RIPPER/VENUS TORMENT INTERVIEW

 

1. Hi Patricio. First off, I want to say I am impressed with your awesome albums you released last year. I suspect it must’ve been a pretty tiresome yet productive time, huh?

 

Hola! Thanks for appreciate Our music, I guess not every metalheads do it, but obviously is great to read that somebody understand the inner message of some point of views. We’re always creating something, personally I draw, I write, I play, I read, I like to party and study. Finally I can share my music thanks to the labels who spread the feeling and compositions. There are many lyrics and songs that isn’t from the present. My philosophy of music is don’t trow the first compositions, but also that doesn’t mean that I can evolve through them. I dream with play everyday, but I want to be a independent person first, finish my studies and after that, I could dedicate more time to music. 

 

2. You’re a young guy, yet your musical entity seems very mature. I mean the way you write music – it is so suffused with the 80s old-school stuff. It doesn’t therefore surprise me to hear so many 80s influences in your music. How does it work like this? I mean why all you do sounds so classic?

Well… I grow up with 80’s music, my parents listen a lot of hard rock. I grow up listening Twisted sister, Quiet Riot, Motley Crue, Ratt. Maybe I don’t play that specific type of music, but I see myself evolving from the entrails of the classic and loud music. When I meet Sex Pistols, I start to see the music more through the experience and attitude than a technique. I have to say that I like a lot of type of music from Chopin to Slipknot, or new wave pop music from the 80s. That doesn’t mean that they will be my favourite. Personally I like to express my music from rawness, from the speed. Have hard rockers fathers doesn’t mean that I had a perfect life with all. Not whole the world was pretty in some moment. I love to connect my music with my emotions. To write is like a path to put out any type of experience from positive, neutral or negative.  Is like an auto therapy, helps me to know myself beyond. For me, music is another way to be free with yo
ur inner self.   

 

3. How did you get into old-school metal? Can you remember your first metal album?

My first metal album was Powerslave when I was eleven years old. But I really considered that my first album of life was Kiss – Alive I. It was a gift from my aunt; there I was like 3 or 4 years old.  Kiss is not metal by many, but fuck them haha. I heard that album since I was kid was the same sensation from my first heavy metal album from Iron Maiden.  By the way, ironically Powerslave is not my favourite album of IM. I think that I get into old school metal, getting another perspective when I went to Monster of rock 2005 in Chile with Judas priest. Later I start listening to Slayer, Possessed, Deathrow, Sepultura, etc. Fucking awesome days.  

4. Raising the corpse, which is your previous album, I would consider your opus magnum. Plenty of KREATOR/POSSESSED influences, for sure! Tell me man, do you listen to a lot of music when writing RIPPER/VENUS TORMENT music? What`s the fuel for your music?

I used to listen music everyday. My band mates from those days also were listening music everyday. But also I think, that living a lot of experiences also is important for give some concept to music. Clearly, I think raising the corpse it was raw and it was incomplete and not a proper worked concept looking from the outside. But that doesn’t mean I don’t respect that teenage experiences.

 

5. When one takes a look at the Chilean metal scene, one will be amazed at the number of HQ bands you have. Why are there so many good bands in Chile? Is it metal flowing in your veins instead of blood? I must say I have never come across weak Chilean bands so far. Good bands and good stuff.

Here, we have 4 or more live concerts approximately every weekend. Also the underground scene is big and also dynamic and many times separately. Metalheads and collectors make events where you can trade music and more. I don’t know… I can imagine many countries doing this, we are not unique, the metal today is not fashion and doesn’t have much TV spaces like years before I guess, but metal is still strong anyway, independent from the subgenre. Also I think not whole the bands here are good, always depends of your likes!   

 

6. Experiment of Existence is undeniably RIPPER`s most brutal doing. I can sense some thrash metal elements, but, to be honest with you, I would say it is pretty much death metal oriented!

Experiment of Existence is a more developed concept, is more musically worked. I think EoE. is in the border between death metal and raw thrash metal. I don’t know, we’ve just made it and nothing else!

7. I do like your guitar work. I can sense some similarities to Mike Torrao`s style. When did you start playing guitar? I am pretty sure you can play other instruments, too?

