Albums of Purgatory Interview Desecration's Ollie

 

Albums of Purgatory: Firstly, what's the band up to?

Ollie: We’re just preparing for our next tour in Ireland in a couple of weeks, unfortunately our new guitarist Lee can’t make it as he’s damaged his arm. Apart from that our new CD ’Pathway To Deviance’ has just come out so we await the reviews and see what the bastards think of it!

AoP: How would you describe the Desecration sound?

Ollie: Heavy, fast brutal death gore metal with a cool groove.

AoP: How did the band begin in the early '90s?

Ollie:    A few of us joined together and were jamming on some covers, we wrote some stuff and put it out as a demo named ‘Mangled Remains’. Pretty much how everyone starts out. No money, crap gear, shitty rehearsal room etc.

AoP: How did the band react to 'Gore & Perversion' being banned in '95?

Ollie: We were young and inexperienced. I won’t lie here, it was scary being raided, arrested and locked up! It spurred us on to continue though, it was a shit start to our careers with a banning but it has paid off now.

AoP: It's being re-released now though.  Is there much difference to its original?

Ollie: Oh yeah, it’s so much better. It has a great production, we’ve played it how it was supposed to be only now it is faster, heavier, catchier and played properly!!

AoP: What sort of response have you had from the latest album 'Pathway to Deviance'?

Ollie:  It’s early days yet, but we’ve been getting album of the month in certain places and everyone has told me it’s great and the best thing we’ve ever done, personally we are very pleased with it. Fans of this music will love it I guarantee.

AoP: You have toured with some big names like Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel, Deicide.   Who have been the most enjoyable to work with?

Ollie: Usually we prefer touring with bands from the UK, they all seem to have the same sense of humour, especially the Celts, we  have done whole tours with Irish and Scottish bands and it’s been real good, having said that our last supporting tour with Enslaved was great, they were cool.

AoP: Can you remember your first gig (how did it go)?

Ollie: Our very first gig was in London supporting Gorguts! It was an all day festival, we played pretty high up in the bill for reasons I don’t know, but it went real well, I don’t think we played all that tight, but those days we were never tight anyway!

AoP: What are your favourite Desecration tracks?

Ollie: Actually most of them, they all have cool riffs. I like most of Inhuman, and the new album and also some of our earlier stuff too, but if I have to choose they would be Turning Black and Offer The Flesh.

AoP: What are your favourite all time songs?

Ollie: Phallelujah by Angelcorpse.

AoP: What was the first record you bought?

Ollie: Metallica’s Ride The Lightning was my first album I bought, I thought it was well cool but discovered heavier stuff pretty soon after that.

AoP: What would be your dream band line-up?

Ollie: Shit that is hard, I don’t pay much attention to band’s line-ups, as long as they were dedicated and talented (very hard to find!!) I wouldn’t mind. I wouldn’t mind most of morbid Angel being in my band though!

AoP: What do you think of the position of metal and music in general today?

Ollie: It’s very much more underground these days, apart from the nu-metal shit that is everywhere but that is for girls. Slipknot are doing a good thing but all of their fans have not heard anything like death metal to know there is heavier stuff out there, I have converted fans into death metal just by playing them a track or two. Other music sucks, the 80’s was much better for mainstream music.

AoP: Do you have any funny stories you can share with us about the band?

Ollie: Only really the things that go on, more before than now, but we’ve had members in the band who shit in the funniest of places, and just being total perverts, but having a laugh as we go, as we still do now but we are not that extreme nowadays, must be getting old eh?

AoP: and finally, what do you see in the future for Desecration?

Ollie: I think we have a couple more albums in us yet. This year will see the re-release of ‘Gore and Perversion’, we’ll see how that goes. We will stop writing when we stop improving and run out of ideas but that isn’t in the foreseeable future.