“We are still going to that venue since we’re on the tour and I think we are going to confront this motherfucker with his pathetic way of thinking and throw him from a mountain or something. He is a real idiot! First of all he thinks it’s a female on our cover but if it was meant to be a female she would have had tits! Second, we played in that venue last year with Macabre and Broken Hope and I don’t know if you can remember the cover for ‘Feasting on Blood’ but that one was surely as brutal as this one!”
Severe Torture/Interview
FINALLY! Death Metal band Severe Torture, soon to be on-tour with Cannibal Corpse, and promoting their new album ‘Misanthropic Carnage’, had the distinct pleasure of popping my interview-cherry. I hope it was as good for them as it was for me. Damn, anybody got a light?
Vile, docweasel.com Hello there. Please tell the dumb people reading this who you are, your favorite color, and how you are doing this fine day.
Thijs, Severe Torture Well, we are Severe Torture from Holland. We started in 1997 and released our first full-length ‘Feasting on Blood’ in 2000 through Hammerheart Records. Our new album ‘Misanthropic Carnage’ is also released by Hammerheart this month (Sept.’02) and will be released in the US in January 2003. My name is Thijs and my favorite color is black and I’m doing fine, a bit tired after a hard day work but still awake to do this fucking interview.
Vile If all goes well, you guys will be the first band to have successfully answered and completed an interview by myself, THE VILE. I’ve asked other bands and they’ve agreed, but after they recieve the questions I never hear from them again… Do you think they’re just a bunch of pussy-cowards or what?
Thijs First of all, we answer every interview we receive and believe me, we received interviews you cannot imagine how fucked up they were! In my opinion they are just pussy-cowards because when you don’t like a question you just don’t answer it!
Vile I hate interviews that always begin with “Give us a brief history of the band…” and shit like that, how tired are you from answering those type of idiotic questions?
Thijs I almost started this interview with such an answer! I have received that question so many times that I cannot remember our own bio anymore! Magazines who ask that question often have the guts to say in the same interview that Severe Torture is not original!
Vile You guys have been getting SHITLOADS of good reviews, from everywhere you go to everything you do, which are definately well deserved. Did you expect to get these good words or did you think your albums would be shot down as dogshit?
Thijs We expected nothing but we knew we didn’t release bad shit. Good reviews are always nice to get but for us it’s more important to get good reactions from people who buy the record.
Vile What’s your favorite candy?
Thijs Chocolate! Do you know Chokotoff? It’s some sort of toffee with caramel and chocolate!
Vile How do you feel about being BANNED from the stages in Switzerland, for the “perverse, disgusting and very offensive cover artwork of the new album ‘Misanthropic Carnage’, which shows a total lack of respect for other human beings” ? Whoever said that is a fucking idiot. How would you like to torture and kill that motherfucker?
Thijs We are still going to that venue since we’re on the tour and I think we are going to confront this motherfucker with his pathetic way of thinking and throw him from a mountain or something. He is a real idiot! First of all he thinks it’s a female on our cover but if it was meant to be a female she would have had tits! Second, we played in that venue last year with Macabre and Broken Hope and I don’t know if you can remember the cover for ‘Feasting on Blood’ but that one was surely as brutal as this one!
Vile AND the coverart was censored in Germany! Why do you think Severe Torture are getting singled-out for all this bullshit?
Thijs I really don’t know why they picked us but this is very normal in Germany. They are so hypocrite! Our cd will be in the stores with a total black cover or something. Most German death metal fans will first look at all the censored shit because that’s more brutal! So I think censorship only gives more promotion to the band!
Vile What drew (no pun intended) you to Joe Maloney, to have him create the artwork for ‘Feasting On Blood’ and ‘Misanthropic Carnage’?
Thijs Our formal label manager Wilko Reijnders recommended him to us. We saw his work for a Slayer tribute cd and we really liked his style! We contacted him and he was really into it and we are very happy having him in the Severe Torture formula.
Vile Tell us a really funny story about Severe Torture. Something that happened on tour, something during recording; anything. I need a laugh.
Thijs Well, two of us, Seth and Dennis, really like to smoke weed. But because we were in the USA at that time we had a rule; NO Weed in the van! In Arizona it went wrong the first time. Federal police pulled us over and started to
search the Deeds of Flesh van. They found weed and next was our van. They couldn’t find anything but we were shitting our pants over there! They strip-searched us, we were Dutch so we had to have weed on us, and still found nothing. In the end they commanded us to wave at the US weed and than we could go. We lost 3 hours over there. You think our smokers learned a lesson after this! A few weeks later we were in Canada, Quebec I believe. I was driving the van and at some moment we were pulled over by 3 police cars. They asked for my drivers licence and passport and then they went to their car. Dennis was really quiet during that. So we asked him what the problem was and he admitted he had a bag of weed in his pocket! The policeman came back and gave my papers back and everything was ok but again we were shitting our pants!
Vile You guys about to go out on tour with Cannibal Corpse, a band which you have named as a definate influence on Severe Torture’s music. How does it feel to be going on tour with them?
Thijs It’s like a dream coming true for us! When I bought ‘Butchered at Birth’ years ago I couldn’t image touring with them in the future! We are going to shred 28 European stages and it will be a great tour with lots of new people we are gonna confront with Severe Torture.
Vile Are you guys planning to tour in the US soon?
Thijs I think we will try to come back in April 2003 our something. We really wanna do a good US tour with some cool bands and meet all those crazy fuckers again! Right now there’s nothing confirmed but maybe we will do a festival in Florida next December.
Vile How many whores and sluts have you met during your time with the band? How many have you killed?
Thijs I think I killed 31 but I lost count. I hate those women that only like you because you’re in the band. They are pathetic and drinking all the beer that’s for the bands! But I think some other Severe Torture members have different opinions about this matter!
Vile From reading the lyrics, Severe Torture seems to have a bit of a problem with Christianity. If you met Jesus one day, what would you do/say to him?
Thijs We hate all forms of religion but Christianity is the closest to us. I don’t know what I should say to Jesus but I think if this guy really existed he was pretty OK. The bible created a wrong image of him. I think he was some sort of hippie and smoking weed and so..
Vile I’ve read that you guys have “normal jobs”. Is this still true? If so, what are you currently doing to pay the bills?
Thijs We all have full-time jobs and luckily we can combine them with touring. During the Cannibal tour we don’t get paid by our jobs but we will attract some money out of the bands account. But what do you think is a normal job? Our drummer drives a forklift, our singer makes toilet paper, our bass player works with snacks and I’m a decorator/carpenter so…
Vile What have you been listening to lately? I’ve been cranking the new Nile and Hate Eternal myself…
Thijs I really enjoy the new Hate Eternal also and I have been listening a lot to the new Cannibal Corpse, Primordial, Arch Enemy and Incantation.
Vile What do you think is perhapse the greatest book ever written?
Thijs I almost only read Dutch our Belgian books because I don’t like translations and I find it very hard to read a English book but I think I like ‘American Psycho’ by Bret Easton Ellis the most.
Vile Allright man, thanks for answering all my shitty questions, Severe Torture is the only band so far that could stand up to THE VILE. Any parting comments?
Thijs They weren’t too shitty and they weren’t too hard! It’s always nice to receive an interview without the usual bio-disco questions. Hopefully we see you all in the US again. Buy our fucking records and keep supporting the scene! Check out WWW.SEVERETORTURE.COM
Many thanks to Severe Torture and Hammerheart Records for the interview, I cant appreciate them enough!!! Be sure to visit both of them and buy lots of shit!
Severe Torture – http://www.severetorture.com
Hammerheart Records – http://www.hammerheart.com