Latest / HEAVY Music Interviews / Sonic Brutality With NZAMBI MAPUNGU From MIRUTHAN

Transcript

Sonic Brutality With NZAMBI MAPUNGU From MIRUTHAN · HEAVY Music Interviews

• 0:00
  Hey guys, it's Zambie here from Maruthin. We're two days off releasing our
• 0:07
  EP, our first EP called Culture the Dead. I'll throw you over to
• 0:13
  Chris beautiful Zombie. Thanks for joining us today. Good good to chat with
• 0:19
  you. My pleasure. So Martha, well unleash your debut four track EP,
• 0:23
  Culture the Dead on April the twenty six. Mate, So how are
• 0:26
  you feeling? Mate? Like debut epshn get pretty unerrvouing. You feel confident,
• 0:30
  you feel nervous, anxious, excited. I feel pretty confident. It's
• 0:35
  funny with the way this CP came around actually because I wrote a complete full
• 0:41
  length album and then I wanted something out sooner. Then it would take to
• 0:49
  record a full album, so I sat down and wrote a full EP after
• 0:54
  the album. Okay, release that first. So what's funny is these these
• 1:00
  songs are the new songs. The album was all written first, but the
• 1:04
  way we write it is all in a story form, so everything kind of
• 1:11
  ties in together. Each song ties into the next song like a story.
• 1:15
  And then this is actually the prequel. Right. It's actually pretty good thinking,
• 1:21
  bro, like a new band coming in. You don't want to you
• 1:23
  don't want to smash people with too much straight away, So little four track
• 1:26
  EP is probably a good like little teaser and introduce people to the band and
• 1:30
  then you can hit him with a full length later. Yep. Yeah,
• 1:32
  that was exactly the reasoning as well. It was like, all right,
• 1:37
  let's not just show our full cards straight up. Let's let's do the teaser,
• 1:42
  let's see what people think of it, and kind of go from there.
• 1:47
  Yeah, beautiful, So tell us a bit more about Hold of the
• 1:49
  Dead from a musical point of view and what you're going for with it.
• 1:53
  Okay, So Cold of the Dead is tiny bit different to the album.
• 1:57
  Songs are a little bit more elongated, so we have some kind of real
• 2:02
  ambient stuff in the middle. It's it's really meant to be like kind of
• 2:08
  like a series of TV or an old kind of story book, Gothic style
• 2:16
  storybook. So the way the way we kind of did this EP was I
• 2:23
  really wanted to extend that and not have it, for lack of a better
• 2:28
  word, hard hitting rock songs or pop song kind of thing obviously, but
• 2:34
  not pop, but that kind of three four minute kind of thing. I
• 2:38
  really wanted to extend that and show what we could do on this EP,
• 2:43
  and I think being four songs, that's more more. There's more real estate
• 2:49
  to do that where you're not like, all right, this album's one hundred
• 2:52
  and eighty minutes long, you know. So that was kind of the the
• 2:58
  idea of the EP, and yeah, it's a little bit more to that
• 3:02
  story. I've got to ask you, mate, like, did you have
• 3:06
  those sirens like pre program that just came into the background then or was that
• 3:08
  coinci Yeah, yeah, yeah, when I'll pick up my beer the sirens?
• 3:16
  So have you reviewed the EP? Mates? So I thought we'd do
• 3:20
  something a bit different, and I'm going to read through the review track by
• 3:23
  track and you can tell me if I'm on the right path or not.
• 3:25
  Yeah, for sure. We'll start off with the intro. So it's got
• 3:29
  described as a pioneering force in the realm of dark folklore and black and death
• 3:32
  metal. Australian metal outfit Marudin are certainly not a band for the faint hearted.
• 3:38
  But aside from that, I know little about these cloaked metal warriors.
