MALEVOLENT CREATION – Retro 2004

Back in May 2004 I had the pleasure of having this chat with the Malevolent Creation mastermind and founding member Phil Fasciana. Their upcoming album that year was "Warcult" and this was the main reason for our chat. Enjoy!

Why did you choose the title "Warkult"?

Ever since our first demo war topics has mostly been in everything we do, and on this album we decided that we wanted to do it completely with every song about war. It’s always been natural for us to write about war and it fits perfect with our music. The titles of the songs and the lyrics are all about war, and we felt it was the time to do it like this.

Malevolent Creation has always been about war and the brutality of war. Why did you choose this topic when you started the band?

It has always been part of Malevolent Creation and today we are almost surrounded by war. I won’t say that the lyrics are about the war in Iraq, but some of the songs are sort of pointed to that direction.

Kyle Symons is doing the vocal duties in Malevolent Creation these days. What would you say that he got that Brett Hoffmann and Jason Blachowicz didn’t have?

Hehe, he definitely put in a lot more effort. Kyle is more into what we are doing. I’m not saying that Jason never did or Brett never did, but they were never 100 % into it like we are. And Kyle is a more professional person to work with. It’s less problems and we have no complains. It’s the way that we want it and it’s perfect for us.

And now Dave Culross is back on the drums. What does this mean for Malevolent Creation?

Well, Dave did play the drums on the recording for The Will to Kill, but he started a family, bought a house and moved up to New York. We knew that he wouldn’t have enough time for the band. He told us that if we wanted to do this we needed a drummer to tour with after the album. And it happens that we actually found drummer that was really into it. But unfortunately he had some problems with touring as well, so we used Tony from Nile to do most of the tours with us. But we thought that if we were going to do a new album, it has to be with Dave or we were not even bothered to do it at all. We hate these problems with the drums, hehe. But we finally got most of the business and stuff sorted out. Nuclear Blast made it way easier for us and a lot easier for Dave continue playing with us. You know during the fucked up years with different labels, Dave was never happy with that. But now that that is sorted out we are just glad that we have a drummer, hehe. We are finally Malevolent Creation again, hehe.

There have always been some changes from album to album, and I feel that the gap or change between "The Will to kill" and "Warkult" is bigger than earlier. Do you have any thoughts on that?

I really don’t think there is too much of a change between them, except from maybe on Warkult we definitely wanted the songs to be separated from each other, not sound similar. But the style is definitely the same as on The Will to Kill, same writing style and the way that we are writing music. We were trying to make the music a bit more dynamic. There is a little more variety with drumbeats and stuff like that. You know that if we wanted to, we could have blastbeats and faster songs, but we have the grindband to that stuff, hehe. This is the way we are writing right now, it makes it more fun and interesting for us. And we know that a lot of people got turned on to the band because of the last albums. Maybe it’s easier to digest, hehe, for some people.

I feel that the songs on Warkult are a bit slower than on "The Will to Kill".

Yes, there is slower sections on some of the songs, because we wanted to do that. We wanted to have slower and heavier parts. I don’t know, it’s the way the songs came out. You never know and we never plan to far ahead when we are writing the songs, hehe. We know what we wanted to do. We just made some slower parts, nothing to mellow or anything, hehehe.

So it’s not an age thing, hehe?

No no, not at all, hahahaha. Fuck that man, hehe. There is enough speed on the record.

I know, hehe.

It’s just stupid to do the same thing over and over.

How did you end up signing for Nuclear Blast?

We were on tour for the Envenomed album in 2000, and we met Andy from Nuclear Blast. We just ended up talking and you know that we were having a lot of problems with record companies, almost no distribution in Europe. He said that we should get a better record company man, you’re having lots of problems and this and that and your records are hard to find here in Europe and stuff. So I said just sign us, hehe. He said when I come home, call me. I did and we talked and it’s a good thing we did. Nuclear Blast is a big label and we know that we aren’t a priority band, but we wanted to make sure that our records could be found in the stores and stuff. It’s really bad for a band like us and to have bad distribution, it’s really suck. But at least our records are available in the stores in Europe now, hehe. That’s good and we are happy.

