The wolfskin killers - Zombeast

This interview was made with Mario and Jared

When was zombeast formed?

- August of 2005

Your biggest influences?

- Samhain, Danzig, The Misfits (77-83), Son of Sam, AFI, anything really..
From goth shit to metal shit to punk rock shit.

Your song "wolfskin killer" is featured on the horrorhigh compilation,
that must have been a great break for you guys?

Jared: Yeah, It was pretty fucking awesome. We had only been a band for about 3 months when Horror High contacted us for the comp.
So it was pretty crazy to have all this intrest in the band this early and with only 4 songs on our myspace.

Mario: as jared said we weren't a band for that long,so to be asked to be on a comp was crazy to me.

And you actually signed a record deal with horrorhigh records, shed some light to the process.

Jared: Horror High wanted a unreleased track for the comp. So at that point we had just written 'Wolfskin Killer" and decided..
"hey fuck it lets give them that song". So we sent it to them and as soon as they got it we got e-mail from Horror High just saying
how fucking awesome they thought the song was and how they felt we had major potential.
Then they came out and saw us live and just thought the whole band was incredible live as well.
They felt Mario's voice really shined in the whole moment of being on stage and shit.

Mario: since they liked wolfskin killer we sent them a demo with more of our songs,they came to see us live and i guess
they liked what they saw and heard.

Zombeast is from Arizona, one of the greatest horrorpunk bands, CALABRESE also comes from the region, how is the scene in Arizona?

Jared: The scene is fucking great. Its really grown over the years. Calabrese are great friends of ours and we play together constantly.
However, the newest band from AZ thats making some noise is "Hour Of The Wolf". We actually all hope some day Zombeast, Calabrese,
and Hour Of The Wolf can hit the road for a small tour. We really feel we can bring some attention to Arizona.

Mario: it seems to be getting bigger,every show.especialy when there's several good bands to see.

You guys just played a show with Calabrese, the Limit Club and couple of more bands,
how did that go?

Jared: It was awesome.. The whole show turned out great. I've never seen so many people at that venue before.

Mario: it was a very good show,it's always great to play with calabrese.

Future plans with touring, Europe perhaps?

Jared: Well once the album drops in october via Horror High Records (www.horrorhigh.com)..
We plan on hitting the west coast and such. We will get everywhere.. Just going to take a little bit of time.

Mario: like jared said we are going to have to start small cause we still work for living,you know.
but eventualy we hope to be a touring band.

Now that you´re signed with Horrorhigh, when can we expect a debut album?

Around the end of october..

Following the previous questions, what can fans expect?

Jared: Well my opinion about it is.. Well its kinda all over the place in a good way.
I think with each song you can hear some of our different influences. I mean of course there will always be the underlining Danzig influence.
Thats a given. But some songs remind of Samhain, then AFI, and even some darker slower shit like Type O Negative.

Mario: lyrics so they can sing along.

As a big horror movie fan, I always ask about favourite horror movies and actors,
could you name couple of your favourites?

Jared: I'm real big on the Zombie flicks. Dead Alive and Dellamorte Dellamore will always hold place in my heart.

Mario: the beyond,basket case,the howling

I bet the future will be good for you guys, what do you expect from the future?

Jared: Touring touring touring. Crazy fucking shows and meeting our fans across the world.
Also, Just to grow as a band really. So far for the next album I have about 5 songs written and I can already see major growth.

Mario: more shows,hopefully touring soon.

Fangs for the inteview, the last words are yours!

Jared: Don't fart in the shower, it might possibly kill you.

http://www.myspace.com/zombeast

All text contained herein; © 2006-2007 Talesfromtheshadows. All Rights Reserved.

Zombeast album update!

