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| Interview by Burt Wolf with Topon Das, vocalist & guitarist for FUCK THE FACTS Interview done January 10th, 2003 |
| YOU GUYS HAVE BEEN KICKING AROUND THE UNDERGROUND FOR SOME TIME NOW. COULD YOU PLEASE GIVE SOME OF THE BANDS BACKGROUND FOR THOSE FEW SOULS WHO HAVEN'T HEARD OF YOU GUYS? Basically, in 1998 I started a new studio/recording project. I did it whenever I wasn't busy with the bands I was in at the time. A year later I named it FUCK THE FACTS & started writing/recording more often. A whole bunch of split tapes, CD-R's, etc... were released through various underground D.I.Y. labels, everything up to "Discoing The Dead". In 2001 I hooked up with our drummer Matt, we started jamming FTF tunes & decieded tio make it a full band. We got Tim on 2nd guitar, Brent on vocals & Shomir on bass. Shomir was in the band for about two weeks, just long enough to record the "FourONine" 3" CDR with us, he was the last bass player we had. Brent left the band in March 2002 & we got Mel (ex-DISJONCTION) to fill the spot. Everything up to the split 7" with KASTRAT has Brent on it. WHY WAS THE NAME FUCK THE FACTS CHOSEN FOR THE BAND? Well, at the time I was getting really into NAKED CITY, so I admit I took it from one of their songs. But, it was mainly chosen to describe what I wanted to do with this project, which was to make it open to any & all ideas I liked & enjoyed, weather it be Grind, Noise, Disco, Blues, Ambient, Experimental, Country, whatever...I didn't want to have 10 different projects for everything different I wanted to try. So it's like "fuck the facts we do what we want!"...Ha! WHO OR WHAT HAS HELPED INFLUENCE YOU GUYS IN CREATING YOUR SOUND? There's tons of great bands & records that I've listened to since I started FTF & all of them have help to give me ideas & help with the direction of FTF. Also traveling & books have played a note worthy role in it as well. As for people, my mom is our biggest fan. YOUR MUSIC IS IN THE GRINDCORE/DEATH METAL STYLE, BUT HOW WOULD YOU BEST DESCRIBE YOUR SOUND? I'd hate to think that we're simply a Death/Grind band. But I have to admit that with our current line-up we do lean towards that. My current "catch phrase" for us is Bastardized Grindcore...the kids seem to like that one. FTF HAS A LOT OF RELEASES OUT, COULD YOU GIVE SOME INFORMATION ON THESE RELEASES & THEIR AVAILABILITY? We got tons of releases out there when you consider all D.I.Y. label splits & compilation appearances. A bunch of these have trax taken from different releases, but some have exclusive trax. Availability definitly varies, we don't even sell all of them & I have stumbled on some that I never even knew about. Here's a quick run down of our releases: "Fuct The Facts" tape, "Vagina Dancer" tape, "Discoing The Dead" CDR, "FourONine" 3" CDR, "Mullet Fever" CDR, "Bastardizing Canada" CDR...check our discography page on our site for up to date & detailed list of all FTF releases, splits, compilations. One of my main focuses is to get our music out there in anyway possible for people to check out & hopefully enjoy. I rather some kid dub 50 copies of our songs & trade them with his friends, then stick a box of CD's under my bed & threaten people with copyright lawsuits. YOU'VE DONE A LOT OF SPLIT RELEASES WITH OTHER BANDS, WHICH IS YOUR FAVORITE & WHY? I really like our split 7" with KASTRAT, it's a fun listen & I think it represents the idea of the band very well. As for older stuff, the first FTF/SMES split on ZAS! AUTOPROD is my favorite. I think that's when FTF really started coming together the way I envisioned it. IF YOU COULD PICK ONE FTF SONG TO BEST REPRESENT THE BAND, WHICH SONG WOULD IT BE & WHY? I really don't think there's one song, cause we do stuff that sounds really different sometimes. But if made to pick, I'll take "Ninja Sweater", just cause it's got a bit of everything in there & I dig it. But, I think every new recording we've done sounds pretty different, so this is something that will change with time. CANADA SEEMS TO HAVE A GOOD MUSIC SCENE NOW A DAYS. WHO ARE SOME OF THE BETTER BANDS, ZINES OR LABELS? Canada's always had a pretty stable music scene. Check out bands like BURIED INSIDE, UTOPY, MARTYR, MESRINE & tons more...Labels: ARSON RECORDS, GWN RECORDS...zines, there's SANG FRAIS a good French zine that covers most of the Quebec scene. HOW WOULD YOU COMPARE THE CANADIAN METAL SCENE TO THE U.S. OR EVEN EUROPEAN SCENES? I'm not actually very up to date on the world wide Metal scene. I don't listen to much Metal music in my spare time, only a small handful of albums I really like & stuff that comes in for my distro, etc... And since we've never been to the U.S. or Europe, I'm not quite sure...hopefully one day we'll be able to find out. CANADA ALSO HAS SOME REALLY GOOD GRINDCORE BANDS LIKE TRAUMATISM, HORDE OF WORMS, YOU GUYS. DO YOU THINK CANADA WILL PRODUCE THE NEXT WAVE OF GRINDCORE BANDS LIKE CZECH REPUBLIC DID IN THE 90'S? I'd be surprised if it did, those bands you mentioned have been around for a lot of years now. In the Czech Republic Grind bands just started growing on trees. There's a lot of great bands up here, but I'd be surprised if Canada had the impact on the world wide scene that the Czech Republic did. DOES FTF PLAY OUT A LOT IN CANADA? HAVE YOU EVER PLAYED IN THE U.S.? Ya, we play pretty often. We've done about 70 or so shows since we started playing live in Aug '01 & that includes two tours. We've never been to the U.S., but plan on going there this summer for a 2-4 week tour. WHO ARE SOME OF THE BANDS YOU HAVE PLAYED WITH? We've played with bands like EXHUMED, TODAY IS THE DAY, ROTTING, MARTYR, MESRINE & many, many, many more... |