After you joined NB, do you feel that you have come any closer to your European fans?

Definitely, we really had a lack of promotion for 8 or 9 years, cuz we had bad deals in Europe. There were a lot of companies, I won’t start with any names and stuff, but it was bad. At least we got some promotion now; it’s more confidence for us. We do a lot more press and like I said earlier, the records are easier to find, so it’s good for us in Europe now. We signed a worldwide deal with Nuclear Blast, so we will see how everything else goes. But we are really happy with things right now.

You started the band back in 87. That’s 17 years man.

No shit, hahahaha.

Is it still fun?

Yeah, it’s still fun. It isn’t like it was when we started the band and we were 17 and 18 years old. Everybody has grown up but the same ideas are still there, especially for me and Rob. We don’t see each other as often as we did when we were little kids. We just get together to work on the material and do stuff and doing the tours. It’s still fun man, it’s cool. Feel like we are a bunch of little kids again, hehehe.

"The Will to kill" was your first on Blast. Can you say a few words about that album?

It was a definitely changing point for us. We had actually written the whole album with the intention of Brett doing the vocals, but that never happened, hehe. The album was written for so long, it was really ridiculous. We couldn’t wait for him any longer. 9 months went by and he didn’t bother come to one rehearsal, so we kind of figured, hehe, that we had to find another singer, hehe. We wanted to do this a while back, because we had thought of Kyle first. But since Brett wanted back in we said ok. But the same thing went over and over again. He doesn’t have any devotion to music, devotion to any kind of work. It’s not for him. He has a serious drug problem, and he was just holding the band back. We actually did a tour with that album even before we recorded it. We knew the songs, had it on demo and everything and Kyle took over. We went to the No Mercy Festivals, came home, signed Nuclear Blast for Europe and went into the studio and recorded the album. It was a little weird. Kyle rewrote some lyrics and so did Rob. It was a big change with Kyle in the band, but it was cool. For him it’s easy. We work real fast and Kyle is really devoted to the band and music. It was good to be out of the nightmare, hehe. It’s hard to work with someone that doesn’t give a 100 %. With Kyle in the band it has given us a lot of confidence. It’s good to finally have someone who sings the right lyrics, hehehe. It’s still the same band with the same guys writing the same music, but a little change like this really have its purpose. Kyle has a more clear voice and for people that do not listen to a lot of death metal can, if they listen closely, understand what he is singing. Brett was more guttural type Suffocation vocal, hehe.

I have been listening to a lot of your records last couple of days, and I must say you do have a lot of great death metal albums. Which album do you consider the best?

Hahaha, hahaha. It’s hard to say man. Each record got a special place in my heart, hehe. Every one of them was a moment of time for me. That is a very hard question to answer, because it’s hard for me to say if I like or dislike a record. If I have to pick one, it has to be Retribution, hehe, because we like recorded it in 5 days. We recorded, mixed and mastered it in 5 days. It’s like the fastest album ever recorded, hehehe. We wrote the songs in 4 weeks, recorded the album in 5 days and was out in the stores like 2 months later, hehe. But a lot of people really like it. It’s hard to say why, but maybe it is so rushed, hehe. We almost did the same thing with the new album. We gave us selves like 2 months to prepare. Wrote our own separate stuff at home, got together and we only rehearsed 6 times, hehe, before we went to studio and did the album. We know what we do, so it went well, hehe.

It’s almost like a Norwegian black metal band.

Yeah, something like that.

If I remember correct, Darkthrone recorded and mixed their latest album in 26 hours.

Who did that?

Darkthrone.

Wow, that’s even faster than us. That sucks man, hehehe.

Your debut album, "The Ten Commandments", what do you think of that album today?