1. Cthulhu
2. Witch
3. Life of Hell
4. That corpse won´t Die
5. Die Slow
6. Down in Flames
7. Flesh Eaters
8. In Nightmares
9. Black Death
10. Eternity
11. Wolfskin Killer






Finally the artwork for the album is finished! Zombeast and
HorrorHigh figured we would give everyone a sneak preview of the album cover
drawn by Zombeast´s frontman himself, Mario Montechello.
Along with this preview comes the release date...! This album will
drop Halloween 06.

http://www.myspace.com/zombeast

Blitzkid coming to Finland

One of the pillars of horrorpunkrock is coming to Finland!
The dates are November 11 and 12th 2006.
Venus are 11th Hotelli Ellivuori, Vammala
and the most legendary rock clubs in northen europe Tavastia Helsinki on the 12th.
Yours truly is going and I´ll try to do a new interview with
the ghouls behind Blitzkid.

See you all there!

Zombiewalk Helsinki + Afterparty

The dead are taking Helsinki by storm! Join the army
of the dead and march through Helsinki.

Afterparty is held in Lepakkomies and your host is the best UG club there is: ClubBongaBonga!
Ghoulish tunes from beyond and friends to die for!
Be there of be afraid!








http://two.fsphost.com/ZWHelsinki/

http://www.myspace.com/clubbongabonga

Having a bite to eat with - Zombina and the skeletones

Introduce yourself to our readers

Zombina: Hello! I am Zombina,
from Zombina And The Skeletones!
Doc: And I am Doc Horror, one of her Skeletones!



Hello Zombina! You just played a great gig here in Finland.

Zombina: Yeah! It was great, wasn’t it? It was such fun. We played the Lumous festival,
the crowd was amazing! I didn't know anyone had even heard of us in Finland,
but loads of people were actually singing along! They knew all the stops, too!

Doc: Even we don’t know where all the stops are!

Zombina: We enjoyed the midnight sun, it was really confusing.
Everyone had cool rock n’ roll cars and there was a sauna in the back stage.
You don’t get that in the UK!

Doc: It was a silly idea to take a sauna before the show, though.
You really need the body moisture in order to play guitar and dance around.
I nearly fainted several times

To someone who doesn´t know Zombina, how would you describe your music?

Doc: New wave horror pop rock n’ roll?
Zombina: Evil doo wop harmony surf punk?
Doc: We need to figure out a convenient tag soon
Zombina: We play real pop songs with catchy melodies and three or four part harmonies,
but loud and fast with punk guitars and crazy organ playing
Doc: We’re sort of loose and sloppy but we’re also extremely tight
Zombina: The lyrics are dark and gory but at the same time funny and cute
Doc: Why, we’re a mass of contradictions!
Zombina: We don’t sound like anyone else, so we have a hard time explaining it to people.

Bands that have inspired you the most? I can hear some ramones and misfits there along with
rockabilly sounds.

Zombina: That’s definitely where we started from! The Ramones, The Misfits, The Cramps, The Rocky Horror Show, old school punk and old rockabilly and sock-hop rock n’ roll stuff...
but there’s all sorts of different sounds in the mix now.
We used to listen to lots of metal and alternative rock when we were kids, Nirvana,
Black Sabbath, Rocket From The Crypt

Doc: ... then we went through an eighties goth phase in six form and got into Bauhaus
andthe Cure and stuff like that, then we went on to the quirkier end of new wave,
like Oingo Boingo and the B-52’s and from there back to sixties garage,
girl bands like the Shangri-La’s and the early origins of horror rock like Screaming Jay Hawkins,
and Screaming Lord Sutch

Zombina: And the other Skeletones are into completely different stuff, again Jetson loves
Prince, Jonny Tokyo collects Beach Boys albums it all ends up in our music eventually!

You´ve been playing with such legends as The Damned, how did that go?

Doc: We’ve played with so many of our heroes now, we get cool autographs all the time.
It’s one of the best things about being a Skeletone.

Zombina: We’re lucky to have picked role models that won’t disappoint you when you meet
them! The Damned are lovely, so are The Meteors, The Misfits, Dinah Cancer, Frankenstein,
Wednesday 13. They all turned out to be super friendly. The Groovie Ghoulies are so nice
that Kepi actually stepped in and played drums for us when we opened for them in Edinburgh
and Kit fell ill... What other rock singer would do that for the support band?
He took one of our CDs and learned the whole set just by listening to it. He’s a hero!

