Interview with Christophe and Fred
When I open the CD the first thing that got my attention was the song titles which is an acronym of the lyrics. That’s quite radical. How did you come up with that idea?
Christophe: I don't really remember, but as I was working for my exam for being french teacher, we had to work on this kind of thing. Then I thought that it would be a very good idea to put this in the lyrics. I try to do always better. But I must say that's quite difficult, but also very interesting to do. It completely changes the way you work on your lyrics, and makes it so much interesting.
You can also see that all text ends with the word "ashes" (or "cendres", which means ashes in french) and you also have 2 songs titled one ASHES and the other CENDRES. And it was also logic, because of the meaning of this album, the theme being death, all is reduced to ashes again. But on the last track from the CD "Faster Than Thoughts", you can see that this title ends saying that we'll rise from our ashes, to make a transition with the next and last album Eternal Life, because it is the next step after death.
Each album cover are carefully crafted with as much pages that it could allow, this must cost extra and knowing that you guys are indie, it’s really cool.
Fred: Yes, you’re pointing two important things for us. First of all the fact that we’re independent. Yes, we’re a self produced band since the beginning. We never signed to any label. It may seem very strange, but that’s the best way we found to overhead everything we do and stay totally free of everything. The dark side of that attitude is the work we have to do. No one is here to help us in any part, but it’s ok. We work hard and don’t have to say thank you or fuck off to anybody, everything we go, we had it because of a hard work.
Now, second thing, concerning the album booklets : We bring high the flag of self production and being an underground band but in the same time we try to propose the highest quality we can.
It’s not easy when you’re doing everything by yourself, especially concerning the financial aspect. But as you noticed it, from album to album we put more and more. First booklet, the "Internal Life"’s one, was 8 pages, with black and white printing inside. We couldn’t afford something more expensive.
Years passed by, things changed, we got a bigger budget for the “Expulsed” album, and so you see what we did for this one. In the same way, Christophe worked more on his lyrics, and we also needed more space to print them ah, ah!
What does the merging of the four elements of nature inside the tray card signifies?
Fred: Hard question, because I have to explain several things before answering… You know we’re building a 7 album concept through our albums, we call it our heptalogy. So, name of the albums are:
Internal Life
Ex-Pulsion
Growth
Life
The Fifth Season
Expulsed
Eternal Life
So, you can see that some words are coming several times, “life” is in the first, middle and last. Same for the second and 6th album, names are very similar. So, in the same way that album titles are connected, the booklet artworks are connected too.
In the “Ex-Pulsion” booklet you could already find those elements, one for each of us. The meaning of that is that the combination of us four, and this combination only can create the INHUMATE entity’s which life is developed through the concept.
I don’t know if this is very clear and understandable. Not easy to explain that in English hehe.
One more album and the band will be history. It’s quite depressing knowing that a good band like Inhumate will no longer exist after one more album.
Fred: Maybe, maybe… but we think things will be even better if we’re able to stop after the heptalogy.
When we were talking about a 7 album concept 15 years ago, people were laughing. Now nobody laughs anymore.
I think we’re the first band able to put up such a thing. And everything makes sense as long as it is seriously done.
Experimentation has been part of Inhumate’s repertoire from album to album like the re-mix of It’s Back, Cendres, Grind To The Core, Grindub. Is it a traditional thing to do something different in each album that sort of shy away from straight-forward grind?
Fred: Hum, no. We don’t want to have something particular on each albums. For us "It’s Back" and "Grind to the Core" are “normal” tracks, we used to play the second on stage for more than a decade and are still playing the first one.
Grindub is different, it was a project of a friend of Christophe that mixed some INHUMATE sound. I don’t like it, but why not. Nowadays, I think we shouldn’t add such a track on an INHUMATE album.
About Cendres, it’s particular. We were thinking of writing a slow track for years. But we wanted something different that the usual doom / sludge parts grind bands play. "It’s Back" was a step to that slow track, "Cendres" is the endpoint of it.
The serial track “I Want To Kill...” was surprisingly missing in the new album. What happened?
Fred: Ah, ah! There are 2 versions of this track on “Internal Life” and none on “Ex-Pulsion”. So, there is no version of it on “Expulsed”, but there will be 2 versions on "Eternal Life" The concept is never far !
You normally use studio-recorded spoken words for intros but in Freaks you sampled from a movie.
Christophe: True. As the lyrics were about this movie, Freaks from Ted Browning (1932) and also a little about Elephant Man from Lynch. I thought it was interesting to use a sample this time.
I love this idea : "Offend one, and you offend them all", which is a little as we are in the UG. At least, it is the way we like to imagine it, even if it's not completely true, we often have this feeling or brotherhood and real friendship.
