Editor’s Note: We never thought that we would see the day where we interview a band called Satan’s Taint for Madness To Creation, yet here we are. I think this band wins my award for band you can’t yell their name too loud without people gawking at you. This band is brutal and a lot of their songs are based upon battles in history, the apocalypse, and even songs that question the validity of religion. On August 2nd, Satan’s Taint has released their brutal album entitled “Destruction Ritual”. Fans can find Satan’s Taint at the following locations:
www.facebook.com/AxetotheheadofmyenemiesDestructionRitual
Madness To Creation: Hi Bobby, thank you so much for taking the time to interview with us for Madness To Creation. I must ask have you ever watched the YouTube channel Wreckless Eating?
Bobby: What is it called?
Madness To Creation: Wreckless Eating they do a lot of food challenges and stuff like that. There was either a hot sauce or a candy called Satan’s Taint that was so hot that some people had to go to the doctor due to the reactions they would get from the food, how would you compare your band do that hot sauce or hot candy?
Bobby: Well, I didn’t know that there was a hot sauce or hot candy called that, but I have looked up the name before because I just happened to say it one day cause we were cracking up because we thought that would be a funny band name, but sometimes I do go down to the Bronx and get some hot sauce, I guess people do understand that it is a joke, I didn’t think much about it. I do like hot sauce, but if it’s that bad, I don’t want to put people in the hospital. *laughs*
Madness To Creation: Let’s talk about your live performance, speaking of throwing up blood, what’s the craziest thing that you have ever seen at a live show, whether it’s your days in Overkill or now with Satan’s Taint?
Bobby: The first thing that sticks in my head was a show we played back in ’87, we were playing a show with Helloween in Poland at a big arena, when you play in an arena, which was really exciting for us at that point, for some reason kids in the middle of the floor where you usually mosh, made a gigantic pyramid, like cheerleaders would do, they just made a giant pyramid on top of each other, I thought, “well, that’s kind of weird”, I’ve never seen that before or since, for some reason, that’s always stuck in our heads and that’s always the first thing that I thought of, that one was pretty funny.
Madness To Creation: Did the pyramid collapse or anything?
Bobby: I’m sure it did! It was really hard at the time because the Berlin Wall was still up, there was no light show, it was really dark, it was just weird, it wasn’t a very well put together show, but kids showed up and bought tickets six months in advance, it was important to us that they showed up.
Madness To Creation: To me, that’s crazy because I see music as a beacon for freedom and I think us Americans take that for granted, plus Poland was going through their own revolution with the Solidarity Movement.
Bobby: It is crazy, I was talking to a couple of Polish DJ’s over there and they said that the kids had no money and what they used to do was back before we had CD’s, they would get the album and they would tell the kids over the radio what they were about to play so the kids can get cassettes at home and record the whole album out because they couldn’t afford them, it really set you back to think that they couldn’t just go to the store to buy albums because they didn’t really have money, they had to save up for six months to see these shows, if they want to make pyramids in the middle of the floor, go ahead.
Madness To Creation: What’s your favorite thing that the fans do at a concert?
Bobby: I love it when the fans make a big wall, separate and just run at each other, I love that!
Madness To Creation: I’ve always wanted to do that but I always chicken out at the last minute.
Bobby: Yeah, I don’t want to see anyone get hurt, I recently saw a show headlined by Slayer and the kids sat on the floor and they sat in rows and they pretended that they were in a big boat like they were rowing a boat like vikings and pretending that they had oars in their hands, that’s the first time that I have ever seen that either.
Madness To Creation: Speaking of vikings, you describe your latest album as “nordic metal” are there songs on “Destruction Ritual” that pertain to the days of the vikings or nomads?
