We are in the pleasant situation lately to have in our country some promoters who try to expand our yet limited live shows, by hosting some bands who belong to this new wave of the metal genre such as War From A Harlots Mouth from Germany. Metalpaths couldn’t miss the chance to speak to the band in this special period of their career and I mean just before the release of their new album titled: “In Shoals”. Let’s see what WFAHM say about their new album and about the general conditions in metal music as well.
Hello this is Metalpaths and we are backstage with War From A Harlots Mouth, just a few minutes before their show starts, hello guys and welcome!
Simon: Hey hey!
Filip: Hi!
This is the first time you are visiting Greece. You arrived here today and you are going to stay for three days, right?
Filip: No, we have to leave tomorrow at seven in the morning.
Simon: Our plane is leaving at seven so we have to leave the hotel at five in the morning.
Filip: No sightseeing at all, nothing!
So i will not ask you if there’s anything special that you liked from our country but i will ask you what have you heard of Greece ’till now. And of course you are free to mention the negative things as well.
Simon: Greece was in the news recently, there was lot of trouble… I haven’t really picked up everything so i don’t know what it’s all about.
Filip: Unfortunately, me neither.
Simon: We’ve seen a lot of street fight, demonstrations, people blowing cars…
Yeah right, that happened because a bird-brain policeman thought that it would be a good idea to shoot a 16 year old boy!
Simon: Oh yeah I remember!
We are not pretty famous for our good conditions lately, indeed.
Simon: No it’s still a nice country. You have a lot of school subjects like history, where we were taught a lot of things about Athens and Greece and some other spiritual things, so I think we are truly familiar to Greece and it’s history. At least a little bit!
Filip: I really regret that we couldn’t see anything, it’s a shame. I was the only one constantly talking about: “Let’s go to Acropolis, at least there!” And I know some more touristic places we could go but…
Don’t bother! I am from Greece, have been a couple of times in Athens and still haven’t managed to get to Acropolis either. You’ve recently finished your recordings about your last album which is called: “In Shoals”. Could you please tell us a few worthy things to remember from the recording process?
Simon: The most special thing about recordings was that we’ve done everything all natural. No triggers, no DI signals, we worked a lot with the room, microphones and everything. Really natural and a little interrupt, but that’s what we wanted to get. I mean a lot of bands have those really super, high produced metal sounds and we wanted to do something more original so we tried something else.
And this is the part where we have to say that the album is going to be released in Germany on April the 24th, in Europe 27 and 28 on the States.
Filip: Right.
You have toured with many famous artists and what comes to my mind right now is that since you are kind of characterized as a band with many Grindcore elements, I guess that touring with Dying Fetus for example must have been pretty cool.
Simon: It was great but I have to say that Dying Fetus fans are more into the straight grind and death metal and we had a bit hard time on the tour cause lot of the metalheads just weren’t into what we were doing. Also we didn’t have a release this time, just a small split cd but not a full length release.
You ‘ve got quite a few splits really!
Simon: Yes we do but at that time we only had this split and the demo tape so nobody on this tour knew us and as we don’t play this straight stuff, the metalheads were not really into it. But it was still a great experience being in a big tour.
Filip: Our first tour ever!
Simon: Our first tour ever! Also the tour manager was a really “cool kind of a guy” so we had to think a few things by ourselves. For example when we got in the venue he was like: “Hey guys, just go there and do this and it’s fine OK?”
Filip: ”That’s the food, you have to be on stage at this time, here’s the key room for tonight, the shower facilities are over there” and that was it.
Simon: Yeah it was easy! He was easygoing! Also we were all in a pretty small van, it was very funny. But it was a great experience and the others guys on the tour were really cool and they gave a great show. Cattle Decapitation were really crazy dudes!
Filip: And we met some of them again in the US. Last summer when we went on the US, we met two of them in San Diego.
Simon: It was great getting into a “strange country” and meet people you know.
I really tried hard to find a biography of WFAHM, but in every single website like myspace, purevolume, last.fm and even in your website, the only thing that someone can find about you is just a small paragraph that says how much you hate to be labeled.
Filip: Oh yeah that’s because we tried to make every side of music that we like, to mixture what we all like so everything gives it’s input, that’s why we don’t like any labels. We didn’t have a plan to write a Deathcore album or a Metalcore album or a Heavy Metal album but there are discussions like: “You are not a deathcore band”. We never claimed to be one!
Simon: No, we don’t want to be a deathcore band, that’s what I say. To me it’s like; there are the big genres: metal, punk rock, hardcore etc which were a big influence to all of us and we don’t have to say: “That much more”.
But don’t you have the urge to write a few things about yourself? A biography, something that could help the fans to know you better?
Filip: We don’t have any past, so there’s nothing much to write about! (laughs)
But you do have future!
Filip: We hope so!
Simon: Yeah we hope so! We don’t find it that necessary to have a biography, of course there are some people that might be interested and there are biographies.
Filip: We’ve got a label biography for example which is much more like a short note with a few information, promo text for the new record which is just OK. I wouldn’t want to write such a promo text by myself cause it means you have to write the best for yourself and that is not easy.
