Interview date: 01.04.2008
It was around half past nine in the evening when Matevž and I joined the band backstage, each grabbed a beer, and the guys had just started digging into some pizzas. It was nice and fun to chat in such a relaxed atmosphere. Most of our questions were answered by the band’s guitarist Dalibor Farčić – Dale…
RockLine: Where does the name Good Day To Die come from?
Good Day To Die: That’s an old story, from 6 or 7 years ago. People often, sadly, hear our name with a negative ring to it. But the name actually has a totally positive meaning. It comes from Native American philosophy. We have a buddy from West Virginia, of Native American descent. Right around the time we met him, we were having trouble picking a name for the band. The guy has a tattoo of a deer pierced by an arrow. Under that picture he also had a saying tattooed in authentic Native American language, and we asked him what it meant. He told us the meaning in English translation: “Good Day To Die”. Wow! We liked it right away. The saying is supposed to mean that if you’re satisfied with how you live your life, with your life path, if you’re a happy person, then you don’t have to fear death and it doesn’t matter what day it happens on. So every day is a good one. You don’t have to worry about settling scores with anybody, or sorting out some conflict, etc… You’re simply ready every day and you don’t have to be afraid to die.
RockLine: How long have you been around as Good Day To Die?
Good Day To Die: Seven years. For the last two or three years we focused more on studio work, so there were more breaks in our live playing during that time. There were also a few crises in the band in that period. Now we’ve gotten past that and we’re moving forward at full steam!
RockLine: How did the collaboration between Good Day To Die and Dallas Records come about?
Good Day To Die: We’re actually the only project in this genre that Dallas has taken on. Okay, before that they tried, say, Father. But they (Father, editor’s note) are more nu-metal. Then the people at Dallas wanted to take under their wing a similar band that has a bit of a heavier sound with electric guitars in its expression and writes lyrics in English. The guy who works at Dallas right now and is our manager, who deals with bands from our region at Dallas and tries to get them onto the scene, picked us. We sent them (Dallas, editor’s note) a demo. They liked it and we signed a deal. First Dallas put out a compilation in 2006, “New Undergound”, which has our track Desert City Lights on it. That was the beginning, and then we recorded the album “Hazing Through Shadows”.
RockLine: How did you get in touch with Steve Austin, who produced your debut “Hazing Through Shadows”?
Good Day To Die: Steve Austin had already been in contact with the Croatian band Change Foss a few years back. Through them we got in touch with Austin. He heard our recordings, unmastered, on our MySpace page. He liked the material. He came up with ideas about what could be done, what could be built on. We sent him some other recordings too. It took a few months, the mastering and all the other stuff that’s part of the process of making a record. It took quite a while. It’s a long process. But in the end we were really happy, especially with the final master sound. At first we were slightly skeptical. In the end, though, we liked it, he liked it, Dallas liked it, everybody did.
RockLine: So you’re happy with the album?
Good Day To Die: Absolutely. It’s a document of our lives over the last four years, a document of all the craziness that was running through our heads in that time, movies, various adventures, a lot went on. That’s why the album is stylistically diverse too. Before that we already had an album with nine tracks that we put out ourselves. But it was completely different in style and genre, new school, hardcore, metal, rock. Harder, different, livelier, in the vein of Eye Hate God or Iron Monkey…
RockLine: So where do you draw your ideas for music from now? Movies?
Good Day To Die: Ha, ha, ha…. Mostly from life in Croatia. Yvan writes most of the lyrics for the songs. They’re personal lyrics. We get our inspiration from our personal lives, from all sorts of frustrations. The lyrics have to click with the music and, of course, with a lot of drugs, a lot of drugs…
RockLine: How did you land the gigs in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands? Today here in Ljubljana is the first day of your tour.
Good Day To Die: Friends, managers.
RockLine: Did you book any of those gigs yourselves?
