VORE interview 2006

VORE is a band that deserves respect. They used to self-finance their music since their very beginnings. I discovered the band with their second opus “Lord of Storms”, which is an interesting opus of old school death/doom metal. Their new CD “Maleficus” is far better and full of power and bone crushing heaviness. Page Townsley shows his devotion to death metal in the words below. “With a word, their minds bend to my will, and with a thought, I shall command death.”

1-Hello Page, how are you? Can you introduce VORE to our readers? What are the feedbacks concerning your new album “Maleficus”?

Hails! VORE is a death metal band from the Ozark Mountains in the USA. We've been together since 1994 and have released three cds, the latest being Maleficus. Musically we play a mid paced doom tinged death/thrash metal style. So far the reactions to our new disc Maleficus have been very positive. We've gotten some killer reviews on Blabbermouth.net, DigitalMetal.com, MetalReview.com and Unrestrained! We've been selling quite a few cd's through our website at http://www.vore.org/ as a result.

2-“Maleficus” sounds really powerful. It was mastered at Imperial Mastering by Colin Davis. He seemed to understand your music when I hear the result. How did you get in touch with him and why? On what equipments do you play (guitars, amps, effects…) to obtain this really heavy sound?

Thanks! We're happy with the production on Maleficus. It's without a doubt the best sounding album we've released. We’ve recorded all of our stuff with a guy in Tulsa Oklahoma named Aaron Allen. He’s a friend and has always done good work for us at a generous price. With Maleficus we really wanted to step things up in the production aspect. We contacted Colin Davis (of the band VILE) through his website at Imperial Mastering to master the album. We were looking for someone that had experience with death metal and we thought having a death metal pro with a new set of ears towards the project would be a big benefit. When it turned out that Aaron wasn’t going to be able to get the mix done for us, we asked Colin if he could do it. Luckily for us he could and things really turned out for the best as a result. Colin’s a great guy, we’re very glad to have had him work on this album. His mix is killer. You can hear everything, nothing's overpowering or covering anything else up. He engineered the mix to perform at high volumes so when you've got Maleficus in your stereo you should crank it up! One thing we did that was interesting was ditch the original guitar tracks and record new ones. I was talking to Colin on the phone one night about the mix and we were both wishing that the original guitar tones were better. Colin suggested we try "reamping". He sent us the drum tracks and essentially what we did was run our guitars (BC Rich USA Warlocks with EMG 81's) strait out of their jacks into our computer's soundcard. We then recorded our parts and sent them to Colin. He took that dry guitar signal and ran it into live amps (Mesa Boogie Dual & Triple Rectifiers) in his studio and recorded them. That gave us the opportunity to take our time with the guitar tracking at home. It turned out really well we think.

3-Regarding your previous album, “Maleficus” is more efficient and shorter? What were the mistakes you try to avoid for this release? Is there anything you will never use in VORE like samples, female voices, etc…?

Since we pay for everything ourselves we had a pretty tight recording budget so we decided to go for quality over quantity with Maleficus. We did less songs and used the extra time on getting those songs to sound the best we could. Every time we've gone into the studio it has been a learning experience and we take those lessons and apply them the next time we record. Prior to recording Maleficus we spent a lot of time making demos on our own before we went into the studio. They allowed us to have everything all planned out and tested ahead of time and that made a huge difference. I don't know that there's anything we'd never use, it would depend on the song. We've used samples and synths in the past. I can say for certain you'll never hear DJ scratching or any rap shit!

4-Your line-up welcomes two new musicians: Remy Cameron on drums and Jeremy Partin (from FALLEN EMPIRE) handling the bass guitar. Why Glen Wheeler and Brian Marcinkiewicz left the band?