I have been asked that question a lot, and it is really weird. It was so long ago since we did it back in the early 1990’s. For me it was thankfully produced pretty well by Scott Burns. Some of the songs on that album were some of the songs that I ever wrote. I still like the album, not like many other thinks about it; "Wow, you’re first album sucks man". I don’t think any of our albums suck. Some may be better than others, but I think the first one is a cool record for a debut.

I think it is a great album.

I’m not saying it’s the best or anything, hehe, but it was our band.

I have an all time favorite Malevolent Creation song and that is "Thou Shall Kill" from the debut.

That’s cool man, because we are actually putting that track back in our set. We haven’t played that song since late 1992. We wanted to have a few of the tracks from the early years back in our set, and Thou Shall Kill is definitely one of them. We’re going to start rehearse them next week with the full band, so it will be cool.

Is there any chance to see you live in Norway in the near future?

Oh man, believe me. Our booking agency screwed something up for us already. They have put us on a tour with Exodus without telling us. It’s a Scandinavian tour. We really wanted to go over there, but when they are doing this without telling us and we finds out like weeks later. When we found out we technically didn’t have any money at all and said: "We can’t do that". It looks like we are canceling, but we really wanted to do it. Hopefully later this year we will be able to come over and do a whole Scandinavian tour. We have never played in Norway, We have played in Sweden twice, but we have never played in Norway and we have never played in Finland, hehe. It’s fucked up, hehe, we have toured Europe like 12 times and we have never played in those countries. But we hope, after the album is released and after the summer festival stuff, to do at least a Scandinavian tour.

Are you still the mastermind behind the music in the band?

I still wrote a lot of it, but Rob and I, since he rejoined the band in 97, write a lot of the songs together. Rob wrote like 3 or 4 of the songs on the new album for himself, I wrote some for myself. So it’s basically me and Rob who are writing the music. Our bass player Gordon wrote a bit of the music on the last few records, but everybody contributes. It’s still me that handling the shit, hehe, but the other guys got good ideas too. With only me doing the stuff, it wouldn’t be any good. I like working like this, though I have been writing the stuff on a lot of the records, and it’s boring, hahaha.

When you are writing songs and recording the albums. Do you often end up with songs that never make it?

Yes, definitely. There were actually a few songs that we had on the demo for Warkult that we didn’t use on the actual record. We meant that they actually were too slow, haha. I wrote a couple of songs, and the other guys went like wow, hehe. It was really heavy and stuff, but it was a lack of the aggressive style we wanted on the record. Some of the songs that doesn’t make it, we save. We use some of the parts in new songs when we are in the studio, maybe add something different to it, or unless we get a fucking melodic singer in the band, hahahaha. Maybe power metal, haha.

I understand that you are looking for someone to run your website.

Yes, the guy who has been running it, Mircea from the band Mnemic, told us that he will be busy the whole year and that we should get another person to do the website. There are a couple of people that I have responded back to, so yes, we need someone to take over our website, hehe.

Priority of the website?

Ehhhh…I am very seldom at our website, hehe, I haven’t been there in a fucking month, hehe. But we have to have it. We try to update it with everything we do. The new album is coming up and the summer festivals. That is the only news we have. Hopefully when we get a new webmaster, we can make some major changes on it. There is a lot of stuff that could be added to it, especially old photos that I have. I got some classics, hehe. I got some really good ones, hehe.

Well, that’s what I had. Anything else you want to say to our readers?

There were a bunch of Scandinavian dates that we were suppose to play, but they were canceled. I just want to say that it wasn’t our fault and I bet that the booking agency isn’t saying it to anybody. But we want to come over there; we want to tour Scandinavia cuz we never did. Hopefully we will pick up some new fans with our new album. Tell everybody who is out there, tell them to go steal a copy, hehe. Hopefully we will make our way over there.

That’s what I have. Thanx for your time Phil.

Thank you and hopefully we will make it to Norway, and when we do we have to meet for a couple of beers. I know they are expensive, so you going to have to buy them, hehe.

 

We met at Inferno seven years later when Malevolent Creation finally played in Norway and Phil could finally have his Norwegian beer.

 

https://www.facebook.com/malevolentcreation