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Interview by Wayne Sarantopoulos 1. Hey Billy! Give us a little glimpse into the life of running Razorback Recordings. Billy: Basically, my wife Vanessa and I do all the orders, promotion, packaging, and planning for everything! There isn't a "staff" or workers or anything like that. It's just a pure DIY, labor of love kinda thing. It can be stressful at times dealing with certain stuff, but the good always comes out on top, or...the EVIL! heh heh! The most fun part of the label is getting to be part of the creative process with some of the musicians sometimes. We've contributed lyrics and song titles, art concepts, and even band names to lots of the bands. This can also be a pain in the ass sometimes, especially when some of the bands run away with all of our ideas to other labels and then act like they created everything...but, in the end, we always find cool things to do and great people to work with who do music for the right reasons! 2. Did you ever think you'd still be running a label after over 10 years? Billy: Nope! In the beginning, I only wanted to do an underground fanzine, writing about bands that I liked and doing album and demo/EP reviews. That's all I really wanted to do. Doing the label for so long has had its ups and downs, but that's like anything in life I guess. I'm proud of many of the albums that have come out under the Razorback name and I'm happy I was able to put out the kinda stuff that I wanted to see exist as a fan myself. 3. Ok, time to make some friends and some enemies. What are a few of your favorite CD's that you've put out (especially maybe ones that weren't big sellers) and what are a few that you totally regret having anything to do with? Billy: It's hard to say because this label has been such a roller coaster ride over the years. I'm usually happy with every CD when it first comes out...then as the months and years go by some of them don't really seem to hold up for many reasons. I guess I'm more critical of what I've released because being part of the entire process can be very stressful at times and there's always band politics and rock star attitudes to deal with a lot. That can take a toll on my enjoyment of the music and releases a lot of the time. I think as a whole, I've been happy with the releases as they have come out. Each album has been a unique experience, always different and never the same. With that said, I can say I've really enjoyed working with you on the DECREPITAPH stuff, FONDLECORPSE (Sly is a true brother for life!), REVOLTING, CIANIDE, CRYPTICUS, BLIZARO, etc. Without a doubt my absolute best experience was working with my all-time favorite death metal band, IMPETIGO! I grew up loving that band and they were the biggest influence on me and Razorback, so getting to do those re-issues of their classic album was a definite highlight for me, as well as getting to bring Stevo back to underground metal again to do vocals for TOMBSTONES. Mark and Stevo from IMPETIGO are first class people and true underground brothers for life! IMPETIGO is what every underground metal band should take some influence from, even if it's only in attitude. 4. Have you ever wanted to expand RR to cover vinyl, tapes, shirts, all that stuff? Billy: I've always looked into vinyl and it's always so expensive. It costs like 2 grand just to make 300 records, where with CD's you can help and support a band more by making 1000 CD's that will help spread the music more to people. Vinyl is cool but it's mostly just a collector's item kinda thing, and most people today don't even have record players and only buy the records to hang on their wall and not even listen to. That really annoys me. I'm into this for the actual music to be HEARD! With that said, I do like how a lot of the LP's look and am respectful towards the art of vinyl, which is awesome that it still exists! I'd like to try and do a special LP release one day in the future, but it will have to be at a time where I'm not also doing a lot of other CD releases. It's just too expensive. I've done a lot of various t-shirts over the years with bands. It's not easy printing shirts up because there never seems to be enough of the different sizes you need to fill the demand. 