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Interview with Ben and Tim
of The Rotted
April 25th 2009 by Chris Davison - Photos by Strawb |
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Arguably the most exciting and vital extreme
metal act to have emerged in Britain in the last couple of years,
The Rotted played an outstanding set at Hammerfest. I spoke to Ben
and Tim about life in the recession, keeping it real and the
prospect of true rural metal.
So I'm here with Tim (guitars) and Ben (vocals) from the Rotted.
Chaps, you had a storming gig last night, how do you think it went ?
Ben: I ....feel...exhausted! It was fun though. The crowd was
wicked, man. I love playing to enthusiastic people like that.
It's quite extraordinary really that for such
an extreme band, you can play to such a packed room like that. How
is it that you're able to appeal to so many fans, do you think?
B: Well, I think a lot of extreme bands are about being technical or
just playing as many notes as possible, that's not what we're about.
We play verse, chorus, verse, and we haven't lost that. It's the
rock n' roll aspect of it.
Tim: We play intro, verse, chorus, mid-section, verse, chorus,
guitar solo, and that's how we write our songs. It's a formula that
started in the sixties, and it works, so why fuck with it? |
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So you've had about six months since the album
(Get Dead or Die Tryin') came out?
T: Actually...I think it came out about nine months ago, maybe
longer, coming up to a year?
All the reviews were pretty positive?
B: Yeah, all the reviews have been pretty good. I haven't seen any
bad reviews.
T: No, not at all.
B: I mean, we haven't even seen any mediocre reviews. It's all been
good.
T: Yeah, and we've had more press in the last six months than we had
in the last six years.
Yeah, it seems that since the Rotted formed
that things have gone ballistic for you ? |
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B: Yeah, that's it man. People are taking an interest. I think
people are getting it now. I mean, when we started, everyone thought
that we were still Gorerotted. Especially around the time just
before the album, but now what people are realising is that this a
different band. We have different ideas. Different writers.
T: And we were talking about as well, is that we're a band for the
times. When we were with Gorerotted, all the gore and stuff, that
was cool, but that was the nineties, you know? Death metal was
coming back. The shit that's happening in this country at the
minute, the shit that's happening in this world, that's all
reflected in our album. It's more...like, we're all about what's
happening now. We're more relevant than we ever have been before.
This seems like a really good time for a band like The Rotted.
Your music sounds really "real", everything that you talk about in
your songs has a very realistic vibe, and at the minute things are
shit everywhere. Perhaps that's why it's really hitting it big, what
do you think?
B: Yeah, definitely. We see what's going on in the world, and we
talk about what we see. Don't let it drag you down, you know, just
get on with things.
T: We were just chatting to someone else about it, and the band that
we find we have the most in common with is The Specials. People come
up and they say, "how the hell do they think they've got anything in
common with The Specials"? You look at the lyrics that we have come
up with, and the lyrics that they came up with, and it's either
commentary about something shit, or it's pure escapism, with
probably a funny story told in them. Go and buy a Specials album and
read the lyrics. Commentary, funny story, commentary, funny story.
They're probably the band that we are most similar to, lyrically,
and again, when they came out it was a very similar environment and
a very similar time to now, with unemployment and protesting and
shit like that. |
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How different is it, given the different band
histories of the
other band members (Screamin' Daemon, Cradle of Filth, etc) writing
for The Rotted to how it was with Gorerotted ?
B: There's no formula. Write a riff, Nate plays drums to it, I'll
sing something...and it just comes together like that. We have no
preconceived ideas before we go into it. That's all we ever did, and
that's what we do now.
How does that work as a band, with some of you being based in
Norfolk and some of you in London ?
B: They all live in Norfolk, and I live in West Somerset now.
T: Now he lives on the other fucking side of the country! But we all
come from London. We all just moved out. None of us work or
anything, so it's like we can live in London and live in abject
poverty, or we can live in Norfolk and Somerset and live in mild
poverty!
A more comfortable kind of poverty?
B: (laughs) Yeah, it's like when you wake up in the morning you can
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out of your window, and you can see the fields out the back, and
fields and cows out the front. Or, where I used to live, I could
look out and see someone getting stabbed.
T: ...Yeah, and London is shit anyway. There was a lot of shit going
on there. It was making me fucking miserable, it didn't make me a
very nice person.
So can we look forward to some songs about nice country life then?
T: Yeah, except I don't go anywhere and there's nothing to do
anyway!
B: Yeah, but the thing is that I live in the countryside now, but I
feel almost more now like I'm on the outside looking in. Everytime I
log into my Yahoo account, it's like, "BUDGET PROBLEMS / IMMIGRANTS
/ PAEDOPHILES". It's bollocks. Just shut up!
T: Every day when I checked into my email account fucking Jade Goody
was there. Like, "oh, I'm dying".
B: Yeah, and it was like, just deal with it.
What are your plans for the future, guys?
T: Yeah, we're writing. Writing for the new album. We're doing a
video next week, for "Nothing but a nosebleed". We're going to do
another video as well. We've got a couple of songs, "Nothing but a
nosebleed" and "Return to Insolence" which sum up The Rotted. You
could probably say that those two songs showcase their most extreme
side and their most bouncy, groovy side. We've got a couple of
videos , but to be honest we are primarily a live band. We're not a
band that's reliant on the internet, we're a band that likes
interacting with people, you know going to play shows and
interacting with people. We like doing things like this, and that's
the way it works and that's the kind of people that we are. |
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A lot of our American readers are dying to know when you're going
to play in America?
B: We went once with Gorerotted and it isn't a question of not
wanting to go, it's a question of someone asking to go and play with
"this band", and then we'd be like, "great, cheers!"
T: It's a matter of getting the fucking message across, because
there's such a saturation of bands, and when we first came out as
The Rotted, everyone just thought that it was just going to be
another band like the hundreds or probably thousands that there
already are, so why are they going to pay for us to come across when
they've got a dense saturation of their own? Now people are getting
the message that, "no actually, these guys are different. They're
not just another band like all the rest".
It seems to me that Gorerotted - "A New Dawn for the Dead" was a
transitional album between Gorerotted to The Rotted. Any thoughts on
that?
B: Yeah, a bit. Most of that was down to different writers, really.
We also really went to different places in our lives. The first
couple of Gorerotted albums came out when we were in our late teens
and early twenties, but now we're all in our late twenties and early
thirties.
T: Personally, recording "A New Dawn for the Dead" was a fucking
depressing time.
B: It was, yeah.
T: There was a lot of really horrible shit going down, with everyone,
and it affected the album. It wasn't so angry, it was a bit more...
B: Melancholic
T: Melancholic, yeah, and I don't think there is a transition
between us because I think that The Rotted are so different. It's
got such a different vibe to it, it's more angry it's...well, people
talk about controlled anger, but I don't think there's any just
thing. You're either just angry or you're not! If you're angry about
something, just kick the fuck out of it, and that's The Rotted!
www.myspace.com/therotted |
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