Thanks bro! Mike Torrao’s is a master, no way! Haha. I start playing electric guitar (I didn’t like so much the acoustic) at eleven years old playing some riffs from Nirvana (Yeah, the grunge guys), Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and many others. I received some basic classes; 7 months approximately and after that I realized that I could continue on my own. Then at 18-19, I start practicing synthesizer, drums and the bass, I’m not an expert but I can show wh

at I know about those instruments. I could practice more drums if I had the space and time damned... - Actually I  want to explore the violin.

 

 

 

8. VENUS TORMENT and RIPPER formed in 2007. How do you manage to deal with these two bands at the same time? It seems pretty hard, you know, it all requires a lot of time and effort, writing music, playing live, promoting etc. If you were to choose one band, which would it be?

Venus Torment has been writing music since 2007, but it wasn’t until 2012 when I realized that I made some great songs and I felt the urge to record them. It was quite complicated to play them with ripper because not everyone had the same tastes. When I realized that I had many ideas, I started working on Venus Torment as a project to express them, I think they could not be forgotten. During the beginning I had more free time, because I only went to school. Many times it happened that I lost a lot of school performances because I preferred to play music, but that way I could give myself the time to play. Choosing a single band would be difficult for me, I've worked hard for both of them and neither deserves to be put aside. My priorities change only according to the goals of each band.

9. When reading your lyrics, I can sense you`re pretty much into science fiction themes. What do you think: are we the only civilization in the universe? Or maybe there are some other?

Here I’m in front of several perspectives and I like to lose myself in them from time to time. I don’t think we are all alone in the universe, but at the same time I believe that we build our reality based on our experience, our decisions. And at the end, if there were other civilizations in other places of outer space, probably we would never know of them, if we didn’t exist.

Who could gives Us the certainty that the universe is not destroyed when we die? . Another less epistemological opinion, is that already discovered planets that are similar to the earth, it would be strange to think that we are the only ones. Also if I’m not wrong, when you observe the planets, one observes just the past of that planet, not the present. Then, looking to the future on those already discovered planets, it is easy to deduce that there may be some kind of entity similar to humanity.

 

10. What is your view on Erich von Däniken`s claims about extraterrestrial influences on human life (ordinary people)?

I don’t know about him, I can answer without know really his view.

11. Do you believe in parallel universes?

Yes, but in my own particular way. I see it from the possibilities and decisions, when I discovered about the quantum physics, I’ve begun to see the world from a freer perspective. Relating it with our life and mind. Since I am not in contact with beings from other worlds, I limit my actions to relate each person with the Universe. Each person is a whole of possibilities; the parallel universes for me are all the combined possibilities that you can share with another person. I prefer to see it that way, in order not to fall into the scepticism that there is no other reality than the objective. I think being an sceptic could distances You from your Source of experience, it takes away the possibility of believing in what you can create, however, scepticism helps Us to discriminate and to doubt, to reflect our ignorance.

12. What happens to us after we die? Is death the end of everything? Or maybe it just means we enter another spiritual dimension.

This question is one of the most difficult about existence. I believe that what happens to everyone is based in what each person used to believe. Everyone is unique and owns an identity, although it seems not. There’s a whole world of studies and philosophies about after life to know what really happens to everyone. But it depends on the culture in which each one lives and how means it. In my case, I believe that death is not the end of everything. I see death as a transformation, like the cycles of an essence that remains during existence not necessarily from the earth. Even in our physical space we can contact with different dimensions. One of my philosophical bases is that our spirit and body have different levels of consciousness, and that our decisions depend very much on how we manage these levels. This has much to do with the writings of the Italian Roberto Assiagioli, in psychosynthesis. The unconscious, sub-conscious, conscious and super-conscious levels. I believe in ascendancy and descendancy, the unconscious is as hell and the super-conscious is as heaven. I found this to be part of the psychological process towards death and its next transformation. Because this human being discovered that we have not only a physical body, but also an etheric and an astral one.

