DECIMATION INTERVIEW

STORMWIND FANZINE ISSUE 2

DECIMATION INTERVIEW

03-03-2015

SW: Yes! Finally your third album released. The band is growing up with getting more power in years. According to this, you are having more fans in time. What is the reaction to the band from world metal scene?

Cem: Reactions are so good from any part of the world. General decisions can be summarized as; sound is more mature, style is more and more Decimation’s own style, sound and production quality is very high, musicianship is attractive. We are happy from the reviews of different well known zines too.

SW: I see especially the Turkish fans are so excited about the album. Near future, Turkish metal fans were not so close to their own bands. There were barbaric compliments. What has changed in time and Turkish fans own Turkish bands?

Cem: Well I remember those years while we were doing great job with Cenotaph, Turkish metal fans did not interested in our albums. As an example, I remember some festivals we played, in which there was an European or American headliner band, people were staying out drinking beer with their girlfriends and waiting for the headliner. They generally did not prefer watching a local band live. Moreover they did not buy your album. Only thing they do related to your band was writing some bad reviews to internet forums and arguing with fans of your band. In such an interesting environment we focused on small group of local fans but more on those living in all around the world. We heard lots of good words from Europe, US, Far East, South America and etc. We began playing in festivals in various locations all around the world, lots our albums were sold. Then Turkish fans noticed that we have good local bands too. By the time not only Cenotaph but also other local bands began doing very good job too. Finally there is a small but a high quality extreme metal fan group currently.

SW: What are the plans for live performances in Türkiye and other countries?

Cem: We are organizing live performances especially in Europe nowadays. We are enjoying to play abroad since people watching and listening to you are more into Death metal. They support your effort. Most of them are modest and true metal heads. For the time being “Death Feast 2015” was confirmed.  We are trying to make a tour around Europe and getting in touch with bands and organizers. You will be informed via our facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/DecimationTR) We will also take local concerts into consideration but there are not any festival plan for the time being. If there will be a good opportunity we will surely want to play here in Turkiye.

SW: I want to hear your personal influences for your bands music. Which styles are you prefer to listen in heavy metal categories?

Cem: Personally I prefer listening high quality music. Since I am a musician playing for more than 25 years, I not only listen to the music but also how it is played as well. Jazz to classical music, brutal death to symphonic power metal it does not differ. But percentage of extreme metal is higher for sure. Technical brutal death metal is my favorite category. I am listening to older and newer bands like Suffocation, Morbid Angel, Nile, The Eternal, Necrophagist, Ulcerate, Hour of Penance, Nefas, Origin. My band members Emre and Erkin generally listen to every kind of brutal death metal. They are following new bands better than me J      

SW: When I heard that you have your third release, before getting that new release, I finally bought your first album and listened to it carefully. The reason what makes me to do that is to realize your rising up graphic. Now please tell me what my reaction means to you as a musician?

Cem: Well, Decimation has a demo named as “Helpless Souls” released before the first album “Entering the Celestial Ruins”. In both of the releases I was not in the band but I was following them closely. The band was playing Death Metal with dark mood. After I attended the band we released 2 albums. Second album “Anthems of An Empyreal Dominion” was a new step, we switched to more technical and faster path. Then in the third step that is our last album “Reign in Ungodly Creation” we balanced technicality with speed and mood. During this period there has been some progress in musicianship and we thought we succeeded in creating our original style belonging to Decimation. When we take a look at good reactions coming from various fans and reputable zines and authorities, we saw that we are in the right way.      

SW: We are agreeable that your new album is totally successful. Now I am asking this as a collector. Do we have chance to have your new and early releases on LP?

Cem: Thanks much for your compliments Cem. Your kind of old metal heads’ decisions are precious for us. Cover art work of “Reign in Ungodly Creation” is a famous Dan Seagrave work which definitely needs the album to be released as LP. We are talking about releasing it as LP but if this happens this will not be immediately. We are now concentrated on promotion of the album. But LP is one my top concerns about our new album for the very near future.  

SW: There is an ancient word ‘Support’ which is used by all metal scene in time. What do you think about this ‘Support’ situation? What does it mean to you? Does every underground constitution deserve that magical word ‘Support’?

Cem: I have experienced the false method of support in my country for years. You are supported if you are a friend of a gut releasing a zine, forum, web site, music shop and etc. This way of supporting demotivated numerous bands in Türkiye. Number of undeserving overrated bands released 1-2 demos and did not show any progress since there were no critics regarding lacking points. On the other hand ltos of underrated other band which deserve to be supported were ignored. We have a good proverb you know, “The real friend tells the bitter truth”. A musician definitely needs applauses and compliments but more of those an honest critic too. Supporting new bands with lacking musicianship/production and what so ever also required but by showing them the right way in order to develop themselves. On the other hand we have football team fans’ like metal fans here J Band is from Kadıköy, then fuck Ankara bands, or vice versa… People we met in festivals in Europe hardly understand this kind of an attitude. As band members, we support each and every deserving act whether it is from Turkey (Kadıköy, Bakırköy, Ankara, İzmir, Haymana, Çemişkezek and etc) or Indonesia.   

SW: I know that you are in the metal scene for a very long time Cem. Even you are a founding member in Cenotaph. Would you please tell us which days are the greatest times for you?

Cem: Yes, those were the good days we have lots of memories. We were working hard on our material and heavily concentrated on creating a high quality work. Since we were university students we had so much time to do these. You can see minimum 300 crazy metals heads who headbands, stagedives continuously in local concerts and more and more of that number in festivals. On the other hand, Cenotaph is one of the first extreme acts in our country so limited number of people were following and supporting us. Moreover Black Metal scene was powerful in those days. Just like Black Metal there was a powerful heavy power scene too. People and zines from both scenes did not support us and fight with us J. There were lots of poser fans in these scenes and most of these kind of attitudes were belonging to them. So we wrote a special fucks list including these faggots near to thanks list in out well known album “Puked Genital Purulency” There was a burst of anger at various internet forums, zines and etc. we were threatened lots of times by those corpse painted teens who have begun listening to metal only few months ago. We had lots of old friends from these scenes who did not took these posers seriously. Finally it was so cheerful for us to see them in the moshpit while we were playing by time J I was also playing with Suicide, a famous local Death Metal band too in those years. Suicide was playing old school death metal with catchy riffs holding hands of both Thrash and Death metal fans. So we played live to more than 1000 metal heads singing our song with our vocalist in lots of concerts which was a very lovely memory for us. Those were the very early times for people to understand the music of Cenotaph, they were watching the hands of our me, bass guitarist Bülent and guitarist Coşkun and trying to understand the growls of our vocalist Batu and looking at our faces surprisingly J. Greatest thing was, despite this kind of an inappropriate environment, we never lose motivation and quit working hard and gave up releasing new albums. As a last note, it was so nice to write and send flyers to thousands of distros, people all around the world.

    

SW: These are our questions brother. It will be a pleasure for us to hear your last words if there are some.

Cem: Well my friend, thanks for your support. We, as Decimation, hope to meet with all metal heads in our live shows and have fun together in the near future. We also thank everyone who bought our albums and merchandise and at top of them Steve from Comatose Music who have been giving more and more support at each new day. We are going on working hard to serve extreme metal scene.