5. You recently started a band called SCAREMAKER that you do vocals for. This is no surprise to me since I drum for the band! But, what made you finally want to be involved in a band other than just doing putting out CD's and sometimes helping with lyrics and art? Billy: My wife Vanessa and I had been talking about doing music together and we really wanted to get something off the ground. I knew she was a great guitar player and could write really catchy, oldschool death metal songs. She's also a great death metal vocalist as well and I just knew we could come up with a cool band that was all about our love for classic horror themes! I consider SCAREMAKER to be her band more than mine, but I'm still glad to be part of it. Getting to work with you on the album was a great process because we did everything the oldschool way with real amps and real guitar distortion and no drum triggers or anything like that. We did everything raw and the ancient way, and that's something that I'll always relish about the experience of doing that first album! As for me, I just got tired of writing stuff for other bands and wanted to write something for my own thing for once. It's been a great experience and very rewarding. 6. What advice do you have to bands that want to work with RR? Are you looking for a specific type sound/theme or do you put out whatever you want? Billy: It's simple...I want bands that do music for the FUN of it. I don't want bands obsessed with going on huge tours and trying to become rock stars. I absolutely hate that crap. I'm only into this to spread the art of music and to show my love for horror films and themes through this great, creative outlet. It's really hard to find bands that share this same attitude because everybody wants to be "HUGE" and get "signed" and try to make all this money and shit like that. To me, it's just about the love of music and doing it for fun and being honest to yourself and having integrity. As for the sound/style, I prefer classic sounding death metal in the vein of DEATH, AUTOPSY, early SLAYER, and 80's era thrash, as well as doom metal...all with themes of horror that I love! 7. Do you have your eye on any bands to work with in the future? I know it's hard to find bands that aren't going to turn into rockstars after they do one album and get a moderate amount of success. Billy: There's a few but it's so hard to tell these days with bands. Everybody starts out with the right intentions, but as soon as they sell a few hundred copies they get big heads and start to change their attitudes. The worst is when a band has a few other side bands and then they stop doing them just because their main band becomes a "bigger" success. That's a shitty attitude to have and proves they're not doing music for the love of it. The biggest challenge for us is to find people that are creative and who aren't just into this music for a year or two and then move on to something else because they're "bored" or aren't getting rich off this stuff. 8. It's no shock that you worship horror movies. About how many do you think you watch in a week? And give us your opinion on nu-horror! Billy: We try to watch as many horror movies as we can! Lately we've been re-watching the classics over and over again, such as DEMONS, HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY, NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, GATES OF HELL, SUSPIRIA, RE-ANIMATOR, MOTHER'S DAY, NIGHT OF THE DEMONS, GHOULIES 2 (hell yeah!), TRICK OR TREAT, and tons of Hammer horror films from the 60's and 70's, as well as anything by Paul Naschy! We've pretty much given up on newer films in general as we can't stand the horrible look of CGI fx and how everything is so digital looking now. The art of film is a dying thing, sadly. There's just something about the films from the older years that hold up more to us. 9. Ok, what about modern classics like SANTA'S SLAY or SCARECROW SLAYER or even the wonderful JACK FROST 2? You know you love those movies! Billy: haha! SCARECROW SLAYER is the most hilarious piece of garbage ever! It's a laugh riot when Vanessa and I watch it. We turn the worst movies into epics of total comedy! JACK FROST 2 is retarded as hell! Sometimes it's fun to watch movies like this just to laugh at them and have fun. There's a ton more I'd eventually like to see. 10. What are the upcoming releases you have planned for 2011? Billy: There's going to be albums from GRAVE RITUAL (actually out in December 2010!), WOODEN STAKE, the 3rd DECREPITAPH album, the 2nd SKELETAL SPECTRE album, the 3rd CRYPTICUS album, hopefully more BLIZARO stuff, and we're also looking for some new bands as well to work with! We have some secret stuff as well we haven't announced yet. Keep checking for updates at _http://www.razorbackrecords.com_ (http://www.razorbackrecords.com/) Thanks for the interview! List a playlist of 10 things you've been LISTENING TO, WATCHING, and READING. 1. THE WEIRD WORLD OF EERIE PUBLICATIONS (book) 2. FOUR COLOR FEAR (book) 3. THE ZOMBIE FACTORY (book) 4. DEMONS (film) 5. TRICK OR TREAT (film) 6. TWICE DEAD (film) 7. BLACK SABBATH "Paranoid" 8. METALLICA "Master of Puppets" 9. BLIZARO "City of the Living Nightmare" 10. WOODEN STAKE demo and EP tracks |
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