Thirteen bloody years have passed since Belgrade’s brutal death metal veterans have started spreading their disease like a plague. Persistent in their goals and loyal to their story, this band is definitely one of those that should be given a due respect by every young and old true metal follower. After their demo release “The Second death”, they’ve recently finished recording their debut album “Thernion Demonarchy” that they guaranty will make your ears bleed. Extreme Review Magazine crew brings you an interview with a well known Serbian band Sacramental Blood.
1. How did you come to an idea to form a band that January 2002 ?
Few months prior to that I decided to put to rest my ex band
Androphagous since I couldn't complete the line up for more than 3 years. Two
months later I got a phone call from our drummer Ivan who heard about the band
and wanted to join us. I told him the band was over but he insisted that we
should jam together and so I gave it one last chance and we played one
rehearsal at the end of 2001. We figure out that we can maybe make it work so
Ivan took few weeks to get back in shape his condition and in January 2002 we
officially started new band Sacramental Blood.
2. Who made the first lineup at the
beginning, and has it change since?
For the first 6 months it was only 3 of us, me on guitar, Ivan
Petrovic on drumms and ex Androphagous guitarist Dusan Vucicevic on bass/vocals
(he switched 1 month later to guitar). After
the first show we got our first bass player Milan Suput and after first 2 shows
played with ex Androphagous vocalist Vampir as session member we found our
first singer Kosta Kovacevic. Since than we have changed line up many times but
the last one is definitely the strongest one and besides me and Ivan we have
Srdjan Todorovic on guitars/vocals and Marko Curcic (ex Toxic Trace) on bass.
3. In March your first demo
"Inception of Ceremony" comes out. Has Sacramental blood change in
its lyrical and music ideas since and how much did it change?
Not exactly in March. We did 2 unofficial demos in 2003 and 2004 and
first official demo "Inception of Ceremony" was recorded in
October/November 2005 and released on 1st of April 2006 through Walk records. I
wouldn't say we changed much our lyrical direction. It's been pretty much the
same but in 2003 we parted ways with our bass player who wrote 2/3 of lyrics on
debut demo. I took over that role and my style of writing is bit different from
his. Also his English wasn't that good so I think our lyrics suffered a bit
from broken English on that demo. Music is in the same vein, which is kind of
old school brutal technical death metal and we changed only vocals by mixing
growl vocals with Obituary/Asphyx kind of singing.
4. Not long after, the band started
cooperating with Brasillian brutal death metal band Ophiolatry. Tell us
something more about that split and the cooperation itself.
During recording session of "Inception of Ceremony" Walk
Records asked us to consider possibility of releasing split cd instead of SB
demo CD. They had proposed some other band but we asked if we could team up
with Ophiolatry, since we were already working with them on our first EU tour.
Both Ophiolatry and Walk were interested in this project and Brazilians soon
recorded 5-6 new songs exclusively for that split CD and in July 2006 we went together on European Blastour
2006, which was unique experience for all of us. We are still in touch with
those guys, hoping that we can do some day EU Blastour pt II.
5. During 2011 you release your second
demo called "The Second Death". As we can see the artwork for it is
quite interesting. Who was the creator of it? Could you tell us something more
about the demo itself?
"The Second Death" was recorded in 2011 but it wasn't
released until mid 2013. I made our artwork as well as artwork of Heretical Guilt for that CD. The split CD
is symbolicaly entitled "Triple Death Threat" and so every band is
presented with 3 songs. Our demo includes intro, brand new song "Derelict
Throne of God" and cover of Kreator's "Storming With Menace". It
was recorded in Del Arno Band's studio by
Karlo Testen from Space Eater. Interesting thing is that we went through
major line up change during those recording sessions. Milan Suput who
previously returned to band supposed to record bass on it and Marko Gospavic
was vocalist at the time we entered the studio, but within few days we parted
ways with both of them and Srdjan who supposed to record only 2 solos took over
the microphone and became our full time guitarist/vocalist. I also recorded all
bass lines on it. This was crucial line up change as Srdjan's vocals gave us
more unique sound and set us aside from many other brutal death metal bands
since he is using more early 90-ies kind of vocals that will remind you of
Obituary,Death, Morgoth,Pestilence etc.