You’ve been using the same studio and the same guy at the helm for every record. Is it merely a matter of convenience or friendship or there is some other reason behind it?
Fred: Yes, it’s a kind of friendship. We recorded the first demo in 1993 with Didier, he was just beginning as we were. Then he became slowly a good friend of us and now I can say that he is like INHUMATE 5th member (in the dark). He is very well known in our local rock and roll scene, his studio is the biggest of the area and working with him is always a pleasure for us.
Other interesting thing is that he is not a grind head, not even a metalhead, so he brings us something different with the sound. We’re not sounding like all grind bands do, but we always had a good sound and that’s fine I think.
Last thing, INHUMATE is an old band also because we didn’t have many line up changes, this regularity is also a proof of our integrity.
And speaking of studio, the production of Expulsed is so far the cleanest without losing the rawness of all the instruments.
Fred: Sure, we always had a better sound on each album comparing to the previous one, and especially on this one. Maybe is it due to way of recording and also the long time spent in studio, we stayed there almost one year!
Christophe, you have never been more insane with your vocals. Are you as wild in the studio as you are on stage? How do you record those vocals at the confines of a studio booth?
Christophe: Thanks ;) About the way I'm in studio, of course, I'm not like on stage, I don't jump around everywhere eh eh, but of course, when it comes to record the vocals, I try to be at 100%, even a little more if I can. Our quest is to explore bestiality in music, and I do it in my domain : vocals. I love it, I love to explore new sounds that I can make and I want it also on stage and on CD, that's why I don't use effects.
About the recording itself, we use for the high pitched vocals a microphone on a stand, like everybody I guess. For the growls, I use my old amp (a 150w PEAVEY for keyboards) that I used in rehearsal at a time and my old Shure SM58, and we record the sound at the exit of the amp. For the very low growls, it is the same, but the mic that Didier, the sound engineer, use in front of the amp is an old mic used at the BBC, as he told me. It better catches the low frequencies it seems.
Christophe, you write the lyrics. Do you have complete control of what you write or do the rest of the band chips in ideas too?
Christophe: As for everything, everybody can tell if he has an idea or if likes something or not. But usually I bring the ideas and write the song after, especially because it is very difficult for me to put my patterns and lyrics from someone else together.
As I try to follow as precisely as possible the patterns I find first for the lyrics, it is better than I work alone, but Damien or Fred, even Yannick once and David, gave me ideas or even lyrics. Sometimes, I changed and adapt them, sometimes, I just kept the idea, and sometimes, I haven't used them. But we always discuss about them, when I have an idea.
It is important for me that they like the lyrics. Usually, many people don't give a fuck about them, so I find important that my mates like them.
And I'm very glad that you ask so many questions about them!
Is there a conscious effort to incorporate the concept to the songs and lyrics as much as possible?
Christophe: Yes, when it's possible. Usually, we finish a song and I just put some patterns of vocals on it, without words, just trying to find which kind of voice I can use, and find some interesting sounds or patterns on it. Then I can have an idea about the title, then I make lyrics using this theme. But it can also completely change. The track "Voices" for example, was about another completely different subject, and the new one is really better now.
I also like to wait until we have many tracks to do, to have a choice and to make echoes between my lyrics. I like this idea of a kind of web, but I know that the others are always angry because we stay a long time without a title for the tracks ah ah! But it's the way I work, so they have to accept it.
But I think that they like my lyrics at the end, and that's the most important, isn't it? Eh eh!
It is often said that the afterlife is a new beginning. Perhaps this could be what the looming demise of Inhumate signifies.
Fred: Yes, maybe… that could be a possibility… but life will be eternal, so no need to pull up something new.
The 7 steps of the eternal life will be engraved for eternity! And to be honest, we claimed so hard that we will stop after the 7th album, that it should sound strange if we won’t do it. But we didn’t give any date, so we can stop when we want.
The only sure thing is that we won’t hit the studio after the 7th album. The concept will be over no need to record any new stuff, in the name of INHUMATE after that.
Personally, what’s your view about death and the afterlife?
Fred: I think we’re meat and just meat. Your consciousness, thoughts, mind is just the result of chemical action. I don’t believe in anything after death. A dead person is nothing left, nor here, neither anywhere else. But art is eternal!
“Time has no other function than to burn. It burns without ash.” How does this quote fit in to the bands’ concept?
Christophe: Well I found this quote, from Elsa Triolet, and I find it interesting because it is exactly what is happening to the band (and beside for everyone in this world at least), that time goes by, and brings us slowly to our end. It is the idea of fatality, and the fight that we try to have against it. And I liked that it ends with the word "ashes", like all my other lyrics, and that it was about Time, which is the main theme of our concept.
