Offensive death fucking metal
Cancerous Womb are a gruesome gang from Edinburgh who've just released a gnarly three-song EP titled 'Austrian Basement'. (You know, the one where that paedophile imprisoned his daughter under his house and impregnated her? Ugh.) Their sound is classic death metal devoid of frills and any melodic touches whatsoever, with a special emphasis on the gory stuff. In this exclusive interview the band's verbose frontman Chris Lewis spared us a few precious moments to talk about his band, gigs, and what makes him raise the devil horns.
AM: Hello Cancerous Womb. I hope the holidays have left you guys in good shape. How long has your music been crawling around the UK underground metal scene?
Chris Lewis: We started playing shows at the start of 2009, but we had early recordings up about a year before that. It took us a while to wrap up some loose ends with other bands that we were in, then we hunted for a while for a drummer (which is no easy task in Edinburgh) and started gigging!
AM: And you formed when?
CL: Cancerous Womb had been an idea for years. We were formed initially by our guitarist Mike (Robetson), and a drummer we were at college with, but it was still only an idea. Then Mike and I decided to write some stuff and record it there and then. They were shit quality and never had any bass, only had programmed drums and on top of that I had only been doing death metal vocals for a little while, but it was fun, and a lot of ideas were thought up during this time.
AM: Since then, what was your struggle for recognition and an audience been like? You got any devoted fans aside from parents and girlfriends?
CL: Scotland sucks for death metal audiences, or any metal come to think of it. We've not had the opportunity to play on any big tours yet, or support any big names. So a lot of our shows are small ones. We try to promote the ones we put on to the best of our ability, but when it's in the hands of promoters who don't put in the effort (which is often the case) then sometimes you're playing infront of only a handful of people, which can be annoying at times. I'm sure it's the same everywhere for bands that haven't been together - for very long. Sometimes, even a well established U.S. band will play here and still only get a tiny amount of people, despite the efforts of the promoters. It's shit. I think it all boils down to peoples attitudes toward coming out to shows. They expect to ditch every local show, but moan about the lack of them when promoters give up due to poor turnouts. Fair enough if people want to go to see big bands on international tours, but without people turning up to smaller shows, those bands themselves wouldn't be anywhere near as big as they are now.
We have a few people that listen to us and come see us when we play which is good, and we almost always get a positive feedback after playing to an audience that we haven't played to before which is nice to hear. All in all, I reckon everyone has it just as bad, it's just choosing the right shows to play and trying not to get stuck in a cycle of playing the same venues to the same audiences that determines how hard it's going to be for a band.
Cancerous Womb from left to right: Mike Robertson (guitar), Graeme Pickup
(bass), Chris Lewis (vocals) and Paul Cook (drums).
AM: Since I mentioned fans does Cancerous Womb play live often? What are the shows and the venues like? Describe everything man, from the booze, to the crowds, to the crazy shit that has the potential of happening.
CL: We play a few shows a month, usually in some dingy, small venue. As I explained before, the crowds here can be pretty shit sometimes, but we've had some awesome crowd reactions. We recently played Denmark, which was good, as we got to see how nuts the Danes went for us, it was a crazy trip, too many beers and not enough money left at the end of it.
AM: You know, I take notes when listening to the music of the bands I'll be interviewing. What I put down while listening to Cancerous Womb was "hairy stuff". How would you describe your music yourself?
CL: Offensive death fuckin' metal. We aim to piss everyone off in one way or another, we'll keep coming up with more ways to do it, until everyone is covered.
AM: I also noted that you guys are "politically incorrect" lyric-wise. What's going on in your brains when writing Cancerous Womb songs?
CL: We usually just think of stuff that annoys us, or stuff that is fucked up or funny to us. The song titles usually tell the story right there and then, so usually we write around a title that we think up and see where it ends up.
AM: Is composing a Cancerous Womb song actually hard?
CL: Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. We don't ever write parts to show off technical ability or speed etc., but sometimes it just turns out that a part of a song will be stupidly fast or hard to play. I usually spend a bit of time getting good vocal patterns down and I know that it takes the other guys a while to get certain parts down to the point where they're happy with them so I guess the answer is no, the songs aren't hard to write, just occasionally hard to play haha.
