PlanetMosh Keeping it Metal
For the second successive year, PlanetMosh is delighted to be the main media partner, and main stage sponsor, for Monsters Of Rot, the annual celebration of the best in the extreme Irish metal scene. Now in its fifth cycle, the festival is expanding its horizons, with the first continental European band to grace its stage, in the shape of Austrian goregrind/slamdeath crew VxPxOxAxAxWxAxMxCx.
As part of this year’s build up to the event, I fired a few questions in the trio’s direction, starting with perhaps the most obvious (and one they’ve equally obviously been asked more than once): what inspired the name of the band?
Well, the name was created at the very beginning of the band. We sat together in a local bar and talked about details of the band that we wanted to establish. Of course also the question of the name of the band came up and our singer had the idea to use a very long bandname, since it will always stand out on flyers etc. The name should reflect the whole concept of the band and embrace the two main lyrical elements which are gore and sarcasm. After some time we thought of the final name in German and then we just had to translate it to English and voila: the name Vaginal Penetration Of An Amelus With A Musty Carrot was born. So, there was no special event that lead to the name, but it just got created during one evening and since we get asked very often about the origin of our name, we think it still does quite well!
So, has any member of the band ever actually penetrated an amelus (which, by the way, dear reader, is the medical term for a limbless foetus) with a musty carrot?
Oh God! Always these clichés, what an offending question! I could also ask you if you ever took part in violent acts in the course of an Orange walk!
Yep, these guys have obviously done some homework about the location for their forthcoming festival appearance. And why a band who have what would be seen to many (and especially our female readers) as an offensive name would take offence at being challenged on same… well, we’ll leave that up to you lot out there…
So, moving on, PM wonders what are VxPxOxAxAxWxAxMxCx’s lyrical influences in relation to the subjects of their songs?
In principle we more or less do comedy for adults in musical form: that means we try to use very violent and sarcastic song titles and lyrics with a big wink and a lot of black humour. Like many bands in the genre, our song titles and lyrics are often ridiculously violent but are not meant to be taken 100 per cent serious, of course. There are just too many things influencing the lyrics to name them all here – from horror/splatter movies to events in the real world. Pretty much everything can be inspiring for us.
So, does the band deliberately set out to be controversial in its subject material?
It is definitely not always good to take part in all conventions of a genre, but we do not know people that are fans of the genre goregrind, but do not like the concept of using gore and violence in the titles, lyrics and artwork. We never tried to be the goriest and most controversial band of all, but we are fans of the whole goregrind concept and that is why we embrace it in our material. There are bands that try to separate the gory concept from the groovy music but mostly the music and lyrics come paired and most people like both. The whole splatter/violence concept that is used in the goregrind genre is seldom used in other genres and we think it is nice that it comes along with groovy music that is fun to listen to.
To be honest, if someone seriously tries to offend people they mostly come across as laughable these days. You can switch on the computer and see carbonised people and executions on the internet or watch CSI on television in the prime time and see an autopsy there so offending people with violent stuff probably works with 70 year old grandmas but is not so easy with people from our generation. More than having controversial subject material, we are interested in playing live shows and having fun on stage and with the audience.
Austria has some fairly strict censorship laws: have you ever been censored or threatened with prosecution because of what you write and sing about?
I think you are mistaking Austria with Germany [actually, we’re thinking of the infamous Belphegor case from around 2002, when the band had all their albums banned in their homeland because of their Satanic content and the country’s pro-Catholic church stance, but we’ll let the lads away with that, as they’re probably too young to remember that!].
In Germany a lot of stuff, also in the metal genre, has been censored, like Cannibal Corpse albums and other stuff, while in Austria the laws are much less strict. In Austria, the only thing that is censored very strictly is material about the Nazi party and the Holocaust, but since we are not a political band we never had problems with any censorship or were threatened with prosecution because of our material.
One of Austria’s most famous exports is Arnold Schwarzenegger: what is your favourite Arnie movie?
We would spontaneously say ‘Commando’. This is really a typical stupefying action movie with hardly any story, a lot of powerful weapons and a lot of kills and violence. They did not even try to have a meaningful story and pretty much just went straight into mass killings. This movie role represents what Arnold was made for in our opinion!
He famously was Governor of California for several years. Do you think he would make a good President of Austria?
You are invited to Google the name Heinz Fischer, who is our current president. He looks like Leslie Nielsen in ‘Dracula: Dead and Loving It’ and sounds like he ate three pills of Valium for breakfast – and that each and every day. Arnold can try to become president in our country – because it can’t get any worse.
Seriously though: this is your first visit to Northern Ireland – are you looking forward to it and what can the audience expect from you?
On the Irish island it is our second gig, because we already played in Dublin two years ago, but it is our first one in Northern Ireland. Therefore, and because we see that the organisers are working very hard to promote the show we are very happy that we can play on the Monsters of Rot and we are very much looking forward to it ! Also it is great that it is not happening in the capital which is always preferred by us because we like the countryside.
This time our kind of music will probably pretty much stand out from the rest, since we are the only goregrind band on the bill. Other than that we will do our typical show with nice danceable intros as well as groovy goregrind and slams during the songs. Also the audience can expect a lot of interaction with us or some rude language towards them if we are not happy with the mood ;)
Have you heard of any of the other bands on the bill?
We know the band Guttrench because they played with us in Dublin where we had the chance to check out their ass-kicking performance. We also know Abaddon Incarnate since they have been around for a long time in the deathgrind genre and they are rather well known. We are looking forward to see both of them perform live on the festival.
Monsters Of Rot is held in a car park behind a bar in what we over here would refer to as “the arse end of nowhere”: what is the weirdest place you’ve played a gig/festival?
Since we always were open to play at a lot of weird and special places, we already had some pretty odd gig locations. Spontaneously we would name an abandoned insane asylum in Turin, an island in Kaliningrad that is still protected by the military and the mansion of a deceased Mafia boss in Palermo. These types of places are much more interesting for us than playing in regular bars over and over again so we hope that we will get the chance to play in weird places many times in the future as well.
You recently were part of a split EP with Anal Penetration and Infected Society, both of whom you toured with last year: you contributed live songs from that tour to the release, so when can we expect some new material from VxPxOxAxAxWxAxMxCx?
Yes we toured with them, with a few gigs in the UK, France and Belgium. About new material we have to say we are pretty lazy when it comes to recording. The next release from us will be a special split that will have to do with the French band Gronibard, which will be out latest in September, but we do not want to give away more details about that at the time ;) We were always more interested in performing live on stage than recording songs for releases so people always have to wait some time for new stuff but we hope that it will be worth the wait.
Monsters Of Rot takes place in Letterbreen, County Fermanagh, on Saturday August 1. Next in our series of interviews, we will be talking to Altus.
