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	<< back \| interviews/the berzerker The Berzerker 1. Greetings! Welcum to Tempest Music from Romania! How are you lately? Working hard and going crazy. I hate everything. Hi. 2. To begin this chat please tell us if you think you're 100% humans. What pushes you so far in order to create such an intense ear aggression? I can't tell you how long I looked at the first part of that question, stroking my beard and trying to think of something abusive and smarmy I could say in reply. I've given up on that, now for the rest of thequestion. We make this aggressive music because we like listening to super-aggressive music especially in a death metal framework, and we don't know many death metal bands these days who are making essentially Angry music, so I guess we have to do it ourselves. It is a senseless side of ourselves that we express through music. 3. The Berzerker was formed in 1995. Did you play in any other bands before? What about now, do you have any side-projects? Luke played in a few bands as a drummer, one of them was called Mystic Insight. Luke has his hand in many side projects. I do solo tracks and albums which can be found on the net with a bit of searching. 4. I know you are the only permanent member now in the band, so can it still be considered a real band or just a studio-project? Hmmm. Although Luke, The Berzerker, is and always is the main-man for The Berzerker, Sam has appeared on every album and tour so far and could be considered something of a fixture. To some people a real band is one which never changes anything, the music they play, the people in the band, and so on. That will never be us. For some people a studio-project is when a band just makes CDs and never plays live and obviously that isn't us either. 5. Are you still in touch with the other guys that helped you along the way? What are they doing now? Yeah, still in touch with most of them. Sam and Matt currently live in the UK and are rehearsing for the new berzerker tour in March. Luke is at home.. Ed and Jay are still in contact with Luke back in Melbourne. Gary and Luke still chat a bit. There are some guys who have been involved with us previously who we don't really have any contact with anymore, and we don't know the specifics of what they are doing. 6. Although being on a precise industrial ground you keep your form of death metal strongly '90's influenced. How come the idea of such a combination? What are you listening at home lately? We love death metal music but the sounds used in it are probably too ineffective for the impact we are aiming for. Industrial has no problem manipulating the sounds of all instruments, particularly percussion, in order to have a more brutal effect. It's an obvious combination, we think. I'm listening to old school death metal, plenty of triphop, and mix cds made of individual tracks from modern day metal bands. I can't think of the last time a death metal band came out with an entire CD that just overwhelmed me, so I pick the most aggro tracks from a bunch of bands and just stick them all on a CD. 7. Do you consider The Berzerker above the other bands into death metal when we're talking about brutality? I'm so curious what bands like Napalm Death, Incantation or Vader said about you when touring. We never toured with Incantation, we did tour with Immolation did you mean them?...and of course have toured with both Vader and Napalm, Each band are brutal in their own right, we do a very different kind of brutality due to our electronic influences. I have no idea what other bands think of us and quite honestly I'd prefer not to know. I suspect a few of them think we are some sort of joke band. Try and imagine what Black Sabbath would make of Morbid Angel. 8. About that, how do you manage to play such long tours? The one promoting "Dissimulate" went on for more than 100 dates... I still have no idea how we managed to tour for that long. It was in part due to Earache helping hook us up with various tours, but more importantly it was because all four of us were totally committed and decided to do it no matter the cost. When it finished we were all pretty broke and had many injuries and ailments. Luke was coughing up black stuff from screaming in smoky clubs. I had conjunctivitis and an infected face from being smashed in the mouth with my mic so much. Gary had broken his foot and cracked vertebrae. I don't see myself doing a tour that long again. 9. By the way, how was it to tour with such great names of the scene? Do you consider The Berzerker now as being an important pillar of the scene? It was great to tour with bands like Nile, Napalm Death, Immolation, SYL and Vader. They are all amazing live, and we really had to lift our game to support them. If you have a shaky night, these bands just totally destroy you. I do not see The Berzerker as being an important pillar of the scene. Our achievements are inferior to those of the other bands I just mentioned. I like to think our legacy will be more the band which opened the door to extreme metal crossover acts, the band that broke down the stifling fundamentalism of modern day death metal. We will never win a 'readers poll' in a magazine, we will never win any industry awards, we will never feature in any popularity contests and far from being a pillar in the scene, we are the band attaching dynamite to its foundations. 9. Now you released a new album. How is it compared to the others? Are you content of the final result? Yes. 'World of Lies' is the first album we've done where we're 100% happy with the production. It's brutal, vicious, dirty, downtuned, beastly, with collosal bottom end. You can hear everything. It's a more song-oriented album than Dissimulate or the debut. The debut album was us doing a variety of styles, Dissimulate was a hardcore Death Metal album where we just wanted to be as mental as possible, but on 'World of Lies' we just wanted songs that would rock us hard. It is still brutal as hell, some of our fastest moments are on this album, but our focus was on songs and riffs rather than just blasting everything to hell. 10. What's the message behing the lyrics? We have no messages. We have no right to be giving messages. Musicians are, by and large, not the ideal people to be offering messages to anyone. We let the music do the talking, or in our case, the beating. 11. Did you have any problems because of your image and message so far? We don't have any problems with how our message is received, seeing as though we have no message. As for our image, I'll admit it has caused problems but not with the mainstream or authorities. The problem has come from within the metal audience. It seems that we are too different for the average metalhead, who has a more fundamentalist approach to music than usual people. We are appealing only to people who are looking for something very different, and very brutal. 12. Do you plan to record a videoclip for some tharck on this album too? Any ideas of how should it look? A videoclip has already been recorded for the track 'All About You' and is available for download from the forum on our website at www.theberzerker.com . You can also find information about our upcoming tour on there as well, and any news about what we're doing. The filmclip for 'All About You' looks - what can I say? - different to all our other ones. We have an idea to do another video, we'd like to do one more shocking than 'Reality', but we'll have to wait until we have resources available. 13. How will you promote this album? Should we expect a new World Tour? Maybe you'll reach this time Romania also. We will play some shows but I don't think we'll be touring on the scale we did for 'Dissimulate'. Our promotion for this album will be mainly the occasional live appearance, and spreading the word about 'World of Lies' as much as possible through metal-loving media such as yourselves. We would really like to push the multimedia side of the band through doing filmclips, anything different from just going on the road and endlessly touring. Doing everything differently to other metal bands has done us well so far, we don't want to be yet another extreme metal band playing the world's pubs year after year. 14. What's the idea behind the 13th track of the album, or there's none? What about the last track? Is there a new orientation for the band? No, we do something different for the last track of each album. We've done it with all three albums so far, and we've done the silent track 13 for the last two albums, I'm astounded that everyone has only started asking about it now. Maybe no-one bought our first cd, and no-one was able to make it past track 7 on Dissimulate, who knows. Heaps of bands have a silent second-last track before the last song on the album, usually they are not listed on the CD though and you have to fast forward through the end of the CD to get to them. This is the same sort of thing, just made a little bit more user-friendly. At least we give you the option of skipping past the track of silence that separates the album proper from the experimental song. 15. Thank you for answering my questions! Hope to talk again soon! Thanks for your time and support. 'World of Lies' will destroy your world.