Bobby: Yeah, we cover a wide area, but the viking stuff has always interest me, it just seems like it’s a cool topic, the first song on there is called “Sumbel”, which has to do with another song on the first album called “Asatru”, which is an old religion, and “Sumbel” is the toast that they do to the gods, they boast about themselves, there’s another song called “Raid Again”, which is about raiding, and the comparisons between what they do when they raid and what a band does when it’s on the road and just the similarities of invading a new town and stuff like that, it’s in the lyrics, but the most would be in the video song called “Desecration” and that song is the about the raid on Lindisfarne, which is considered to be the first viking raid of England, when they raided the monastery, and that was basically the start of the Viking Age, but if you look at the imagery on the front of “Destruction Ritual”, when they have the ceremonial fire, the back of it is an ax, which is another symbol, little symbols like where are the lyrics and liner notes are is little symbols. I don’t want to say that it’s completely viking, but there’s a lot of that theme in the songs.
Madness To Creation: Based on the press release, there are themes of revenge and religion? Would you say those themes are more poking fun at religion or questioning religion?
Bobby: I would definitely say there is a little bit of both. The track “Sorry You Were Ever Born”, questions Mary and the birth, there’s just a lot of different questions that arise out of that, there’s another song called “End Your Bloodline”, and that questions Noah’s Ark, where God has sent down, where His disciples were being with earthly women and that’s one of the reasons why God flooded the Earth, but there’s so many discrepancies in the story of Noah and the Ark that if you read into it it doesn’t seem like it could ever happen, so I try to touch on little topics that I come across, there’s religion, there’s revenge, there’s Nordic themes, all of those fun metal topics.
Madness To Creation: What are some other of your favorite pieces of history or philosophers to study?
Bobby: Well, I’m half Swedish and half Italian, so there’s two parts that I’m very interested in, and that’s the Viking Age and anything with the Roman Empire, from the gladiator days to the Renaissance, just history in general, it gives me topics, to just write the songs and the lyrics, but if I can get a story or a nice piece of history where there’s some sort of controversy or do more with Italian history, I want to touch on a little bit of everything, so the next one might have little pieces of Italian history as well.
Madness To Creation: Who is your favorite historical figure in Roman history?
Bobby: I’m always intrigued by Nero, whenever I see anything between Nero and Julius Caesar, just the way that they totally took control of the country, and just some of the crazy stuff that they did while they were running not just Italy, but a huge section of Europe, so I’m going to check more into them and some of the stuff that they did, I’ll probably have some of that on the next one.
Madness To Creation: Would you ever write a song about Donald Trump?
Bobby: No, I tend to keep politics out because you just can’t win, I watch people fight tooth and nail every day and back and forth with politics, even back in the early Overkill days, that was something that we always said that we would never do because you can lose fans, you can lose friends, we just always kept politics to ourselves, I mean it’s just flooding Facebook with every other post, and it just gets annoying, people are bitching about this person and they’ll bitch about the next one, and that will be that.
Madness To Creation: I give kudos to you for taking a neutral stance on it.
Bobby: I said one thing when Trump got elected, “I don’t know if he’s going to be good, I don’t know if he’s going to be bad, I don’t care, I’m just more interested in the fact that someone other than a career politician was able to get themselves elected”, which to me opens the door for people who got greater minds that can maybe organize this country a little bit better and bring everything together, I don’t think that someone that is a career politician to be elected, there’s so many smart people out there, I’d rather see someone else run that can maybe straighten everything out. That’s all I’m going to say about that. *laughs*
Madness To Creation: For “Destruction Ritual”, you did all the guitar and bass work, what is your mentality when you enter that studio?
Bobby: Most of the time with the bass, it’s going to follow what the guitar does, I purposefully give it a spot to where I have a fill or where I take the lower notes and bring the notes higher on the bass, but instead of spending time waiting for people to send the music and waiting for them to record it wherever they are, I told Jim that, “this is all in my head, I know everything that’s going to be there, why don’t I just do that, then we’ll fill all the other persons in after it’s done, it’ll be a lot quicker, it’ll be just two of us in the studio”, and it locked up really well, we actually had a hard time trying to pull the bass away from the guitar, because they played it so much the same, it blended together really well, it made for a huge wall of sound.
