Vomitizer sign their first album.
With the help of Undercover Records, Peterror (vocals, Ghetto Ghouls), Øyvind Rekdal (guitar, Chton, ex-Cleaver), Ketil Sæther (bass, Corroder, Goat the Head) and Espen Hektoen (drums, Chton, Corroder) unveil Release the Rats.
The band attacks without delay with A Wonderful World to Destroy, a first composition with an aggressive Old School mix that welcomes morbid vocal parts in the purest tradition of the genre. The choruses are slightly more accessible, even offering a few eerie melodies, and the jerky riffs soon return with Rat Religion, which immediately follows, offering heavy dissonance and oppressive backing vocals to complete the ambient violence. A few Thrash influences and a vocal sample accompany the rush to the finale, before The Church of Rats gets underway with a more subdued start, but its heaviness is just as telling to complement the track’s rage. The unifying final will undoubtedly be most effective live, before Rattus Rittualis continues the macabre tones for a further two very similar minutes to reach the brutality of Pestilence (the Sickness), a short track where the musicians unleash their full force without delay. Howls and bloody harmonics take turns to testify to the constant rage, before adopting more melodious patterns with Indulge into Chaos, while retaining the energetic blast and catchy riffs. The composition quickly hands over to The Reek of Death, which takes off again in a cadaverous slowness to create a suffocating atmosphere, at times fueled by aerial leads that confirm this dissonant positioning, but Something Dark and Bloody did Indeed Occur will change this calm atmosphere to return to unbridled violence. The wild jolts are interspersed with more melodic but still vivid harmonics, before Raw Meat closes the album with Grind/Death influences to confirm the aggression.
Vomitizer is obviously capable of being violent, but also of offering more dissonant melodies on Release the Rats. The first album is a success, anchoring itself ever more firmly in Norwegian brutality.
85/100
A few questions to Øyvind Rekdal, guitarist for the Norwegian Death Metal band Vomitizer about the release of the band’s debut album, Release the Rats.
Hello and first of all thank you very much for your time! How could you introduce the band Vomitizer without using the usual Metal labels, such as “Death Metal” or its subgenres?
Øyvind Rekdal (guitar): Hello, and thank you for this interview. The easiest way to describe Vomitizer without doing the usual metal labels, is just by using the word filth. That’s where we’re going both musically and through lyrics. We want to deliver that dirty raw feeling in everything we do. If Filth Metal was a thing, that is what we would label us.
Where does the name Vomitizer come from, and how do you link it to your project’s music? How did you guys decide to create a new band together? The press page also mentions bass player Ketil Sæter, but he’s not in the promo pictures, did he join later?
Øyvind: We started off with different ideas for band names more linked to the lyrics we had, but we were never totally convinced by any of them, and we didn’t want to bind us to hard to the concept. In the end we just went for a band name that stayed true to the filth we deliver through our music. It has the word vomit woven into the band name, so we’re happy with that. About Ketil not being part of the promo pictures. He’s just not as handsome as the rest of us, so we gave him the wrong address for the photo shoot. Well, that was maybe not totally true. The real reason is that we didn’t have a bass player for the time of the recording and we asked Ketil if he could do it, since we knew he would deliver. Ketil already played with Espen in the Thrash band Corroder and I have also done another projects with him earlier on. So Ketil was willing to do it, but did not have time for another band. So he never had the plan of becoming a permanent member of Vomitizer. We asked him if he wanted to do the promo pictures for the records, but as he is not a permanent member of the band he just didn’t see the point. But of course I could be wrong and it’s the other way around, he being the handsome one and we’re not, and that’s why he chose not to do it.
The band is about to release its debut album Release the Rats. How do you feel about it? Do you already have any feedback?
Øyvind: We are very excited about it. It has actually been some time since we finished the recording, and we still find it great today. So it ended up the way we wanted it. Not many have heard the album yet, so we are really eager to see some reviews of the album soon. We actually got more than one offer for a record deal though, and I take that as a good sign. When a label wants to sign you, it means they believe in you and that you have some good stuff going on.