• 3:40
  So what better way to get myself acquainted than by having a listen to the
• 3:44
  band's new EP, Cold of the Dead, which will infiltrate the masses in
• 3:47
  all its chlory on April twenty sixth, opening with Survived the Blast, there
• 3:52
  is an eerie sense of foreboding that descends from the outset, the air thick
• 3:54
  with channing and desolation, before the gars begin to swarm more menacingly and the
• 3:59
  drums actually to overdrive to us in a deathly wave of harsh vocals. It's
• 4:03
  mother the landscape and committing you to an eternal pit of suffering, but in
• 4:06
  a good way. The layered vocals add to the uneasiness and depth of Marudan's
• 4:11
  music, overlapping each other in a swarm of menace that is only ever lessened
• 4:15
  by the occasional spurt of guitars. The drumming is frenetic and intense, creating
• 4:18
  a sense of urgency in the face of despair that suggests resistance is futile,
• 4:23
  whereas most music this quickly starts to become an elongated mess. To my ears,
• 4:27
  so far, Erudian have threaded the type rope between destruction for the sake
• 4:30
  of it and that intended to accentuate the music as well. Yeah good explanation.
• 4:41
  Yeah, so look the idea behind our songs. What's funny is,
• 4:47
  you know, we keep ourselves anonymous. Obviously, there's some close people that
• 4:55
  kind of have this camera keeps changing, sorry, but that know who we
• 5:00
  are. But the general masses don't know who we are. Ruth and actually
• 5:05
  don't come from a metal background, which is going to surprise some people.
• 5:12
  And and I think that shows in our in our music. There's a lot
• 5:17
  of punk background. There's a lot of blues, there's even country background in
• 5:20
  the musicianship in this band. So our writing, although I do majority of
• 5:29
  the writing, although I've wanted to do this for years, in this style,
• 5:36
  this this has been in the back of my head for many years now,
• 5:42
  and I think that's kind of why we come out swinging with these songs
• 5:46
  and with with our kind of touring and stuff like that. But there's there's
• 5:51
  such a the songs are really kind of punk songs there. I think we're
• 5:58
  as much punk as we are met and I think that's where maybe people like
• 6:03
  yourself, it's quite extreme end of metal, but there's just some different stuff
• 6:10
  happening in there, which kind of is keeping the listeners in there instead of
• 6:14
  like, oh, this is really just blasting my ears for seven minutes,
• 6:17
  and I'm not totally into that me myself, I'm not either, So I
• 6:24
  really want it to be a landscape of music where it is, it's coming
• 6:29
  in, it's you know, it's like, holy shit, what's happening now?
• 6:31
  Then to pull back and go all right, now it feels like I'm
• 6:34
  in a movie. You know it. Now it feels like I'm in a
• 6:38
  punk song. And that's kind of where we're headed with the writing. And
• 6:43
  survived the blast obviously the first song I think really has a lot of those
• 6:47
  elements in it. Wait Okay at the Barricades is next, and fires up
• 6:54
  on the back of a pounding drum intro that is soon enveloped by the now
• 6:57
  familiar atmospherics that highlight much of Mardan's music. A deliberately lazy slap on the
• 7:01
  guitar string acts as a segue into the more impending doom, with gang vocals
• 7:04
  the top fastest fuck double kicks providing a sensitive escapism or somewhat trying to escape
• 7:10
  the clutches of death. There is actually quite a lot going on here,
• 7:13
  and the interests of the music could easily get lost in the mailstrom of discontent,
• 7:16
  but surprisingly, I am keeping up, or at least I think I
• 7:18
  am, and enjoying the convulsive ride of decay that Maroudon are taking me on.
• 7:24
  There are moments in this track that feel like an incantation of thoughts before
• 7:27
  a melancholy piece of music threatens to upset the status quo. This last only
• 7:30
  freedingly, however, as the forces of darkness soon rise to quell this unwonted
• 7:33
  uprising with the frenetic war of sounds waging between drums and guitar. The bass
• 7:39
  intrudes briefly with a well placed run that only seems to anger the demonic forces
• 7:42
  once more, who returned to reclaim at the Barricades to its disturbing conclusion,
• 7:50
  Yeah, so at the Barricades. In my head when I was riding this
• 7:57
  was, for lack of a better a word, but you know something that
• 8:01
  more gets thrown around in the kind of punk, realm and rock kind of
• 8:07
  stuff was I really wanted to write a banger. I wanted to write something
• 8:11
  that that first song gets people in and they're like, all right, I
• 8:18
  can kind of see what's happening here, I can see what they're about.
