Salute! Montezuma’s Revenge was born in 2005, but, man,
you had only 3 singles till now, what did you do all this time?
Hey there! Yeah, it took us a while to figure a
bunch of things out. Our rhythm section – Vladimir and Yuri both started out in
a ska band, while I joined them after playing in a funk band. So we all know
what we were running from and wanted a change, but we had no clue what the new
band should sound whatsoever. Besides, our first rehearsal space was the
concert hall of the Moscow Institute Of Chemical Physics and it was free for
us, so hanging there we weren't really in a hurry.
Okay, it’s a good
start, but then I need to ask how did you figure out your way to a sound which
you wanted to hear?
We started throwing all possible influences
into our band's system and than filtered out the stuff, that didn't sit well
with us. There was no preconceived idea of what our style should be like what
so ever.
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These were from the same recording session as
the rest of the album. We just put them out to promote the record upfront.
Does Montezuma’s
Revenge have some songs besides these 8 tracks to perform a big set-list for
gigs?
We've recorded 10 tracks for the album, 2 of
them haven't been put out yet. And we have the second album already completely
written, so there's a lot of stuff to play with on live shows. In our band
there's always a big pile of new material to work with, I just wish a day would
consist of more that 24 hours.
The album was mastered
in New York
With West West Side Music it's been a classic
word of mouth story. I liked the mastering on one of my favorite records: the
album «Lava» by the Swiss band Sludge. So we asked their bass player Sergey
Ulyanov (ex-Sobaki Tabaka) where they mastered the record and he gave me the
contact of Alan Douches at West West Side Music, whose experience include the
likes of Mastodon, Neurosis and Converge. And that sounded
right up our alley.
I’m looking at
art-work of “Sleeping Beauty” single and it looks amazing: great logo, great
subject, great sense of taste. And art-work of “Key to the Abyss” looks quite
chaotic, there’s lot of colors and details. Why did you choose it?
We're fortunate to have so many great visual
artists among our personal friends. The design for «Sleeping Beauty» was
created by Sergey Safonov (http://sergeysafonov.com/) - my friend since high school and an
internationally reknown black belt in character design. The cover of our first
single «Dead Frost» and it's video were made by another friend and true to the
bone artist Vladimir Snegotskiy (http://rottenfantom.com/). The whole artwork of our album
was a piece of fantastic cooperation with another good friend – Andrey
Davidovsky (http://www.davidovsky.com/), who had the balls to take a dive
into the abyss of our record's concept and visualize the entire piece. They all
have their signature styles and it was great fun to watch our creative
substances react to each other.
What’s interesting Montezuma’s Revenge can offer to its listeners?
I'll leave it up to them. Our point
is to make music which presents our own version of music we like with lyrics
coming from the abyss of my distorted microcosm.
There’s a popular metal trend in Montezuma’s Revenge lyrics, I’m meaning
apocalyptical subjects. Was it necessary to put this old (and personally for me
pretty boring) conception in your songs?
Throughout the human history all
motives tend to remain the same. Take Romeo and Julia, Cinderella or the
Apocalypse. Nothing changes. There are apocalyptic motives in our album, but
they shouldn't be taken literally, it's a mere metaphor for any change. And
this album has a lot of changes in it. In the very core of it's concept it's
closer to Vivaldi's «The Four Seasons» - only with a lot of sacrifices between
the seasons.
“Key to the Abyss”
songs sound harsh, chaotic, aggressive yet professional – am I right in such
assessment? What’s your point of view?
You get what it reads – we're not there to
please your stomach. All the rest is up to the listener. I find it harder to
listen to calm music.
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The song's character serves to the great
chimera of popular culture. That's exactly what we all do this way or another,
obeying the warmth of black hole. Living the rock'n'roll dream. Even though
it's been dead for many years we're like a samurai without a master – ronin,
who fell down 7 times and got up 8 times and was too week to commit a harakiri
and is therefore classified as a servant. That's what the song is about.
The band and label promote “Key to the Abyss” very intensively – on-line
streaming, gig with Down and so on. Can you judge about an effectiveness of
such active position?
It's hard to judge how all worked
yet – we just released the album. Sharing a stage with Down was a real blast,
and jamming with those guys definitely tops anything we could possibly have
dreamed about making music. We started getting international feedback from day
one. The moment we put out our first video for «Dead Frost» Metalsucks.net placed
us on top of it's video grab and it went on from there.
Montezuma’s Revenge is
a professional band, do you see some features which you still need to became
more successful as artists?
Right now we're a 100% DIY band. Financed our
album recording, put together a video and artworks with the help of our
friends, we are self-managed and we have day-jobs. It would be great to become
a professional band once, but we're not there so far, so spread the word and
get our album if you care.
Okay, thank you for
interview – good luck! And I wish you to reach more listeners and play more
gigs.
Stay tuned and follow your madness no matter
what!
Photos by Andrew Davydovskiy and Natalia Stupnikova
Interview by Aleksey Evdokimov
Interview by Aleksey Evdokimov
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