Interview

Interview With George Misanthrope Of Monument Of Misanthropy About Metal Underground

Christy Lee of "All Things Metal" has written an article on the metal scene and the society within the genre that we all know and love. She also had the opportunity to chat with George Misanthrope of the band, Monument of Misanthropy. Check out some excerpts below (read the entire interview HERE):

CL: How did you guys end up with Romain Goulon drummer of the band Necrophagist in your band?

GM: Romain is a very good and old friend of Jean Pierre Battesti. They were jamming together before Romain got famous for being the drummer of the technical death metal innovators Necrophagist. Unlike Necrophagist the stuff JP and Romain played at that time was pretty much brutal death metal with old-school death metal and grindcore elements- Brutal and fast but with some Napalm Death & Terrorizer groove in it. JP who already knew me from “Raising The Veil” one day asked me if I want to try out some vocals on some songs he had pre-produced with Romain. And I of course said yes, because I liked the brutality and straight in you face-punch of the songs. So for all of us in “Monument Of Misanthropy” the album is also kind of a tribute to the early days of pure, upright and unpretentious death metal, which defined the 3 of us as young musicians.

CL: How do you feel about how today’s society likes to categorize metal sub-genres?

GM: I think its human, which doesn’t mean it is ok or that I like it. People especially growing up kids long to be part of something they can or want to be identified with. It also has to do with insecurities during adolescence. Anyways what really matters is that someone really likes the music genre and it’s a message and ideals which he or she’s listening to. I never thought it was cool to be a thrash metal fan when I listened to thrash or later a death metal fan listening to death metal. I just liked the music and the people I met in metal record-stores (yes we had to buy our music at that time), clubs and at shows. But it has always been and probably always will be that people of one genre try to tell you that his genre is the best ever and that what you’re listening to is total crap. I never tried to persuade someone to any kind of metal genre. If a friend didn’t like what I listened to it was ok I kept listening to it. Best practice for dealing with metal elitist preachers: Ignore them, end of story.

CL: If you were to evolve heavy metal, how would you do so?

GM: That’s a tough one. I really don’t know into which direction metal could evolve anymore. I mean it’s almost impossible from today’s point of view. It is almost impossible to play faster or more technical as metal is being played today. Also do we have that many sub genres that it’s almost impossible too to “invent” any new crossover genre too. I guess only time will tell where the future of metal will be heading to….

CL: Even bigger bands have problems selling their CDs and concert tickets. How does this affect the underground and unsigned bands?

GM: Well this actually IS a big problem for all bands, signed and unsigned. First the big labels realized “hey we don’t sell as many CDs due to music-piracy. ok let’ s send the bands around the globe for years and let them sell their merch and all will be good.” But what happened now is that on one hand many promising bands called it quits due to burn-out and frustration and even more self-destructive: they created and overflow of bands touring so that the live-gig-branch got over-saturated in the big cities too after some years. So what to do now?

Next solution-strategy was to re-activate all the old bands that still had a big name but have disbanded or retired already and send them around the globe as well. Well that’s where we’re standing now. As an unsigned and most likely also unknown band you can decide to play local gigs or buy yourself in on some bigger tour or even into a label if you have enough change saved. On the other hand if you have the passion and the right musicians you can also succeed using the internet to make yourself heard on YouTube, Soundcloud and Facebook etc. and then try to grab some interesting gigs and festival slots. We decided for the latter and I think our success proves us right.