I hope it is clear enough ah ah!
How do you see the scene evolve over the years?
Fred: I think I could give you a different answer everyday… sometimes I find interesting thing in it, sometimes I don’t. I can’t say it was better before because things are changing and I also have to change my mind.
When I started in the Underground, all exchanges were done by snail mail. I was receiving 5 to 10 letters a day, from all over the world. I was spending hours to answer them. And it was fun to spread flyers, read them, searching for the good contact for promotion or a new band to discover. But in the same time it was expensive as fuck!
Nowadays things are immediate, in one click on Fuckbook you get connected with anyone in any part of the world. You got your answers in 2 seconds and don’t have to investigate to find music, there is some everywhere… And everything’s almost free!
But... But… I can’t fight against a small voice into my head that tells me that if everything’s seems easier nowadays, quality is less. Too many bands, too many people connected for the best or the worst…
Before thing were surely harder and only the strong were able to survive, nowadays, things seems so easy that only the strong is interesting. But it belongs to every underground maniac to make a difference between bullshit, commercial or unserious music and the rest !
What are the things that you missed from the scene back then?
Fred: Without hesitating the need to investigate to discover new bands. I had a real pleasure to buy, trade tapes in order to find an unknown band that was interesting.
I never followed what labels was telling as being the best stuff to listen to. I always wanted to make my own choice. And nowadays, there are too many bands and it’s almost impossible to find something new in this crowd…
Lately many grindcore bands have been incorporating different influence into their music and sludge is probably the most popular. What’s your opinion on album with fifteen 60 –second track and one ten minute sludge track on an album?
Fred: I don’t like sludge or doom. Grindcore is fast music, nothing else. Of course you can add here or there something different tempo, but I don’t understand the similar feeling some people find between sludge or grind core ???
For me music is sickness and there no sickness in slow shits. Slow playing is for drug to the eyes smoking hippies, not for me !
Do you have certain criteria when trading with labels? Will you trade with “bigger” underground labels?
Fred: We were trading our albums with everybody until the 5th one. But for “Expulsed” we don’t trade it anymore. The CD market seems to be over, it’s hard to sell CD. So, now we do just work through wholesales and no matter if we don’t spread many albums. In any case, we will have our money back with the merchandising as we play enough gigs to sell it. So, it may looks like crazy, but we’re selling much less album than 10 years back…
I myself have been trying to influence my kids to get into metal and grindcore but of course I cannot control them with what they want musically. What about you how do you deal with your family when it comes to listening to this music?
Fred: My wife is absolutely not into metal. But as I was a metalhead and playing in INHUMATE before I met her, she couldn’t change anything for me and I couldn’t change anything for her. But the most important thing is that she accepts that metal is a part of my life and that I cannot live without it.
Concerning my children, I’m in the same case as you. They all 3 grew up listening to metal and grind core, no one of them seems to like it. And it’s absolutely no problem for me. I’m enough open minded to accept their choices in musical tastes and future way of life.
Fred: To be honest it’s a long time since a found a really interesting band. Last one was EPICRISE from Ukraine, especially the split album they did with NEUROPATHIA. Nowadays there are too many bands as I told it before… And I think I’m also too old to follow the new grind fashion. I’m really not into power violence and such things. I don’t like all those high pitched voices, seems they got their balls crushed all the time ! This is hysterical music, it’s not brutal anymore…
Any possibility for Expulsed to be on vinyl too?
Fred: Yes sure ! We’re working on it now. I think you can expect it for the beginning of 2014.
After the release of The Fifth Season you stopped doing splits, why?
Fred: To be exact, we never did any full length split. Usually if a band proposes us to release a split, we don’t say no, but propose only live tracks. We keep our studio tracks for our own full lengths albums. The only exception to this was the split EP with DEPRESSION. We did it because the tracks were recorded with David and when the label asked us, David had left the band. So, we accepted to use those tracks: But it’s really an exception, and that should never happen again.
Is there any possibility of compiling all your previous split tracks, demo, and maybe even unreleased tracks in the near future?
Fred: Everything is possible, of course. If such a project should happen, I think we’d better make a special box with the seven albums and the 2 demos. But, nothing is possible before the last album is unleashed eh, eh…
Any idea as to what the final album would be? Have the band discussed about it?
Fred: Yes, some ideas about the artwork, but nothing definitive for the time. About music, we already started to write some stuff. Only thing I can tell you : it will be pure INHUMATE, nothing else !
INHUMATE!