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The Berzerker

1. Greetings! Welcum to Tempest Music from Romania! How are you lately?
Working hard and going crazy. I hate everything. Hi.

2. To begin this chat please tell us if you think you're 100% humans. What pushes you so far in order to create such an intense ear aggression?
I can't tell you how long I looked at the first part of that question, stroking my beard and trying to think of something abusive and smarmy I could say in reply. I've given up on that, now for the rest of thequestion. We make this aggressive music because we like listening to super-aggressive music especially in a death metal framework, and we don't know many death metal bands these days who are making essentially Angry music, so I guess we have to do it ourselves. It is a senseless side of ourselves that we express through music.

3. The Berzerker was formed in 1995. Did you play in any other bands before? What about now, do you have any side-projects?
Luke played in a few bands as a drummer, one of them was called Mystic Insight. Luke has his hand in many side projects. I do solo tracks and albums which can be found on the net with a bit of searching.

4. I know you are the only permanent member now in the band, so can it still be considered a real band or just a studio-project?
Hmmm. Although Luke, The Berzerker, is and always is the main-man for The Berzerker, Sam has appeared on every album and tour so far and could be considered something of a fixture. To some people a real band is one which never changes anything, the music they play, the people in the band, and so on. That will never be us. For some people a studio-project is when a band just makes CDs and never plays live and obviously that isn't us either.

5. Are you still in touch with the other guys that helped you along the way? What are they doing now?
Yeah, still in touch with most of them. Sam and Matt currently live in the UK and are rehearsing for the new berzerker tour in March. Luke is at home.. Ed and Jay are still in contact with Luke back in Melbourne. Gary and Luke still chat a bit. There are some guys who have been involved with us previously who we don't really have any contact with anymore, and we don't know the specifics of what they are doing.

6. Although being on a precise industrial ground you keep your form of death metal strongly '90's influenced. How come the idea of such a combination? What are you listening at home lately?
We love death metal music but the sounds used in it are probably too ineffective for the impact we are aiming for. Industrial has no problem manipulating the sounds of all instruments, particularly percussion, in order to have a more brutal effect. It's an obvious combination, we think. I'm listening to old school death metal, plenty of triphop, and mix cds made of individual tracks from modern day metal bands. I can't think of the last time a death metal band came out with an entire CD that just overwhelmed me, so I pick the most aggro tracks from a bunch of bands and just stick them all on a CD.

