Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Interview date: 02.11.2006
On Friday, November 3, we headed to KUD France Prešeren in Ljubljana for a double bill of metal bands and to see how gig-ready Slovenia’s metal flag-bearers really are. Flying the black flag this time were Kranj quartet God Scard and Kaoz from Velenje, and both already have their debut albums under their belts, which they’ve been presenting on our stages. Before the show, in the small hall of one of the most important temples of Ljubljana’s alternative culture, we invited both bands to step up to the mic. And both took us up on it.
GOD SCARD
After a successful soundcheck, first up at our mic was Nicky, guitarist and vocalist of God Scard. Nicky was visibly in a good mood and always ready to say a word or two about themself, the work so far and the band’s vision of the future, which already looks pretty bright. At first glance they remind you of Rob Flynn, the Machine Head frontman, or one of the Biohazard guys, but since I’d sworn to myself not to judge someone I hadn’t had the chance to meet yet, I left myself room not to pass any hasty verdict in advance. Because of the noise, the two of us decided to do the interview right on the stairs of KUD’s top floor and dove straight in, with no pointless warm-up chatter.
Sandi: So, first off, a warm hello! How would you introduce God Scard as a band to the whole Slovenian crowd? What were your beginnings like?
Nicky: The beginnings go way back, to ’92. Back then metal was really different from what it is today. The crew was completely different too – of the original lineup, I’m the only one left in the band now. The first gigs were in ’94 – people’s reactions were good – and then it carried on through all the years since, to sum it up briefly. But we had a ton of trouble with lineup changes and that basically held us back, so luckily we only managed to put out our first project, our first really official album, and a video clip, and to go on more serious tours just last year, so…
Sandi: What were the changes like during that time?
Nicky: Yeah… Up until 2000, when the whole lineup got swapped out except for me, we changed members about every 5 – 6 months on average. So… that’s a pretty heavy blow for a band, right? Now that I’ve got a more stable lineup, now that we’re a bunch of more grown-up people and mature musicians, we’ve really only made one change in that time – we swapped the bassist, and that mostly because he wanted to focus more on his own band, since he was playing in two, right?
Sandi: In that time you also put out your debut. Can you tell us more about it? What was the background behind the record? What’s the concept? Could you point out the main directions you wanted to put across most directly with this album?
Nicky: Yeah OK… If we go back to when we started working on this album, it’s basically the fruit of the last couple of years. As far as authorship and how it came together – there’s only one old track on here, from ’97, because we thought it was good enough and it still fit the concept of the newer picture of God Scard that emerged after 2000. The album… You mean the music itself? Yeah, look – the trick was that we wanted a change. In earlier periods we were better known as a band that overcomplicated things a lot; we wanted to refine the music with all kinds of influences… We still do that now, just in the most direct and simple way possible, while still keeping some complexity of our own – in terms of our approach, riffs and so on. On this album it felt really important to us to have the rawest, roughest sound possible, one that works as a whole, where everything’s one piece and the music is dead direct, energetic. Plus the structure itself hints that there’s some core hiding in there, some essence you can find if you listen more carefully, so you need to listen to this album more than once. Not just once. If you listen casually the first time, you’ll hear music with interesting influences, but if you listen several times, you’ll realize there’s quite a lot of philosophy and different musings behind it, right?
Sandi: Definitely, on first listen the influences of Sepultura and Machine Head stand out. What would you point to as the basic core, the foundation where you’d say: “This is God Scard! Outside of this, there’s no God Scard!”?
Nicky: You mean in terms of influences?
Sandi: Influences. Exactly.
