Привет!
Представляем англоязычное интервью Диссектор для шведского блога Робекс Лундгрен www.ghgumman.blogg.se
1.Have any of you played in other bands?
– Before creating of Dissector in 1992 no one of us has played in other bands. After 1995 our drummer Andrey “Circle” played in one local band in Vladimir-City before reunion of Dissector in 2008. Guitarist Yan had/has his project The Lust and also played in Russian metal-bands Inside, Tartharia, Satanation in Saint-Petersburg. He was also a part of synth-pop duet Green Brothers.
2.How is it that you started playing music?
– I was interested in music since my childhood but didn’t play any instruments till 1991. Then I started to play acoustic guitar and to compose my first primitive songs and lyrics. Our drummer Andrey was my neighbor, so step by step we began to play together and to try to do first demo-recordings. In 92 after playing several months with female bass-player Ksenia, we completed our first active line-up with bass player Oleg and singer Vladimir.
3.What are your names? / Who plays what? / How old are you?
– Now we have three core members in Dissector. Oleg (42) plays bass-guitar, Andrey(40) plays drums, Yan(42) plays guitar and sings.
4.Have you had other previous members?
– Yeah, in our first active line up called Distimiya (92-93) we had another singer Vladimir Yarkeev. After some conflicts we have gone separate ways. We had also the second guitarist Lex Bachanov in 93-94, who is living in Ukraine now.
5.Did you make music even when you were young?
– No, I personally played only on my mother’s nerves when I was young. But I liked to listen to the fast classical music when I was a kid. And then, in the school I become a fan of AC/DC.
6.Where are you from?
– We are from Magadan, a small city in Far North of Russia.
7.What year did the band form?
– Autumn 1992
8.What's your style of genre?
– Well, I think we use different metal/rock elements in our songs and try to use lots of melodies and easy song structures. Let it be melo-death with power-metal influences.
9.What inspires you?
– There are many things to inspire me by composing music and lyric. Most of the time it’s something negative - social or very personal disasters or fears. Nothing new about it.
10.How often and where do you rehearse?
– Well, Dissector is the studio band, all members live in different cities. We don’t play concerts, so we don’t rehearsal together. We meet together sometimes before recordings, but most of all we just hang up together from time to time on concerts or by visiting each other.
11.How have you developed since you started with the music?
– As a band we developed every time we recorded demo or album. It doesn’t mean that we become more progressive or brutal. We just tried to combine melody, some spontaneous ideas and metal elements which we were grown up with.
12.Do you have other interests of work outside the band?
– As for me, I haven’t other interests or passiones outside the music, but, maybe traveling. Well, and my job, of cause, costs a lot of time and energy.
13.Are you looking for a booking agency, and what are your thoughts around that?
– So far we aren’t live band (anymore), we don’t need it.
14.Are you looking for a label, and what are your thoughts around that?
– I have personally some experience with labels playing in other bands. And I have to say most of them are not positive at all. Well, every band from underground has his negative experiences in his career and his unique way to develop. So it’s quite possible that some bands have good arrangements with labels. Music industry goes through big changes; every year brings something new, but nothing better for musicians. Too much dishonest business and less good music nowadays. Dissector was and stays so far independent, but if we find a good or at least fair deal, we will use this opportunity to have support by label and someone who maybe helps us to spread the words about our music.
15.What made you decide to make this music?
– Have no idea. It seems like music doesn’t ask to be preferred. It’s like Black mark – you get it and have to go with it through your life. In the school I become a fan of AC/DC and listened to many classical heavy-metal bands, including Judas Priest, WASP, Accept, Manowar, Iron Maiden, Saxon and many others. But at the same time I listened to European pop music too. Actually I can compose different music, ballads, instrumentals, acoustic etc. I prefer hi-energetic side of metal and minor side of real good pop. Dissector tries to combine it in its music obviously.
16.What are your songs about?
