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| Interview by Burt Wolf with Danilo, drummer for CHAOSFEAR. Interview done 3-12-07. |
| SINCE I HAVE ONLY RECENTLY BEEN IN TOUCH WITH YOU GUYS, CAN YOU GIVE SOME OF THE HISTORY OF THE BAND SO FAR? Officially, the history of the band began in 1999, when the band SICK MIND was formed by me. Fernando Boccomino (guitar / vocals) & Eduardo Boccomino, who is currently playing guitar with the thrashers from SCARS. We have released one demo & made some concerts under the SICK MIND name & when we were preparing a new demo, with Anderson De Franca (bass player), we've discovered a namesake band. So SICK MIND became CHAOSFEAR in the beginning of 2003. At this time, Eduardo left the band & we've released the demo called "INSIDE THE EXTREME WORLD" as a trio. Between the demo release & our first album recording we had two guys playing guitar, but we decided to stay as a trio. WHY WAS THE NAME SICK MIND CHOSEN FIRST & THEN THE CHANGE & WHY WAS CHAOSFEAR CHOSEN? The resason as mention before, it was a coincidence of names. The name SICK MIND is the name of a music from Fernando's former band called WASTED CO. CHAOSFEAR in influenced by MESHUGGAH's "CHAOSPHERE", however it's meaning is something like the two words segregated. Chaos & Fear, which for us represents the conditions that we are facing in the world today. WHO OR WHAT HAS HELPED INFLUENCE YOU IN YOUR LIFE & IN CREATING YOUR MUSIC? For sure, musically, the 80's Metal bands such as SLAYER, TESTAMENT, SEPULTURA, METALLICA, EXODUS & so on, besides Hardcore bands like D.R.I., SICK OF IT ALL, BIOHAZARD & AGNOSTIC FRONT are my main influence. But as my interest on drumming expanded, I started listening to non-Metal stuff like PRIMUS, MR. BUNGLE, JOHN ZORN, VITAL INFORMATION...they've all influenced me. I also pay a lot of attention to the lyrical content of all the bands I listen to & I can say that a lot of ones help me in the way I face life. I can mention a lot of bands as examples - NAPALM DEATH, BIOHAZARD, SEPULTURA, SOULFLY, MESHUGGAH, PANTERA, KREATOR... Personally, I enjoy reading about human behavior, political books & I'm a huge fane of George Orwell's work, who also is a part of this mess. |
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| YOU BLEND TOGETHER MANY ELEMENTS OF THRASH & DEATH METAL TO CREATE YOUR SOUND. HOW WOULD YOU BEST DESCRIBE THE SOUNDS OF CHAOSFEAR? When we create music, nothing is like "let's do a music like Death Metal now". The majority of our music comes up spontaneously. It always happens that Fernando starts some riff & then we join him, so in this way we have some very natural raw material to work on. It starts like a jam session, so we have a lot of fun. After that we start to make changes, arranging songs & no matter if it sounds like Thrash, Death Metal or Hardcore, if we think the music is good we will keep it. |
| YOUR NEWEST ALBUM "ONE STEP BEHIND ANGER" CAME OUT LAST YEAR. HOW WELL HAS IT BEEN DOING SO FAR? WHAT HAS THE RESPONSE BEEN LIKE? The response could not be better! We are recieving very good reviews. We are very surprised to see that people are really enjoying our album. It's even strange to me, I don't know, I look to it in a different perspective...but of course it's a big pleasure to see that the album is recieving very good reviews around the world. I feel very recompensed (& I'm sure that my band mates also feel the same) because the only idea was to record a good Metal album after so many years. All those positive responses are now working as feul to our will. We are very happy with this. CAN YOU EXPLAIN THE COVER ARTWORK A LITTLE? We gave a general idea about or lyrics & we said we wanted an aggressive art. This is all that we told to the guy who did the cover & in the second try he got it. It's a dark cover, but if you pay a ttention, you can see a lot of details & this is a kind of thing that I like very much. I believe that it's not possible for me to explain exactly the artwork, due to the interpretation of our ideas by the artist, but the most important thing is that it captures the aggressiveness of our music & the context of our lyrics. WHAT IS SOME OF THE LYRICAL CONTENT IN YOUR SONGS? Our lyrical content is very influenced by our country's economical & social situation. There is too much injustice around (not only here, but in every