Nicky: Let’s say… Here’s how it is: like you mentioned – Sepultura, Machine Head, Slipknot… These are all bands we really love listening to. And then of course, probably not even consciously, they rub off on you, at least as far as the sound and songwriting go – you can’t get around that. But we try to lean on ourselves as much as possible, try to preserve some uniqueness. It’s hard to talk about uniqueness, because there are so many different sounds and styles that you honestly can’t even tell whether you’re still unique or not. But we do try, so – as far as influences on us go, we really don’t have a limit beyond which we’d say this music or these approaches don’t interest us. It is true, though, that we can’t just cram everything into the music, since the basic structure is metal. If we stuff everything in there, it’s not metal anymore, it’s goulash, you know? So the trick is to try to use a lot of influences, but only if the song needs it, right? We’ve stuffed all sorts of things in there – if you noticed, from some ethno tricks to some electronic variants and all that… Definitely – for my taste, the one thing I wouldn’t shove in too much is some electronic techno, some beat and bass – I don’t dig that. Even if somebody offered to do remixes of our stuff, I’d be very skeptical and it would have to be really good.
Sandi: Though if you listen to bands like Raunchy, they still keep the edge. Do you think a techno approach would really be totally incompatible with the metal genre itself?
Nicky: No, not at all! No way! I didn’t mean that at all! I just meant that we in God Scard don’t see ourselves going that way, the way some people are doing it now, you know. There have been examples, though: Fear Factory already did it on the record Re-manofacture, and we’ve seen with quite a few bands how it can actually work well. Like I said: if someone did that for us, they’d have to be a real ace, and we’d have to like it first before we’d even allow it. But it’s not incompatible… Absolutely not.
Sandi: Most bands (practically all of them) start out in a garage. Maybe you get to the point where you record an album… Then comes promotion. What were the birth pangs like with your debut?
Nicky: You know, personally it was actually a lot easier for me, because I’d already recorded in the studio with previous lineups. We recorded quite a few projects which, unfortunately, because of exactly those problems I mentioned – lineup changes, lack of money, maybe lack of experience too – never got released in a form like this one, right? So – basically: yeah, this is our debut, even though we’d previously recorded material for at least four more albums. OK! Let’s leave the past behind – let’s keep moving forward! So as far as the birth pangs go, it was easy for me. I’d worked on other projects too and had some studio experience. For some of the band members it was a bit harder, because it was one of their first times.
Sandi: Let’s put it simply – your first record is behind you. Word is that new surprises are in the works, a new record. What can you say about what you God Scards are becoming in this period?
Nicky: We’re really just trying to preserve that integrity of ours that we found works for us. We’re happy with it and it’s going well. The new material that’s coming is slightly different from what we’ve done so far, though, because new things happen in life, you’ve got new problems to write about, and you as a person change from month to month, right? So of course it won’t be exactly the same, but we’ll try to keep our whole thing together as much as possible, that ‘phil rouge’ of ours, with the difference that, since the first record is already quite conceptual, on the second one we’ll take on a different concept. Look: on the first album we criticized society pretty directly, the existing philosophies and religions that shape our lives somehow, that box us in, all the way to what the world has turned into and what else it could be, right? On the next album we figured we’d go down to a bit more of a personal, human level, straight at the individual as a person and what’s going on with someone – that’s basically all I can tell you, because otherwise it won’t be a surprise anymore.
Sandi: And when can you promise the eager God Scard fans a release of the new album? When can you say people will be able to get their hands on your second record and see how God Scard’s evolution has gone on?
Nicky: Honestly, that’s very hard to say. I’d rather not announce anything at all, because we shot ourselves in the foot a couple of times with the first record. We announced the release I don’t know how many times – I think five or six times we came out with a date, and then because of such banal things you can barely believe them, the release date dragged on. So long, in fact, that a year and a half passed between the first announcement and the actual release… And that’s from the date of the announcement where we said: “It’s coming out today!”. I mean… Those were stories in themselves and we’ll keep them to ourselves, because nobody would believe them anyway. Now, with this second album it’s like this: the material isn’t completely done, but a huge amount is, and we expect it’ll be very soon – don’t hold me to my word here – but by the end of the year the material for the new record will be finished, and then it’s only a question of a good producer, how we arrange things with the studio and how long it takes us to record it. From recording to release there isn’t much left.