Brian and Glen departed in 2002. Through course of action and/or inaction they both showed us that they weren't committed to Vore. It was a long time coming really, there was a lot of turbulence with those two over the years. Neither had any real ambition, they had to be constantly pushed along and as the years wore on it just got worse. Neither of them are doing anything musical now. Their departures put us down for awhile but it was definitely a change for the better. Our new drummer Remy Cameron moved from Missouri to play for us. We played gigs for over a year without a bassist until Jeremy Partin joined. He used to play guitar in a black metal band from Little Rock, Arkansas called FALLEN EMPIRE. The new guys are great and this line up is far stronger than the old one. Everyone’s more focused, intelligent, mature and dependable. It's invigorating having new blood in the band.

5-John and you played in a band called MAUSOLEUM, am I right? Are there any releases of this period? Can you give us few words about this band and the style you played in it?

John and I played together in MAUSOLEUM from 1990-1993. I was in the band about nine months or so before John joined. The music was in the early CELTIC FROST and DEATH "Scream Bloody Gore" vein. Lyrically it was all gore and graveyards themed stuff, we had songs with titles like "Embalmer", "Marital Mutilation", "They're Not Dead, They're Sleeping" and "Braun's Hook". We recorded two demos and released one. The band split up right after recording the second one and it was never released.

6-Since your beginning VORE used to self finance its music, “Maleficus” is your third self released album, is it a will/pride of independence? Never been contacted by a label?

We just sent a whole bunch of promos out to many European metal labels last month. A lot of people ask us why we aren't signed. I have no idea. We're almost indifferent to it at this point to be honest. We've kept on making music and putting out our own cds, doing as much as we can on our own despite the fact. I think that's a testament to our tenacity and sincerity. We're very proud of what we have done on our own without a label. We love doing this and it's a big part of who we are as individuals. We obviously don't entertain any illusions about becoming multi-millionaire rock stars playing death metal. We enjoy what we do: practicing, writing, recording and performing our own music live. We're god damn good at it too. I think VORE's music stands up against anything else out there right now and our fanbase is growing. We’d like to find a supportive label that could help us with recording expenses as well as providing promotion, distribution and some touring opportunities. There are limits and barriers we run up against not being on a label. We could benefit from the legitimacy that being on a label provides. We have gotten offers from some smaller labels, but they couldn't do anything for us that we really couldn't do ourselves in most respects. We're not going to sign away the rights to the music we've worked hard to write just so we can say that we're "signed" and get no solid guarantees on promotion or distribution. It just wouldn't be worth it to us. We got offered a contract once from a label that never got off the ground. If we had signed that deal, they would to this day still own our music and be doing nothing with it. Fuck that.

7-In the past you covered “Inner Self” of SEPULTURA for a tribute album, what do you think of the band today? Eager for a comeback of Max Cavalera or don’t care of it?

We recently worked Inner Self up again with the new guys and have played it in our live set a few times. I heard their album Roorback last year and I thought it was pretty cool though it was certainly no thrashterpiece like Beneath The Remains or Arise. I don't have much of an opinion really if Max rejoins or not. If he does I hope they can create some killer new music!

8-In my review of “Maleficus”, I describe your music as death/doom metal with an old school feeling. Do you agree with this? Do you know DEATHEVOKATION who has a similar approach as VORE?

That's an accurate description of VORE. We strive to make our music dark and heavy with an emphasis on writing solid, heavy death metal riffs. There is also a doom presence that runs through much of our material both musically and lyrically. I think a lot of that is our penchant for writing songs that are slower in speed compared to modern death metal. I'm not familiar with DEATHEVOKATION. I'd be interested in hearing them.

9-On each of your release there is an acoustic instrumental. It gives a special tone to your albums; a piece like “Opaque” on “Lord of storms” is impressive. Which music style influences that particular track? Are you into progressive or experimental music?

John and I both really like classical guitar music. John wrote both Albion from our Dead Kings Eyes cd and Opaque. He has a real gift for that sort of guitar composition. We think they make good interludes and they fit well on our albums. Everyone in Vore listens to a pretty eclectic range of musical styles.

10-Your lyrics deal with mythology, occult, war, death, etc… Where do you draw your inspiration from?