– We never had special concepts in our albums or one customary theme in our songs. But we don’t write happy songs with messages full of hope. There are enough artists in other music genres to do it. But I can say that all our lyric is less or more about dark or bizarre sides of our life, about trying to find your own way or identity, or about trying to leave this fuckin planet.
17.Who does the composing and writes the lyrics?
– I compose the music, and then we arrange it together with the band, at home or during studio-time. Everyone has his own personal input. If someone brings his idea for a song – no problem with it. Musically I’m free for ideas, riffs, melodies etc. Composing is for me the easiest thing in the whole process, one or two songs in one day are also no problem, but no one needs so much stuff. We have a different situation with lyrics these days. Earlier I composed most of lyrics for Dissector and The Lust by myself and used from time to time lyrics written by my countryman, course mate and old fan of Dissector Alex Rekunov. Since last half on 2000-s we use largely lyric by different authors, lots of texts are written by singer of Grenouer Andrey “Ind” Merzlyakov. On the new material of Dissector we have another author – stunning creative metalhead and friend Randy Gerritse.
18.Do you start with the music or the lyrics?
– Most of the time I start with music and very seldom with vocal-line. This situation is the result of me composing music much faster and more than lyric. Only if I have a guest text or even just chorus-lines in my hands during composing, it can be something on lyric basis.
19.Do you compose in a certain environment?
– Well, nothing special, I think. First of all I need a guitar, some free time, free mind and not hasty atmosphere.
20.Have you done any covers live?
– In the first decade of Dissector’s history we played some covers live. As far as I remember, we played songs by Rage, Megadeth, REM and Crush Test Dummies.
21.What language do you sing in?
– Now we sing primary in English, but in first decade of Dissector’s history we had also recorded demo-material with lyric in Russian and German. Music was also kinda experimental in this connection too, either acoustic semi-ballads or metal-punk stuff. Actually we have nothing against experimenting in music these days, but now prefer to sing only in English.
22.Do you always play the same songs live, or do you vary?
– No, we tried always to have new songs in our set-lists. Well, we never played tourneys, just local clubs, so we could try all the time something new.
23.What was your first gig like?
– Of course I remember my first concert in events hall of local medical college in autumn 1992, in front of 30-40 students and a couple of friends. We have played only seven songs, one of them without bass guitar. I think we had usual feelings for the first concert – excitement, nervousness, a little bit fear and delight.
24.What was your latest gig?
– Last time I ever played live was 2004 or 2005. I played guitar in band called Tartharia. Frankly speaking I don’t remember much about it… It was in Saint-Petersburg for sure, as far as I remember in club “Arctica” (RIP) as support for Dark Funeral.
25.Have you had to cancel a gig?
– Never in my live career. Sick, drunk or broken – no matter, but the stage was always the sacred place.
26.Where do you plan to gig the coming year?
– No, we don’t have any plans for live activities.
27.When did you start to sell merchandise, and what do you have for sale?
– We didn’t have much opportunity to make any kind of merchandise earlier, first of all because of the fact that Dissector existed in his first decade in relatively small and isolated city. After that follows the new and hard period of new beginning. So we were glad to have at least something recorded in good quality. These days every underground band or small label is able to make its own merchandise, so we too from time to time. Now we have different t-shirts, cups, mouse pads, picks, stickers and magnets. We have other ideas for next releases, but time will tell.
28.Where can people buy your merchandise?
– We sell all our CD’s and merchandise (T-shirts, cups, souvenirs) directly and send all orders only by ourselves. In our case it means maximum trust and liability. You can use for orders our e-mail dissectorband@gmail.com
29.What do you think about people downloading music instead of buying records now a days?
– That depends on what people do with this downloads. If they do it to get acquainted with new material or band, and then finally to buy the CD, digital album or merch, or to visit a concert, so far I think it’s OK. But in countries where never existed big modern and international music culture (Russia, China, Ukraine and many others), never was kind of social discipline, responsibility and reverence for hard musician’s work, and where piracy prospers (for a number of reasons), people won’t buy nothing if the have unlimited recourses to take it for free. Under the conditions of globalization, this situation has a sizable and fatal effect on music market in every country and on music industry in the whole world. But its only one part of the problem. Another part is the fact that now we have already generations of young people thinking, that the intellectual property they have in Internet is for free. Who creates this property and how he pays his bills – we don’t know and don’t give a fuck.
