Interview: Louder Than Bombs

Malefaction are pretty much the only thing Winnipeg has going right now (other than this 'zine of course, heh, heh). They are a metal turned hardcore turned grind band. The line-up is: Cory (Cy) - drums, Clint (C) - guitar, Mike (M) - bass, Travis (T) - vocals. Their first full length, Smothered, is sort of metally hardcore, their second full length, Man Grows Cold, is amazingly fast grind. Plenty of blast beats in there for ya. The new album is a must and if you have some extra money you should buy the old one too. We spoke with them at the Alberta one night...

So how long ago did you guys first start? It's been a long time...

C: '91 or '92?
T: Yeah, me and Clint have been playing together since '91 and our first show wasn't till January of '92 or something at the West End.

You guys (Clint and Travis) are the only original members now?

T: Yeah.

What are you guys doing in the next little while? Is there any touring or recording coming up? I guess you just recorded (the Man Grows Cold album) a little while ago...

T: That was about a year ago. For recording, we gotta do a 7" for Commode Records in Calgary and then Denied a Custom wants to do a 7" from Japan, and then a friend of mine staying here from Belgium, his band band is called Stroke of Grace and they've got someobdy over in Belgium that wants to do a split 7" with us and his band so that's really cool.

Have you guys ever been to Europe?

T: No. We're trying.

Have you ever been to the States?

T: Yeah, we've been to the States a lot of times.

How do you like it there?

Cy: It depends where you go.
M: It's touch and go. Some of it is good and some of it's really shitty
T: Some places, the shows are just amazing, and some places it's just a waste of time.
Cy: Just like in Canada.

If you guys could change one thing about the Winnipeg scene right now, what would it be? Or do you like it the way it is? [Laughter at the second question]

T: We could use more grind drummers.

More blast beats?

T: More blast beats!
Cy: Build a time machine so we could go back ten years. [Laughter] When things were really fun. [Everyone discusses the late 80's scen for a little bit]

What happened

T:A lot of people left and...
M: ...outgrew it.
Cy: A lot of new people came in. bands changed, styles of music changed and...

Got shittier?

Cy: Not necessarily, I guess the PC scene infested a lot of it.
T: Well it has, basically.

I've heard stories about that, like Propagandhi killed the Winnipeg scene...

Cy: Well, I don't know... No, it wasn't really that. A lot of people that were going to the shows were really into it. Back when... Well I don't want to sound like an old fart or anything...
T: ...but I am!
Cy: When I started going to shows back in the late 80's a lot of people were there for the music as well as the politics. There was just a lot more craziness at shows back then, a lot of people there. Some shows back then were just fuckin' nuts, as opposed to just a lot of people standing around and scared to dance because someone is going to yell at them for bumping into them or something.

It seems like Malefaction doesn't just have stupid lyrics about "I'm proud to be into hardcore" and at the same time it's not just the super anal PC stuff. Is that a conscious balance you try to strike, or is it just the way things go?

M: We just try not to talk about stupidit, just don't have silly lyrics.
T: Yeah, or something I do, or maybe Mike as well, is just trying to strive for topics that people don't really sing about.
M: Issues that aren't generally associated with hardcore. We try not to say things like "We're the most straightedge" or whatever.

What would be an example of that?

M: Well, there's songs about things like Tomson Highway, things like that that are based in Manitoba, these are things that affect either Travis or myself individually.
T: Some of the songs on Man Grows Cold are just about fuckin' weiners in the scene. Like the second song, Powerless Politics. That's just about some shit that went down at that Drift show in Brenden's basement. Just a bunch of drunk idiots, making enemies of a band that they shouldn't have attacked. I think because of that Officer Down's gotten more religious. That's the thing that strikes me is that's it probably because of that, it's stupid.

I think that's the backlash that's...the PC backlash! There's more religion coming in because of that. It's going from one extreme to another extreme... And on the other hand, you've got that song Fuck the League for Life, so how do you feel about all of the pro-life sentiment that's coming in because of that [religion]?

M: I thing that kind of sums it up. [Laughter]
T: Those people are just fuckin' garbage, is basically it. They're just not to be tolerated, but I'm not going to lower myself to that kind of level just to make a point, like they do.

There's a lot of pentagrams on the new CD and on the t-shirts. Is that because you guys are into Satanism, or because you want to show respect for your metal roots, or some other reason...

All: Metal roots!

