Blackened Horde: How did the band get started?
Evangelos: Considering it started as a solo project it’s difficult to name an exact date. I started working on some ideas and at some point I decided to upload them online. The first release was a demo in June 2020, so I’m guessing 2020 is the year that all started.
Blackened Horde: What kind of music do you play?
Evangelos: I think extreme metal in general is the most appropriate term because I have influences from all extreme metal genres and most people find it hard to categorize CHESTCRUSH in just one genre. So far the majority of the reviews speak about a mix of Black, Death, Sludge and Grind. I think CHESTCRUSH has become its own thing. When I started writing music I wasn’t thinking to be in a certain genre or to sound like a certain band, I just wanted to express the dark part of myself and the result is a really dark and sinister blend of all the aforementioned genres.
Blackened Horde: How has the fan response been?
Evangelos: This album isn’t for everyone, and I’m really glad that there are people loving it. The shipping costs from the UK to the rest of the world is really high and I’m always surprised to see orders from the USA, Australia, Canada, Malaysia, Alaska, Mexico etc.
Blackened Horde: Where did the band name come from?
Evangelos: I wanted a name that would represent this project in its whole, music, lyrics and purpose. I’m not just having fun by putting riffs together, this is very personal. I want to get all the shit that is crushing me out of my chest by writing them on a piece of paper and making a soundtrack for it. The first songs I wrote were about my personal demons, some mental issues that I’ve struggled with for many years that caused me a constant crushing feeling on my chest. Also, I literally had my sternum cut open from a surgery I had to go through, so at the time I found the name CHESTCRUSH very fitting.
Blackened Horde: Introduce the band members and what they do in the band.
Evangelos: Well, this is a solo project as I said, I (Evangelos) write all the music and lyrics, play the guitar, bass, and do any programming where it’s needed. The other two musicians are sessions. Thomas Blanc on vocals and Krzysztof Klingbein on drums.
Blackened Horde: How many albums/CD’s have you released?
Evangelos: In June 2020 a four song EP was released on cassette tapes and CDs, and this July the first album titled “Vdelygmia” has been released, again in cassettes and CDs.
Blackened Horde: Tell me about some of the songs on the latest CD?
Evangelos: “Vothrodoxia” is the most black metal track of the album. It’s straight black metal riffs but tuned really low. The lyrics are anti-Christian and the name of the song is the Greek word «Βοθροδοξία» which is a portmanteau word coming from the words “Vothros” (Βόθρος) which means cesspit, and the word “Orthodoxia” (Ορθοδοξία) which means Orthodoxy and it refers to the Christian Orthodox church. All religions and all the different branches of Christianity are society’s cancer, but I have a special place in my heart for hating orthodox Christianity because that’s the one who everyone was trying to indoctrinate me for the most part of my life, and the one that I’ve experienced its depravity first-hand.
“The Digester” started like a short intro but it came out too long and became the instrumental track that opens the album and sets up the mood. It starts really ominous and eerie like a twisted funeral hymn and gradually ends up full of despair and madness.
The name comes from the “digestion” pit (or “digester” for short). It’s a pit underneath every Greek orthodox Christian cemetery. The graves are rented for a three-year period and once that time is up the dead are exhumed and their bones collapsed either into a small box to be kept at the cemetery’s ossuary, or the remains are thrown into the “digestion” pit with countless others’ where they are dissolved with chemicals. Greece is one of the few EU countries without a crematorium because the Greek Orthodox church won’t allow it for obvious reasons.
Now imagine yourself in there. I wanted this track to create this atmosphere.
Blackened Horde: Who writes the music? Lyrics?
Evangelos: I write all the music and lyrics.
Blackened Horde: And where do the lyric ideas come from?
Evangelos: The ideas come from two things. The first is my struggle with some mental issues (PTSD, phobias, severe panic attacks, extreme nightmares etc.), I use all that shit for inspiration. The demo (all lyrics and cover) was about this thing only, as a matter of fact the lyrics of all the songs on the demo is actually one long song. The other thing that inspires me is my hatred towards certain manifestations of human depravity, from religions and socio-political matters, to our everyday fellow next door shitty human trash. I channel all this soul-crushing toxic vomit towards this musical project as a kind of self-therapy. I’m not always doing this for fun.