• 8:20
  And then I wanted to hit them with you know, this is our version
• 8:24
  of our our pop song our This is our version of all our cards on
• 8:33
  our sleeve, hard hitting but still kind of not not accessible in the way
• 8:41
  of like again pop music or rock music, but accessible in the way of
• 8:46
  people can really listen to that and resonate, and it's done, and it's
• 8:52
  done quick, and that all the parts coming quick. Yeah, pretty cool,
• 8:56
  okay, into the bushes to the surface with an air of ambience and
• 9:01
  relative calm, as bellstole in the distance under a steady, chant like vocal
• 9:05
  presence that rises and falls the beat of an unseen savior around him. The
• 9:09
  music slowly denigrates into an abyss of petulance as guitars thwroll, aimlessly, taking
• 9:13
  flight as an opposing force to the flashes of good that seemed to be gathering
• 9:16
  momentum. Rshly whispered vocals ignite the termil once more, ushering in a raging
• 9:22
  beast of unrestrained ferocity who threatens to send any notion of goodness or heggling back
• 9:26
  from whence it came in a screaming ball of pain. The vocals are harsh
• 9:30
  and unforgiving, creating a divide of sorts between this realm and the next,
• 9:33
  never once pausing to let more than a glimpse of sunlight into pieces of mail
• 9:37
  and darkness. A wicked guitar solo enters a fray around the four minute mark,
• 9:41
  a stuttering, forceful slab of sonic disparity that acts merely is a distraction,
• 9:45
  while the forces of evil recharge your anger before spewing it forth and even
• 9:48
  more in change awesome, I'm liking the way you are writing about actually reading
• 9:56
  back through that. Now, I did a fucking good job, didn't I
• 9:58
  good? Yeah? Well, as I say, the band read through this
• 10:03
  review and I had the message me and go, this is fucking awesome.
• 10:09
  Who write this? We appreciate that. But all right, so into the
• 10:15
  abyss is It's funny you say winter as well, because that's that's the thought
• 10:24
  that I kind of had. I wanted it to be dark. I wanted
• 10:26
  it to be cold. Riff wise is not too much going on in intricacies,
• 10:33
  So I wanted this really pulled back to rhythm guitar to be a nice
• 10:39
  basic riff instead of kind of overdone. But the the lead guitar doing a
• 10:45
  lot of that swirling up and down and that that real black metal stuff really
• 10:54
  going into that atmospheric stuff as well into in this song this this was this
• 11:03
  is a little glimpse into some of the album as well. This song there's
• 11:09
  There's With a full length, there's obviously time to do some more stuff,
• 11:16
  So this has a bit more of a glimpse into what we're producing with this
• 11:20
  album. It's a little bit more ambient stuff coming up. But yeah,
• 11:24
  I think you hit the nail on the head beautiful. Okay. Drums and
• 11:30
  guitar lay the platform for the Land of the Damned, ushering forth another sonic
• 11:33
  descend into darkness. I honestly have no idea what these guys are singing about,
• 11:37
  but you don't need to understand to know what's going on. One side
• 11:39
  of battle between good and evil that has the Gates of Hell winning either by
• 11:43
  knockout or unanimous points decision. This track features more guitar and to play with
• 11:48
  a much cleaner and deliberate sounded on the preceding track. Suddenly the music retreats
• 11:52
  and the harshness of the vocals is accentuated significantly. They really are frightening and
• 11:56
  imposing, acting as judged during an executioner in a war from which they're only
• 12:00
  be one victor. Vocals are threatening and repelling, but no match for an
• 12:03
  insane, vicious drum solo of sorts that is almost too quick to be human.
