Impaled Interview

1. I gain new appreciation for the butt everyday. 


2. Best line I heard yesterday… “I spit in the mirror everyday, because my reflection reminds me of you.” Of course, I make-out with the mirror everyday because I find myself attractive, but it’s still a good line. 


3. I should not be allowed to do interviews: 


Interview with Ross Sewage of Impaled 
“The world’s most offensive band” takes only one thing seriously-and that’s not taking things seriously. The fact that Impaled are churning out some of the best Grinding Death to be heard in the last 10 years is a given. But it’s their outrageous, over the top humor that polarizes the graphic images of death and carnage to make them unique, unpredictable, and at all times 100% entertaining. 


EI: How’s it going? 
IMPALED: “Good! I called a bit early because dinner’s gonna be ready soon, and I’ve got a crazy German cooking it for me, so…you know, you don’t wanna cross them!” 
EI: No, you don’t wanna piss them off! (laughs) 
IMPALED: “Noo! Oh no! (laughs)” 
EI: I missed it, but you guys just played a couple shows up here in the Northwest? 
IMPALED: “Yes, we did. We played one in Seattle and Portland. Much fun. So you missed it? You missed the 20 dancing girls we hired? They had sex with everyone in the crowd!” 
EI: Really? 
IMPALED: “Yes! You know, it’s all for the fans. We wanna get them all laid, because Impaled fans have a problem with that. Generally they’re the guy in the back of the class with glasses who doesn’t talk to anyone. (laughs) That’s your typical Impaled fan.” 
EI: (laughs) So you’re doing Impaled fans a community service? 
IMPALED: “Exactly! For a lot of people it was their first time. Actually, … for me it was my first time. So…” 
EI: Well, that’s why you’re in the business, right? To remedy that. 
IMPALED: “Yeah, its taken me like 10 years playing music to get laid, and then I had to pay for it.” 
EI: But you’re there! You’re moving on up. 
IMPALED: “It’s all gonna be downhill from here.” 
EI: You guys had a 3 year hiatus when you came off Necropolis… 
IMPALED: “Um, yeah we came off Necropolis…I think the last record we did was 2003, we did a split with Hemorrhage, and that was post-Necropolis and between Century Media. And then we lost a guitar player, which set us back for a while because we wanted to find the right guy for the bill, so we took our time. ‘Death After Life’ was actually recorded last year, but it’s just taken awhile scheduling because obviously Napalm Death release dates are a little more important than Impaled, so it got pushed back. But it was all good because we were totally unprepared. (laughs) So it gave us time to drink more beer, finally put our work together. Good times.” 
EI: Fuck an A. Did you have a good experience while you were on Necropolis? 
IMPALED: “It was probably one of the worst experiences of my life. Absolutely. There’s nothing like having the president of the label call you and tell you he wants to kick your ass with a bunch of English soccer thugs. I gave him the address and he never showed up. Yeah, that was probably the highlight of being on Necropolis right there.” 
EI: Wow, what great support. So was there any specific reason why you chose Century Media? 
IMPALED: “Because they e-mailed us. What’s pretty key is that they were willing to talk to us. So I would say we…chose them because…they were the…only ones.” 
EI: So they appealed to your vanity then? 
IMPALED: “Yes, yes they did. They also sent us a case of absinthe, and after hallucinating for a couple hours we went ahead and signed the contract. And I think they actually…I have to go clean up Marco’s garage. It’s part of the contract.” 
EI: That small print will get ya. 
IMPALED: “I should have read that stuff first, but what can you do?” 
EI: “Death After Life”-it’s a concept album, correct? 
IMPALED: “Correct. We like Voevod too much.” 
EI: So is it like a Death Metal version of “The Wall”? 
IMPALED: “Yeah, especially when the kids start singing. No, we didn’t do that-that was another band. Um, it was gonna just be a song but then we had some friends out here-Hammers Of Misfortune-put out a concept album and we were so impressed with it we were like, ‘Wow, we could really expand this into an album about 4 idiots who don’t know what the fuck they’re doing’. So that’s basically what the album’s about.” 
EI: So there’s a theme with the little sections in the album of you cutting up the Professor? 
IMPALED: “Oh yeah, that all plays into the story. You know, one thing we didn’t feel the need to hear was another Hellraiser sample or another Night Of The Living Dead sample. And also it saved us a lot of money not having to get releases forms, so it’s actually the easy way out.” 
EI: Some of the songs on the album are the titles of previous albums, like “Dead Shall Dead Remain”. Is that an intention to tie into this album? 
IMPALED: “Well, the titles definitely make sense with the songs but also we just ran out of ideas for song titles. The concept of the album is based around…I kept thinking about the title of our first record and how stupid it was-The Dead Shall Dead Remain-because you could never make a more obvious statement than that. You know, like Grey is always Grey-that’s about the level of intelligence we have. I was trying to think about that concept, so the concept is about 4 idiots trying to bring dead bodies back to life and they fail miserably.” 
EI: Specifically with the song Dead Shall Dead Remain I just get this huge Carcass Necroticism vibe. Are you guys trying to keep those days alive? 
IMPALED: “I’ve never heard of this band you speak of. Were they big? I don’t know anything about it. I think everything we’ve done is completely original and has never been done before. I mean, come on! What other Death Metal band has talked about being crazy doctors? Come on, there’s none-just us. Ok, I’m a liar. Uh yeah, there’s definitely Carcass-like I would say Necroticism is probably like our favorite album, but we also kind of have the same roots they do. I mean you listen to Heartwork and there’s so much Megadeth on there. And Sean is like the ultimate fan-he’s got a Megadeth belt buckle for God’s sake! So I think beyond just drawing from Carcass I think we drew a lot from the same influence.” 