6. Macedonian record label
"Darzamadicus Records" releases a split in 2013 called "Triple
Death Threat". Along with bands "Heretical Guilt" and
"Blaspherion", "Sacramental Blood" also took part on this
excellent split edition. How satisfied are you with that spit, and how wide is
your cooperation with other bands?
We are satisfied with CD but we are not satisfied with promotion label
did for it. They spreaded all their copies quite fast through their distro
partners and did absolutely no promotion for it. They haven't send not even 1
promo CD to some magazine/webzine for review so there was no promotional use of
this CD at all. HG are not active that much so there's not much space for some
bigger cooperation with them. Blasphererion is the 2nd band of our vocalist
Srdjan but they haven't been active for years so we cooperate only with him. :)
7. You've performed at many Serbian and
foreign festivals and concerts. Which one stands out as the most memorable one?
Probably Mountains of Death fest in Swiss stands out as the most
professional fest we have played so far. We supposed to play the same year on
Brutal Assault fest but organizers didn't provide us necessary papers and we
couldn't get visas on time so we had to cancell it. Otherwise that would be our
biggest show to date.
8. What do you think about today's
Serbian death metal scene and it's bands? How different are they comparing to
foreign bands in the genre? Could you recommend some Serbian band to our
readers?
If Heretical Guilt and Blasphererion were more active our metal scene
would be lot more interesting. I picked those 2 bands for the split CD so
obviously I would recommend both bands. I also like Wolf's Hunger (which is not
death metal band) and I can listen to few more thrash bands but I'm not really
their big fan. We need lot more death metal bands if we want to say that we
have death metal scene. That being said I can only add that we need more
dedicated and more original death metal bands if we want to get compared to
some other well developed scene.
9. Last summer you released the single
"Destroyer of Thought and Form" which announces your new album
"Ternion Demonarchy". Tell us more about the album. Where was it
recorded and how did the recording go?
The basic tracks were recorded in 2009 in Wild Cat studio in
Kragujevac,the same studio we used for recording of "Inception of
Ceremony". We tried to mix it there but it sounded like shit so we decided
to use some other studio for mixing and mastering. However after the "Storming
the Balkans tour 2009" with God Dethroned and Fleshgod Apocalypse we run
into problems with some ex members and we had to put that album on ice and wait
for some better times to finish it. After recording of "The Second
Death" demo and "Disgorging the Balkans tour" with Disgorge and
Natron we realised it was time to start working on it again. The result of
"The Second Death" showed us the direction we should go so we decided
to re-record all vocals and majority of guitar leads and we used few different studios for that and services
of Igor Loncar (ex Awaiting Fear) to complete the album. Unfortunatelly The
16th Cellar studio in Rome and Stefano Morabito were too busy so it took
another year to get some studio time there and do reamping, mixing and
mastering of "Ternion Demonarchy". It took us so long but the final
result is far, far away from what we started in 2009 so I wouldn't change
anything about it.
10. As is usual, lots of great bands from
Serbia and abroad have trouble finding the publisher. Apropos to that, in which
direction are the plans for your new album going? Are there any good news on
that field?
Yes, you are right.The scene is overpopulated by so many bands that is
really hard to catch some labels' attention. We tried with so many of them,
sometimes we had to write the same label or send them album 5-6 times before
they decide to check it out. We got good response from many labels, even the
big ones but we also got turned down by 10 times more labels, that didn't even
listen to album. To be honest I'm not sure where are we at this moment. We got
good offer from some label from Japan but we have been waiting for their
contract for more than a month. In a meantime some friends told us that some
major label is willing to check us out and right now we are also waiting for
their response. I won't mention any names at this moment but I believe we have
a good chances to see album released in this year so let's cross the fingers
and hope it won't take too long
11. Thanks for the conversation! Would
you like to send some message to your fans?
Thank you for the interview. Make sure to check out "Ternion
Demonarchy" once it get released, it's going to make your ears bleed.