• 12:07
  And the song pulls back once more as fiendishly intoxicating, demonic whispers cover
• 12:11
  the sonic landscape before fading into the darkness, seemingly content with a lot sided
• 12:16
  victory. And that's what Cold of the Dead is. A musical victory of
• 12:18
  the darkest proportions, is compelling, dense, divisive, and brutal all at
• 12:22
  once. The best of all makes no apologies for being so again well written.
• 12:31
  Yeah, so a couple of things you said in there, I'll get
• 12:33
  to with that. With the drums um so our only somewhat known member is
• 12:43
  our drummer. He has quite a following on Instagram and YouTube now as well
• 12:52
  in a million kind of views for some of his videos. This kid's fourteen
• 13:00
  said, yeah, like me, he's fucking good. Yeah, yeah,
• 13:03
  he's a prodigy. Be the kind of word I guess we throw out.
• 13:11
  This is his first ever band. Okay, not even kidding, So yes,
• 13:20
  it's good that that was noticed. He'll obviously watched this review and be
• 13:24
  a bit happy with about that. Yeah, just uh, so he nailed
• 13:30
  the drum parts on this. This is his first ever recording to did he
• 13:33
  did he write the drugs himself? He didn't know. I write generally everything.
• 13:41
  I'm not very kind of what's the word. I don't tell people their
• 13:48
  parts though, I'll give them their parts and then they do what they will
• 13:50
  with him. So there is definitely changes that he's done. Uh feels that
• 13:54
  he's done, changing up the beats and that kind of thing. Yeah,
• 14:01
  so Land of the Damned is you're talking about. I'm not sure what we're
• 14:05
  singing about. So Land of the Damned was actually the first song on the
• 14:09
  album, but it got pushed forward to the EP mainly because of the story.
• 14:18
  This is this is where we kind of find out in our folklore.
• 14:24
  You obviously read that we write a full folklore. That folklore is going to
• 14:28
  be released very soon in little parts. It's really really quite in depth.
• 14:37
  We're riche literally writing it like a kind of a movie script of it,
• 14:43
  like maybe maybe a show script because it's it's quite long. But this is
• 14:48
  where we kind of find out in our folklore. The world is fucked ah,
• 14:56
  So it's kind of as a it was going to be on the album,
• 15:01
  but story wise was like, actually, you know, this would be
• 15:03
  a good way to finish up the EP because we kind of learn we've been
• 15:07
  through some shit in the first three songs story wise, and we've learned that
• 15:11
  the world is pretty fucked out there and it's kind of fitting to twenty twenty
• 15:16
  four. And then I rewrote a song to replaced Land of the Damned on
• 15:28
  the album, so I slipped in a bit of a story so you'll hear
• 15:31
  that. We've also got the film clip to match this. I don't know
• 15:37
  if you've seen that yet. Very good, very good. I liked it.
• 15:43
  Yeah, yeah, So we have a bit of our own production house
• 15:46
  here is so we do all our own recordings, video stuff like that.
• 15:52
  So we did we did that as well. But yeah, so that's kind
• 15:56
  of where Land of the dan sits story a nice right now. For those
• 16:00
  who don't know too much about Maruthen like I haven't caught you on the way
• 16:03
  out the door to with fifty Shades of Gray party made, it's actually this
• 16:07
  is a band to look like. He's a very theatrical band. He's a
• 16:10
  very very in costume and stuff. So can you tell us a bit more
• 16:14
  about marudin where you come from, your backstory, Like, I know every
• 16:17
  member's got their own name and backstory, So give us a bit of an
• 16:21
  introduction to the band, all right, Yeah, so we kind of think
• 16:27
  of think of Maruth and Lank if you're watching say The Walking Dead or something
• 16:34
  like that. So it's based around this apocalyptic world. The folklore was written,
• 16:42
  It started to be written before the songs were even written. I wanted
• 16:48
  this to be not just a band. I've played in many bands. I've
• 16:52
  toured for lots of years. I've done some big touring with one of the
• 16:56
  bands having quite a big a bit of success. So musically, none of
• 17:06
  it's new to me, apart from the style and touring's not new to me.
• 17:10
  But I really wanted to bring in this whole story. I wanted.
