BENEATH THE MASSACRE Interview

A lot of good comes out of Canada, and luckily for us it's in the form of fine music, in this case some fine technically accelerated death metal. Beneath The Massacre have a MCD out now on Galy Records entitled "Evidence of Inequity" which continues the excellence that is Canadian death metal.

Political in theme, the band keeps death metal in the ranks of fastest and most precise playing style while gutteraling their way through five quick but leveling tracks of animosity soaked structural attack.



The Gauntlet: How long has Beneath The Massacre been around for?

Elliot: We did our first show in October of 2004. So it's been a little more than a year. We started to jam in April 2004 but had to wait for our past guitarist to comeback from Guatemala before we started doing shows.


The Gauntlet: Were members in other death metal projects prior to the formation of Beneath the Massacre?

Elliot: We used to play in a band called Observing the Falling Tree which was a much more progressive band that was mixing almost all the element of the actual underground scene. We decided to start BtM after making a line-up change: I went from bassist to signer and we added our good friend Dennis at the bass. At that time we choose to take the new band at another level and to be more professional.


The Gauntlet: What are some of your favorite death metal acts that have inspired you to tackle such technical death metal?

Elliot: We're all inspired by different stuff and all of us listen to many different type of music. But I'd say the band Death has done a lot of the job for the technical side of the music. Then bands like Cryptopsy and Suffocation but yeah I think Death were the first to make us want to try to add solo parts and such..with time we just started to try more and more new stuff and the result is Beneath the Massacre's sound.


The Gauntlet: How did you guys sign to Galy?

Elliot: I was talking with Alex from Despised Icon about us wanting to record something like an EP with Yannick St-Ammand. I think Eric Galy was there at our first show at the Fouf in Montreal with Candiria. I think he was surprised by our band. Coming out of nowhere we really sounded great that night. So I guess he heard about us wanting to go in studio soon and he knew our potential and that Yannick will make us sound good, so he let us know through Alex that he wanted us to be on Galy. I was happy that our first CD would be out on the best Canadian label and distributed world wide. It was a good start ha-ha.


The Gauntlet: Is there a full length in the works?

Elliot: Absolutely. We are in the writing process of a full length CD and we're having fun doing it. I can say that we're just getting better doing our kind of stuff and we can't wait to enter the studio.



The Gauntlet: How many tracks are completed?

Elliot: We do not write song by song so it's hard to say. We can have riffs for 3 to 5 songs but just wrote and finished 2..and even they can still change until the day of the studio. For example, I've changed some lyrics of songs on the Ep when I was in the recording booths.


The Gauntlet: Your last tour didn't go so well, will Beneath the Massacre head out on tour after the full length or before to make it up?

Elliot: We'll see how the writing process goes. If we go into the studio in May as planned, we'll probably wait after the recording and even the release of the CD before seriously touring but if takes more time to write then we might wait longer before going on the road. In both cases, we'll be touring next summer for sure. If the time between the recording of the new CD and its release is too long we might tour to promote the upcoming CD. The fact that we crashed our van but it did not stop our will to tour. We wanted to be a touring band and will make it no matter how many crashes we'll have to survive ha-ha Shit happens. The stats are now on our side ha-ha.


The Gauntlet: Will the full length differ from "Evidence of Inequity"?

Elliot: I think it will differ in someway. Of course it will still be a Beneath the Massacre CD but I think it might be a little less "in your face" than Evidence of Inequity. We don't want that CD to be a longer version of our EP; we want to show different aspect of our musicianship.


The Gauntlet: What are some of the themes of the lyrics; they seem quite pissed off at a political power, is there a specific one or is it in general directed towards any corruption?

Elliot: All the lyrics in Evidence of Inequity are about politic. It is mainly expressing hate toward a system that creates greed, hatred and what we call the borndead people. Our economical system is a corruption system itself. The elite making money on the back of the people, the people (not too politically aware) gives more power to corporations by voting for parties that are affiliated or directly owns corporations� I mean, geez, my Prime Minister Paul Martin owns a boat corporation, does anybody think that guy will do anything to make the corporation socially responsible. Not a fucking chance he'll just go on and do what he's always been doing: get the rich richer and the poor poorer.


The Gauntlet: Specifically, what is the primary theme behind the song "Comforting Prejudice"?

Elliot: That song is the only one lyrically apart from the 4 others.
Comforting prejudice is a song that we wrote in studio. It is about people preaching for their religion. There is no reason to preach. Believing is different from knowing. You can't argue on someone's beliefs and we are not trying to do it. You believe or not. There's no convincing job to do in there so why some people has to try. So yeah this one goes to the people that I respected in their choice for a religion but they didn't respect my choice not to believe.



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Tags:  Beneath the Massacre  , Elliot Desgagnés - Vocals , interviews

Dave Huffy    November 30, 2005