Dead Dildo Drome: No Reserves, No Holding Back – Cowboys From Kredar’tza Are Here! (2012)
Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Photos: Jerneja Jerak
Location: Gala Hala, Ljubljana
Interview date: November 15, 2012
I can say without reservation that with the arrival of Dead Dildo Drome, a Kranjska Gora band with a pair of steel balls and a loudly raging soul, a badly needed fresh wind has swept through our neck of the woods. Barely two and a half years after the members of Godscard, Language Of Thought Hypothesis and Leaf Fat first put their heads together, the time has come for a sonic assault on the senses. The triple D is a band that was forged on stages and carved out its rugged sound with the live power of a soul-hurricane, and from beneath the layers a heart has emerged that, besides noise, delivers plenty of groove and above all the juicy oomph that Slovenian parts desperately need. Cowboys From Kredar’tza is a record that’s been teased for quite a while, and right before the christening, the opening gig that begins a new chapter in the history of this young but damn vital and hard-hitting band, I caught the guys in front of Ljubljana’s Gala after soundcheck. Since they hide nothing and don’t walk around with their fingers crossed in their pockets, one word led to another, and every last one of them talked to Rockline exclusively about the background of the debut and the essence of Dead Dildo Drome.
Rockline: Ljubljana is about to witness something Slovenia has been waiting for a long time. What are your first impressions ahead of this christening and, finally, the release of your full-blooded full-length?
Andy: I feel like we’ve finally reached a phase where we’re completely sure of what we’re doing, and the album Cowboys From Kredar’tza is the result of that. Today is a turning point, and tonight’s show is the chapter where we officially kick off the album’s promotion, so the crowd will get to hear the whole album – no cuts, no unnecessary tweaking. The vibes are great!
Rockline: Right from the start, back at Metalcamp in 2007, Šero, you told me something new was being born and that Slovenia would get its own version of Lamb Of God. Since then, Dead Dildo Drome have made a completely original step of your own in your own direction, so I’m curious how happy you and the whole crew are with the sound, and how DDD has shaped up over these past few years?
Šero: That’s exactly it! We started out with the likes of Lamb Of God and, I don’t know, wanting more, we evolved – right, guys? After the LOG phase that didn’t cut it for us anymore either, and we subconsciously wanted to break free of any frameworks and templates. So we started recording the record, and Daco can confirm that we managed to grow into something homegrown, recognizable and our own.
Rockline: Dead Dildo Drome are a live band first and foremost, so how do you capture that live energy on a digital medium? What kind of birth pangs did you, Daco, have to wrestle with as the record’s main producer?
Daco: I nearly got sick over all of it, so … It’s a special feeling when you have a controlled environment and can take as much time as you need for every little thing, but I always feel like I’m at a gig anyway. It might sound weird, but I always have a vision of us playing in front of my eyes, and that was the guiding principle of the recording. When you’re sitting in front of an MP3 that’s been compressed who knows how many times, the feel is what comes first. I really enjoy working with the guys, and that’s why the work is totally easy and natural. When things click, you can hear it on the record, because you gladly put your whole self into it, and it’s not all recorded just for the sake of recording and just to have something to show for it.
Šero: There’s no more mediocrity like there used to be, when you’d record demos with some band and the demo was an end in itself, and the whole thing didn’t resemble much of anything. Today, for the first time, I can say it’s all really on a proper level, and above all the important thing is that we play a lot, and that’s what makes and shapes Dead Dildo Drome. Those 60 gigs a year are our timeline for leveling up and taking shape!
Andy: We’ve all been in bands before, which isn’t even that important a priori. Plenty of people will be surprised that the album came so late, but we all think everything needs time and a band simply has to mature, rather than playing ten shows and jumping straight into recording a record, which is absurd. If it were up to me, we’d have played another 50 shows before diving into studio work.
Šero: Personally, I’d say 70 shows would’ve been better …
Andy: A band has to mature on stage first, get the juvenile birth pangs behind it and find its voice, personality and “oomph” so the music is coherent and what comes out on the record resembles what the band delivers on stage. That’s my opinion and the opinion of the whole band. I think in our past bands, and I can speak only for myself here, we often got seriously burned. The studio is just one indicator of whether you’re ready for the next steps, and this year we felt the moment was right for the studio, and with the shows we gave people a taste of the core of what DDD is really about. If we’d come out with a product like this after five gigs, people wouldn’t have had a clue. We had to present the idea on stage so it all crystallized and sparked, and then went like a controlled avalanche in the direction where we could channel it all properly.
Rockline: Cowboys From Kredar’tza is almost here, and now we’re counting down those last moments to D-Day. What’s the crowd going to get? One big fat dildo, if I can be a little obscene and blunt?
Šero: Absolutely a dildo, because that’s what the people like, right? Instead of the natural thing, people want something artificial, and that’s what they’ll get! They’ll get a dildo from Kredarca – a proper Slovenian dildo! (laughs)
Rockline: The dildo might hint at something generic, but there’s no trace of that with you. You’re an organic band and you breathe that way. Let’s move on to the studio work, which is the big burning question for every band that sets out to record an album. Where did you decide to record yours?
Daco: At my place. I fixed everything up so that, I won’t say it’s rustic, but it’s cozy and homey. It looks like you walked into my girlfriend’s studio – the dogs bother us the whole time and get under our feet, and we bother them. Cats jump on your head, so the mood is just right – you don’t get any sterility or work hours or schedules. Me and Robi (Šero, editor’s note) are constantly goofing around and then we work. I’m talking about him because lately we’ve been constantly together and working a lot.
Šero: Daco has a great view of the whole global picture and he set up the space brilliantly, so we said, why go somewhere we’d feel like strangers, and on top of that pay some outside person who’d end up doing it worse than we could do ourselves.
