Torture Killer pour l'album "Swarm!"

Hi! This is an interview for the French webzine http://www.thrashocore.com . Thanks in advance for your answers!

- No problem, thanks for the interview brother. All answers by Jari Laine /guitars

First, could you please introduce Torture Killer to our readers, your main influences and the style which could best define your music ?

- We are a death metal band from Finland formed in early 2002, started out as a fun project playing our favourite Six Feet Under and Obituary tracks and eventually started writing our own music with the same approach. Released our first album in late 2003 through Karmageddon Media and after some amazing coincidences are now signed to Metal Blade records.

This may be the 34672th time you answer this one, but let's do it: could you explain briefly how Chris Barnes became the permanent vocalist for Torture Killer? Is he still in Six Feet Under?

- Late 2004 when our paths crashed with our previous vocalist just before our first european tour with Cropment and Poppy Seed Grinder, we had the news posted on our website saying were not sure how we will be able to move on from there. At the time Chris had heard about our band and checked us out, finding us in the difficult situation we were at with the line-up. I guess he appreciated the stuff and attitude we were doing this, openly admitting our main influences with the band and simply just approached us offering his help. We still play random shows here in Finland with the replacement naturally, we are still doing operating the same way as before and actually did a split 7"/cds with Sallinen (the replacing friend who we owe a lot). Yes SFU is alive and well and that´s the way it should be, he is a professional musician and he needs to have an active band just like we need our daily jobs to survive.



You guys are great Six feet Under fans i guess... which other death metal bands do you like?

- I could name you hundreds of bands but my fave ones are Monstrosity, Obituary, Dying Fetus, Bolt Thrower, Cannibal Corpse, Deicide, Misery Index, Godhate, Demigod, Severed Saviour, early Gorefest, Pestilence, Sinister, Resurrection, Brutality...dude i could go on and on...

Listening to "Swarm!", i felt kind of a ... "Finnish" vibe to it (how strange!), in the way that you end up some songs with some doomy melodies not quite common in this music style... There's also definitly an old school vibe into it, kind of the same Bloodbath was trying to achieve. What can you tell us about these comments?

- Yes i guess you could say that, playing the style we do with a lot of basic riff passages and low keys you need to have those high notes here and there to give some dynamics to the sound. Quite honestly were not the best lead players around, so we kinda used some more melodic type of patterns here and there instead. Can´t really say about bloodbath but i think they´re more in to the swedish type of old-school sound where we prefer the US style so i don´t think you can compare that much.

Finland is mostly known for its heavy and doom metal bands, how is the death metal scene back in your country? Are there any good Finnish metal bands you would like people to hear about?

- Yes there are some, but like you said it ain´t what Finland is known for. The good thing is that pretty much all of them have a bit different sound each and that´s cool. You should check out Demigod, Deepred, Sotajumala, Kataplexia, Slugathor, Cadaveric Incubator, Mordicus (RIP) and Archgoat - those are all kick ass bands.

Will we have the chance to see you playing live?

-Hopefully. No plans yet though, obviously we have to wait the album to get out before we can start talking about it, it´s pretty impossible to start booking shows or tours with a band nobodys heard about so...but yeah, we have a lot of schedules that´ll have to match but i´m confident we´ll get there some day. Looking forward to it definetily.

What do you do for a living apart from the band?

- I haven´t made a single buck with this band ever so if i´d be doing it for living i´d propably live in a ditch...haha...i work for road construction (asphalt)...the drummer works in a warehouse, bass player is working for a postal office and at the same time doing some school shit and the other guitar player works for some house improvement firm.



What is the best (and the worst) memory you have from your musician’s life?

- the best propably when Chris contacted us, the second one i´ll always remember is when i joined my first death metal band Adramelech years ago. Worst is the bullshit we had to deal with when our old vocalist split. Not regretting any of it but it was total bullshit.

Finland is currently in the international news because of Tarja Halonen, who may be reelected soon (or not) as the Finnish president. What's your opinion about it?

- Not my choice, but she´s done ok.

Do you know the French metal scene? What do you think of it?

- to be fully honest i don´t know much about the french scene, i´ve always followed mostly the scene in the US - they´ve always had the best bands. It is weird i guess, france being a big country not to have more well known scene. Didn´t you guys have a death metal band called Gurrkhas or something? I think we had their CD´s for sale on Severe Music catalogue.

What are you listening to these days? Any good metal / non metal albums to recommand?

- Lately i´ve been spinning Death´s "spiritual healing" a lot, funny, i never thought it was that good for a long time, always preferred "leprosy" and "human" but i kinda got into it a new way a while ago. Mostly it´s the albums i mentioned earlier in the interview, I really can´t understand why Monstrosity isn´t the biggest death metal band on the planet, just put on "millennium" or "in dark purity". Deicide with "serpents´of the light"; Napalm Death´s "Harmony corruption" (still the most extreme album ever made), out of the new ones the new Krisiun sounded awesome.

If you could change something in this fucked up world, really anything you want, what would you choose?

- i´m not here to save the world. i just try to live a decent life, Finland is the best place on earth, the safest and so distant to all the big problems of the world so by saying something here would make me sound like a miss hawaian tropic. "world peace"...haha!!

Last words are yours!

- thanks for the interview man, all the best to the mag!