A. First thing, what is Benediction doing these days? I understood there's a new album planned, if so, will it be produced by Andy Sneap again?
D. We're starting to look at writing a new album now, as well as maybe doing a few shows later in the year.
Right this minute we're getting ready for a festival show in Italy next week, we're looking forward to it. I'm not sure whether we will use Andy Sneap again - he's a good producer, but he's very expensive!
A. I read on your site that there are some live shows going on, what shows did the band do lately, and what shows are planned?
D.We did a small headlining tour in Europe in May with Divine Empire and
Master, then a few weeks ago we played the With Full Force festival in
Germany. They were great. But I think we're more going to concentrate on
writing the next labum than playing shows for a little while now.
A. during the band's earlier years, you released several records in a short succession, but later on, the period between each release is longer, and it's now 3 years since Organized Chaos came out, what's the reason for that?
D.Too old! Too drunk! It's just things like kids eating up so much time and so on. We're still committed to the band, but we're committed to a lot of other things too that maybe weren't such a problem a few years ago. But we will keep grinding on!
A. I know that there were some changes in the line-up through time, the most
important, of course, is the changing of vocalists, why did Dave (Ingram)
leave for Bolt Thrower, and how did you join in his stead?
D.I don't know. He said at the time that he wasn't leaving to join another
band, but he knew he was. Maybe he figured he'd get on with the people in
Bolt Thrower better. Or maybe he thought Benediction was on the way out.
So for a band on the way out, we've toured Europe with Death and others,
played festivals with Motorhead, Judas Priest, Slipknot etc etc etc. So I
think we've done pretty fucking well! I honestly don't know why Dave did
what he did, but I'm glad he did because now I get the chance to do all this
stuff. The way I can to join was I was playing in a local extreme metal band
with a few friends and Neil from Benediction came to see one of our gigs.
So when they needed a singer for the Death tour in 1998 Neil remembered me
and they asked me to have a shot. It worked out pretty well once we'd got
used to playing together and now here I am. Simple really.
A. I understood you do shows with Bolt Thrower, what is your relationship with the band?
D.We got on great with Bolt Thrower when we did the European tour in 2002,
there's no good reason not to get on, and they're a great band. Personally it was just good to be able to see them live, because I'd never had the chance to see them before as they don't do many local gigs.
A. Organized Chaos was released through Nuclear Blast records, why is the band not signed with them anymore, and what is your current label status?
D.There was a 7 album deal with Nuclear Blast, and we've done 7 albums with
them. So the deal has expired. We haven't decided who we would like to
work with in the future yet. There was an offer on the table from Nuclear
Blast, but we are in a position to speak to other people as well now and see what they have to say. I think in the last few years Nuclear Blast have concentrated a lot on their more commercial, popular bands. And maybe they've forgotten a little bit about who it was that got them to where they are today. So we'll need to have a big talk with them if we're going to sign with them again I think.
A. There has been somewhat of a resurgence of classic metal bands as of late, a great example is the reformation of fellow Brits, Cancer, which we
also interviewed for our site, do you feel the wind changing, metal-wise, in the UK and abroad?
D.There has been something of a wind change, yeah - Cancer reformed, and we played recently with Obituary who are apparently back on the scene. It's
great as far as I'm concerned. Although the wind change hasn't made much difference to Benediction because we never went away! But if people come to
their senses and start returning to some real music then all the better.
A. Dave Ingram used to write lyrics very much centered on serial killers, what are the current song lyrics about?
D.They're about a fair few different things. Some are written to fit the idea of Benediction, a Death Metal band, some are more just things I think about, for example Temple of Set is kind of about carnality and accepting that man is a kind of animal, among other things. Same with Don't look in the mirror. Others are just about feeling violent and getting fucked up.
Plus there's some stuff about murders and so on. I try to write lyrics for
Benediction in a kind of Benediction style, so maybe they're a bit different to what I'd write outside the band, but hopefully they fit and sound cool.
I certainly think they do, I'm proud of them.
A. You guys have some interesting links on your site, not exactly pertaining to metal, such as several football groups, so I gather not all of you share the same allegiance (football wise) which band members support which group?
D.Rewy supports West Bromwich Albion, Frank Aston Villa, Mickey (the other
bass player!) Birmingham City (and Birmingham City and Aston Villa don't get
on very well so sometimes we have problems!), Phil (new drummer boy) Aston Villa I think. Me - England when there's international matches but the rest of the time I'd rather be down the pub than watching football. And Daz is the football maniac who supports Liverpool even though he comes from miles away from Liverpool! The links section of a site shouldn't be boring I don't think. If it's all just predictable links there's no point looking at the page, so we put some other stuff up there too because it's things we like.
A. Regarding your own musical influences, what bands do you listen to these days, and what vocalists affected you, as a growler?
D. Nowadays I listen to absolutely loads of different stuff - anything from Radiohead and Bjork to Circle of Dead Children and Madonna. I tend to like
anything that's in some way diseased or brutal, even if it's not necessarily musically brutal. Vocalists I 'grew up' listening to and admiring - Jeff Walker, LG Petrov, Chris Barnes, Glen Benton, Rob Halford, King Diamond.
Although I suppose the last two don't have much to do with growling. Joe Horvath from Circle of Dead Children has to be my favourite at the moment though.
A. What the hell is the "Birmingham- It's Not Shit!" Campaign???
D.Haha yeah, I found that a few weeks ago. The thing is, Birmingham has a bit of an image problem in England - people from other parts of the country tend to think it's an ugly place, and they way we speak round here makes some people with different accents think we sound a bit, well, stupid. But
obviously we're proud of where we come from, and so are the people who made the Birmingham - it's not shit! campaign. And it isn't shit! It's great!
A. What was your first reaction upon seeing England piss away the match against Portugal (apart from shooting Beckham, the knob)?
D. Haha, what a lovely turn of phrase you have! Wattie from The Exploited said to us when we played a festival with them a few weeks ago, the ball moved as Beckham was about to kick it because everyone in Scotland was blowing as hard as they could to try to move the ball and put him off. Bastards!
Personally I think we were fucked by the referee as well as anything else, although there were big problems with the way we played too, of course. But there was a huge national pride thing happening here in England with the tournament so it was a huge blow to get knocked out in that way. A shame
because it had really brought the country together. I was walking through Birmingham city centre after the game, and there was rubbish everywhere from
where people had trashed the streets because we lost.
A. Future plans for the band?
D.Like I said, writing some new material and playing a few shows. When we've got a new CD out we'd really love to get to some of the places we don't get
to play very often, places outside central Europe. So we'll be looking at doing some shows further afield if possible.
A.That's it, Thanks for taking the time answering my questions!
D. Thank you, cheers for the support. And thanks to the fans out there - you're why we keep on doing this after all these years!
Alon Miasnikov
