NERLICH INTERVIEW

This is the Interview with Miikka vocalist and guitarrist of Nerlich.

1.- Brutal Regards guys how are you? What was the inspiration to create “Nerlich”?
-Hi, we're fine, thanks for asking. Nerlich was formed because we wanted to play the same kind of music as our favorite bands. Slayer was one of the first that caused the urge to do something like this, and some others that were important in the beginning were Death and Sadus. I think you can hear the influenses from all of those, although Death was the only one which played something similar as Nerlich. I think the speed and hectic atmosphere on our debut album is partly coming from the early influenses of Sadus.
When the things developed further we decided that we wanted to play death metal in the vein on Death, Pestilence, Malevolent Creation, Suffocation etc. Most of the bands played death metal with vocals similiar to Cannibal Corpse and Deicide, or they played extreme brutal death in the vein of Devourment. We didn't want to play like those, we wanted to have mid range vocals like Obituary, Pestilence or Death had, and also crushing riffs. That's the stuff we wanted to hear and rare bands played like that anymore. Ofcourse there's still several good bands that play stuff like us, but not so many, and we wanted to do our own music.

2.- What is the meaning of “Nerlich”?
-It can mean many several things, but I think it's better to let everyone decide it by themselves. It can mean ”old school death metal band from Finland” or ”my all time favorite band” or whatever you want.

3.- You have some changes in your line-up, in this moment who are in the official line-up of Nerlich?
-Viktor plays drums, he joined us after the ”Defabricated Process” album was recorded. I (Miikka) play guitar and do the vocals. We don't have any other members, and don't want to have.

4.- It was difficult record with this line-up changes?
-Line-up problems are always very frustrating. Sometimes people aren't motivated enough, they are assholes or the things that just don't work and then somebody has to be replaced. It's really frustrating and annoying to search for new members, then teach them the old songs, then write and learn new songs and then again someone leaves. But that's just the reality, it's not so common that same guys will always play together, especially in younger age. That's why there's now only me and Viktor. It's alot easier that way, to have only two members. I just have to teach the songs to one guy and then we're ready to record.

5.- How was the contact to record “Embalmed Madness” split with Gorgasm and Decoherence?
-Gab from Nihilistic Holocaust contacted us and asked if we wanted to be part of the split, and it sounded good so we accepted the request. He did great job in spreading it around the world. He spread about 3000 copies of it which is quite good from DIY label and really good promotion for us and the other two bands. Thanks for that Gab.

6.- Now you are already signed by OSM Records, do you have a good promotion and distribution with them?
-We did also a demo compilation with Conqueror of Thorns records in 2006 before signing to OSM Records. I don't know much about what kind of promotion and distribution they have. I have seen alot of reviews in Germany, but that's basically all that I know. Maybe it could be better in Europe. The release of ”Embalmed Madness” was good promotion and I think that several people that liked us on the split haven't heard the album for some reasons. I don't have a clue what's the situation in US, propably better, because the label is from US.

7.- “Defabricated Process” is a really good Death Metal piece, how was the process of composition?
-Thanks. It was quite long process. The songs were written during spring 2004-fall 2005 period, about 1,5 years. We mostly wrote 2-3 songs in 6 months, but in the last three months we were quite fast and got three songs composed. I mostly do the songs by myself, writing riffs at home and arranging them in my head. Then I show those to the Teemu (our drummer back then) and we re-arrange some things a bit. Some songs on the album also contains riffs from some other band members and several parts that Teemu and I have improvised together at rehearsals. But the songs were done mostly by myself. The song ”Mask for the faceless” is and exception, it's done by me and Teemu jamming at our rehearsal place. I came up with the intro and first two riffs when I was at home laying on my bed and playing guitar. Then I showed the riffs to Teemu and we just started to jam, getting new ideas and riffs and composed the song further. We jammed it for 1-2 months and all the time it kept developing, inventing new riffs etc. During that time I also did some re-arranging by myself. The lyrics were written always when the songs were already composed, but the vocals patterns were created at the same time as composing the songs.

8.- For you what is the most important difference between the Old School Death Metal, and the new sound of Death Metal?
-Atmosphere. The new sound of death metal is too consentrated on how tight you play those and how good (=clear) production you get. New bands also tryes to be as brutal and heavy as possible by playing really fast. The problem is the result. With these new death metal bands the production is often too plastic and the atmosphere suffers alot and eventually they lose alot of the brutality they are trying to get. And the fastness doesn't always make you brutal or heavy, it comes from riffs and atmosphere.
You propably know that Speed metal is mixture of heavy metal and punk. Death metal is basically mixture of speed metal and punk. So does that mean that death metal is 99% punk? The modern death metal bands don't seem to realize that and so they consentrate on wrong things and end up lacking the right atmosphere and having a dull modern production. Death Metal should sound war and brutal.

9.- Talk to us a little about your expirience like a Metal band in Finland, it..s hard to live for the music?
-Metal has become quite popular in Finland and you can see goths, bats, penguins, wannabe vampires and all kind of strange people everywhere. They are giving metal heads a bad name and they also spawn alot of crap bands. Otherwise it's not so bad. People don't get convicted to jail (like in Morocco) or beaten up in the streets because what kind of music they like.

10.- With who you like share the stage?
-It would be cool to play with Asphyx.

11.- Pestilence or Slayer?
-Tough one. Maybe I should say Pestilence, because that's one of the bands (amongst Death and others) that inspired us to play this kind of "old school" death metal. But Slayer is always Slayer, it's a great band and it has also been a significant reason why Nerlich excist. So my anwer is: Megadeth!

12.- Do you have plans for touring soon?
-No, because we are a two piece band now, so it's not so tempting to play with one guitar and drums. Well, we will see, maybe some day we will get some session/official members to the line-up. But not now, I like it more this way, it's more simple to do everything with only two members.

13.- For last, anything to say?
-We have a 4-track Ep coming really soon. Check out our homepage (or myspace page) for more info about it. It's the best Nerlich release so far, so it's worth of buying.

You can check this guys on:
www.nerlich.tk
www.myspace.com/nerlichband