Blackened Horde: What is your view on Satanism and Occultism? (If this applies)
Evangelos: Depends which Satanism you mean. I’m a member of the Satanic Temple. I don’t like that they use the term “religion” even though it is nontheistic, but I understand why they do it. Everything the Satanic Temple stands for was always common sense to me, unfortunately not for the people around me, to the point that there were times in my life that I felt like a main character from Polanski’s “apartment trilogy”, or the protagonist from the Wicker Man. I still do to be honest. Christian mythology is a great source of inspiration and if you’ve been oppressed by a society brainwashed by Christianity it’s only natural to use Satan, the adversary and rebel against God’s authority, as a hero against the religious oppressors, we’ve seen this countless times in literature and arts.
Occultism looks cool, it’s fun like Halloween and horror movies, but if you really believe that shit, then you fall in the same category as religious freaks, conspiracy theorists, and other similar kinds of people that I don’t want around me.
Blackened Horde: Do you have any side projects?
Evangelos: I used to have another solo side project called Rejected Ideas and it was instrumental. This project has two releases of roots rock/garage rock and one release of Blackened Hardcore/Crust Punk. Now I have another side project on the works which is a very basic OSDM influenced by 80’s horror movies.
Blackened Horde: Who are some of your musical influences?
Evangelos: It’s hard to say… I grew up with Thrash, Death and Black metal, some of the bands that I loved when I was a teen were Slayer, Kreator, Morbid Angel, early Cannibal Corpse, Pungent Stench, Impaled Nazarene, Burzum, Dark Throne, Absu etc. But I don’t know how much they have influenced my playing and songwriting. I didn’t try to sound like any of these bands and sometimes I read some comments, or reviews that say that CHESTCRUSH sounds like this or that band that I’ve never heard before.
Blackened Horde: What is the band like when you play live?
Evangelos: This is an international project, I live in Scotland, Thomas is in France and Krzysztof in Poland, so we’ve never even rehearsed together. I don’t see any live gigs happening.
Blackened Horde: What do you think about the underground scene?
Evangelos: I think this is the best time for creators. Personally, I’m mostly following the underground scene for discovering new music. When I was a kid the underground scene was just badly recorded demos, a couple of badly printed zines and getting signed from a label was mandatory if you wanted to get heard (the underground labels were hand numbered as well), now you don’t need a label to get your music out there and it’s also much cheaper to record music. The negative on this is that the scene is over saturated and it’s hard to follow, there are so many good releases popping up all the time that many of them will go unnoticed, the same goes for webzines and small labels. Being noticed as a creator is great, but you’re not creating music, or anything else to be noticed, but to get it out of you. As a fan having all this amazing music to choose from is great, but on the downside the “rush” doesn’t last long because another good release is out before you have time to “digest” the previous one.
Blackened Horde: What are some of your new favorite black metal/death metal bands?
Evangelos: Some new and newish bands that I like are Vermin Womb, Hyperdontia, Nails, Akhlys, Primitive Man, Caustic Wound, Full of Hell, Burial Pit, Journey into Darkness, Gulch, Knoll, Amnutseba, Vacuous, Resin Tomb, Cult Leader, Abduction, Leeched, Domestic Terror, Vorum, Body Void. There is so much good stuff out there.
Blackened Horde: Since the Covid Pandemic has that hurt the band in making music at all?
Evangelos: No, the contrary. Lockdown helped to make and record music, but it ruined all live activities. I found the time to record the guitars for this album because I got Covid and I had to self-isolate for 2 weeks.
Blackened Horde: What advice would you as a musician give to a fellow musician just starting out?
Evangelos: Don’t think about what other people like when writing music, be true to yourself, create art for the right reasons and have no expectations.
Blackened Horde: When do you guys plan on writing any new material?
Evangelos: I’m already writing new music, I think I have 2 or 3 songs almost finished and I’m working on 6 or 7 more, but it’s too early to tell when they’re going to be ready.
Blackened Horde: What does the future hold for the band??
Evangelos: Another full-length release for sure, other than that no-one knows.
I want to thank you for this interview and for the support on CHESTCRUSH. I wish you all the best.
Contact them at:
https://chestcrush.bandcamp.com
https://www.instagram.com/chestcrush/
https://www.facebook.com/chestcrushband
https://open.spotify.com/artist/2YpMZ9fQn85Ife30oR1QYf?si=LG5J7lO4TcSDzf1D2G9amA&nd=1
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV-FSxAyhm6k_RjDW4q1IaQ
