Acid Death are opening the legendery death metallers Pestilence at An Club in Αthens at a show that no one should miss and of course Metal Invader and Petros Michopoulos got in touch with the restless band and learned a few things about the upcoming new album and future plans. Afterall Savvas Betinis has always something interesting to say!
Hello Savvas, welcome back to Metal Invader! It’s been three years since this great release of yours entitled “Hall Of Mirrors”. How do you value, these three years that passed and the album closes its circle?
Thank you so much guys! We worked really hard for it. We dedicated ourselves to this release, and as it seems it worked just fine. We received great feedback, giving us a motivation we never expected, since then much more people had the opportunity to listen to our music while we had the chance to play abroad as well. Now it’s time for more. We’re working at the studio right now for our 8th effort.
As you mentioned before you had the chance to perform abroad as well. What was the feedback?
It was excellent. Especially the X-MASS IN HELL tour w/ Six Feet Under. This summed up our entire work up to now and what is about to come up. We were totally surprised when 7hard told us that our “Life and Death” digital single was ranked 11th on March 2017 at the German Amazon charts. It’s silly to put yourself to rest after such success, on the contrary; it gives you motivation to work even harder in the future.
After “Hall Of Mirrors” came “Eidolon”, a great release as well. Those two,
including some important reissues marked your career after your hiatus years. Do you feel that your career has steadily risen and there is a constant progress? Or do you think that a band with such a unique sound has a limit in terms of popularity?
Here’s the thing…there’s no such thing as a limit to these thing. You work as hard as you can, remaining true to your purposes. The truth is that Acid Death’s sound is not let’s say easily digestible, but we never thought we reached our limits. It’s all a matter of how the world sees a band and in our case, it would be ungrateful to say that our efforts have not been embraced. There are still a lot to say and a lot more to create!.
So you’re back in the studio right now, ready to create something new. Could you share some details? When is it due to be out?
We went in studio practically a week ago, in April 2018, the drums’ recording is already complete. Fotis Benardo is once again our sound engineer. If everything goes as planned, the album will be out in Autumn 2018. The title – for now- is “Primal Energies”.
Acid Death has proven over the years that is not fond of artistic discounts, and is characterized by its experimentation and research. Music wise, do you have any surprises for us and what are the differences between your new work and “Hall Of Mirrors”?
A lot actually! Discounts are unacceptable. Both the musical and lyrical elements will be surprising for sure and they even might be controversial for some people. But as we said, Acid Death is not a “go safe” band. We are not obliged to work in a particular way, no one puts limits to how we work, nothing binds us.
A legendary live appearance is due to occur in Athens with the egendary Dutch Pestilence. Tell us a little more about it. What should we expect from both bands?
Pestilence was -and still is- a band that has influenced us a lot back in the 90’s. They have a great album coming up. Meanwhile, we ‘re in the studio for our next step. As you can imagine, there will be many surprises from both sides. Not to mention that we have already planned some of our new songs to be on that night’s setlist, since it’s a good chance for people to hear our new stuff. As for Pestilence, everyone must be prepared for a thunderous performace!.
How does it feel like when you share the stage with bands you’ve been a fan of and have influenced your sound? Coroner, for example, is the first that comes to my mind… Any mentionable moments you have experienced with some of these bands, and that became a sort of a lesson?
The Coroner case is unique indeed, since we had the opportunity to tour with them, so came closer. They are really cool guys with a “we have nothing to prove to anyone” attitude that was striking and on the other hand, such a behavior is a great slap in the face for selfish people from our scene. Indicatively I’m going to mention what happened on the last night of the tour…Ron Royce knocked our door in the backstage telling us “Sorry to bother you guys, come over if you want so we can have a drink or two, we didn’t manage to catch up that much during all this hectic tour timetable…”.
You are a person that follows the Greek scene closely for a long time. How do you see it today in 2018?
Past mistakes became examples to avoid. That’s for sure. The entire scene works really hard and this becomes recognizable abroad too. Let’s be optimistic, things will get even better in the future.
Is there a difference in mindset between the newly formed bands and the older 
generation you also belong to? What would you advise a young guy who is starting his first band now?
There’s a difference, and it’s totally reasonable. An older band sticks to his own era’s elements and tries to recycle it. It’s not a bad thing, yet it’s not a good one, to be close minded and attached to the past. Youngsters have learned how to stand in difficulties. The motto is one and only one. Work, work, work!
Thank you so much for your time, Savvas. As an epilogue, I would like you to mention some of the band’s short-termed and long-termed plans, such as lives or anything else…
Thank you for the support. Our main goal right now is the new album. The rest will come up eventually.
