Aristocracy arrives in its Eleventh Interview with the Swedish Death Metal Band RazorRape. The band does a highly intense work and full of cruelty. However, always putting excellence as the north. This time, they show us their fifth album titled as Fucked Beyond Recognition.The band have this formation:Martin Schönherr on Drums & Vocals,LG on Vocals,Claes Holm on Guitar and Dan Widing on Bass.All band answer our questions.Let´s go to the interview in all our emotions.
A1:Talking about the composition work in Fucked Beyond Recognition?
RazorRape:We spent 1 ½ year writing the new album and we did a pre-production to get the songs as perfect as possible.It was definitely no rush and since Claes Holm was new guitar player in the band we had to challenge ourselves and take the time to find the right song structures and not write anything that would change the sound too much. It was also new territory for Claes so it was important to brainstorm together and let him get the right feeling to create new music.I am very happy that Claes joined the band because he has brought so much new ideas and sick guitar shredding on the new album.
A2:What kind of humour band doing in this new album?
RazorRape:On this album,we have put the humour away for a bit,because we wanted to focus on writing the most brutal album the band has done and we think we have accomplished that!
A3:How the band put gore in your sound?
RazorRape:Since we like gore and death metal it is an important ingredient in our sound and,I am a very big fan of horror and splatter movies so it came very natural when the band was formed. And I think when you play gore grind / death metal with gory artwork it should give you the same hint when you listen to the music.You know like guttural vocals, pig squeals and other sick sounds.
A4:When band see the band is most strong than one-piece project?
RazorRape:The band started as a one man project,but since I’m a drummer and vocalist and cannot play guitar, I needed a guitar player. All our albums has good guitar players and everyone of them has their own unique style,but still the RazorRape trademark sound. With Claes Holm on the new album is a big upgrade or style wise and he is in my opinion a guy that can play everything. Just give him a song and BAM, he nails it! He is also one of the best guitar player the band has had.Now, Claes will anwer this question about how he got in the band.Claes Holm:In 2018, Martin asked me if I was interested in playing bass with him and David,the previous guitar player in RazorRape for some festival gigs in the summer and that the door stood open if I had the ambition and wanted to be a member of the band.I said I'll do the summer with them and if you and David still want me in RazorRape after, then we can talk about it. But this was an absolut fucking no brainer for me for many good reasons.First. Martin and David are just straight up fun dudes, very chill to be around, drink beer and listen to death metal. Second,I also had nothing planned for the summer since me and my ex-girlfriend at the time had just broken up, so this opportunity saved me that summer.
That summer in 2018 we were opening up the main stage on the last day at Party San Open air in Germany. Needless to say that summer was a fucking blast and we hade alot of fun together. Made some really good memories. Some time after that David decided to leave the band to make time for other projects that he wanted to proceed like starting his own company www.SOUNDTORNADO.com that mixed and mastered the new record by the way.Martin asked me if I wanted to play guitar and write a record with him. I said yes,but I want us to do it our way even though it may sound a bit different.Martin was on the same page and he sent me some drum ideas and I recorded some guitars on it. The first “test song” we wrote was Fucked Beyond Recognition.We both thought the sound was cool and the record is named after that song.We didn’t want the new album to sound like the old ones. The old stuff is more gore grind and has a certain type of humor to it which we have kept, but in a darker way. The humor is simply this: Imagine you and your friends back in the day like 17 years old drinking some stolen beer and just topping each other off to how your new song is gonna sound like.
Me and Martin drank beer and tried not to be too serious about the stuff that we wrote together. We had friends over too that got to put some ideas in as well along with some pig squealing and improvisation. I have to say that Martin is the one that kept this record together in many ways and pulled me back when drifting too far from the shore at times and I told him to do so too,because I have never written any goregrind prior to this record so this was a new thing to me.I am really happy and surprised that the record got some good reviews, it's cool that someone even bothers to listen to it honestly. Now we have a full lineup and are putting in the work in the rehearsal place in Malmö to play these new and good old songs for people, probably in a not too distant future as it seems things have opened up after the pandemic.
A5:Some literature or film inspire the band?
RazorRape:Old school horror movies and serial killers is a big inspiration since the band was formed.
A6:Why does the band have this name?
RazorRape:That is a question we get all the time. Well,when the band was started we just wanted to have a sick and really disturbed name. We were young in our early 20’s and I never thought that this band will be active 20 years later and it would be a mistake to change name now because we have our fanbase and so on. But if I could go back in time I would have considered a better name.RazorRape is simply two words put together to sound brutal,we don’t want people to get raped by razors.
A7:What´s the idea behind artwork´s album?
RazorRape:That is an interesting question, because many people thinks that we are a porngrind band, and that our band name and artwork are female sexistic.If you look at all of our records there is actually a similar theme/red thread. We are not political but we take standpoint against some topics in society like violence against children/women. A couple of our albums shows that. For example Orgy In Guts artwork was a statement regarding all sexual crimes against children within the Vatican/catholic church. Our artworks are gory, but with a twist! Not just gory for the sake of it.
A8:How is RazorRape different from your previous bands?
RazorRape:RazorRape is the sickest and most brutal of all our other bands.
A9:What´s bands influence ours?
RazorRape:Mostly old school death metal,but also newer stuff.Some of them are Dying fetus, Cannibal Corpse, Suffocation, Jig-Ai, Regurgitate.
A10:Is men an animal that carries the corpse on his back all the time?
RazorRape:Yes,of corpse!
A11:How band arrive to Morbid Generation Records?
RazorRape:We are good friends with Frank from Morbid Generation Records,so when we decided to search for a new label I asked Frank if he was interested and he was very positive to work with us. We also know that Morbid Generation has a good reputation!
A12:Is the songs have sex conotation?
RazorRape:We don’t have lyrics, every song is just the music with an extreme title.
A13:Is this album conceptual?Yes or no and why?
RazorRape:Not really! When,we wrote the new album we just wanted to make a brutal fucking gory album.
A14:Is it better to think of the human being as agony than an animal for health?
RazorRape:Hum,I am not not sure what I should answer on this question.Maybe both!
A15:The band feel differences between Stripped To Kill and now in Fucked Beyond Recognition?
RazorRape:It is a big difference.The previous album “Stripped To Kill” was very much improvised, and we recorded it without any effects, like triggers and so on. We wanted to try something “out of the box and keep it simple. I am proud of the songs on “Stripped to Kill” but now when I look back I wished we have put more time into the production, because the sound is very noisy and the drums are too weak.But,that’s how it is and that’s why we wanted the new album to have a really crisp and punching production and I guess we succeeded with that.
A16:How the band put grind in your sound?
RazorRape:Well, since we are a death / grind band it is one of the most important ingredients.
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