Good Day To Die: The Mars agency did all of that. The rest you’d best ask the manager and the booking agency. Mars is a young agency, but they’re doing great.
RockLine: You shot a video for the song Crush the Skies. Why did you pick that particular song for a video?
Good Day To Die: It’s our newest song. That track has everything, it rounds up all the moments of the album “Hazing Through Shadows”. It’s the most representative track on the album.
RockLine: Where did you shoot the video?
Good Day To Die: Ha, ha, ha, ha,… Why do you ask? Did you like something about it in particular? We have to do it again. It’ll be even crazier. This was barely a warm-up…. We shot at several locations. Old houses, cellars, archive footage from the fifties,… The old house in the video is mine, but I don’t live there, it’s old and has a great atmosphere for something like this, and the girls fit into the video perfectly. Screw a shock band that doesn’t have good-looking girls in the videos it makes.
RockLine: In the track The Path Of The Cross you use a speech by Tito at the start of the song and a speech by Franjo Tuđman at the end. What did you want to stress and express with that in the song itself?
Good Day To Die: It’s best if everyone interprets that for themselves. We wouldn’t like to comment on it from any political angle.
Good Day To Die: Yes, and then he kills 3 million people on the “Way of the Cross”… that’s what the song is about.
RockLine: Aha, so that’s where the title comes from?
Good Day To Die: Yes. All that damn war. All that past, all that stupidity… Genocide too. It shows the path from one president in one regime who hit upon the birth of another regime. Too much blood spilled for nothing, too many needless victims… Really, what matters is what you think when you listen to the song and how you interpret it yourself. It sounds negative, but it isn’t a negative song. It carries an anti-war theme. That’s why it’s built on such heavy tones.
RockLine: When can we expect your official website to go up?
Good Day To Die: Never.
RockLine: So the current MySpace page is enough?
Good Day To Die: Yes. Totally enough, MySpace is really practical to use, it’s plenty. You upload your tracks, people can listen to them.
RockLine: But right now there isn’t much info about Good Day To Die on the MySpace page?
Good Day To Die: People will get to know us at gigs. Anyone who needs the info will find it…
RockLine: What do you think of internet “downloading”?
Good Day To Die: It should be banned.
RockLine: So you don’t support downloading?
Good Day To Die: (an interesting debate circle breaks out among the guys)
– We’re against it.
– I’m not.
– What do you mean you’re not? Don’t you know “downloading” has destroyed the entire rock industry?
– How? It’s unavoidable these days. Ask a kid today if he bought an album. He’ll look at you in astonishment, because all the youngsters today burn CDs of music in mp3 format.
– Only the ones who really love music still buy it.
– It’s nice when you’re at home and, before you put the album in the CD player, you carefully open up the original jewel case… I can’t imagine, say, the first Black Sabbath album sitting at home without its cover.
RockLine: Will you release your albums on vinyl too?
Good Day To Die: Definitely. Especially our next album. Maybe “Hazing Through Shadows” too, once we remaster it someday. Be patient.
RockLine: How do you like it here at Orto Bar, where you’re playing tonight?
Good Day To Die: It’s great. We played here last year. At the “stoner warm up show”, before Eagles Of Death Metal played in Ljubljana.
RockLine: That was when Stonebride and Chang Foss kept you company too?
Good Day To Die: Yes. In Ljubljana and Kranj. Two gigs.
RockLine: On RockLine we published a live report from last year’s gig in Ljubljana (click HERE to check it out).
Good Day To Die: Was that you guys too?
RockLine: Yep.
Good Day To Die: You’ve got a great site. Really. We read that report. Thank the journalist who wrote it (thanks Sandi Sadar, editor’s note). He really dug into every single song we played. Incredible, and that was before we’d even released our first album.
RockLine: Thanks, guys! That’s all. We wish you a great gig tonight here at Orto Bar, and we’ll say a few more words later at the bar.
Good Day To Die: Thanks to you too, enjoy the gig.
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