30.How do you think the music industry have changed because of this?
– Changes in music industry are disastrous for musicians and fair music business first of all. Well nothing is forever, you know. I don’t try to say that changing is a bad thing. But in this case the changing has nothing to do with natural development. It’s just a survival in an age of robbery and rapid mutation of human consciousness, adjustment to non-natural conditions. It won’t bring much and better music in the future. Music is not the point in this situation. Well music will exist for sure, there will be unique and interesting projects, but either no one will care or this music will stay unheard.
31.What do you think of my work?
– I greet that you support underground musicians and less known projects. You have some interesting interviews in your blog!
32.How do you think and know that this interview will help you in the music business?
– It’s hard to appraise, sometimes people have no time to put up for a minute and to think about things they really need or just to read something. But every interview or review can invite the attention to your band, and you never know who and where will be this person who has read this interview. Who knows, maybe it will help! Ok we have to have thousands of such publications to be noticed, but sooner or later it happens if you have balls to accept all sacrifices you do and have a will not to drop music or other desire.
33.Do you have any role models or idols?
– It was way possible in our childhoods. But now I don’t think so. We just have some bands and personalities which play cool music and do interesting things, and this music and deeds feed us with inspiration and wish to go on.
34.Is it easier to find inspiration from older bands, or bands that are more active today?
– I can say only for myself – I don’t like old school sound, so I find more inspiration in old bands playing with modern sound now. They still keep the essence of their classical stuff, heavy, doom or thrash-metal, doesn’t matter, and at the same time some of them combine it very effective with elements from other styles and transform their music into something very actual and inspiring for me. Carcass, Paradise Lost, Katatonia or Haunted, for example.
35.What have been your biggest obstacles?
– I have many of them, sure for some people I’m a monster. I’m tenacious, pessimistic, egoistic, and useless for family life person with wrong priorities, which can’t find his place in the life. With music I try to fill all damned holes in my soul.
36.What advice would you give other bands or artists?
– If you have started - keep moving. If you are not kinda Metallica, Ozzy or Madonna, don’t think that this shitty world will be shifting around you.
37.Do you have any new material?
– This year we have released two albums – “Grey Anguish” and ”Pride And Hate”, which have got good reviews, what we a happy about. We still have some unreleased songs from last studio sessions. But we have again lots of new material and never had problem with it. Problem is to records such a big amount of music in a proper and best possible way with our private budgets. Because of our jobs, ways of life, living in different cities and trying to cooperate during recording process with old friends, creating a new album or even a couple of songs needs not only money but also a very good organization of transfer and terms.
38.What are your web sites?
– Now we have an old website www.dissector.ru which we try to reorganize. We have also official blog (http://dissector-stillalive.blogspot.nl/) and some other recourses in Russian social webs Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki, but the most activity and freshest news we have in Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Dissector-107484652627160/
39.How can people reach you?
– We are free to all possible contacts and collaborations. People can use our E-mail dissectorband@gmail.com or drop us a line on Facebook, Vkontakte or other web-platforms, where we are presented.
40.What are your plans for the future?
– As I said earlier, we have lots of new material, and I go on with new demos. Now we work with three albums simultaneously. First in the row is the new album of Dissector. We hope to get it ready in spring 2016, so our future plans are aligned with promo activities. We look forward for a new stuff, future collaborations and support by Metalheads Forever community (https://www.facebook.com/groups/MetalOnLoud/) – our friends and biggest supporter. This autumn we have composed a hymn for MHF – “Metal On Loud” and hope to carry this friendship.
41.Do you have something to add?
– Keep the soul fire burning. Be honest with you and your relatives. You never know what kind of surprises this life prepares for you right now, and who of your nearest will be most important one in your life.
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