That's what I suspected

T: Metal roots and it's just a big joke.
M: It's just to go against the Christian scene we've got going here.
T: That's what it was, it was just to try to piss people off and...
Cy: Give somebody something to talk about.
M: One more reason to hate us.
T: We're trying to loosen up as much as possible.
M: There's a lot of humor in the band, maybe not in the lyrics, but we still have a sense of humor about ourselves.
T: We're not a Satanist band. We're just atheists. I don't know of any one of these guys who believes in anything religious. There's some things about Satanism that make a lot of sense, but's just common sense really.
M: Humanism if anything
C: The pentagram is a symbol that people associate with Satanism, but it's really not. It's a power symbol. I guess it could be taken as anti-christian and pagan, which is cool. I think that's what we're doing.

The samples on the new CD, are those all from the same movie?

C: The one at the start is from Tenebrae, and other ones are from a movie that's really called De la Morte de l'Amore, but the North American title is Cemetary Man. They're both Italian horror films. The one at the end is from From Dusk 'til Dawn. When the van blows up and there's the vampire band.

See, that's some humor there.

M: Exactly.
C: And that sample from that show...
T:That was from the first time we played Saskatoon. They asked us if we wanted to do a board mix, and Koss had a tape, so we thought why not, and the crowds in Saskatoon were fucking apeshit.

I heard they were telling you guys to play faster. [Laughter]

M: It was great.
C: They're fuckin' crazy.
T: There was a whole show where they said stuff like that. Some kids would say "Is this next song going to be fast?" It's like, well, what the fuck do you think?
Cy: We're going to slow it down. [Laughter]
T: Those kids are great.
M: They're crazy.
Cy: Out of control.
T: Rad kids.

Uh, well, I suck at making questions. What would people be surprised to know about Malefaction?

[Pause. Reflection]
M: We masturbate a lot? [Laughter] On tour that's what we talk about.
Cy: Hey, shut up!
M: Oh wait, take this off the record!
T: Yeah, there's that. We're big Simpsons fans. We spend lots of time just talking about funny parts in the Simpsons.

What was your favorite episode?

M: I don't think you could say that.
T: The one where Bart sells his soul to Milhouse and Moe puts up Moe's Family Feedbag, that's one of my favorites.
C: I like the one where that guy started that cult.

I just saw that one.

C: I thought that was pretty crazy. I was pretty surprised at some of the things they were saying in it.
T: That show is so right on. It's like, the truth.

You guys put out a lot of your own records, make your own shirts, put on your own shows...

T: Nobody else will do it. [Laughter]

You wouldn't have a problem doing a record on a label where you didn't know the people personally or anything...

T: Yeah, like we've never met the guy from Denied a Custom, it's just that I sent him a CD to see if he knew some distros there and he happened to like it. That's all it was, it was a total fluke.

Are you guys going to record that soon?

M: Summer. We hope to do all three seven inches in one shot.
T: Or at least do two of them. I mean, I don't know about this Belgium split, that's sort of something that's a lot newer. It's an idea that's just started. But yeah, putting out Smothered and our early demos, that was just because we had to. And same with Man Grows Cold. Maybe we could have got Al to do it, Al from Commode in Calgary, but...
Cy: The Divisions 7" was put out by Mike Alexander.
T: Yeah, Mike Alexander and Al from Commode. It seems like we've got more people interested in putting out stuff now, so that's alright.

I'm out of questions, is there anything you guys want to get off your chests?

M: Well, what do you think of the new CD? Let's talk about the CD.

I think it's awesome. It's rad.

T: Except the samples, they get boring after a while...
M: Yeah, they get boring!
C: I think the whole thing works better on vinyl. We edited it a certain way for the vinyl where there's no breaks between songs, the song ends, the sample starts as the song ends, everything flows way better. When they were trying to assign the tracks on the CD, I guess because there were no breaks it was clipping the end of the last song onto the next track.
Cy: They put two seconds of space in between everything, and it doesn't work.
C: It breaks up the flow of the album.
T: Whereas with the vinyl, it was just - boom! - there were no breaks.
C: It's a different feeling.

There's no way to get rid of the two seconds?

T: You can do it, it's just...
M: But at that point, the CD had been delayed, three or four times already, it was getting ridiculous, we had tons of problems with mastering, it was just like "Let's get this fuckin' thing out now."

Well, thanks guys. I guess that's all there is. Short but sweet

Cy and C: SHORT!...BUT!...sweeeeeeeeet! [Everyone else groans}