EI: The style really takes you back to those days. 
IMPALED: “Well that’s good! We just wanna keep rehashing 1992 death metal for the rest of our lives. So you know, why not? Emotionally we’re not growing, so why should we grow musically?” 
EI: Stage-wise you have the Doctor costumes-is there an involved stage act that you do? 
IMPALED: “That’s just because we think we look snappy.” 
EI: It’s a uniform thing. 
IMPALED: “Yeah, we’ve been doing the uniform thing for quite some time because we were always like, ‘Hey, that one Dismember band photo where they’re all wearing the same buttoned up shirt-Let’s do that!’ And I think it lends a team quality to the band ala Devo with their yellow jump suits-we will never been seen dead wearing yellow jump suits! And then next year I’ll of course be wearing yellow jumpsuits. But yeah, we definitely like it. We try to carry the concept beyond, because there are a lot of bands that have interesting concepts but then you see ‘em live and it’s just 4 Joes waiting for the bus. And I personally hate the bus, so I put on the show I wanna see. And the show I wanna see is a bunch of guys dressed as doctors.” 
EI: Right-where you get all your fans laid. 
IMPALED: “Exactly! That was a wonderful moment.” 
EI: Those are dreams I can aspire to. 
IMPALED: “ (laughs) Exactly.” 
EI: And of course the ultimate peak of your distinguished careers-you made it onto a compilation that is being sold in Hot Topics! 
IMPALED: “YES! I’m waiting to get our lunch boxes made to sell at Hot Topic. And then of course we’ll have our action figures from McFarlane Toys and I’m really hoping to get an Impaled thong that would have a spike in it, so when you put it on it will actually impale you. So it should be a hot commodity at ye olde Hot Topic. I’m gonna go there and get some stretch fucking jeans and I’m gonna get some really bad arm bands-yeah, I think this whole Hot Topic thing is really going to work for us.” 
EI: Yeah, this is your big break. 
IMPALED: “Yeah, this is our break. And we’re definitely gonna have to buy lots of ironic shirts with ‘80s cartoons on them. That was our main goal-we were gonna get sponsored by Hot Topic so all the mall kids will love us.” 
EI: And you get the free mall clothing. 
IMPALED: “Exactly!! You SO get it.” 
EI: I’m with ya, man. I’m just jealous that I didn’t make it first, but I wish you the best. 
IMPALED: “Yeah, thanks! (laughs)” 
EI: (laughs) I laughed my fucking ass off checking out the website. I listened to the Dead Inside mp3, then the “Hard Assed Nintendo Remix”! That has got to be one of the coolest fuckin’-how did you guys do that? 
IMPALED: “Sean has this program; he was tabbing it out because I think he thinks people want to cover us, but they don’t. But this program also turned it into that-a nice little mini file. One of the most hilarious things I’ve ever heard was a whole set of Carcass minis, so I had to put that up there. We’re still waiting for Nintendo to call us because we really wanna be on the Super Mario Brothers 5 soundtrack. It’s a little bit dark, but there’s those times when Mario goes underground.” 
EI: It could be the Bowser theme song. I heard Bowser from the first note. 
IMPALED: “Exactly! That’s what we wanna do-we wanna do an 8-bit mini video game soundtrack.” 
EI: Well, and speaking of video games you actually have an Impaled video game on your site-what’s up with that? 
IMPALED: “That was someone who contacted me who wanted to do a school project, and he asked us if we would let him do that and then I begged him to do it because it’s hilarious. I don’t know if anyone’s played it…” 
EI: Unfortunately I was at work and wasn’t feeling quite that bold to download it onto a government computer. 
IMPALED: “Government? This isn’t even an interview, is it? You’re like CIA.” 
EI: Well, I am recording it… 
IMPALED: “Ohh, this is making me very nervous. There was a time I was in Walgreens getting my photos printed and they wanted to call the cops on me. That was good. Love the post 9/11 world where you can’t get away with anything. Actually, now that I said 9/11 there’s like 30 satellites recording this conversation now.” 
EI: Yeah, you tipped them off. 
IMPALED: “Can you hold on-I gotta go put on my aluminum hat.” 
EI: They’re converging on your house now. 
IMPALED: “I know it. I’m not paranoid-I just know they’re out there.” 
EI: Do you guys have a favorite horror movie besides Evita? 
IMPALED: “Evita? That is a horrible movie! As far as horror movies, if you wanna know a lot of Impaled’s inspiration lyrically go see Reanimator and Bride of Reanimator for sure. Don’t see Beyond Reanimator because that will make you want to punch your head into a wall! It’s one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. But yeah, we love horror movies. Sean likes a lot of the old ‘70s ones like I Spit On Your Grave, things like that. I like some of the more late ‘80s humor like Evil Dead 2 and Bad Taste.” 
EI: So are you guys doing a tour after the album comes out? 
IMPALED: “Hopefully-that’s the desire. I don’t’ think any band wants to deal with us on the road-we’re drunks and we like to pull pranks, and that can be a problem; Like making a garden in another band’s trailer with some sod from the back of a hardware store and a bunch of flowers. We thought it was cute, but they thought it was not so cute.” 
EI: Who was this? 
IMPALED: “Uh, I think we did that to Origin. And Skinless-we silly stringed them on stage and also there was the night where we pulled out 40 pink balloons that said ‘I heart Skinless’ and poured them onstage.” EI: Well, I’ll be looking for you this time around. 
IMPALED: “I hope so-we’d love to get you laid.” 
EI: Well, I would love to get laid, and I think I’ve found my ticket. 
IMPALED: “You’re a metal journalist-you can’t be getting that much sex.” 
EI: Certainly not. (laughs) Alright man, I’ll let you get to your German cooking. 
IMPALED: “ Great-cheers!” 
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