13. Do you believe in reincarnation?

 

 

This is one of those questions I regularly used to ask to myself. Along with what I have learned and researched thanks to the theoretical knowledge that exist from different authors, for example; From the Platonic perspective or simply from the Eastern perspective that is directed by The Samsara, The Wheel of Life. What I mean is that I see reincarnation from these theoretical frameworks, which would be the transmigration of souls from a spiritual world to the earthly, along with this the concepts of karma, the channels of subtle energy, the concept of vital energy That would be Pragna, that would be concepts of the disciplines of yoga, among others, Arman a whole philosophy around the earthly and spiritual. Although in my classes I live certain experiences that approach these concepts, it is still a possibility and a different way of seeing life. To this day, I have not chosen to base my life in reincarnation, but I integrate these concepts to forge my own and that makes a lot of sense to me. It seems very exoteric, but unlike that, I seem to work in my life, this could be something esoteric, because I try to see further the literal and simple way, I’ve interpret the meanings surrounding reincarnation. I just believe that we live reincarnation during our life period. Some experiences are dying and others reborn. In this perspective he would be dying and reborn permanently, as explained from the Samsara or Platon, or circle of souls of the world of ideas, or whatever you want to call it. That is my vision of reincarnation.

14. What is your view on the power of dreams, transformations of your own reality when dreaming, experiencing the power of daydreaming and conscious control of extra-experiences away from your body?

 

I believe it is a dimension that can’t be dismissed and is inherent to the human being. Almost 40 years ago, we started hearing extra-corporeal experiences in the contemporary world and began to be objects of study. Even receive information from our subconscious in a way that we can interpret them to a better understand of yourself. The dreams or images that happen are of ancestral character, Carl Jung denominates it like “Archetypes”, that are symbols that form part of a collective unconscious and that lies a priori in our conscience. I can’t falsify something that I myself have lived, although anyone is free to say that it does not exist, that it would be simply because it has not lived it or does not see life in that way. That I have lived it does not mean that I can control it, I always think that I will begin to practice, because the astral projection requires praxis and domination. I often come to the conclusion that it is not yet time. When I was a teenager I experienced the negative side, which was too enjoyable. Then I slept too much and I did not like getting out of bed because I was addicted to dreams and their placers were not necessarily sexual. To this day I wonder why I do not feel the same way when I dream. But I find that it is better to stay in bed, my vital needs are always changing.

15. Ok, let’s talk about music again, shall we. Summer festivals are about to begin here in Europe. Do you plan to play live at any fests here? Any chance to see VENUS TORMENT or RIPPER? Would you like to come over to Europe and tour a little, eh?

 

Yes, but I think that we will not reach to be in festivals  because I really did not have availability for the European summer. So we decided with Ripper to organize a tour with the help of Roadmaster Booking with Daniel Da Silva for next September. We will arrive September 8 in Frankfurt, Germany due to economic reasons. But the tour will start on September 15 formally and with the dates assigned by tour manager Daniel, this will come to an end on October 1. Maybe in a further opportunity  We can visit Europe with Venus torment.

 

 

16. Do you know that Polish fans are a wild bunch? Ones of the wildest there are?

I really didn’t know about it, so when we go this 2017,  I'll realize how savage you are. I just know that you have a beautiful extreme metal scene, bands like Exorcist, Eghzekutor, thrasher death, Armageddon,  kick ass.

17. This split DVD Strike of Metal - Moreover Imagination was out last year. Can you please tell me some more about your live performance?

We are close friends with those bands, we have lived Good times, besides we admire each other musically and personally. It was great to be invited to this release show of the band Dictator with whom we know since children. They are almost our same age and I have shared with them for a long time.

18. Time to wrap up, I think. What can we expect from VENUS TORMENT i RIPPER in the nearest future?

 

 

Tons of Death and Thrash Metal, more released material and hopefully more tours around the world.

19. Thank you very much for your time. Any last words for Oldschool Metal Maniac readers?

I want to thank you for giving me this space, where I can express my philosophy with no restrictions and in an expansive way. We hope we have a date in Poland, if so, you can’t miss our Show!

Leszek Wojnicz-Sianożęcki

Poprawiony (środa, 10 maja 2017 18:12)