Mortuary
Spawn is a killer death metal band from England who recently released
their crushing debut EP "Spawned From The Mortuary" which is
an addictive blast of brutality from start to finish. The following
interview was conducted with the band’s guitarist, Jack.
Greetings!
How’s everything going in England? Please tell us how Mortuary
Spawn was conceived and what the band is all about.
Hi
Jim - cheers for the interview! All’s well here, or as close to
well as it can be these days. On the welcome cusp of having shows
return even as cases of the virus seem to be skyrocketing, so
wouldn’t be surprised if that decision gets reversed, but on the
whole we are happy and healthy.
Mortuary
Spawn started as an idea myself and Ben (drums) had many years ago,
shortly after a band we were in called Bong Goblin ended. The initial
plan was for Ben to send across some mad sounding drums and I would
come up with some riffs and send them back, working that way as we
were based in different cities at the time, but that never ended up
happening, mostly because of my ineptitude using recording software!
In the meantime I had started writing some songs with some friends
more local to London under the name Deadly Intentions, but as that
project kind of dissolved, I started travelling up to Leeds on spare
weekends and jamming with Ben with more purpose, and at that point
you could probably say Mortuary Spawn was properly spawned. Shortly
after that Ben (bass) joined, followed by George on vocals, and all
the while we were searching for a capable shredder who eventually
emerged in Joe after he watched our debut show supporting Demilich on
Valentine’s Day 2020. Then the pandemic hit and although it really
scuppered our plans (and everyone else’s!) in hindsight it gave Joe
a chance to catch up and add some extra flavour to the EP, which was
eventually recorded by Ben at our practice space earlier in the year.
As
to what we’re about - nothing more than trying to write some gross
Top of the Pops death metal and having a good time while we’re at
it!
As
we all know, the underground is saturated with bands and competition
is strong. Do you feel it’s important to leave one’s mark with a
quality output, as opposed to releasing some sub-par material that
will soon be forgotten in time?
The
obvious answer is yes, but it depends on what you’re trying to
achieve! If that’s immortality through music, then for sure, crack
on with writing a masterpiece. I think I’ve been in over 15 bands,
and I’d say most of them would be classed as sub-par or forgettable
unless you were directly involved in them, but playing music isn’t
a popularity contest for many people, or at least it needn’t be
when you’re playing this style. It helps not to lose sight of the
fact that you need to entertain people with quality songs if you want
to play live a lot, but as long as we continue to write music that is
interesting and fun to us, that is the key thing.
Your
debut EP “Spawned From The Mortuary” ripped my head off. Raw,
vicious, and well-executed Death Metal. Can you tell us a little bit
about the sound you were after, including some details about the
whole writing process? Will there be more of the same with future
releases?
Cheers!
There was no foundational plan or guiding principles when it came to
writing these songs, and because some of the riffs have been bouncing
around in my head for the best part of a decade before being upgraded
massively by the full band’s input, there’s been the chance for a
lot of revisions and improvements along the way. I’ve got some
videos of some of the riffs that made it on to the EP from 2013, and
the hardcore influence was a lot stronger then, sounding more like
All Out War or Stampin’ Ground. I’m glad it’s ended up fully
death metal sounding, and that’s largely down to the combined
talents/capabilities/backgrounds of everyone in the band. Ben
(Southern, bass) is a maniac for grind with the nastiest tone in the
business, while Joe (Kerry, guitar) is successfully learning
Stabwound by Necrophagist at the moment, so I think playing to our
strengths while working towards a common goal is probably the reason
we sound like we do. Going forward the songwriting has started to be
a lot more collaborative, but I still do most of my portion of things
at home first, as I can obsess over note choice for hours on end
without wasting anyone else’s time (bar my own) that way, before
bringing it to Ben (Jones, drums) to demo/learn and then to the
practice room. Expect pretty much more of the same from us in the
future, which is essentially our take on classic death metal - not
enormously original but not entirely hackneyed either.
I
have to admit, the black and white artwork for the EP is just awesome
and gives off a sort of cult vibe that fits your music. What is the
idea behind it and who is the artist?
The
original concept was George’s and it was drawn up by the excellent
Tombtower, someone we know from their time playing in Stiff Meds
before
relocating to Berlin. The brief was pretty short - we wanted a
corridor filled with a trail of chaos leading to a set of double
doors behind which you would not want to go. Tom ended up going one
step further and actualising this horrific monstrosity that you see
on the cover, so there’s less left to the imagination but it’s
certainly better for it and we’re extremely happy with his work!
Do
ridiculous boomer sentiments like “metal is dead” hold any
significance to you?
