Interview w/Filip from DEFECT IN INDUSTRY zine issue 14 from Belarus - January 2008

1) Yours early records sounds more chaotic in comparsion with yours last albums. Your last songs are faster, more even and with a bit of metal-solos, then older stuff. Why did you decide to change your music? Or maybe it happened spontaneous?

 
Well, it’s little difficult to talk about it now, in early 2008, since the old stuff you ask about is from 2000 - 2002 and this was long time ago!

Basically it was like this - when SEE YOU IN HELL started in mid 1999 my old band MRTVA BUDOUCNOST was still active and since we used to play pretty extreme fast hardcore/power violence music with M.B. I wanted to try something very different in my new band (S.Y.I.H.). Also the former drummer of S.Y.I.H. had some pretty original way of playing and our musical influences back then were little different than now too. So 7-8 years ago was SEE YOU IN HELL influenced by bands like BORN AGAINST, ORCHID, PALATKA, CATHARSIS, RORSCHACH... kind of complicated hysterical emoviolence/metal HC, but of course not so good like these bands! Especially live we sucked many times, haha! You can hear this earliest style on our first three releases (demo, split 7” w/MINDLOCK and full 7”).

Later, when we have changed the drummer in 2002 (new was finally able to play crust/fast HC too!) we started to play more straight-forward music maybe a bit influenced by HIS HERO IS GONE, ARTIMUS PYLE and similar kind of brutal and dark music on Prank Records - you can hear this on our split 7” w/THE PUBLIC and on “Dying Alive/Living Dead” compilation LP.

And finally, in 2003, when also our first LP/CD “Umet se prodat/Market Your Self” was released, we started to switch to even more straight forward fast hardcore/thrash influenced mostly by Japanese bands like FORWARD, JUDGEMENT, DEATHSIDE, D.S.B. and many other. You can hear this on the above mentioned LP, split 7” w/MASSGENOCIDE PROCESS and newest LP/CD “Utok”. By the way, I don’t find these solos you mentioned so important, they are just short and simple and in only few songs. This is something to “spice up” the music and give it more diversity, but the base of our style is just energetic rocking simple hardcore riffs combined with simple, straight-forward drumming and some full-impact gang choruses!

So as you can see we have changed quite a lot during the years, but I don’t find it too unusual or strange keeping in mind that we play for almost 9 years and the usual time duration of hardcore/punk band is mostly 2-3 years. As the time goes you absorb new influences and this often affects your own musical style. For me there are few things important - we have always operated and still do on D.I.Y. level, always had lyrics in Czech language (for me very important) and we always played “more brutal” kind of hardcore/punk, not some radio-friendly emo or pop punk bullshit.

 

2)Who is a designer of your albums and 7''? Do somebody of SIYH cans draw or you usually ask somebody else to paint a cover for your album?

We used different comix artists for our cover designs, for longest time we cooperated with Petr Vcelka, who did the split 7” w/M.G.P. and our new LP cover artwork. But last time when we asked him to do T-shirt for our upcoming European tour in 2008 he did asked for so much money, that it was impossible for us to pay him. So I am afraid we will have to look for somebody new. It sucks that these comix guys do start as underground artists doing their stuff like we do in D.I.Y. way and charging very fair prices, but later they become money-hungry assholes.

 

3) Tell us please about yours Japan and Brazilian tours. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think, that Japan tour must be the best tour at all! How do you make tours to the lands, which are so far from you? Is it repaid with money or (generally) with emotions? What's the difference between these scenes and the European?

I could write whole books about these tours! I wrote pretty long tour report from our 2006 Japan trip for Profane Existence, it is in English, so check it out. I also wrote another (much longer!) tour report for my zine, but this one is in Czech only... and I just started to write the Brazil tour report for planned new issue of my zine too.

Well, both tours were great and it is hard to compare them! Both Japan and Brazil are obviously very different from Czech Republic or from Europe in general, so just visiting these countries means a totally eye-opening experience which will probably make you to think a lot and maybe even re-evaluate your opinions, behavior, thinking... The most important thing was that in both countries we met really friendly and enthusiastic people doing things in similar D.I.Y. way like we do over here, which is really inspiring and empowering! Both countries have so many ass-kicking bands and I still can not believe that we had so great luck to be able to play with bands like AGE, FRAMTID, CROW, DISCLOSE, CONGA FURY, DERIDE, VOCO PROTESTA, NK6, CONTRAST ATTITUDE, PADLOCK, EFFIGY, ACROSTIX etc. in Japan and with bands like LOBOTOMIA, DEATH FROM ABOVE, DESASTRE, ARMAGEDOM, UTGARD TROLLS, DISKONTROL, SOCIAL CHAOS etc. in Brazil - all these are totally killer bands and to see them in their own city/country was so fucking great!

If you want to talk about differences - well, Japan is much more professional in every aspect, also more strict, everything runs perfectly, the p.a. in clubs/sound are totally superb, bands work really hard... but the tour was also more stressful, we had sometimes communication problems and to get the vegetarian food was also always complicated. Brazil is more laid-back, people are having fun all the time living the “sex, drugs and rocknroll” lifestyle, they are also more open and communicative, language and cultural barrier is not so drastic like in Japan. The p.a. on shows sucks shit usually as it is more poor country, but people usually don’t give a fuck about shitty sound and go wild for you since the first song. Of course we “lost” tons of money on both tours as we never made our flight tickets expenses back, but we dont give a fuck. It was definitely worth of it! Right now we discuss possible 2nd Japan tour for 2009... we will see.

 

4) What bands do you mostly cover? Which songs have you played and which of them are your favorite?