We spend a lot of time on our lyrics, they are a very important aspect of what Vore is about. We've always made sure that they're printed in the cd booklets. We draw much of our lyrical inspiration from books. We're into high-fantasy, sword & sorcery, mythology, horror, history and philosophy. We like our subject matter to be dark and ominous to match our music.

11-Your demo “To devour” and your first MCD “Dead king eyes” are sold out. Have you ever think of re-releasing them on CD for those who don’t know your beginnings?

Lord of Storms is almost sold out too. Right now our plan is to remaster Lord Of Storms and Dead Kings Eyes and put them on one disc and release it as a digipack. This will happen later in the year hopefully. I don't think we'll ever re-release the To Devour demo. Its production is poor compared to our other releases and we don't like to release anything that we don't feel is of good quality. The master tape is a four track cassette so none of To Devour exists in a digital format. We should probably get it off of that tape though before it totally degrades I suppose just in case.
12-Your albums seem to be well distributed in the US, but is it the case in Europe? How do you promote your music?

We sell our cd's through our website and on www.amazon.com. We also do trades and wholesales with many underground metal labels in the US and in Europe and Japan. Barbarian Wrath in Germany is selling our album. We've really made a significant investment in the promotion of Maleficus. We mailed out a couple hundred promos in January all over the US, Canada and Europe last January via Earsplit PR. We hired them to help us with the webzine, print zine and metal magazine promotion. This spring we're working with Skateboard Marketing and they're going to service the new album to metal radio all across North America. I think they're mailing out 500 of our cd's total. We've bought a couple of magazine adverts as well and we'll be getting features in upcoming issues of Metal Maniacs and Unrestrained! Magazines.

13-The big trend actually in the US (that also tends to be followed in Europe) is hyper fast technical brutal death metal. Are you into that kind of stuff, bands like ORIGIN, SEVERED SAVIOR or DEEDS OF FLESH? How your music is perceived in your country? What will you tell to someone arguing your music is boring because of it slowness?

We have great respect for the skills and discipline of the bands that play really fast and technically complex death metal. The guys in ORIGIN are friends of ours, we've played a lot of shows together over the years. Most people here in the States seem to really like what VORE is doing. We hear much more positive than negative opinions about our music. There are of course some people that think we need to speed things up, but honestly there are hundreds of bands out there playing ultra fast and technical death metal for them to enjoy. We did inject some faster parts on Maleficus, but we’ll never be trying to compete in the same arena with bands like ORIGIN, CRYPTOPSY or HATE ETERNAL. That's not the brand of death metal that VORE chooses to play. We want to kill you slow!

14-I read in an interview you think that death metal was the only music that wasn’t totally commercialized and whored out like anything else? Do you still have the same opinion? I mean that many bands change their styles and become more accessible or completely different from their beginnings like IN FLAMES, AMORPHIS, ATROCITY and many more.

Death Metal itself has never achieved widespread commercial appeal compared to many other styles. Some bands that started out as death metal have moved beyond their roots into more commercial areas though.

15-What are the latest releases you bought (CD, books, etc…)? Anything to recommend?

I host a metal radio show here on Saturdays nights on KXNA 104.9 FM called The Weekly Beating. I've been doing the show for almost seven years and I get most of the new metal releases sent to me. So far this year I've been very impressed with the new KATAKLYSM, GOREFEST, VILE and KRISIUN albums. All of those are great. I also dig that new FALKENBACH disc. In books I'd recommend The Bone Doll's Twin by Lynn Flewelling and Hyperion by Dan Simmons. A really great sci-fi flick is Serenity as far as films go.

16-Page, I would like to thank you very much for your time. You can add anything you want, future plans, gigs, threats, words of wisdom, etc… Until the next time! Hails!

Thank you for the opportunity to be exposed to metal fans in France through your zine Jim, we really appreciate you support! I'd like to let people know that they can order Maleficus through our website at www.vore.org or send $12 USD to us at VORE; P.O. BOX 8425; FAYETTEVILLE, AR 72703, USA. We've got some sound samples up at our myspace page at www.myspace.com/vorefare that can be listend to as well. Cheers!!