Interview with Slavebreed

The killer Birdflesh/Slavebreed split released in March by Screaming Victims Records (you can find the review here). 2015 is another ‘gig year’ for Slavebreed again. Some minutes before the second day of Svenfest started, we took the opportunity to speak with 2 members of Slavebreed (Paulos and Lampros).

Your ‘Nekroacropolis’ split ‘Ep with Birdflesh is really a highlight for the genre of grindcore for 2015 … initially, how this collaboration occurred and what is the fan and press reaction so far?

 It is indeed a very important release, not only for us, but we believe for the whole european scene. We are friends with the guys from Birdflesh for years. We all together discussed about it many times and finally we made it happen. The release had a great response, imagine that we have only a few copies remaining.

Is there any chance for a future ‘Nekroacropolis’ CD release? How was your cooperation with your label Screaming Victims Records and Makis?

We are not sure. We’ve discussed about it, but at the moment we don’t know. As a group we keep postponing things (haha)! There is an idea to gather all our tracks from all our splits and ‘Eps in a CD or as bonus material. Time will tell, but it is almost impossible to happen in the close future. Concerning Makis, he is a friend of ours, he is helping us a lot and our cooperation is perfect.

‘Til now, with your releases you are following, with mathematical precision (3 years – 1 year – 3 years), the following sequence: full length – split – full length – split. So, next year are we going to have your next full length album?

No fuckin’ way! We are going to stop following this motive (haha). There are some new songs, but we have to work a lot with them. We had almost no time to work on this section, mostly because of the many gigs we did. It was also impossible for us to rehearse, because Lampros (vocalist) was not in Greece for some time.

Was Lampros’ absence (he was living for some time abroad) an obstacle to group’s progression?

As we told you before, we couldn’t rehearse at all, so there was no progress in the songwriting section. With his return, some months ago, we overcame this difficult situation and we are moving on. Before that, we just booked some gigs and he was travelling only to sing with us, nothing more.

Who handled the cover artwork of the split ‘Ep?

We think that everyone recognize Andreas’ works, we have worked with him in the past, he is the drummer of ΛΗΘΗ and he is also known as (Freelance illustrator – Graphic artist) Admc07, with a lot of works in the genre.

In my opinion, I think Andreas’ style fits more with your sound compared to your earlier choices with Spiros’ (pretty good) works. Is this a permanent change or are you going to use Spiros’ work in the future?

We haven’t discussed it yet, we’ll see. The truth is that Spiros’ works are of great quality, but they are too metal for the musical path we are following in our later releases. In our first album Spiros’ style perfectly fit with our music, which was the reason we worked with him. Now we have changed a lot.

Is the situation in Greece affecting you (rehearsals, recordings, movement fees)? Are your lyrics and music influenced by the crisis?

If someone wants to do something that really loves, there is always a solution. There are a lot of difficulties around, but they didn’t manage to stop us. Crisis is not affecting our lyrics and in general we don’t let crisis affect our music at all.

There is a huge progress in greek grindcore scene lately. Are there any releases or any groups that you really dig? Would like to recommend any of them to our readers?

The greek level is of high standards lately. There are a lot of worthy mentioned grindcore groups and the most important thing is that, pretty often, more and more grindcore groups are created. (Lampros: I really dig ‘Μάζα’ by Delete The Mass)

You are well-known supporters of the DIY scene. Is it worthy for someone to get involved with it? What’s the situation in Greece?

The so called DIY scene in Greece is an awkward situation, and that is happening because it is a pretty misunderstood term. Anyway, to make the long story short, there are a lot of DIY fans, there are a lot of DIY events and the whole scene is getting a lot of support. But, Slavebreed is not only DIY, and this fact creates positive and negative reactions to our situation.

Last time I attended one of your shows was in 2010 in Salonica and you were the opening act of Napalm Death. Five years later, am I going to see something different in your gig?

Musically speaking we are more aggressive. In our show you are not going to see something different, except us being greyer, older and bolder (haha)!

Your thoughts about Svenfest.

We have been invited by the guys (organizers), we have never been here before and now that we are living it, we’d like to mention that it is very important that some guys are organizing such events in such difficult economical situations, without any economical profit and doing exactly the thing we referred to in a previous question: overcoming all the difficulties with only weapon the love about what they are doing.

Thank you very much guys. Have fun tonight. Your last words …

We are definitely going to have fun tonight. This is pretty obvious, just watch all the smiling faces around us. The greek grindcore scene truly deserves your support!