 
There are so many cover songs we did so far - NEGATIVE FX, D.R.I., GAUZE, DISCHARGE (5 songs!), S.O.D., VENOM... also lots of 80s Czechoslovakian hardcore/punk bands like RADEGAST, H.N.F., KRITICKA SITUACE, MICHAELS UNCLE, S.R.K., TELEX... 80s Czech black metal ROOT... But we have never played most of these covers regularly (usually only D.R.I., RADEGAST and GAUZE), most of them were played just once at our annual “Killed By Brno Festivals” which we organize every December since 2003 in local Yacht Club. We also had this kind of side-project called TUZEX which did 80s Czechoslovakian oldies exclusively, but played only 3 shows ever back in 2002-2003. We  plan to play new cover song in our set, this will be most probably “Give Up All Hope” by CROW. Hard to track down my favorite, well, I like all of them, we choosed them because these bands had some kind of influence on us or it was just for pure fun aspect of it... different reasons.

 

5) In which cases do you make a fancy-dress show on the concerts? It looks very funny! I'm talking about shows on 9.12.2006 and 29.06.2007? There are only yours fancy-dress shows I know.

Hahaha... just very special occasions! We are not a circus band, haha! Usually only at “Killed By Brno Fests” I talked about above - just check out the photos from 2003 when we dressed as total chaos punx, from 2004 when we dressed as monks, from 2005 when we dressed in kimono suits and finally from 2006 when we dresses as DISCHARGE! The show you talked about which took place at June 29th 2007 in Brno was together with FRAMTID and it was our new record release gig, so we dressed in fancy suit, entered the stage under the sounds from 30s mafia cinemas, shot down the newly released LP to pieces and threw them to the audience... it was fun!

 

6) You've paid to Profane Existence for they put your song on the compilation for their new issue. What do you think about their new "politic"? I don't very like it. I think that glossy profane existence is not THAT old PE anymore, though it's still possible to find something interesting there.

 

We did not paid to be included on compilation, we got the space for free, because I wrote our Japanese tour report for PE.

I started to read this magazine probably in 1992 or 93 when PISSED (the old band of PE editors) played in Brno and brought it here... Profane Existence was huge inspiration for me and countless other people in Czech, Eastern Europe... fuck, in the whole world! I still help to distribute it here and honestly I don’t give a fuck about the format be it newspaper, magazine or book format... this is not so important. Important is for me the content and the general direction PE is taking. And I have to say that since the resurrection of the zine few years ago it also doesn’t make me so inspired or fired up like before back in 90’s. Time has changed and I am also much older, so this may be one of the reasons probably. But back then PE used to be an anarchist collective, they managed to connect good anarchopunk/HC music with radical political activities (often on local level in their Minneapolis hometown - still it was very inspiring!), but today it is just one-man operation focusing just on releasing and distributing music and trying hard to keep the zine alive - sometimes successfully sometimes not.

I can understand that it is extremely difficult to run punk business like this one, that it is difficult to find new members for collective, when the sources are limited or people simply don’t give a fuck anymore, I understand that today there are many other labels, while back in 90s PE used to be one of the few good ones, I understand that people don’t buy so many records anymore and just download music for free... still I am not happy about some of the plans of the “PE owner” Dan for the future - like to have the barecode on the cover, to have mainstream distribution for PE titles and to switch newly released titles from vinyl just to CD or even to downloading... But it is “his” labels/magazine and he can do whatever fuck he wants - lets just stop pretending that this is some kind of “anarchist anti-authoritarian collective operation” - it is not. But who knows if something like this is possible at all in 2008 in America.

 

7) Are you planning to do a new issue of Hluboka Orba? And, if yes and if it's not a secret, what will be there?

 

Yes, I do, it should be issue 27 and I hope to have it out for summer 2008. It should be again 200 pages thick monster, hopefully in 1000 copies print run. I am still not 100% sure what’s will be inside, but I already contacted some bands for possible interviews, so there will be probably bands like PRUMYSLOVA SMRT (Czech), BLOODY PHOENIX (USA), DIOS HASTIO (Peru), DISKONTROL (Brazil)... Refuse Records label from Poland interview too, also tons of tour reports (SEE YOU IN HELL in Brazil, DISNEY in Baltic countries, GUIDED CRADLE in Israel, COMPLICITE CANDIDE in Ireland - well, if it will ever take place...)... I will have special issue dedicated to autonomous/self-governed places like squats, anarchist centers etc., so I hope to have interviews/articles about them from countries like Germany, Italy, UK, Czech... and also I hope to have some scene reports from cities from all over the world, maybe even one from Belarus (Brest?). But all this is just planned and honestly said I had not much time for it so far as I also book our March 2008 South European tour now and work on compilation LP of bands from our Brno hometown (with SEE YOU IN HELL, MAD PIGS, RISPOSTA, ZEMEZLUC, LOUDEST SILENCE NEVER HEARD, FESTA DESPERATO, MAC GYVER, PRIPYAT, REAKCE NA ZMENU, AGE OF DEATH, EVIDENCE SMRTI and CORE BASTARDS) - out hopefully in summer 2008 too!

 

By the way, thanx a lot, Alex, for interview and for endless support, also thanx and greeting to other friends from Belarus, especially to Green and Sanja! I love Belarus hardcore/punk / MANDRAZH, DEVIATION, LAMANT, BRUD-KROU... killer bands! I just wish to all active people in Belarus D.I.Y. scene lots of energy and dedication, it is much more difficult to do the same things we do here in your country.

To contact SEE YOU IN HELL check out www.seeyouinhell.cz or www.myspace.com/seeyouinhellthrash