• 17:17
  I really really wanted to give back to people. You know, obviously I've
• 17:22
  done lots of gigs over my time, and I've had friends and fans and
• 17:25
  all that kind of stuff, and I really wanted to give them more than
• 17:27
  just a series of songs. So the whole folklore was written, and as
• 17:36
  I said before that will that will start to be released very soon. There's
• 17:41
  the EP needed to be released first, and then the lyrics will give people
• 17:48
  a fair bit of insight into the folklore. And I really wanted people to
• 17:52
  have to do a bit of digging as well. Yeah, it kind of
• 17:57
  yeah, kind of like if ah, what's that thing that people do where
• 18:02
  they hide and they geographically find these kind of I kind of think what that's
• 18:08
  called jeer cashing, kind of like that where people have to do a bit
• 18:17
  of digging and there will be info for them to dig and find. And
• 18:22
  I just think for people that are really into this kind of stuff, to
• 18:26
  me, that sounds really fun. Oh yeah, even if you're not,
• 18:29
  didn't do it, it's fun, you know, like trying to just trying
• 18:30
  to discover shit, play the detective. Yeah yeah, yeah, So we're
• 18:34
  going to kind of hide this stuff around the Internet and people will find it
• 18:38
  and eventually people will find who we are. And you know, we're not
• 18:44
  super you know, super funny about that. It's as tongue in cheek as
• 18:51
  it is serious. You know, we're having a bit of fun with it,
• 18:53
  and we kind of we really play it up at the shows. So
• 18:59
  we kind of of we hope that that comes across not in a wanky way
• 19:04
  either, you know. I think you'll have certain people that are like,
• 19:08
  oh, these black metal wankers and you know, pop that please anyway made
• 19:12
  fucking that's right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, So we're hoping what we
• 19:18
  do is a bit different and it's it's much of a as much of a
• 19:22
  kind of theater show as that is just a metal gig. So you'll have
• 19:27
  the people that just go to a metal gig will come and enjoy it.
• 19:30
  The people that go to theater shows enjoy it as well, you know,
• 19:33
  and very nice. And speaking of shows, mate, you're part way through
• 19:37
  a tour that continues on April twenty seventh in Newcastle, then hits Tasmania,
• 19:41
  Gold Coast, Brisbane, Port mcquarie in Melbourne and finishes in Sunbury on June
• 19:45
  the thirties. So how's the tour going so far? It's going really good.
• 19:52
  Had some had some big numbers, had some some good tour stories.
• 19:57
  We've had all the things for a kind of a newish band. As I
• 20:03
  say, some of the guys have toured heat so that you're used to it.
• 20:07
  Some haven't, so they're learning all the too stories. Crowd wise has
• 20:12
  been amazing. Had this guy and we played Sydney on the weekend and this
• 20:18
  guy was just on his knees bowing, you know, like and we're doing
• 20:22
  the full get up, you know. So it was good. It was
• 20:26
  good fun. People are kind of getting the stick, you know what we're
• 20:30
  about. So we're having a ball. Wait, and what can people expect
• 20:36
  from the live show, mate, I'm guessing it's going to be visually intense.
• 20:40
  It is visually intense. It's I feel sorry for our sand guys because
• 20:45
  we've got eight members on tour. Four of them are vocalists, so you
• 20:51
  know, you're talking this kind of style of vocals, this dirty vocals we
• 20:56
  have. We have a choir section as well, but they also both do
• 21:00
  dirty vocals, so at times there's four growling vocals. Yeah, so I
• 21:07
  feel sorry for the sound guys, but they're all kind of by the end
• 21:11
  of it, they're like, that was an absolute headfuck. But I really
• 21:15
  enjoyed that. And so visually we offer a heat to the crowd and as
• 21:22
  I say, sonically as well, expect kind of a massive, big sound.
• 21:27
  All right, Well, thanks for your time. Zambia it's been an
• 21:30
  absolute pleasure again to know you mate, and we'll hear more about the band.
• 21:33
  The EP Hold of the Dead is out this Friday, April twenty sixth.
• 21:37
  Where can people get hold of it and find out more information about the band