Summon: How did the band get started?
Rob: I wanted to channel my love for Nifelheim into my own pure, unadulterated black-thrash attack, so roped in two friends from previous bands (both shitty grind-core bands, if anyone’s interested!) in late 2010 to rehearse some songs I’d written.
Summon: What kind of music do you play?
Rob: We play black thrash to strike fear into the hearts of men.
Summon: How has the fan response been?
Rob: Pretty good so far, we sold out a 4-song demo tape in about six months, only 50 copies but still pretty good for a new band, mostly by word of mouth. Our live shows have gone down very well so far.
Summon: Where did the band name come from?
Rob: Cultfinder is a name I thought summed up our ethos and tone. To me it sounds like a Darkthrone album title!
Summon: Introduce the band members and what they do in the band.
Rob: I’m Rob Belial and I play guitars, do vocals and write the majority of our songs. Our bass player is Necroskull and Wilbeherit is our supremely talented drummer.
Summon: Who writes the music? Lyrics?
Rob: I write most of the music, although we change some bits in rehearsal. I write all lyrics.
Summon: And where do the lyric ideas come from?
Rob: Most lyric ideas are a mish-mash of classic metal themes: Satanism, the occult, witchcraft, plague and nuclear apocalypse.
Summon: What is your view in Satanism and Occultism?
Rob: Practice what you preach. We don’t have any political or religious agenda, there are plenty of other bands around for that. We just want to enforce the historical traditions of extreme metal, without being fake about it.
Summon: How many albums/CD’s have you released?
Rob: Thus far we have released a demo cassette and one 7” EP.
Summon: Tell me about some the songs on the latest CD?
Rob: The songs on our latest vinyl are thrasher than our demo songs, one is a re-recording from that tape. I am very happy with the direction we are taking.
Summon: Do you have any side projects?
Rob: The other two guys are in the doom metal band Witchsorrow. Wilbeherit also plays in the sludge band XII Boar.
Summon: Who are some of your musical influences?
Rob: Our main influences are early Nifelheim, later Destroyer 666 and the first Bathory album.
Summon: Which current bands?
Rob: Current bands are Perversor, Proclamation and Black Witchery – I think a bestial death influence is creeping in.
Summon: What is the band like when you play live?
Rob: We try to put on an energetic show and keep our set short and sharp and nasty. Live we have been compared to Abigail, which sounds good to me!
Summon: Have you guys ever played in another country?
Rob: No, I doubt we will in the near future – we hardly play in our own country!
Summon: How big of crowd shows up at shows usually?
Rob: We’ve played some good support slots so far so we’ve always played to a decent sized crowd, nothing huge but I’m happy with the shows so far.
Summon: How is the crowd response when you play?
Rob: So far they have been pretty into it – had some pumping fists and singing Black Thrashing Terror the first time we played it live!
Summon: What do you think of the US Black Metal/Death Metal scene?
Rob: Going through my collection I don’t seem to have much in the way of US metal, not new bands anyway. As far as I’m aware it seems healthy enough! Focus does seem to be shifting away to more exotic places, but that’s the beauty of the Internet, it allows bands that have been going for years to easily reach a much bigger audience.
Summon: What do you think of the Overseas scenes?
Rob: Any Latin country has amazing bands like Perversor, Proclamation, Morbosidad, but I also love Asian bands like Deiphago and Impiety. The Australian scene is also killer, we have been likened to a lot of Aussie black-thrash.
Summon: What are some of new favorite black metal/death metal bands?
Rob: We’ve met and played with some amazing bands here in London like Sepuku, whose demo I am re-releasing on my tape label Ferrous Void Productions, who are great crust-influenced death. Also love Scythian, Craven Idol and Grave Miasma. Winds Of Genocide are also great female-fronted crust-punk/death from north-east England.
Summon: When do you guys plan on writing any new material?
Rob: I’m working on material for our debut full-length now, we plan on rehearsing again soon to try and get some new stuff down.
Summon: What does the future hold for the band??
Rob: Hopefully some more shows to promote our 7”, then write and record our full-length CD/LP next year some time, provided we find a label/labels to put it out!
Contact them at:
http://www.facebook.com/unholycultfinder
