- Hello, Matt! To start this interview, could you recall how you joined Cryptopsy? At that time, what did it mean to you? - Yes I remember very clearly the day that I got the call informing me that I would be a part of Cryptopsy. It was my 24th birthday and I was having a party at my house, needless to say I partied extra hard that night. I was very proud and honoured to be a part of an international touring act. - Was it easy for you to become a part of the team? What was the main challenge for you in the beginning? - Once we set out on the road the band accepted me full hearted as a member of the team. They were very supportive in sharing any tour tips and helping me out along the way. - Ok, back to nowadays. Recently you returned from your "Back to the US 2015" tour. How did it go? Did you have any particular concert to remember of? - The Back to the US tour was a success. We had an amazing time reconnecting with the fans and meeting new ones. It had been far too long since we played the US and we were very excited to be back. The first show in Worcester was sold-out and set the pace for the entire run, it was a great way to start things off. Also all the bands on the bill were great people as well as musicians; I would tour with them again any day. - How do you usually get ready to your live shows? How do you choose the songs for the setlist? Do you have any favourite track/tracks you enjoy performing? - I am a man of rituals. I always warm-up my voice before a gig, then watch the bands with a nice cup of coffee to get myself pumped up. As for the set list, we choose it as a band. Mostly Oli our bass player will determine the order of a set; he has a real talent deciding which songs go over better at what point during a performance. I love crowd reactions so when we play the classic and the crowd goes wild those are my favourite songs to play. To name a few; Slit your Guts, Phobophile and Open Face Surgery. - Let's talk about "The Book of Suffering". The title itself, as far as I know, was supposed to be used instead of "The Unspoken King" one. Why did you decide to comeback to the name again? - Yes it was Worm’s title for the post OWN album he was writing. It was just an excellent title, and when we were discussing an anthology of EPs it just made sense to use it. Flo contacted Worm and he gave us his permission to use it. - "The Book..." is planned to be as an anthology of EP's, so how many of them do you plan to include in the upcoming release? - At this point we have discussed at least 3 Eps in the series. We will see what happens as time moves on. - What kind of topics do you raise in your lyrics? Is there anything in common between all the EPs you planned? - I took up where the self-titled left off concentrating on real life Canadian content. This time around I would say that the lyrics are more manic and brutal than anything I have written. I have focused my attention on some disgusting recent crimes that have been committed and covered in the media in the past 20 years. - Once you mentioned that "clean vocals were a mistake of the past". So how could you describe the music you are working on now? What is the main difference in comparison with your previous works? - We are extremely proud of the music we have created for this EP. It is extremely fresh and innovative while remaining 100% Cryptopsy. There are no clean vocals and there will never be any on any future Cryptopsy record. From a vocal standpoint on this EP I attempted to bridge the gap between Worm and Disalvo. The disgusting gutturals with rapid fire articulated patterns. I am happy with the end results. - At the moment, you are still running the Indigogo campaign to crowdfund your new CD. How does it go so far? Who came up first with that idea? - Since we released our previous album independently we have been thinking about the crowd fund route. The idea is that this EP will be a cross collaboration between our fans and us. This will be the fans EP as much as it ours. As of right now we have just shy of 7K raised from 260 fans. That is simply amazing. We still have three weeks to raise the other 13K and we have a whole bunch of surprises up our sleeve to help motivate the rest of our fan base to support us in any way they can. - How did you decide on the perks? Do you consider to credit some names in the CD booklet as well? - We wanted to keep some more traditional perks for fans that are more comfortable with buying things like that such as CDs, vinyls, t-shirts and hoodies. But we also wanted to share some of ourselves with the fans since this is a partnership between us. That is why we included perks like online lessons, guest appearances, our old stage banners and cymbals. - What can you say about the cover? So far, the perception of it is quite mixed. Who is the artist? - The art that we have shared is in no way the final cover art. When we launched the campaign we simply wanted to include an image so we did. An old eerie photograph that we found online inspired us and we attempted to recreate it with our friend and photographer Eric Sanchez. The final artwork is in the process of being completed now. We appreciated our fans constructive criticisms and worries that this would be the final artwork. As I said this is their EP as much as ours so we want them to be happy with the final product as much as we are. - Alright, thank you for this interview, Matt! Is there anything you would like to add in the end? - Support The Book of Suffering! |