Haha
- absolutely not! Great metal musicians keep dying, which is
obviously terrible, and we’ll most likely never return to a time of
stadium filling metal bands, but any which way you look at that
statement, it’s a pretty stupid and blinkered one.
Has
metal become too soft and watered-down? Are people too sensitive
nowadays? How do you feel about censorship?
As
far as I’m aware, no! If anything, metal mirrors the population at
large - it has spread, split into smaller and smaller fractions,
evolved for the better and for the worse, argued with itself, become
many new things and preserved old ideas too. So if you go looking for
something that seems soft and watered down to you, you could probably
find it easier than ever before, but that ease applies to more
orthodox shit (rendering the concept of obscure somewhat less earned)
and other much more unpalatable ends of the spectrum too. I reckon a
lot of the people you see pumping out inflammatory sentiments
regarding censorship, or a perceived culture war, or trying to reduce
the world to binary terms like left and right when it suits them to
do so - people like Nergal from Behemoth, for instance - are smart
people who are too comfortable in their own views to continue to
evolve or listen to other experiences that contradict their own.
Penny Rimbaud of Crass is someone else who because of their own well
established world view, just sounds like an idiot these days. It
stinks of laziness and intellectual stagnation, it sucks. More than
trying to censor others' views, I think we all need to practice a bit
more compassion and spend a lot less time trying to garner truths
about the world from warped, decontextualised online interactions.
Honestly, is there anything more depressing than a group of older men
with stupid avatars banding together in a space they dominate to
convince some new teenage black metal fan that they are somehow wrong
or a poser to bring up the issue of outright racism in the music that
they are encountering for the first time? It’s a hateful playground
where it’s easy to get sucked into the wrong crew for quite some
time before you’re able to come to your own (hopefully palatable
and respectful) conclusions. Metal and the wider music world will
always be a place where ideas can be discussed and learned and an
avenue for expression, but they definitely aren’t the places where
they should be finalised or taken as law.
What
are some of your favourite albums of all time and which bands
influenced your sound?
Most
of my faves dwell outside of the kind of relevant levels of heavy,
but all of Sepultura’s classics, Doom - Rush Hour of the Gods,
Entombed - Clandestine, Extreme Noise Terror - Phonophobia, Carcass +
Obituary + Death in general, Framtid, Bolt Thrower, Merciless - The
Awakening, Aura Noir, Black Breath - Slaves Beyond Death, After The
Bombs - Relentless Onslaught, Celtic Frost (big time) and Dystopia
are all firm favourites of mine who fit both categories and have
seeped in to the Mortuary Spawn sound somehow!
Can
you give us some details about working with labels like Brutal Cave
Productions, Chamber of Emesis, and Sewer Rot Records? How has the
response been so far towards your music?
Great
on all three counts - Chamber of Emesis is George’s venture with
the other two in Vomitorium
and
we thought 50 copies with them would be enough for a first run, but
we’ve got through a fair few extra copies now. It was only a matter
of days after putting the EP up on bandcamp until Brutal Cave
(Portugal) and Sewer Rot (Southern California) got in contact with
offers that worked for all parties, as in no unreasonable
obligations, no expectation of riches, but plenty of enthusiasm for
the music, and although there’s crazy delays with production
worldwide at the moment, you should be able to buy Mortuary Spawn
stuff from both of them by the time this is published!
The
response has been pretty great and more than we expected, and since
then it’s been a pleasure finding out a bit more about the current
landscape of death metal through the support we’ve got from
strangers in the underground. I didn’t realise death metal was
having such a big moment! I might have come across them anyway, but
now I’m listening to 2021 releases by bands like Sněť, Morbific
and
Cerebral Rot
and
thinking, shit, these guys are very very good and we’re going to
have to be very very good too.
That
will be the end of our interview, thanks for your time! The last
rotten words are yours.
If
you’re in the UK, come to any of the shows listed below, and give
us a shout on mortuaryspawn@gmail.com so we can come play in your
living room/alldayer/generator show/megafest/miserable town, we
really would like that. Thanks again, Jim!
LEEDS
24/07/21 w/ Discharge, Pest Control, Ona Snop, Frisk + loads more @
Boom
LONDON
02/09/21 w/ Celestial Sanctuary, Slimelord + Vacuous @ the Black
Heart
LONDON
11/09/21 Chimpyfest w/ Varukers, Active Minds, Sulk + loads more @
New Cross Inn
LEEDS
14/10/21 w/ Foetal Juice, Basement Torture Killings + Ona Snop @ Boom
MANCHESTER
16/10/21 w/ Wode, Live Burial + Sump @ the Star and Garter
