Interview with Herb Burke of Seattle death metal band Drawn & Quartered
 

Boring stuff first, like band history and how long has the band been together and things like that.

HB  Ah yes, always the boring stuff first. Let's see, we've been jamming together I guess since '94, actually the summer of '94. The summer of '94 was when me, Kelly our guitar player and Matt our drummer began playing together. For some time we just jammed, we had a couple of bass players that didn't really work out. Probably by about '96 we has a stable lineup and were able to start playing shows, of which a real early success was being able to open for Napalm Death and At The Gates when they played in Seattle. That was a real, well it was kick ass, let's just say that. That show was great. Not too long after that, in the late summer of '96 we recorded our demo which was put out finally in early '97 and that was about the time that we found ourselves without a bass player again. That was when we hooked up with Greg, who's playing bass for us now and we've had that lineup since then. Otherwise pretty much we've been playing. In the late summer of '98 we went into the studio to record what became our debut cd To Kill Is Human and that was released in early '99, it's official release was the summer of '99. Shortly after it's release we went on a short tour of the western US which was a great success and we're now playing additional shows and working on our material for our second release.
 

For your album To Kill Is Human, how did that come about and what's the distribution on it like?

HB  Well the distribution, to answer that first, is through Moribund Records who've been a big help to us. Basically the cd was all self financed. Although we looked for a label to put it out on we didn't get any reasonable offers and so ultimately we elected to pay for the pressing ourselves but Moribund has helped us out a lot in distribution and a little bit of promotion. So that's about it.
 

You guys still have your day jobs, you're not exactly rock stars.

HB  No that's for sure. That is for certain.
 

Your lyrics aren't exactly tame. Have you gotten into any trouble or complaints about them?

HB  No, can't say that we have. I mean I don't think that we are particularly, oh you know maybe I should say that we've had a couple of freak outs but nothing major because obviously we're not to the point that we have an awful lot of scrutiny from big powers that be, so to speak. But just little things like even our drummer's girlfriend the first time she read the lyrics and she was apparently a little offended by the content or whatever, which is fine. Also from what I understand, what I've been told, when we went to re-press our cd which we did recently 'cause we sold out the first pressing, we went to do the second and we had Moribund basically take care of that, going through their people and from what I was told the people that normally do their printing saw the cover, I think they just saw the cover but they might have seen the lyrics too and I guess the manager saw it and had a little freak out. So they had to go to a secondary place that'll print anything. Either that or it's all media hype, it could be, I'm not sure.
 

What non death/black metal bands do you listen to?

HB  Hmmm, none! No that's a big fat lie. Pretty much any aggressive metal. Maiden rules, old Maiden of course with Paul Di'anno, Killers era but I would also have to say that Brave New World is a great album, I listen to that all the time. It depends on how you categorize. I listen to some old metal, I listen to stuff that's kind of in the vein of At The Gates and stuff, although some people consider that death or black, it's I don't know it's kind of whatever. Nevermore is kick ass obviously. But I think truthfully mostly if I'm not listening to something that's aggressive and hateful I'm probably going back to older stuff like old Maiden, old Sabbath, the old heavy stuff when they were still being really aggressive in their way.
 

Are you going to go see Sabbath this time at Ozzfest?

HB  Gonna try to. It's the originals I really can't turn it down even though I've seen them a bunch of times already.
 

How much have you toured so far and with who?

HB  Actual touring has been reasonably minimal. Like I mentioned, shortly after the official release of the album we did go on the road for a couple weeks. We played a few dates with Cephalic Carnage and Vile from the Bay area in California and that was a great experience. A learning experience of course, the road is not a place for wusses, it's a place for men. Anyway we played Portland, Seattle, Salt Lake, Denver, Austin Texas, Corpus Christi Texas, Los Angeles, San Francisco and then we came home. So that was quite an epic journey. I mean it was a great time, I had a blast. We had some really great shows. Denver was great, I thought Austin was a great show, San Francisco was really good. Our first night actually, in Portland, we got word a day before the show was to take place that Immolation, who had been touring with Cephalic Carnage, were going to come up to Portland and play the show which they weren't going to do beforehand. So that was like the first date of our first tour so that was pretty fucking cool. Other than that we've done other road trips, localized like up to Vancouver BC, central Oregon and also we did November to Dismember this past November in San Bernadino, down in Los Angeles and that was a real kick ass experience too. That may very well be the high point of the band so far.
 

You know what's coming next, road stories. Especially the ones that usually wouldn't get printed.

