Godking - Death Metal from North Carolina

GODKING

Death Metal from North Carolina

The interview with Todd Smith

METAL SIDE: When did Godking's history begin? Who formed the band?

GODKING: Godking was formed in the summer of 2004 by me (Todd Smith) and J, our other guitarist. We met in college in guitar class and started jamming and looking for a drummer. My old high school friend Jon-Michael saw our flyer and gave me a call, and that was that. We recently got a fellow named Steve to play bass, but that didn't really work, so we're in need of a steady bass player for live gigs again.

METAL SIDE: What inspired you to play such aggressive and brutal music?

GODKING: We've always been into metal, all of us grew up on it, so it was just natural to start getting into the more extreme and brutal stuff. I'm sure the typical frustrations with life and being angry at all the bullshit going on in the world right now has something to do with us being attracted to aggressive, brutal music, as well as the desire to excel at our instruments. Plus, normal mainstream music is always so fucking bad, in order to find anything decent one is almost driven to seek out the real stuff, be it metal, jazz, country, etc.

METAL SIDE: Is Godking is the first band for its members?

GODKING: No. All of us have been in many bands, Godking is my 5th band, J's 3rd, and Jon's 3rd band. We've all grown up playing in bands.

METAL SIDE: What are your strongest musical influences? How do you use them composing Godking's material?

GODKING: We all have a wide range of influences. My biggest influences right now are bands like Death, Nile, Vital Remains, Morbid Angel, as well as classical music like Bach and Paganini and any exotic world music. J is more of the classic metal dude, he worships Dimebag and Pantera (we all do!) and old Metallica, Motorhead, Gwar, Black Label Society and so on. Jon is more into black metal. But we all love it all regardless of our preferences. We try not to consciously rip anyone else off and basically just write what we want, and work on whatever ideas we come up with, however of course everything we listen to will obviously influence us. Sometimes we might try and take an idea, for example like how the guitarist from Cryptopsy uses chords in his solos, and put our own spin on that, but we definitely try to not rip off anyone or sound monotonous ourselves from song to song. Usually, we like to have each song have its own defining idea or atmosphere. I'm not sure this is good for us, because it seems like all the bands getting signed just write the same damn song 12 times for their albums! But we don't really want to do that.

METAL SIDE: How often do you play live? Are gigs more or less important for you than the work at studio?

GODKING: We play live as often as we can, which is about 2-4 times a month. Most of our gigs have been small shows so far, but we're playing june 19th in New York with Incantation! We can't wait. Gigs and the studio are equally important, yet two entirely different aspects of playing for us. We've only been to a real studio once, when we recorded our Bloodrite demo, but we learned alot for when we go back to record a full album in October. Playing live is what we live for, but its really hard to get shows unless you have good connections or are signed. I would like to say, though, that everything we do in the studio we can do live, usually better live. We refuse to record anything that we can't do live. Hopefully that will show more on our next album, which we're recording with a very experienced producer and taking much more time on than our demo.

METAL SIDE: Some bands spend a lot of time preparing so called 'image'. So they have special tattoos, special clothes, special haircuts, and special behavior on the stage. Do you think that it's only a pose or a normal part of band's activities?

GODKING: I think it depends on the band. Personally, we're just metal dudes, and haven't considered our "image" at all until I just read this question! But I know other bands, more commercial bands that are radio-friendly, that are basically all image and no substance. This works for them. Well, if that is what they want to do, best of luck. But with music like extreme metal, like we play, I think image doesn't really mean shit. Now there is definitely a look to most metal bands, and sometimes Jon likes to wear corpsepaint, but that's just who we are, metal guys. We're not trying to look like anything, or be anything we're not. It's like the difference between old In Flames (very good) and new In Flames (very bad). They used to just look like themselves. Now they look like they're trying to be in Korn.

METAL SIDE: What are the topics of your lyrics?

GODKING: Lyrically, I like to talk about issues related to the history of human beings as a species on this earth. We're very against Civilization. Most people don't know what I mean when I say that, but human beings have lived on this earth of over 100,000 years. The history we are taught only goes back 10,000 years, and is the history of one culture, the culture of civilization that has spread over the entire planet. So naturally, all we see is war and pain and slavery and man ruining the earth. But when one looks at prehistory accurately, one sees that this is not true. For thousands of years humans lived in balance with everything else, like every other species. Man is an animal, no different from all the rest of things. But 10,000 years ago, one culture among thousands decided man was the pinnacle of creation, and that the world was made for man, thus began civilization. This culture spread to eventually take other all others until we don't remember or see any other way to live. And this way is going to make us extinct soon if we don't wise up. So my goal lyrically with Godking is to hopefully turn on some new people to the things I have studied and the way I see the world. I'm big on anthropology and philosophy, so this is kinda my area of focus for now. It's really a much too big topic to adequately address here, but some outstanding books to read for anyone interested are Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, The Culture of Make Believe, by Derrick Jensen, or check out the websites Ishmael.org, Derrickjensen.org, or Inthewake.org for more information.