Sandi: Actually, a German label has gotten fired up about you too… What’s the story with the planned collaboration with them?
Nicky: Actually, it’s not a label, it’s a booking agency. That’s basically an agent who sorts out tours, gigs… The interesting thing is that they got pretty fired up about us. At the moment they’re arranging a few gigs in Germany for us, and when we get up there and they see for themselves what we look like live, further talks will probably follow. The situation at this stage is that they’re organizing, or booking, these gigs for us, and whether we go into further talks with them – they’ve shown interest in signing a contract with us. Plus maybe there’s also a possibility somewhere of a takeover, you know, by foreign labels. Right now we’re with a Slovenian label. Independent, right? But there’s a scenario where we’d sign with a foreign label… We think that’s cool, but of course under decent conditions, right?
Sandi: Let me put it this way – comparing the Slovenian scene with the European one, or with abroad in general, including the American one, or let’s just say the whole world – where do we stand? What’s the state of connectedness, or just the chances of development for an individual young band starting out?
Nicky: I mean, if you compare it with Afghanistan – excellent! (laughs)
Sandi: And with the rest, the more advanced world? Germany and the like?
Nicky: You know what? I think our chances here are improving a lot. The internet keeps everything, and now all the borders between us are erased. I think all of this is getting better and everything’s on a much better level than it was 10 or 15 years ago. It’s different now too because we’re in Europe. If we go play from Slovenia, we don’t need to sort out awful paperwork for gear – you just show up, cross the border and play. Contacts with these people are much easier. No more postal correspondence or phone calls that cost a horrible amount, it’s just the internet, which is practically free. I think it’s way easier. Plus we’ve got all kinds of websites where music is presented, opinions exchanged… It’s really cool, because the flow of information has turned out great. But it’s still like this: we’re a band from Slovenia. It’s still harder than for someone from Germany to make it. Considering… But there’s bigger competition there, right? Though I actually don’t agree with that at all, because in Slovenia we’ve got such insane competition it makes your head hurt! There are so many good bands here. The only problem we have is that these bands can’t get enough money to make it worth sticking with it. They get ‘screwed’ by obligations at uni, jobs, families and so on… And that’s why our bands so often sadly fall apart or struggle along and often stay at a hobby level. But if you really decide and go 100% in – I think it can be done. A little harder than elsewhere, but it can be done!
One more thing in Slovenia bugs me a little! Our work system is getting closer to the European, the Western one, which is probably the goal, but it’s still a bit cowboy and wild. As in: “Play, Gypsy!”. You play for miserable fees because people are too stingy to pay for a ticket… That’s just one of those theses that exist in Slovenia… It’s not quite like that. If over there some 17-year-old brat is willing to pay seven fuckin’ euros for a party – I don’t see why someone wouldn’t pay a thousand tolars, or fifteen hundred, for two or three really good bands? If I go to the video store to rent some porn, I’ll pay that much, you know?
Sandi: Right on! One last question. To sum up simply: God Scard’s plans – private ones, plans of the band as a whole – short-term, long-term…?
Nicky: Here’s how it is – after that first album we put all our energy into getting ourselves out there in the Slovenian media as well as we possibly could, which we managed. Then we tried to get a contact abroad, get some feedback and see how it goes – we managed that too. And now the first short-term plan is to organize a few gigs in Slovenia, where we’ll kick up a bit of dust again, since it’s been a while since we last played. Plus prove ourselves abroad. That’s the short-term plan. The long-term plans are: a new album, as soon as possible. As for the label, here’s the deal. Unless we switch to another one, or there’s a takeover, we have a contract obliging us to put out three albums for them – so we’ll make at least three albums for them, right? What happens after that, I don’t know. I’m not supposed to say too much, they’ll pull me by the ears.
Sandi: Thanks a lot for the forecasts, and I wish you a wonderful gig today. I hope that in time we’ll be able to measure our steps and find that everything has gone ten steps forward!
Nicky: Great! And I’d also like to say hi to all the readers of rockline.info! Thanks.