Zombina and the skeletones come from Liverpool, how´s the scene there?

Zombina: It’s pretty extensive. There’s millions and millions of bands to choose from there’s something for everyone here.
I recommend aPAtT for weirdness, Blue Demon for
rockabilly and The Down And Outs for punk rock, but there’s just so many. If anyone wants a
fun rock n’ roll holiday, visit Liverpool and pick a couple of random shows. It’s a very musical town.

Could you shed some light to your songwriting, how does the zombina tunes come to life?

Doc: In most cases, I’ll put on a horror movie and switch off my brain, after about ten
minutes I’ll write a song title down, usually something stupid like, Zombie Hospital
or Robot Tigers Rule The Night then after another couple of minutes it just seems obvious
how the song should go. If I can’t finish it there and then I get Zombina to come round
and fill in the gaps. Then we all get together to sort out a good arrangement.
Jonny Tokyo is good at figuring out harmonies usually we’ll just keep playing
it until it starts to make sense.

I read somewhere that youre gonna release a new CD next year, what can we expect?

Zombina: The new CD is called Death Valley High, and it’s actually out in December,
just in time for Christmas. It’s a concept album, not in a pretentious prog rock way,
but in a way that all the songs together tell a story.
It was originally supposed to be a film! We had an idea for a screwball horror musical sort
of like Class Of Nukem High meets Carrie meets RockN’ Roll High School,
but it didn’t work out. It was a bit over-ambitious, we didn’t really
have the budget we needed so we just condensed it into a killer album instead.

Doc: It is sort of experimental, though. There are a lot of synthesisers going on and it
shifts styles from song to song. It might sound weird to people who’ve only heard Taste The
Blood but it’ll make more sense if you’ve heard Monsters On 45,
which is a compilation of all the singles we put out in the last three years.

Horror movies are close to your heart, what do you think about the modern horror movies, to
me 99% is the same hollywood crap or re-makes.

Doc: Yeah. I can’t believe the cheek of some of these remakes.
How can you even think that you can improve on Texas Chainsaw?
Dawn of the Dead? The Wicker Man? Fucking Psycho? You can’t!
If you mess with a classic you can only make it worse. They should try remaking
something that sucked in the first place, like Nymphoid Barbarian In Dinosaur Hell or Eegah?
Something where there’s still a little room for improvement. Orgy of the Dead.
They could just keep remaking that film over and over,
it doesn’t even need to be good to be good!

Zombina: The old films are still the best, but it’s unfair to say all modern horror movies
are crap. I didn’t mind the Chainsaw remake, I prefer the original but it wasn’t the worst
thing ever. The Wicker Man looks like it’s gonna be a waste of time.

Following the question above, who is your favourite horror actor of all times?

Zombina: Lugosi all the way. They don’t make ‘em like they used to.

Doc: I’m gonna be equally groundbreaking and original and say Karloff.

Let´s talk about your fanbase, since there are lovely girls in the band, are there many
horny men in the front row?

Doc: There’s only one hot chick left in the band now that Kit’s quit, but yeah,
the boys like Zombina She won’t answer this question. She’s gone shy. That’s not like you, Zombina, you just did that top ten songs to fuck to interview for Bizarre

What about horny females?

Doc: Yeah, the girls like her, too. She’s way more popular than any of the boys are with the
female groupies. It’s not really fair... all these girls rush up to us when we come
off stage and the me an the other boys are going ‘Hello’
and then we realise they’re not even looking at us, they’re going straight past us to drool
on Zombina. It’s humiliating.

Where do you see yourself and the band in the future?

Zombina: In the centre of some mass orgy by the sounds of it. Doc’s totally exaggerating!
We want to be able to just keep doing this forever. We’re having an unbelievably good time.
Thanks to everyone involved with Lumous and everyone who came for making us feel so welcome!