Simon: We’re not any kind of rockstars you know, we don’t think we are the greatest guys in the world. All those biographies always sound like: Hey! That’s the greatest band in the world, we are better than every band in the world! We just don’t think like that.
Filip: It’s better someone else writes that and not us.
Do you have your own works back home?
Filip: Yeah we have to work cause we can’t live from our music, this is impossible.
But how do you manage to take so many days off and get on tour?
Simon: I am a freelance mastering engineer and I get a little money from my grandmas before leaving as well!
Filip: Daniel the other guitar player is an optician, he is the only one with a proper job. Nico is a salesman.
Simon: He sells jeans and stuff. Paule is hanging at home with his father.
Filip: He’s the “living at home”. So we have the perfect conditions to tour.
Simon: And the worst to survive!
And what about the label? Are you satisfied with what it provides you?
Simon: They do a good job but still you can’t live by selling cds, even if you sell lots of them.
Filip: They provide us of course the possibility to come here for a show.
Simon: If we didn’t have a release in Lifeforce records we wouldn’t be here.
Filip: That’s true. And we wouldn’t be able to talk about release dates in the US or the rest of Europe.
Simon: They do a good job, a great job overall. We are really happy working with them. And it’s getting better and better.
Simon: We try to invest as much time and force we can and since they do the same, we are more than satisfied.
(Note: One of the supporting acts’ merch guys {Polis} happened to be with us and getting into the conversation asks the band a question.)
Polis: I just noticed that you neither smoke nor drink. Do you consider yourselves as “healthy” persons?
Filip: Since I am old, I have to do sports, don’t want to drink and don’t want to smoke anymore. Also my father always said that I will rip everything I have so…
Simon: His father is a doctor.
Filip: Yes he is.
Simon: A couple of years ago, I was drinking and smoking but then I just stopped it. I thought that I don’t want to smoke anymore cause I spend a lot of money. Smoking is just a waste of money. And I just stopped drinking. I think that you don’t have to drink all the time. A lot of bands are drinking tons of alcohol every night and I just think it destroys your body and everything and you still have to get on stage and play properly and I wouldn’t be able to do that if I was drinking a lot.
Filip: We’ve got a smoker, and we’ve got a drinker and we’ve got a vegan on the other hand, everything is personal.
Polis again: This kind of life doesn’t seem to come along to this kind of music though…
It does actually, don’t forget that there is the “straight edge” lifestyle which is followed by many hardcore,punk or grindcore bands.
Filip: We’ve got some different roots maybe, we’re not like straight metalheads or hardcore kids. We try to be as open-minded as possible. It’s been a process. I don’t want to drink anymore. Maybe I will, but at the moment I don’t want to.
Simon: If I am old sitting in an Italian restaurant, maybe I will want to hit a glass of wine but I don’t care about that now so…we’ll see.
I would like to ask you your opinion about the new kind of the metal ID nowadays. I mean in the early days, metal had to do with things like satan, evilness etc but now these are replaced by emotions and everyday life. The merchandise is also like full of t-shirts with funny cartoon monsters for almost every new band. Since you are one of those bands that adopt this designs you must be able to answer this question: Is metal a fashion?
Filip: Everything is fashion.
Simon: Even punk is fashion. Everyone and especially the punks say we are non-conformists but they all dye their hair or have the same clothing, follow the same fashion.
Filip: Everyone looks for what they are wearing.
So you believe that the old dictum “Fuck the trends” that many bands such as Pantera used to say, was only because it was kind of seasonable?
Filip: Actually we don’t really like to speak about this kind of questions cause the people blame us to be to scene stars…
Simon: They did it at the beginning.
Filip: They did at at the beginning and we had some discussions with a few people about that. For example there was a promoter, who was quite friendly with us and at a moment he said; “You are one of those bands who just have those fancy, fashion t-shirts only” and I said that every band is dependent on the merch and we would be stupid if we were selling ugly t-shirts actually!
Simon: Most of the times we get designs we really like. We get the basic idea for what we want and we have a guy doing them for us. Every single t-shirt has a background, most of them are coming from our song lyrics and I don’t care if someone says it’s trendy or whatever.
But of course all these stand only for the guys’ t-shirts! I have to complain that there is nothing available for the girls in your merchandise tonight.
Simon: Yeah we don’t have something yet but we really want to create an exclusive girl design.
But I was recently checking some cool WFAHM designs at “Imperial Clothing” online shop. They had almost all the designs available for the girls as well.
Simon: But these are available I think only for the boys and we want to have some for the girls too.
Filip: It has always been difficult to decide cause we didn’t really know which design girls might like and we couldn’t afford producing a girl shirt for every single design, so we used to have one or two from each but we were always wrong cause the girls were keep asking for “the other” design. We’ve always been wrong! We have some in mind which at the moment are being prepared for the next tour.
Believe me I liked so many designs that I could barely decide which one to finally buy!
Well guys I understand that in a few minutes you have to be on stage so I will end our beautiful conversation here, wishing you have a great show and hoping to see you soon. Till next time then!
Simon: Hopefully! Thanks a lot!
Filip: Thank you!
Interview by: Rena Koutsou