We also love Satan, since we are metal dudes, after all!

METAL SIDE: Your album "Bloodrite" is very good but I have impression that many fans of Death and Thrash Metal don't know it yet. How do you promote it? Is a chance that your next album will be released by a good independent record label?

GODKING: So far we've done all our promotion ourselves. We were featured in Pit #49 underground connection, and our short was recently in Metal Maniacs, also we're up for review in the current issue of Brave Words and Bloody Knuckles, but I haven't read it yet. We've gotten positive response from several indie metal labels, but none have said they would sign us yet. Hopefully, when we get our full-length done in Oct., the quality will be good enough so that a label will sign us and can release it as is. That's what we're shooting for. Other than that, tell everyone you know about us, I'll send you a free t-shirt sometime!

METAL SIDE: Have you thought to hire a manager to promote Godking? Sometimes I hear opinion that without manager nothing is possible since managers have too strong connections with people from labels and big magazines, and totally independent band has no chances to break through. Do you think that it's a real problem?

GODKING: I'm looking at booking agents right now, but I don't really have a clue right now what we're gonna do business wise, none of us are good at that sort of thing, we're just trying our damndest to get signed! I know we've had a really rough, frustrating time getting anywhere so far, but all we can do is give it our best shot. This is our dream and our life's work so we can't give up. But, yeah, it's really hard when you're on your own, but hopefully we're slowly making connections and getting our name out. I think metal in general is less rigid a genre than say pop. All pop music is corporate product, bands are assembled in record execs offices. Metal is way more real, and about good quality music, so I'm hoping things are not impossible for bands like us!

METAL SIDE: Do you already work on the next songs? How will your music evolve?

GODKING: We've already gotten 3 more songs done and 2 more should be done by October, and those 5 plus the 6 from bloodrite should go on our album, but we're definitely going to record the original 6 over for a better sound and production. Our new songs are more straight forward and very brutal, that has been my focus lately. Although one of the new ones is our black metal song, and another is an instrumental that was just designed to be as technically demanding on the guitar as we could make it. So we should have a very expansive, well rounded album if all goes well. We just hope to continually push ourselves to write the best music we possibly can.

METAL SIDE: Tell us please something about the scene in N.C. Have you many Death/Thrash Metal fans and Metal-friendly venues there?

GODKING: There are a shitload of great metal bands all over N.C. right now! I truly hope someone here makes it just so all this great metal will have a chance to be heard. There aren't many venues or a very large audience for metal here, unfortunately, but the true fans and good bands are all super dedicated and very cool. Of course, there are also a bunch of crappy lame bands trying to be the next Shadow's Fall, and many bands don't care about anyone else and don't support one another. But the good real true metal bands here are all great fucking guys and excellent metal musicians, and I'm proud to call them my friends.

METAL SIDE: Can you recommend some other good Death or Thrash Metal bands from N.C.?

GODKING: Some great fellow N.C. bands are Apotheosys, an amazing death metal band, Omniscient, an excellent black-death metal band, Heretic's Fork, great brutal death metal, good buds of ours, Dreamscapes of the Perverse, another great death metal band, and Widow, a great melodic power metal band. All these bands should have websites, please check them out. Omniscient was just reviewed in metal maniac's firing squad section, but he totally didn't give them credit in my opinion. They are definitely more than a Dimmu-borgir clone, and any real metalhead should check them out.

METAL SIDE: 20 years ago Possessed released "Seven Churches". It's symbolic beginning of the genre. Many people say that the best Death Metal albums were released in the 80's and early 90's. Do you agree with such opinion? Are you optimist thinking of Death Metal future?

GODKING: While some killer albums were definitely released back then, I definitely think death metal keeps pushing itself and things only keep getting more extreme and varied. Death metal is definitely not gonna die out, I mean, the new Nile album is beyond anything I've ever heard! It's so fucking brutal and fast and amazing. Cryptopsy, Origin, Vital Remains, death metal is thriving right now and I only see it continually getting even more extreme. I'm kinda answering 2 questions in one here, but death metal is just such an intense, broad and challenging type of music, I think it has endless potential.

METAL SIDE: Thanks for the interview.

GODKING: Thanks very much for your interest in Godking, it was a pleasure to be interviewed. Please feel free to stay in touch with us, and do try to check out those bands I mentioned. You will not be disappointed. Thanks Damien, best of luck with the webzine and everything, keep it metal brother!

June 2005

http://www.godkingmetal.com/