I’m a big fan of death metal, it’s fair to say, and I listen to a lot of it. Sometimes though, something sticks out as particularly enjoyable or exceptional, and Gravenous Hour by Katalepsy is one such release, making it more than worthy enough for an extra grilling…
Introduce us to Katalepsy!
Katalepsy is a death metal brigade from the heart of Russia, Moscow. We play this kind of extreme music for more then 10 years and don’t plan to stop. We released three full-length albums and played a lot of shows all over the Europe. New album, entitled GRAVENOUS HOUR was released 27 May 2016 by Unique Leader Records.
What are your influences?
Our lives, feelings and thoughts are motive powers to our music. We try to reflect our inner worlds in music we create.
Name five things you’ve listened to recently that you’d recommend
Rivers of Nihil – Monarchy. Splendid atmospheric death metal of new millennium. I think this is the new way to death metal.
Fallujah – Dreamless. Too progressive for me – this band became closer to Between the Buried and Me than to death metal. But it’s still great
Cryptopsy – The Book of suffering. Brutal, fast and insane as always.
Mgla – Exercises in futility. Very dark, grim and depressive music full of melodies and atmosphere of decline and dust.
Defeated Sanity – Disposal of the Dead / Dharmata. One of my favourite band’s long awaited album. I hear only few songs and I think it will be killer
Tell us about Gravenous Hour
This is the album we worked with near a year – it’s very fast for us. We have some ideas from AUTOPSYCHOSIS, have a lot of new ideas and grow up like a musicians and composers. Then we composed and rehearsed enough songs, we had discussion with sound engineer Arkady Navaho – we tried to make all decisions before we started the recording session. After that all we need was to drive to studio and push “rec.”
How did you choose the cover artwork?
We don’t choose it, it was create special for us by W. Smerdulak. This artist is our good friend, he designed our previous album and made designs for t-shirts. We thought a lot about cover art to GRAVENOUS HOUR, rejected few ideas and finally got what you can see. I think it’s really great and describe our music better then words.
How important is good album art to you?
I know that this is wrong, but I often estimate unknown band by cover artwork. Just imagine: you come to metal shop and looking for treasures in counters with CDs, you see unknown name and what do you do? You see great cover art and think “These guys are carefully for art and they should be carefully in their music”. But then you see a toilet full of yesterday pizza on cover you start thinking “These guys want 10 euro for toilet sounds – are they kidding on me?”
What’s the process you use for writing songs?
Our prescription is old as this world – one of us compose main riffs of the songs and send it to others. After that we correct song together, and then all of us find it ok, we began to rehearse it. We correct, rehearse and correct again until the song becomes sounds we like 100 %. And this is not so easy, because we’re critical to our music and we don’t hurry to release new but boring material.
How do you think your music will progress in the future?
I try looking forward but not so far. We just released GRAVENOUS HOUR and this is the only important thing for us – shows, festivals and tours to bring this new songs to death metal fans. Only after that we’ll begin to preparing a new ones songs. I don’t think about progress, but each our song is differ then other – this is the reason why we not release an album per year. So, the next album will be different than GRAVENOUS HOUR, for sure.
What’s your favourite song on the album and why?
I like all songs, really – each of them have their own charm. I like the order of songs on this album – you can feel strange logic, conception, the emotional breathing if the album is solid, monolith, one 40-minutes song.
How do you think the Internet has impacted on extreme metal?
In Predator 2 movie has a phrase: the door can move in both directions – you can come in or come out. Similar thing with the Internet – in one hand we have great tool to promote your music and be in contact with different people all over the world. On another hand everybody can download your music for free, watch your shows while sitting at home. Let’s see what happens in the future.
Where do you think Katalepsy fit in to the extreme metal scene in 2016?
I don’t think about things like that. We are just five guys, who love death metal, love travel and play shows. It somebody likes our music – that’s great, but if not – that’s not a problem. We play it to ourselves, not for money or glory.
Playing live – essential or pointless?
For us live performances are very important. We like it and I think only live shows can give the whole energy of this kind of music. When you listen to it live you can’t stand still – you stage dive, headbang or begin to do other crazy things. Today you can even not play good, but engineer in studio records you and you became sounds like super-hyper-technical-progressive death metal. And only live performance can show, who are you and how much you cost.
What are the next steps for Katalepsy?
Now we are preparing for summer festivals in Europe, especial for mighty Party.San Open Air and our old friend Death Feast Open Air – both are in Germany. After that we’ll come back to Europe in September with a two-week tour with maniacs from Unfathomable Ruination. After that… who knows? Maybe we’ll make a video clip? Or tour the USA? Let’s see what happens! Stay sick & brrrrrutal!!
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