How would you sum Release the Rats’ identity up in only three words?
Øyvind: Ugh! Hard question. Oh, that wasn’t my three words. Here goes: Filthy, raw, sickness. I guess that will catch the essence of the whole package. I know you’ve already heard some of these words earlier in the interview, but that’s really were we’re going with Vomitizer and the album.
How did the creation process happen for Release the Rats? It’s the band’s first album, but you all have experience with other projects, so did it come naturally?
Øyvind: It’s kind of a special creation process for me, since nothing was done in the rehearsal room. I actually made all the songs on guitar, arranged them and recorded them. After that I wrote the lyrics for the songs. We recorded drums, vocals and bass separately and then sent it over to a friend of ours for mixing and mastering. This is a new way of making music for me, since I’ve always used to put the songs together in the rehearsal room with other guys in the band. But I think it worked out really well. All the guys had the same idea where we were going with the songs, so we ended up with a really good result. So yeah, I think it came very naturally for all of us. But of course it helps out that I had made all the basis for the songs before the other guys started working on their stuff. Then we already had a good feeling for what this was going to be.
The band’s sound is definitely anchored in an Old School Death Metal, but how do you manage to create your own touch? Which bands would you quote as the most inspiring for you Vomitizer?
Øyvind: It was me and Espen that started out Vomitizer, and I told him I wanted to do something that catched the feeling of Abscess. Just have that filthy attitude with Old School Death Metal and maybe even some Punk vibes. I don’t think we ended up sounding very much like Abscess in the end, but that was also not the point. It was more to hit that same vibe, and I think we managed that. Our vocalist Peterror has been very inspired by Killjoy of Necrophagia when he did the vocals, so you will find some more high-pitched screaming and gurgling than you might expect from the usual death metal album. To namedrop some bands that inspired Vomitizer; Abscess, Autopsy, Necrophagia, Obituary, Bolt Thrower. So if you combine that with a touch of punk and a lot of filth, I guess you have the recipe for Vomitizer. But it’s hard for me to say one band we sound like, so I definitely think that we have found our own thing. We haven’t had much feedback on the album yet, but from what we’ve heard so far, many find that we have an original sound. I don’t think we worked very hard on creating that, it’s just the way it turned out.
In the Death Metal scene, it’s not uncommon to use some themes like rats, plague or sickness, and it’s of course used for Vomitizer. Is there a concept on Release the Rats?
Øyvind: Yes, Release the Rats is a concept album with a story going through the ten songs you find on the album. At the same time it’s not very hard story driven like you would find on a typical King Diamond album or anything like that. We wanted each song to be able to stand out for itself, so you don’t need the concept of the album to understand the lyric of each song. But you follow a sort of religious cult believing that sending plague-infested rats into the world will only spare the chosen ones. So the album starts out describing this cult and their philosophy, and how the world turns sick, people dying and were only the most wicked and gruesome people are surviving this new world in the end.
Do you have a favorite song on this album? Or maybe the hardest one to achieve.
Øyvind: OK, this is a brutal question. I think the songs have very different feeling to them too, so it’s hard to compare them to each other. But if I should pick one, I think it will be the opening track A Wonderful World to Destroy. It just rolls really good and catch the vibe of Vomitizer in a good way.
Where do you find your inspiration to create music?
Øyvind: The most obvious source of inspiration is of course listening to other bands. So all the bands we listen to will have things that we pick up and inspire us. But it’s not always death metal bands that needs to be the inspiration, and sometimes I come up with ideas while I’m doing completely other stuff on the guitar. I’ve experienced many times fooling around with exercises, learning new songs and stuff like that, and suddenly I’m sitting there making new death metal riffs instead. For the lyrics it’s of course other sorts of inspirations, mostly through different horror movies, series, comics and book.
Do you think you improved yourself as a musician and songwriter with this new record?
