A: I understand there are two new albums coming out, a best of/rarities collection through Earache and a new album through Nuclear Blast, let's start with the Rarities collection, what will in include?
G: I actually chose most of the material on the Earache collection, there's loads of unreleased material and B-sides there, different versions for tracks, I mostly chose tracks that had proper sound, since I didn’t want any lousy sounding songs there,
There are also some tracks that were left out of albums, that we didn’t have enough album space to put them in.
The new album is already written, I and Lee wrote the music, and Lee did the lyrics, we usually do the music first, and then add the lyrics,
We're planning on going into a studio sometime around august, but we're not really set on who will produce it, we want to change the sound and the production this time, since we want some diversity on this album, one producer that we're considering is Chris Goss.
A: The guy behind Masters Of Reality?
G: Yea, I really like his sound and his musical capability, he's been around for a long time, and he's a real professional.
A: He was also part of the Queens Of The Stone Age and Kyuss albums.
G: Yea, I liked some of their stuff; the new QOTSA album is great.
A: The band infused a lot of seventies and sixties vintage horror in the lyrics, from such films as Witchfinder general, and Night Of The Seagulls, and what are the films that influenced you guys the most?
G: We really like the old 70's horror movies, it's our favorite decade for horror films, my own personal favorite is Nosferatu the old German movie, I think it has some great atmosphere, films that like are so well done, so cleverly directed, that they do not need any soundtrack or dialog, they just convey a fearful vibe.
It's because of our love for the films that we try to put some of that vibe in our lyrics and music.
A: What about the gorier films, things like Peter Jackson's Braindead, for instance?
G: (Laughs) I really like his old films, even the older ones, like Bad Taste and Meet The Feebels, but from the band's point of view, they're not exactly the right material for songs…
A: The band's first album is one of the heaviest albums to date, yet in the soul sacrifice EP tracks you speeded things up quite a bit, and developed the style which still characterizes you today, why was that decision made?
G: The first album's style just reflected what we all felt at the time, we were young, and pretty depressed at the time, and very much broke, and so the music just reflected our feelings at the time.
The change in direction came about when we changed as people, as we got a bit older.
Apart from that, the old style doesn’t leave much to expand the band with, and, of course, it really isn’t that popular, the band's chances of making it would have been pretty slim had we continued with that.
We're all different by now, I'm married, with two children, we're all older and more settled, so the music changes as we change as people.
A: You guys did some shows, some 12 years ago (1992), in Tel Aviv, what do you recall from that time?
G: We really enjoyed that, and the crowd was great, they were very friendly, and knew our stuff really well, apart form that, we did some sight seeing in Israel,
A: There are a lot of people that would like to see you there again.
G: The current political situation seems unstable at the moment, so I'm not sure it'll happen too soon, you're used to it, so you don’t see it as the situation that we do.
But its certainly something we would like to do, we enjoyed our time in Israel, and would be happy to go there again.
A: The British music scene is known to be a great breeding ground for metal bands, but a crap scene for them to exist in, do you feel that the situation in the UK has changed regarding metal in general and doom/stoner metal in particular?
G: It's quite right, its not the best scene to operate in, the places we do well in are Germany, Japan is great for us, Italy and France are not as good, the US is quite similar to most of Europe for us, we have some crowd there,
But in the UK they tend to draw more into the Nu metal stuff, Stoner and doom are harder genres to get into, they're not as accessible as Nu metal, so we don’t do so well in the UK.
A:The roots of the band go way back to black Sabbath, what other bands influenced in doing the kind of music that you do?
G: Well, of course Sabbath is the main influence for us, and they continue on influencing is today, another band is Trouble, Pentagram, Saint Vitus, there's quite a lot of them.
A: Did you do any other projects apart from Cathedral? Any side bands?
G: No, the band is full time for me, I also have a wife and two kids, so I don’t have too much free time, and the fact is, I do the kind of music I like with Cathedral, and since I'm not into this for the money, but for the fun of it, I have no need to do anything else, fame and recognition are not important to me, music is what matters.
A: You've released one DVD back in 2001, which had some promo videos and a live set from 1992; do you plan on doing an updated DVD, with a larger amount of material?
G: We don’t really have any new material to do a new DVD, what were working on now is the new album, to finish it and release it as soon as possible.
A: There's been in change in Lee's vocals, which have been much more melodic in the last album, is that a direction you're going to peruse in the coming album?
G: His singing is certainly more melodic, he's voice changed during the years, but it's really a part of him fitting into the music that changed, the melodies that evolved, keep in mind that our first album was released 13 years ago, so a lot of changes happened since.
A: You didn’t do a video for some time, are you planning one?
G: We want to do one for the new album,
A: Something like Midnight Mountain?
G: (laughs) not really, that video was done in good fun, nothing too serious, we want this one to be different, it certainly won't be the same…
That's it, Gaz! thanks for talking to us!
Elad Miasnikov and Martin Gravholm