7. Do you consider The Berzerker above the other bands into death metal when we're talking about brutality?
I'm so curious what bands like Napalm Death, Incantation or Vader said about you when touring. We never toured with Incantation, we did tour with Immolation did you mean them?...and of course have toured with both Vader and Napalm, Each band are brutal in their own right, we do a very different kind of brutality due to our electronic influences. I have no idea what other bands think of us and quite honestly I'd prefer not to know. I suspect a few of them think we are some sort of joke band. Try and imagine what Black Sabbath would make of Morbid Angel.

8. About that, how do you manage to play such long tours? The one promoting "Dissimulate" went on for more than 100 dates...
I still have no idea how we managed to tour for that long. It was in part due to Earache helping hook us up with various tours, but more importantly it was because all four of us were totally committed and decided to do it no matter the cost. When it finished we were all pretty broke and had many injuries and ailments. Luke was coughing up black stuff from screaming in smoky clubs. I had conjunctivitis and an infected face from being smashed in the mouth with my mic so much. Gary had broken his foot and cracked vertebrae. I don't see myself doing a tour that long again.

9. By the way, how was it to tour with such great names of the scene? Do you consider The Berzerker now as being an important pillar of the scene?
It was great to tour with bands like Nile, Napalm Death, Immolation, SYL and Vader. They are all amazing live, and we really had to lift our game to support them. If you have a shaky night, these bands just totally destroy you. I do not see The Berzerker as being an important pillar of the scene. Our achievements are inferior to those of the other bands I just mentioned. I like to think our legacy will be more the band which opened the door to extreme metal crossover acts, the band that broke down the stifling fundamentalism of modern day death metal. We will never win a 'readers poll' in a magazine, we will never win any industry awards, we will never feature in any popularity contests and far from being a pillar in the scene, we are the band attaching dynamite to its foundations.

9. Now you released a new album. How is it compared to the others? Are you content of the final result?
Yes. 'World of Lies' is the first album we've done where we're 100% happy with the production. It's brutal, vicious, dirty, downtuned, beastly, with collosal bottom end. You can hear everything. It's a more song-oriented album than Dissimulate or the debut. The debut album was us doing a variety of styles, Dissimulate was a hardcore Death Metal album where we just wanted to be as mental as possible, but on 'World of Lies' we just wanted songs that would rock us hard. It is still brutal as hell, some of our fastest moments are on this album, but our focus was on songs and riffs rather than just blasting everything to hell.

10. What's the message behing the lyrics?
We have no messages. We have no right to be giving messages. Musicians are, by and large, not the ideal people to be offering messages to anyone. We let the music do the talking, or in our case, the beating.

11. Did you have any problems because of your image and message so far?
We don't have any problems with how our message is received, seeing as though we have no message. As for our image, I'll admit it has caused problems but not with the mainstream or authorities. The problem has come from within the metal audience. It seems that we are too different for the average metalhead, who has a more fundamentalist approach to music than usual people. We are appealing only to people who are looking for something very different, and very brutal.

12. Do you plan to record a videoclip for some tharck on this album too? Any ideas of how should it look?
A videoclip has already been recorded for the track 'All About You' and is available for download from the forum on our website at www.theberzerker.com . You can also find information about our upcoming tour on there as well, and any news about what we're doing. The filmclip for 'All About You' looks - what can I say? - different to all our other ones. We have an idea to do another video, we'd like to do one more shocking than 'Reality', but we'll have to wait until we have resources available.

13. How will you promote this album? Should we expect a new World Tour? Maybe you'll reach this time Romania also.
We will play some shows but I don't think we'll be touring on the scale we did for 'Dissimulate'. Our promotion for this album will be mainly the occasional live appearance, and spreading the word about 'World of Lies' as much as possible through metal-loving media such as yourselves. We would really like to push the multimedia side of the band through doing filmclips, anything different from just going on the road and endlessly touring. Doing everything differently to other metal bands has done us well so far, we don't want to be yet another extreme metal band playing the world's pubs year after year.

14. What's the idea behind the 13th track of the album, or there's none? What about the last track? Is there a new orientation for the band?
No, we do something different for the last track of each album. We've done it with all three albums so far, and we've done the silent track 13 for the last two albums, I'm astounded that everyone has only started asking about it now. Maybe no-one bought our first cd, and no-one was able to make it past track 7 on Dissimulate, who knows. Heaps of bands have a silent second-last track before the last song on the album, usually they are not listed on the CD though and you have to fast forward through the end of the CD to get to them. This is the same sort of thing, just made a little bit more user-friendly. At least we give
you the option of skipping past the track of silence that separates the album proper from the experimental song.

15. Thank you for answering my questions! Hope to talk again soon!
Thanks for your time and support. 'World of Lies' will destroy your world.