Daco: I’ve really been in this band from day one and I have the clearest idea of how the band’s whole sonic picture should end up looking – whether it’s picking effects or sensing what Robi should do – which is also a guarantee that the final result is something organic and not generic or overly artsy. It’s easier for me to stack the layers one on top of the other myself than to have some outside factor bring something into the album’s sound that we’re not.
Rockline: The problem with this kind of recording is that every audio track gets polished to the max and then it all gets poured into the same bowl. How did you manage to make the final product something that isn’t synthetic but actually has a living soul? Did you have to give up any songs because of it, or was the recording really meant to document absolutely everything you’ve created so far?
Daco: The fact is that we write new songs really fast, so we ended up having to make a selection. There was one song in there that’s very close to my heart, but it simply hadn’t matured enough to be the right moment for harvesting and studio immortalization yet. We’re not into forcing things. After two years of work we decided to shake things up and pick all the cream that was ready to be recorded. When a song goes down like a f…, then you know the song is good and ripe.
Rockline: What about the story behind the album’s name? Cowboys From Kredar’tza damn well evokes Pantera …
Šero: That was the basic idea! I didn’t want it to be obvious at first glance, but at the same time I did. Let people think it’s our take on the album Cowboys From Hell, or a heavenly antipode, and we’re the Cowboys From Kredar’tza, which I think describes us best right now!
Rockline: Are you hinting that Kredarca is a synonym for Pantera’s or Dante’s Hell?
Šero: In a way, yes, which the cover shows too, since there’s something ominous looming over Triglav, and we play that up in the design as well.
Rockline: What about the deeper message you’ve put front and center – no need to overstate that these recession times have brought something leaden and heavy into our sub-Alpine corner of paradise … How does that play out in the band’s mental evolution?
Šero: I think the band will move forward together with me and with the flow of time. People have no idea what I’m singing, but I’m very positive about the message itself, which sets the work in DDD apart from my earlier work in Leaf Fat. I’m optimistic about a future that maybe isn’t the brightest, and my stance on that is clearly shown by the songs I Hail Satan and Harmony.
Rockline: And will people get the lyrics to read on the record?
Šero: Not all of them, and that’s the point! The artwork will be similar to what the previously mentioned Phil Anselmo has done on records in the past – excerpts will be given to read. Everything that’s most important will be there to read!
Rockline: So the record is almost here. The band has put all its time, energy and money into the product – time is money, after all. How will the promotion go from here? Andy, in our past meetings you hinted that something nice and juicy is shaping up for you beyond the borders of our little henhouse – can you say more about that?
Andy: We’re realistic! We’ve played abroad a lot and we know how things work outside our homeland, so all our expectations are realistic, but precisely thanks to that realism we’ve always gotten more than we thought we would. So let’s wait for the album, but judging by the plan for the next six months, everything is going significantly smoother and better than in the past, and the first reactions are also much better and more positive than I expected in the initial phase. The record will come out across Europe, and in Croatia too, and we ourselves want to play as much as possible!
Šero: And go to Dalmatia …
Andy: And we’re already doing that with a shorter European tour in December, if I can call it that, and in 2013 it’ll only ramp up. We won’t neglect Slovenia, because it’s our incubator and our homeland. We like to play anywhere there are clubs and a decent PA – that’s where you’ll find us – but still, our home turf is getting too tight for us. The situation is that clubs are closing more than they’re opening. On one hand we’d like to play more, but the doors are closing for bands like us, and quite a lot, so we’re forced to think ahead and bigger.
Rockline: What about a label? Is anything opening up there, so you can keep growing and developing through a label too?
Andy: For a band like us, a label is still a relatively unimportant factor at this stage, because we’re a band that still has to build its basic reputation so you can lead the way and defend your status. We’re almost there, but we’re not quite at the finish line yet …
Šero: No gas money …
Andy: We’re almost there. The problem with this band, which isn’t really a problem since plenty of people would give anything to be in our shoes, is that everything is happening insanely fast. There are lots of shows, even though at the very start we weren’t exactly ready for that, and then came the support slots for bigger bands, festivals … Usually a band needs five years before it can open for heavyweights like Soulfly. We managed it much sooner …
Rockline: And you absolutely steamrolled those, no doubt! There’s no shortage of tally marks on the achievement wall. So today you kick off the opening season of the hunt for new pairs of listeners’ ears. When will you finally cross the finish line and release the record for the people?
Daco: If all goes well – we talked about something like this in the past too, and we ungratefully set an overly ambitious plan that we couldn’t hit – I hope by the end of November or the beginning of December. The point is that on D-Day we’ll be happy with the final product, and we don’t give a damn about anything else …
Andy: The point of today’s show isn’t a release show, we’re only announcing officially – Kredar’tza is here!
Rockline: Kredarca is about to come crashing down on Metelkovo. Any closing thoughts to crown tonight’s conversation?
Daco: I’m really glad we’ve reached the point where we’re about to release our debut and are back on the live circuit. Back to the roots! We’re very hard-working and our fruits will be here soon, so I’m truly, sincerely happy and can’t wait for 2013, when we’ll be able to level everything up even more and do a lot more for our success!
Andy: Kredarca is here and even clothes won’t help you anymore!
Šero: The easiest thing is to just follow along and vote Labor!
Žiga: We love playing live, so you can damn well bet we’ll just get better from show to show! Follow us!
Enej: It’s a bit slow going for me, since I’m a drummer and not a talker! (laughs) What I’m saying is, it’s all going to be good!
Rockline: Thanks for the chat, and may the Dildo keep slicing at full throttle for many years to come!
Andy: Thank you!
Photo Gallery