Madness To Creation: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician or guitar player, if you could teach them one thing, what do they need to know?
Bobby: What I did was just play. Practice all of the time, play by yourself so you can develop your own style, I wish I would’ve done this earlier even in my career, but get a little four-track, or if you’re a little more advanced, get yourself some computer gear where you can actually play to yourself playing, if you put down a rhythm track, play to it, because when you go into the studio, that’s what you’re going to do, you’re going to wake up to your other tracks, so learn how to put more tracks down and learn how to play other harmonies that go with those tracks, that way you’ll keep expanding and it’ll bring you to other different sounds and that will really help you learn the guitar a little bit, it saves time in the studio, if people are still paying for studios, most of it is really done at home. Back in my day, I had to get two boomboxes and two cassettes and play the guitar on one radio, and then I would go and do the lead on the other radio and then pick them up together, that’s how I would double my tracks, it was all that I knew how to do, it was just a cheaper way to do it, but that’s what helped me later on, just playing to myself and replaying the tracks and locking up to your own play, it makes a big difference.
Madness To Creation: What are some plans that Satan’s Taint have in promoting “Destruction Ritual”?
Bobby: We’re working on some stuff, trying to get some shows together, get a couple of Florida dates, unfortunately the album came out so late that we missed some of the summer festivals in Europe, and that’s what I really want to do more than anything, we want to try to get on at Rockville in Daytona at the speedway, our name is thrown in the ring with a bunch of other bands. We’re hoping that we’re promoting it enough to where someone will want to take us on board.
Madness To Creation: Have you ever played a festival gig before?
Bobby: Not even back then in Overkill. Back then, only a small handful of thrash bands were invited to play on festivals and we couldn’t even get on one. By the time that I left Overkill, it seems like within the next five to ten years all of these heavier bands started to play all of these festivals, I wasn’t doing anything at the time, so I kind of missed out on it. It would just be so weird to be so far away, you would just hope and pray that the monitors and mixers on stage were enough for you to hear, but since they’re so far away, that’s all you’re relying on. At a club, they’re right behind you, you just turn your eye a little bit and see where the drummer is and just jump right back into the song, but hopefully I’ll have that experience with this album, and then we’ll talk again and then I can tell you what it’s like.
Madness To Creation: We also cover mental health awareness at Madness To Creation, what are some things that help you get through tough times or what makes Bobby happy?
Bobby: Well, besides playing, I do love to watch television with my two dogs right here, they’re basically like having two kids who take up the rest of my time and taking care of them and looking at their faces, that’s usually all I need.
Madness To Creation: Are they good dogs?
Bobby: Yeah, they’re really good. I got two of them and they just basically hang out all day at home until I get here and we have dinner together and watch TV.
Madness To Creation: Would you recommend dogs for those that suffer from mental health disorders?
Bobby: Yeah, I’m sure that they help a lot, they’ve been bringing dogs around to hospitals, obviously they have the dogs that are trained, they take them to be petted, you can just see the change in people’s faces, there’s nothing but love with a dog, they don’t judge, they don’t speak, they just want to be petted and to lick your face.
Madness To Creation: Anything that you want to cover or touch on as we close this interview?
Bobby: “Destruction Ritual” recently came out August 2nd, so we’re plugging the album, on Amazon, they sold out so quickly that there were a couple of little companies that were wanting the CD’s, so we’re trying to replenish, the site is up online, I’m on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, we have a page where we still sell the first album still and the merchandise at www.satanstaintmusic.com, you can go there or just hit me up on Facebook and leave me a message if you have any questions or I’m usually pretty good about posting whatever the band is doing, so you can always find out information there.
And there you have it! Go pick up a copy of “Destruction Ritual” on Amazon or at Satan’s Taint’s official website!
