Aaaaaah, Cephalectomy, ma première chro' sur Thrasho, c'était pour "Eclipsing the Dawn"... Mais ma vie on s'en fout: voyons plutôt ce qu'il en est de celle du groupe, qui propose une fois encore, sur "The Cycle Mythos", un superbe et osé mélange des facettes les plus mélodiques et les plus brutales du metal à gros décibels ...Hi you brain surgeons of death! Your new EP, « The Dream Cycle Mythos », is available since this summer in all good mental institutions. How has been the feedback so far, both by the fans and the medias?
The feedback has been good, lots of positive reactions and some good reviews, but we haven't really sold many copies. I think it's becoming harder and harder to sell cds these days, especially for a band with very little distribution. It's so much easier for someone to just download the album then go out of their way to order it, not to mention it's free.
It's quite a challenge to use the “1 single song” format for such a mid length album. It is something you had in mind for a long time? Did you have some references in mind, like for instance Edge of Sanity's “Crimson”, when writing the song?
Yeah, when I started writing music for "T.D.C.M." I knew I wanted to do one long song. I'm a big fan of "Crimson" and thought it'd be something different for us to do. You don't tend to see long brutal songs, and I like to try and do different things with Ceph. I don't want to just make a clone of an album I've already made, so I'm always trying to make things a bit different while still keeping the essence of the band in tact. My actual original intent was to write a 30 minute song but once I got to the end of where the song lies now, It just felt right to stop it there.
What are the actual differences between writing and recording for such a long track and the usual work for “more mainstream” releases?
Well, the recording process for the most part is the same. We record everything on a PC so obviously having such a long song was a lot more intensive for the computer to handle. At the end we had vocals on about 100 different tracks. Other then that it wasn't much different. For writing however it was a matter of, how were we going to keep the song interesting. We did a lot of vocal layers, doubling up most of the voices to try and make new unique voices and such. I'm big on vocals, it's what disappoints most about a lot new bands/albums. Everyone is writing crazier more technical music but a lot of the time I find the vocals very generic and uninteresting.
Did you write the story or the music first?
Jason writes the lyrics. I always write the music first and then Jason tackles lyrics. I can't imagine trying to write music around lyrics, I think that'd be tricky.
After “Eclipsing the Dawn”, you definitely seem to stick to Lovecraftian stories with « The Dream Cycle Mythos ». Do you think this will stay one of your trademarks for some other albums to come, or do you plan to deal with other subjects any soon? By the way I might have read somewhere that you think about trying other themes, is that right?
Well the lovecraft lore as has always been a big part of our lyrics, right back from our demo cd up until now. The only release we've really done that wasn't mysticism based was our split cd with Bound In Human Flesh. That was horror based, but even then we had a song based around the movie Re-Animator which is based on lovecraft material. I do believe our upcoming album will be something different though. Our upcoming full length is a bunch of short songs and I believe Jason has something different up his sleeve for that one.
With the EP, you offer “Eclipsing the Dawn” in MP3 format. I remember having had some difficulties to put my hands on the CD some times ago (by the way thanx Corey for having found a copy for me back then!) … Knowing all that, should we understand that you have given up the idea to have this album re-released?
Well, the label we're on (Discorporate Music) is a very small independent label, so we have very little distribution. I really didn't feel we could push enough copies for it to be worthwhile to repress. If another label wanted to re-release it, I'm sure we'd be happy to let them. I however, don't see that happening anytime soon, so I thought it'd be a nice little bonus to throw that album on
"T.D.C.M." for some people who may not have heard that cd or been able to get a copy before it sold out.
Can you tell us a little bit about the other extra tracks that we can get on the EP. I think about « The Igniting Tempest » (it will be featured on the forthcoming full length I guess), as well as the 4 other tracks …
"The Igniting Tempest" actually won't appear on the next album. It was recorded for the sole purpose of helping promote "T.D.C.M.". Since that cd is only one long song, it's not like we could post a song to spread word, so we thought i'd be fun to do a bonus song and make a video for it to help build some anticipation. The other bonus tracks were actually recorded at the time of "Eclipsing The Dawn". They were intended to be released with that cd but we didn't get everything together on time so we just put them on our website for download a bit later. Since some people probably haven't been to our site, we figured we'd throw them on the new cd as an extra bonus.
What about Cephalectomy's drums department? Anybody to take up the machine's duties and help you on stages? Do you think that all drums parts could be handled by a human being (sometimes it goes so fast!)?
We've never had any luck finding a drummer that could do what we needed and was dedicated. We've tried a few times but people were just never willing to put the time and work into getting things done that was needed. That's why the newest stuff is so fast. We figured since we're not going to find a real drummer we might as well get a little crazy with things and push limits. I think the new stuff could be played by a few people, but it'd need to be one hell of a drummer and someone who's good with gravity blasts, but I don't foresee a live performance ever happening unfortunately.
You are in the process of writing/recording (?) a new full length. Could you give us some fresh news about it?
The new cd is going to be 10-11 new songs, probably about 30-35 minutes in length. This time around we thought it'd be fun to go the other direction and write short songs. I believe the shortest song for the new material is 2:08, which is unheard of by us. Usually our songs are 4-5 minutes long. We've simplified the music a little bit on this but it's still very much what we always do and I think anyone who enjoys our other material will certainly enjoy this stuff. So far, the drums and guitars are all done (for recording), and bass has started, so we just need to get bass and vocals done. I have a feeling we'll probably see this release by spring.
Are there any live experiences planed overseas (I mean right here, in Europe)?
Like I mentioned earlier, we don't play live, so unfortunately not. I'd love to see Ceph go live but I just don't see it happening.
Last words are yours: feel free to summon Yog Sothoth, say hello to your buddies or say the hell what you want to your European (and especially French) fans. Thanx for the interview!
Well I guess this is where I tell everyone to go to
www.cephalectomy.com and order our latest cd. Also, Thanks to everyone who has supported Cephalectomy in one way or another over the years and thanks to you and Thrashocore for your time! CHEERS!
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