celebration of exhumation” and probably we will put it as bonus from repress of “Goresoaked Reincarnation” album on Sevared Records from USA. It is possible to download it from www.sanatorium.nfo.sk for free in medium quality.
Are you working on your next release? Can you give us an idea as to what we can expect?Any big gigs scheduled for you in the near future?
Yes, I wrote in one of the previous answers… we do! It will be really sick release, all of us make some 2-3 songs, so it will be very diverse material I think… we have some 4-5 songs done and it sounds really sick, technical and vey very brutal hehe. Yes, we plan to play some festivals in summer in Germany, later we play some tour in Russia and Ukraine etc. We will be hitting clubs and festivals very often in the future… maybe once in your country as well!
From the time you guys started out in 1994, how has the journey been? Did you face any problems or struggle initially? Have you guys got appreciation for your music since, and are there any “long term” goals that the band wants to achieve?
Yes, it is long period.. .we started like typical school band tying to compose something with no musical experiences and skills… it sounded in the early times like mix of Bathory, Slayer and maybe Anal Cunt hehe… it took a long time to find a stable line up, find our own face etc. We usually suffer the line up problems as we live in really shitty town full of punks and techno maniacs, there is maybe 20 people listening to metal music, but nobody into brutal sick shit… we do not have any goals… we just want to be bigger band, more famous probably hehe. Would be nice to tour all our planet, have fun and lay brutal guttural musick
What are your favorite bands, both contemporary and old that have strongly influenced you? Are there other genres apart from death metal that you follow?
We listen to mainly death metal… some old bands like Grave, Dismember, Carnage, Obituary, Death, Pestilence… but also new bands like Vomit Remnants, Devourment, Orchidectomy, Retch, Infected Malignity etc. We prefer new school brutal death metal last times… other musical genres I can listen is some brutal industrial and electronic body music, maybe some beats and drum´n´bass but must be very very extreme
Are any of the band members engaged in side projects? If so, what kind of stuff do they play?
Our 2nd guitarist plays in Demonic Chorals, it is his first band and then we asked him to play 2nd guitar with us… it is some fast and extreme black metal in Dark Funeral way… but I have not listened to it yet… and our drummer plays in 2 local bands in his town, some gore grind project called Cafilery and soem deathmetal band as well… and bassist Mimi plays guitar in soem hard core band… I do only Sanatorium, but in the past I played bass in brutal DM band called Goreopsy together with our guitarist Magick…
Are you full time musicians or do you have your own professional commitments? Is it hard to make money out of playing extreme music?
We are unemployed musicians hehe… it is not possible to live out frm musick we play, so we have some side jobs… it is pretty complicated as it is not possible to have full time job due to holidays for shows and tours… it is only 21 days a year for holidays if you have full time job here, so it is not enough… we all have some session jobs to survive… but would be very nice to be professionals hehe. But we play some extreme and brutal musick, that it is probably not possible…
As far as your lyrics go, is it you who does all the writing? Where do you draw inspiration for the same?
I can not write so much about lyrics, so we have guy from Sweden, he wrote us all lyrics for “Celebration of exhumation”. It is very sick lyrics based on real stories and some gore fantasies as well… I was writing lyrics before as well, but I can´t write good lyrics due to lack of inspiration… and I am quite phlegmatic person, so I do not care bout anything and it is very hard to write something…
What is your overall take on the extreme metal scene that exists today? Do you think that now there is more appreciation for extreme genres like Death/Goregrind etc? Do you get a lot of support from the other bands in the same genre? Moreover, do you think more support needs to be given to underground bands, so that the really good bands don’t get lost into oblivion?
Well, I think scene is OK. Especially brutal death metal scene is quite big worldwide and quality of the well known bands is very very high. Our band is distributed by almost all bigger death metal labels around, we are sellng a lot of cpies of our CDs and shirts, so we are very thankfull to the scene for supporting us. I think bands should support each other… I use to support all good bands buying their merchandise, that´s why I have some 300 t-shirts of death metal bands now hehe.
Have you heard any bands from India, and do you have any idea about the small underground scene that we have here?
Sure, I have some 2 bands from India… Gruesome Malady and Gorified… I am not sure how small is your scene… but hope it will rise and hope you have some big metal shows from time to time…
Are there any specific gigs that you consider memorable in terms of your performance and the crowd response? How would you rate your performance in the Obscene Extreme fest?
Of course man… we remember some sick shows… one of the best was show in Lyon in France in front of some 300 totally crazy maniacs, it was line stagediving all the time, I was afraid of my life hehe. Then I remember some shows like one in Sweden when I went out before club in summer at 2 am and it is arctic light still…then our first show in Belarus when we need security to survive to go our of stage before 400 crazy maniacs in very small place… and of course I remember Obscene or Fuck The Commerce appearance… our Obscene show was really terrible as we played on Saturday, but on Friday we got so much drunk, that I do not want to see that Obscene DVD as it must be the worst band there hehe.
Has Sanatorium toured any Asian country like Malaysia or Japan which have a great UG scene?? Do you plan to do that in the future?
Not yet… but we would like to tour Asia in the future for sure… it is my dream to play in Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia or Thailand… hope it could be possible… if you can book us in your country, we will come!!
Thanks a lot for taking time out for this interview Martin. Any words for all the extreme metallers, especially in India?
Thanx bro for intie and support! We appreciate it very much! And sorry for delay, was busy with band little bit last 2 weeks.
All brutal sickos, keep supporting extreme metal scene, buy merchandise and go to shows!!! Check out our band at www.sanatorium.nfo.sk or www.myspace.com/sanatorium
Keep it fucking brutal!!!!
Interview by Saion Chatterjee saionc@gmail.com