place where you find people). The problem is that even this is an endless source of inspiration, these kinds of lyricas have already been used by millions of bands, so I personally, try to bring it into a more personal perspective, trying to express the anxiety, the fear, all the presure that we suffer. They are in general, pessimistic views of the world, but I try to express that even it's a world of shit we need to try to live in a better way. We stand for peace. HOW DO YOU FEEL THE BAND HAS PROGRESSED SINCE YOUR DEMO DAYS UP TO NOW? I believe that we have progressed very much since the demo days, in all aspects. We played together for a long time, so sometimes we just need to look at each other to know what to do. I also believe that we play better nowadays, but the most importante progress that happened is our relationship as band mates. It's not easy to carry on together, each one has it's personal wars, but we learned how to respect each other. We have very different opinions, sometimes we are tired of each other, however we now face these problems in a positive way. |
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| YOU JUST RECENTLY GOT SIGNED TO OSM (OLD SCHOOL METAL) RECORDS. HOW DID THIS DEAL COME ABOUT? Well, we have to say that we didn't expect this to happen too soon. It was a really great surprise to us. The way it happened was the basic scheme - we spread a lot of CDs around & OSM got interested in it, then we had that negotiation period etc... But the key factor in this history is Ronaldo Carone Jr., who is working with us. It's not possible to explain how this deal came about without mentioning Ronaldo's name, since he is the guy who did all our promotion & therefore was the one who sent the CD to OSM. We are very honoured & happy because people at OSM are being very nice so far. |
| THEY ARE GOING TO RE-RELEASE "ONE STEP..." WITH SOME BONUS TRACKS. CAN YOU TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT THE BONUS TRACKS & WHEN THE RE-RELEASE WILL BE? OLD SCHOOL METAL RECORDS is planning to release it by May 2007. There will be 4 bonus tracks & these songs were first recorded for our first demo as CHAOSFEAR, "INSIDE THE EXTREME WORLD", released in 2003. Two songs were not released in that demo & I thinkthat they sound a little different of "ONE STEP BEHIND ANGER's" songs. Of course that the fact they were composed a long time ago is one of the resons, but the presence of Eduardo Boccomino, both in creation & in the performance is also making it sound a little different. We expect that people like it, maybe we'll use some of these songs in the future. YOUR SITE MENTIONS THAT A NEW ALBUM WILL BE OUT IN 2008. HAVE YOU STARTED WORKING ON THIS ALBUM YET? Yes. We've already started working on new material. We already have some songs in the wroks. Everything is raw, but by the way that everything is running, we are 100% sure that it's gonna be released in 2008. We are very excited to step into the studio. DOES CHAOSFEAR PLAY OUT A LOT? WHO ARE SOME OF THE BANDS YOU'VE SHARED THE STAGE WITH & WHERE ARE SOME THE PLACES YOU'VE DONE SHOWS? Now, with an album released & some space in Metal media, it's a little bit easier to schedule gigs, however we don't have the best conditions to tour in our country. We've played in some cities in our state, in small places. We've played with Brazilian bands like CLAUSTROFOBIA, SCARS, GENOCIDIO, TRAGEDY, CAOSCENTRIA ( there are a lot of ones that we want to play with). We intend to have a steady concerts schedule this year, we are working on it, searching for gigs in other states of Brazil. ANY INTERESTING OR FUNNY BAND STORIES THAT STICK OUT YOU COULD SHARE WITH US? When you play around, specially in a country like ours, where the structure is far from good, there are always funny stories. One I can remember now happened in a SICK MIND show, in a very small bar in our city Sao Paulo. We had an introduction in the concert & I with my innocence, asked the bar owner /stage manager / audio tech & cooker to shut the lights to start the gig. But I hadn't noticed that the lights consisted of a single lamp hanging from a wire in the front of the stage. The guy, which was a very nice fellow by the way, promptely took a chair & stepped on it & I was thinking "what the hell is he doing?" Then the man took the lamp with his hands & almost fell off