Tagged: David Griffiths

17Sep

[FILM INTERVIEW] CULT GIRLS – Mark Bakaitis Interview

Posted in Film, Film Genre, Home Page, Horror, Interviews, Thriller | Leave a comment

 

One of the best films to screen at last year’s Monster Fest was Australian director Mark Bakaitis’ film Cult Girls. Starring one of Australia’s most underrated actresses Saara Lamberg (Innuendo) alongside a cast that includes Jane Badler (V) and Dean Kirkwright (Charlie’s Farm). As an added bonus for heavy metal fans the film also features a very special performance from Swedish death metal band Tribulation.

“Originally we were looking to do a documentary about this Australian cult called the family,” says Bakaitis when we sit down to talk to him about the film’s home entertainment release. “We started to do some research into that and we realised that it was going to be pretty heavy doing interviews with victims and survivors and I don’t think we had the temperament to approach that subject really. So with the research I started to think that perhaps we could do something more fictional.”

Something more fictional is exactly what Bakaitis and his team did and the result was something phenomenal. A film that looks at home in an artistic cinema but contains the suspense normally reserved for a Hollywood blockbuster.

“We then had the opportunity to travel to Europe and go to Lithuania,” says Bakaitis as we begin to chat about how the film further developed after it was decided to go with the fictional angle. “We spent a few days in Germany and i was really inspired by the folk horror films of the late 1960s and the 1970s. I was inspired by films like Blood On Satan’s Claw and those classic folk horror films. I managed to weave that in some of the Lithuanian mythology that had been in my blood and came up in the film.. and we threw a little bit of black metal in there as well.”

You can listen to the full interview in our audio interview above.

Cult Girls is available on DVD now through Umbrella Entertainment.

12Sep

[MUSIC INTERVIEW] LAMB OF GOD Interview

Posted in Home Page, Interviews, Metal, Music, Music Genre | Leave a comment

When I spoke to Mark Morton a few months ago about their brand new album he was excited and couldn’t wait to get out onto the road and tour it. 2020 had other ideas though and live gigs as we knew them are now a pipe dream. Don’t think that is going to stop Lamb Of God from delivering their new works of art to the world though because the band have decided to return back to their home town and stream the performances out to the world.

One show will see the band play their new self-titled album in full while the other will see them play through their Ashes Of The Wake album from start to finish. It is a format that has Morton excited. “It is really exciting, man,” he says with a laugh. “It is just great to be able have a way for our fans to access us and for us to reach our fanbase. There are people out there who want to check out the new album in a new exciting way… I guess you can call it a new way.”

“They will also have the chance to revisit the Ashes album as well,” he continues. “That is exciting as well because that album is kind of revered  by fans of the band. They see that as a classic from us. So it is just cool to be able to engage and have something to deliver during a time like this. It’s a pandemic and everybody feels challenged by that so this is a chance for the industry… not even just the band… to rebound and respond in anyway that gives the fans a chance to respond, it is a little bit empowering.”

You can listen to the full audio interview above.

For more information including tickets and merch bundles, visit at:

http://watch.lamb-of-god.com

05Sep

[MUSIC INTERVIEW] DESCEND TO ACHERON Interview

Posted in Home Page, Interviews, Metal, Music, Music Genre | Leave a comment

Out of Adelaide comes something brutal and something different. In a time when so many bands sound alike death metal outfit Descend To Acheron turn everything upside down with their killer new EP The Transience Of Flesh. To find out a little more about the band I sat down and had a chat with Descent To Acheron’s lead singer Andy Kite.

“Pete the lead guitarist and myself were in a previous band together called In The Burial and we decided it was heading in a different direction to us,” explains Kite. “So we left and started to write music for Descent To Acheron – that was back in 2013 and 2014. So Pete and I wrote the entire EP and then started to get people together by thinking about who we really wanted to work with.”

What eventuated was the band bringing together a virtual supergroup. “We thought Dave Haley from Psycroptic would be perfect so we enlisted his services. He flew out to Adelaide and just spent a week laying out drums. Then we asked a mate of ours who is an amazing bass player a guy called Matty P and then once the EP was recorded we decided to start thinking about who we could get involved to help us out when we played live… which isn’t always easy in Adelaide. There are only one or two guys who can play our stuff live in Adelaide and you have pretty big shoes to fill when you are following Dave Haley.”

As we talk more about the how the band’s sound has evolved over the years I ask Kite what were the lyrical inspirations to the EP. “I get inspired by the great sceptics and atheist minds of today,” says Kite. “There is a lot of stuff based on that kind of thing on there – there is science based stuff. It is not your typical gore and horror kind of thing. There are certainly some anti-religious sentiments on there but they are not general anti-religion things they are more specific based on specific people.”

 

The Transience Of Flesh EP is out now.

 

29Aug

[MUSIC INTERVIEW] THE RED JUMPSUIT APPARATUS Interview

Posted in Alternative, Home Page, Interviews, Metal, Music, Music Genre, Rock | Leave a comment

 

As I begin my interview with Ron Winter from The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus I want to tell him how much I enjoyed listening to their latest offering The Emergency EP. But things don’t go exactly as I planned as Winter straight-away starts to tell me how much he loves Australia and how much he has missed it during this time of lockdown.

“Oh man it has been an amazing journey,” he says with complete honesty. “We have been in this band for seventeen years and the first time we were ever on the ground was at Soundwave. Since then it has been absolutely amazing… we have never had a bad show in Australia and we’ve consistently come back over and over again and that’s been sweet. We did the tenth anniversary awhile ago and I think that the Australian shows that we did were the best in the world and that wasn’t just because of the band – it was because of the vibe.”

As we talk more about his love affair of Australia we chat about their cover of “Down Under” which Winter says he loves of the lyrics of. That leads me to bring the conversation back to the lyrics on their new EP which to me felt like I was reading Winter’s diary because of how personal they were.

“Thank you,” he says laughing. “There are a lot of bands out there and everybody has a gimmick and ours has always been lyrics and I have always tried to stick to that. With this time all of these songs are directly related to me. Every song on the EP is something that I went through or it happened to somebody close to me.”

“So I have just tried to be as honest as I can and paint that picture,” he says continuing. “That is something that I dealt with because when somebody close to me goes through something I always try to be there with them and I am going through it with them… that is the way friendships are. But yes everything on there is something that I went through or going through currently and that is why I feel like there is some urgency there because it is a crazy time right now right across the board – it doesn’t matter how you look at it. It is just strange times, man.”

As we talk about that I mention the track “Please Unfriend Me” which I admit really resonated with me as I live in a lockdown and read people’s posts on social media about it. I ask Winter whether he has thought about the fact that most of the band’s fans will be listening to these important songs while they are still in lockdown. “I have thought about it,” he admits. “And that is something that I am going through as well… I am going through it with you right now. Here we are talking to each other right across the world and that is cool at least. It’s been weird and tough but I am glad that that is the one song that you have mentioned because that one is super, super fresh. That song wasn’t even mixed thirty days ago, it was written while we were in quarantine so those lyrics in that song… I am literally explaining what it felt like for me to be in quarantine and to see all this madness – that title is exactly how I reacted.”

 

The Emergency EP is out now through EMI.