Ok, that´s about it, thanks a lot for the interview and break a leg in the future.

Zombina: Okay! I’m on my way to the future anyway. I’ll break as many legs as I can.


http://www.zombina.com

http://www.myspace.com/zombinaandtheskeletones
All text contained herein; © 2006-2007 Talesfromtheshadows. All Rights Reserved.

Burning the candles with - Redemption

Redemption was formed in 1996, what was the force
that made you form
the
band?

- I started the project because of a drop off in good
traditional Gothic rock in the underground.
Unfortunately it took a few years for me to get the
band on its feet. But we have been going strong for
around 6 years now and there are no signs of stopping

To someone who hasn’t heard of you yet, how would
you describe your
music?

- Our music is Traditional Goth rock with a modern
twist. Deeply intoned vocals, ethereal synth sounds
and driving beats beneath a big guitar sound. That
pretty much sums it up I think

On your website you state you are influenced by
Sisters of Mercy and
Mission UK,
what other thing have inspired you?

- Life in general is what inspires most of my writing.
Musically I like to keep things fresh so depending on
my mood I will try tons of different things and styles
to carve out the sound I want.

Your debut album was self-released, is this the way
you like it or was it something you were forced to?

- Currently we are in the do it yourself mindset. You
have more control over the product that way. It would
be nice to have some big money behind us and get our
CDs out to more people but it would have to be the
right situation contract wise. We are happy selling
multiple albums right now. It keeps things simple and
special for our fans.

Following the previous question, are you pleased
with the result?

- Absolutely. Erik and our producer James and I worked
very closely together to get the album to sound the
way we wanted it to. I thought the end result was
fantastic.

Shed some light to your songwriting process, any
weird rituals?

- Not really. I do most of the writing in general. So I
just bring the mostly finished song to the rest of the
band and we hammer out their parts and make the magic
happen. As far as rituals go, we mostly consume
copious amounts of alcohol and let our intuition do
the work

Gothic music scene is constantly changing, your
views on the scene?

- Your right it is constantly changing and that is the
wonderful thing. I love the fact that there is such
variety. It keeps things lively. Right now we are at a
great point in the fact that the internet has brought
us all together in ways that where not possible
before. That makes everything far easier and more
accessible to a greater number of people.

Do you enjoy touring or is it just necessary evil?

- We love to play live and touring is a part of that.
Being on the road has its definite ups and downs but
there isn’t a better way to spread the word.

Redemption has a real high energy live show and
touring is necessary to present that. After all we are
a band not a bunch of guys who just sit around their
studio and make music. Playing live is integral to who
we are and what we want to promote.

I have seen so many acts that its obvious they don’t like to play
out. Personally I find it absolutely refreshing to
know that a band sounds and performs as well or better
than their recordings. We strive very hard for exactly
that.

Let’s talk a little about horror movies? What do
you think about the re-makes that Hollywood
is making? Almost every classic is going to made or is
already re-made.

- Its true. Some of them are better remakes then others.
I have enjoyed most of the remakes I’ve seen and maybe
I’m getting old but most will never compare in my mind
to the originals. There is something about seeing a
horror film when you are young that you can never
shake. So the classics will always live in my mind as
what they are. Classic

Favourite horror movies?

- I love horror movies so there are to many to mention.
But some that stick out currently are: John Carpenters
The Fog, The legend of hell house, The original
Salem’s lot, The 3rd Omen film, Susperia, Phantasm,
Silence of the lambs and some of the more campy films.
Like Dead alive and Shaun of the Dead.

What does the future hold for Redemption?

- Well currently we are writing and recording our next
release which will hopefully be finished and out by
late December early January. Of course more live shows
and touring and hopefully getting to Europe sometime
next year.


http://www.redemptiononline.com/

http://www.myspace.com/redemption


All text contained herein; © 2006-2007 Talesfromtheshadows. All Rights Reserved.