Øyvind: Yes, I think so. Of course, it’s always new stuff to learn making a new record. But as I described earlier, the way we made this album was a new way of making music for me, and I had to think things through at a whole new level. And being a concept album we had to get the different lyrics and songs fit together in other ways than I’ve needed to think about before, and at the same time make an album that has a good progression where the song fit together in the right order. So in the end I think I’ve learned a lot as a songwriter in this process.
What were the guidelines for Release the Rats’ cover art? Who’s the artist and how did you reach this person?
Øyvind: We sent the description of the whole concept to an artist that we wanted to use, and he came up with a really good album cover combining a lot of the story elements into the cover. But we wanted to release a single of the song Pestilence (The Sickness) before the album. The lyric of the song is actually just a description of how this pestilence attack the body of a guy, and Peterror had some old artwork he had bought that fitted really good with these lyrics. Just showing a man in pain and agony screaming while puss and blood is running out of his eyes and mouth. After we released the single we were so happy with that artwork that we decided to do a modified version for the cover art of the album too. The guy that did the artwork just wanted to be credited as Endlessvile and you can find his artwork on Instagram. So he didn’t get any guidelines, it just fit the concept of the album and was a really cool cover, so we went for it. We of course still have the other artwork that was supposed to be the album cover, so I guess we will use that at some point too.
Release the Rats is released by Undercover Records, how is the collaboration with your label?
Øyvind: It’s been really good so far. They have delivered on everything as promised and they are into this on all the right reasons. Just a big passion for good Extreme Metal. They also respect all our artistic choices, so this is what matters to us. Of course it’s an underground label, so I don’t see them sending us on tour with Metallica any time soon, but they have always been honest on what they can do for us and that’s what they’ve done all the way.
I didn’t find any mention of any live show for Vomitizer, would you like to play your material on stage? Are there any things on the way about live shows?
Øyvind: Yes, but there has already been some change in the line up in the band to pull that through. We will soon announce that, so it’s a bit early still. We’ve also already have signed up for our first gig at a festival, but that is also stuff we are not allowed to talk about yet. I know it just ended up in a lot of secrecy in this answer, but the bottom line is; yes, Vomitizer is definitely to be seen live soon. We will also start working on getting new shows as soon as the album is out.
What will happen in the next months for Vomitizer?
Øyvind: It’s three things that will be the main focus for Vomitizer in the next months. That will be to promote the album, rehearse to get the live set tight for our first gig and make new music for what is going to be an EP.
Are there any musicians or artists you would still like to collaborate with in the future for Vomitizer? Whether it is for one song, or maybe more.
Øyvind: It’s actually not a thing I’ve been thinking about. But that is something I can be open for at some point. But if I should choose what would be the perfect guest musician for Vomitizer, it would be Chris Reifert from Abscess and Autopsy. Just because his bands has been such a big inspiration for us. We actually did a cover of the Abscess-song Ratbag with my other band Chton on our album The Devil Builds in 2012, so this band has been an inspiration for a long time.
If you had to organize a concert for Release the Rats’ release show, which bands would you love to play with? I let you create a poster with Vomitizer and three other bands! Even unrealistic answers are accepted.
Øyvind: I guess AC/DC would be a great opening for Vomitizer. But over to some more realistic, but still very unrealistic bands: Of course Abscess should do a reunion to join us at stage. Band number two would be Immolation, just because they are an awesome band and Robert Vigna is an awesome guitar player that’s been a big inspiration for me. Last band to join the ranks for this show, also doing a reunion, would be Slayer, just because they’re Slayer.
Last and funny question: which dish would you compare Vomitizer’s music with?
Øyvind: That have to be surströmming. If you don’t know what it is, search up surströmming challenge at YouTube. But yes, it’s slimey, disgusting and reeks of death, but still there are weirdos out there who actually enjoy this stuff. So Vomitizer is surströmming.
That was the last question for me, so thank you very much for your time and your music for all those years, last words are yours!
Øyvind: Thanks a lot for doing this interview. Expect a lot of nasty Death from Vomitizer in the future. You can follow us at most social media platforms to get the latest news on what’s up in the Vomitizer camp. Stay brutal!