HB  Road stories. Well, I don't know that we've got too many really great road stories that I can think of right off the top of my head, other than just imagine cramming four smelly people into a small van and driving all across the country. It's not like other people haven't done the same thing, but you know what the fuck. The most entertaining thing I can think of right offhand is how on our last trip we were just cracking each other up to no end by calling shit 'baby jesus'. So it was like "I gotta go pinch a baby jesus" or "are you giving birth to baby jesus in there" which I yelled out at Kelly one time in a Quik E Mart, I think it was in Oregon somewhere and that was pretty funny. But I don't think, let's see. There's not too many, let's see ha ha. I suppose there's a couple of minor stories that I can relate. In Utah, which is a fucked up place by the way I might add, people in Salt Lake are some of the worst drivers. I mean I'm sure everyone there is pretty much fucked and inbred. Sorry if you're from Utah, no whatever. But after our show in Salt Lake City we got this place to crash and it turned out to be this total ragged coke whore's apartment and it was just fucking filthy but it was a place to crash. Then the other cool thing Ha! about Utah was what was supposed to happen is we played Salt Lake on Thursday, on Friday we were supposed to have an all ages show at this town called Tooele and that was supposed to be the kick ass show 'cause that was going to be a weekend, it was gonna be all ages and dada dada da. So we roll out there, we're a little late. Doors are supposed to open at six, we're on time to get there maybe at seven or something but we're not really stressing 'cause you know, we get there an hour after the doors open maybe show's being set up or whatever. So we roll in there, it's like a dinkhole town. We take the directions, just goes out to the middle of nowhere, just this little quiet area, it looks like there's nothing and ultimately we find that it is this building off there and it's just a gymnasium. There is nothing in there but just this square gymnasium and I might add that they don't have anything except like a table and a couple people sitting at the door. No stage, no PA, no other band that was supposed to be there to play, nothing. They showed up with the PA at I don't know, maybe nine and since there's a curfew I guess as well, by then it was pretty much pointless. So both Vile and us were like "sorry but we're bagging" and we just headed for Colorado, where we got to chill with the folks in Cephalic, who are always the most gracious of hosts. They put us up and gave us the royal treatment for sure. I don't know, not too many other killer road stories. Getting baked with Tony, who used to play in Angel Corpse and now plays with Nile, at Metalfest. That was pretty cool. Oh, another cool thing about Metalfest was the party beforehand, the night before at Sadistic Intent's record store in LA, which is Dark Realm, their store and their label. They had an in-store and party there with the dudes from Enslaved and In Aeternum. It was pretty cool, we got to all just get loaded and by the end of the evening Enslaved did a practice in their jam room at the back of the store. So we got to hang out and chill while they ran through that, so that was pretty cool.
 

How about any future plans?

HB  Oh future plans, well of course there are many. As I may have mentioned the primary plan at this point actually is working on new material for our second album. We've got a lot of material near completion, a couple songs that are completed. We've still got a bit of work to do but we've got a lot of songs that are written and just not quite put together yet. I can give you an exclusive scoop on a couple of new titles if you like. Incinerated Faithful which you'll hear tonight, and then Kill For My Master which you won't hear tonight but you will hear soon. Other plans are just to keep playing around. We're trying to concentrate more on getting the new material done than playing a lot of shows but we're still playing. Good shows when we can. We're going to actually be playing a show in Seattle in May, I guess with a couple of underground bands from across the globe - Vomit Remnants from Japan and Morgue from France and a couple other bands that I guess are touring with them so that's going to be sick. We've also got a show in Portland in June with Impaled from San Francisco with Engorged Raven, a couple bands from the Portland area. Trying to set up other killer shows. Probably hopefully try to do a little more touring before the year is out but we don't have anything set at this point.
 

How is it for getting shows in Seattle? I haven't heard you playing too many.

HB  We haven't played a lot actually. I mean, that's not quite true. We played recently at Planet Hotrod on March 17 but it wasn't well advertised and there weren't a lot of people that came out. To get people to come out for a local metal show is kinda tough, although having just seen the crowd that turned out to see Cryptopsy at an all ages show in Seattle, I have high hopes, and I am glad to say that couple of places in Seattle have made it possible now for all ages shows to exist and that's a big big fucking step that we haven't had for a long time.
 

Anything else you'd like to say?

HB  Uhhhhhm, not too much. Hate, violence uhm murder, bloodshed, genocide, uhm drug abuse, marihuana, glad to be in Vancouver for 4/20
 

Where they don't seem to kill you quite so badly for the marihuana.

HB  No, noooo. Yeah, I like being able to puff in the club and they just walk by and they don't even care.
 

Check out the Drawn & Quartered website