AM: So how can the curious metalhead get a piece of Cancerous Womb? This is the part where you advertise whatever material you either have for sale or up for grabs.
CL: People can buy our T-shirts off our myspace page for £5 via paypal and we just finished our first E.P which is free to any good home which has 'V.I.Paedophile', 'Up to My Nuts in Guts' and 'Austrian Basement' on it, it's a lot better sounding than the bedroom demos!
AM: If Cancerous Womb had the resources, what kind of merchandise would you sell to the crowd during your shows?
CL: Ha! We'd probably have a lot more designs of T-shirts available, we've only done two runs of tees before. Probably have a whole fucking album done if we had the resources to be honest. We should have posters done soon as well, which a lot of bands seem to forget about these days.
AM: Over the course of the band's existence and the time you've spent becoming a better musician, how much have you learned about the nuts and bolts of the music business? You know, all that jazz about recording, licensing, contracts, and labels?
CL: We're still learning the ins and outs of it all really. We've never had to deal with contracts or stuff with labels or booking agents, etc. as we've done everything ourselves. It keeps it a lot simpler. I'm sure in the future we'll have to learn everything, hopefully the easy way.
AM: Alright, now for the fun part. I'll mention a band and you leave a comment. It's up to you whether it's positive or negative. Let's start with...Cathedral
CL: I didn't used to like them till I saw them.
AM: Biomechanical
CL: Pantera meets Priest, it's all good stuff.
AM: Cannibal Corpse
CL: They're not the biggest death metal band for nothing, they're still releasing killer albums.
AM: Allergen
CL: Never listened to them!
AM: Evile
CL: I couldn't never get into them, don't know why not.
AM: Saxon
CL: Still legends!
AM: Carcass. (Isn't Jeff Walker an Englishman?)
CL: My favourite band on earth! I never thought I'd get to see them, but I caught them on my birthday in Germany... They were flawless.
AM: Blaze Bailey
CL: He's a faggot.
AM: Metal Hammer UK. (It isn't a band, but it's an institution of sorts, isn't it?)
CL: Terrorizer is a million times better.
AM: Judas Priest
CL: The only gay man that should be allowed to live.
AM: My Dying Bride
CL: Another band I could never get into, I've only seen them once and I wasn't too impressed.
AM: Six Feet Under
CL: Not my cup of tea, he should have stuck it out with the Corpse!
AM: Savage Messiah
CL: Need to listen to them more.
AM: The More I See
CL: I've not listened to these guys before.
AM: The Sex Pistols
CL: Shit.
AM: The Rasmus
CL: Extremely shit!
AM: Cradle Of Filth
CL: Hot keyboardist!!!
AM: Now just go ahead and name a couple of bands I should have mentioned but didn't because I had no idea they existed. Just a couple of bands now, like two or three.
CL: Dyscarnate, Foetal Splatter, Scatorgy River Freshney, and Haar.
AM: How would you rate 2009 based on the metal releases of that year? Were their more disappointments for you than 2008? Or was it just 12 months worth of spanking albums?
CL: It was okay, 'The Fathomless Mastery' by Bloodbath was epic and 'Catacombs of the Grotesque' by Denial was one of my favourites, 2008 was better though with 'Twilight of the Thunder God' by Amon Amarth, 'Communion' by Septic Flesh, 'Obzen' by Meshuggah and 'The Way of All Flesh' by Gojira.
AM: Where do members of Cancerous Womb congregate to get shit-faced in grand style?
CL: Wherever we happen to be! There's not many places that play metal in Edinburgh, you see.
AM: Name three things aside from music that makes you raise the devil horns.
CL: Sex, beers, and travelling.
AM: A little more serious this time. How would you measure success for Cancerous Womb's style of music?
CL: I would like to be able to live comfortably off the music, nothing lavish. I just don't want to have to work for the rest of my life doing something I hate, when I could do something I love, and be happy at the same time. That'd be success to me.
AM: Interviews have to die natural deaths too, you know. Thank you for cooperating. I hope you had fun. Care to leave a message?
CL: Check out the bands I mentioned earlier, and start going to local shows or we'll stab you.
03/02/2010 22:13