the chair with burnt hands. Before he got a towel to complete the mission, I said to him to forget about the lights, we didn't have the introduction...lol. ARE YOU INTO ANY OTHER STYLES OF MUSIC BESIDES WHAT YOU PLAY? WHO ARE SOME OF THE BANDS YOU HAVE CURRENTLY BEEN LISTENING TO? Yes, first of all I respect all efforts to do real music, I mean, when peopletry to express something real, not to make money, or achieve popularity. It's not difficult to know when these kinds of people show up, so i really ignore it. But I'm open to different styles of music, especially when I started to study more about drumming. I enjoy listening to bands like MR. BUNGLE, FANTOMAS, PRIMUS, some Jazz stuff...I don't care, if I feel I can enjoy a band I'll listen no matter the style, except a kind of popular Samba that's very popular here, this is really impossible...hahaha. But currently, I'm listening to a lot of Metal, torturing my neighbors... I like very much MASTODON's "BLOODY MOUNTAIN", "THE NEW BLACK" from STRAPPING YOUNG LAD & I can't for the new MESHUGGAH! |
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| WHAT IS THE BEST & WORST PART ABOUT BEING IN A BAND? I think that the worst part about it is that if you want to take it seriously, you need to think in the band as a buisness. In our case, we have to do planning, bdgeting, fight for opinions with band mates...this is tough, it steals a lot of energy & time, but it is the rules, we live in a corporate society. But once you are playing, it's possible to forget about all this shit & it's great when people get connected with your music. You know that you are not a lone, there are more people who feel the same way. It's inbelievable what a good concert can do to my health! |
| WHAT IS ONE THING YOU THINK PEOPLE WOULD BE SURPRISED TO FIND OUT ABOUT YOU? That's a really cool question! People where I work always get surprised when i say that I'm in a band. ("A Rock band??" "No- a Thrash Metal band...you know the noisy ones? Something like that") I think that people who know me as the CHAOSFEAR's drummer would be surprised to know that I'm an accountant, wearing suit & necktie. It's weird even to me! It's not easy, but I need to work... WHAT WAS THE FIRST CONCERT YOU SAW? WHAT WAS THE FIRST ALBUM YOU BOUGHT? The first concert I saw was DEEP PURPLE, in Sao Paulo, 1991. But the "real" concert was KREATOR, during "COMA OF SOULS" tour, 1992. I was 13 or 14 years old & I got kicked , pushed, punched, it was real insane to me, I loved it! The first album I bought was "CREATURES OF THE NIGHT" from KISS, which in fact was a cassette tape that I still have. They were about to play in Brasil & I was caught by all that production & still love that drum sound! WHAT DO THE MEMBERS OF CHAOSFEAR DO WHEN NOT DOING ANY WORK FOR THE BAND? We all have 8 to 5 jobs, it's the only way to keep the band alive, so in fact what happens is that we work for the band when not in our activities as wage slaves. But when not working or doing something for the band I enjoy reading books, listening to music or hanging around with friends. WHAT CAN WE LOK FORWARD TO NEXT FROM CHAOSFEAR? Right now we are promoting our first album, trying to play as much music as possible, but we are already working on our next effort,, which I think will be more aggressive than our first one, we are very excited about it. We want to keep the band growing, so we are searching to play everywhere & we want to improve, to record a better album than our first one. The only thing that I can say about our furture is that we are psyched to play & do our best. WHAT WERE YOU DOING BEFORE ANSWERING THIS INTERVIEW? WHAT WILL YOU DO NOW THAT IT'S DONE? This interview was answered in some few steps...some of them I did during my work. I'm finising it at home. I just arrived from work. I'm listening to "REINVENTING THE STEEL" from PANTERA & after this interview I'll play some drums. i need to releax. I have a small room where I can practice, so I'll be locked there for some time. THANX FOR ANSWERING MY QUESTIONS? IF YOU WANT TO ADD ANYTHING FEEL FREE. THANX! Thanks to BEOWOLF for this opportunity & we hope we can keep on thrashing. Cheers to all Metalheads around the world. Let's keep it LOUD! See you! |
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| ALL PHOTOS & GRAPHICS COURTESY OF CHAOSFEAR INTERVIEWS MAIN PAGE |