There was a time, back in 2013, when I’ve got in touch with this great guy for the very first time to do an interview. And apart from short appearance on one of his FB account, this interview was never published. Until now.
Hello, Izedis, and thanks for your time. 2013 saw the release of your latest album “The Day After”. For those of the movie fans, after just a glance through the titles of songs would be probably clear you were inspired by the 80s classic by the same name, right? But the right question is – why the departure from the long maintained line of black metal themes/GoatSerpent/Satan worship? I see similarities between this album, The Day After, and Pissed Off Orgasm old release – also apocalyptic kind of a noise soundtrack…anyway, can you put some light on the concept and the development of this album?
Fuck yeah, we were very much inspired by the Movie of the same name… using samples and ideas from it in the concept. But the major inspiration for this album was a movie called “Threads”. A BBC Drama that came out about a year after The Day After. Samples from this movie were used in the Nuclear Explosion intro as well as background noises in the interludes. Sometime in 2010, KumSlinger and I were sitting around drinking a half gallon of bottom shelf, plastic bottled, blended Canadian Whiskey and were somewhat obsessed with Threads at the time. We said, “Let’s fuckin record an album based on the aftermath of nuclear war”. I found some drums a person had sent us and we broke out the gear and hit record. Nothing major or profound about it, as is the case with every Enbilulugugal release. Due to problems like Depression, fucked up surgery on my lungs, laziness and general lack of interest. I didn’t even start recording the vocals till almost 3 years later. To explain what we were going for while compiling the track order, interludes and feelings… It starts off with the Bombs dropping in the introduction. But, this is just the beginning. The next song takes you further into the chaos of the firestorm. Then the Chaos once everything settles down and the hospitals begin to fill up. It gradually takes you into the deperation, sickness, and general unease that would be associated with being alive in the aftermath of a full scale nuclear war. It finally ends with an acoustic outro of total hopelessness as you wish for death and suck on a rat carcass for sustenance. As for the reason we stopped talking about GoatSex for this album, well we always try to do something different with each release. This has been the case for the past 13 years. Wether with the sound or “concept”, we don’t enjoy doing the same thing twice.
Actually, although the discography of Enbilulugugal is quite long, this is just your second full-length. With the first one, “Noizemongers for GoatSerpent” released in 2004 … why such a delay? Are you more comfortable with shorter demos and split release collaborations?
We’re not really comfortable doing any of it. I can’t answer why there wasn’t a second full length, or even 3rd or 4th sooner. But one reason may be, drum tracks. Enbilulugugal is a vast network of people around the United States. When somebody like Alcoholonomicon sends me drums or finished tracks with guitar and all that shit, I base the release on the length. Most of the time it’s short. When he did drums for Noizemongers… he just happened to do enough for a full-length. I’m not too concerned with what kind of release it is, as long as the releases keep happening.
99 copies limited Pro-CDR release, do you do limited releases deliberately, or thinking – damn, I will hardly sell even these? How do you view the noise segment – as much as you follow it – nowadays? Compared to the early days of Enbilulugugal, do you see any difference between now and then in relation of “supply and demand” in the underground circles?
Honestly, 99 copies is too many these days. Everyone just downloads CDs and Vinyl is way too fuckin expensive to get pressed. It’s also hard to find labels interested in Enbilulugugal even though there seems to be a fan base of some sort (which I still have no idea why). As for black noise now compared to then, a lot more people accept it and listen now. When we started, we gave everything away and I’m sure over half of the first demo tapes were destroyed by the people I sent it to. There was no “Black Noise Scene”. There were a few bands floating around but I’m sure they had the same problems as us getting rid of their demos. What my drunk ass is getting at here is: More “fans” now than there used to be for “Black Noise”.
Well, time to jump back to the beginning of Enbilulugugal. Can you tel us what was the primary reason to form the band? Also, as there might be some misunderstanding, chaos maybe (LOL), can you distinguish between Enbilulugugal and Chernobog? If I am not mistaken, Chernobog was first, right….?
The reason Enbilulugugal was created was because Nebiru (The other founding member) and I were in a Yahoo! Chat room as stupid teenagers and were sick and tired of the elitist assholes everywhere… We both had always wanted to be in bands so we decided to make some anti-elitist noise to piss some dickbags off. It went from there and turned into it’s own entity with no rhyme or reason for existing other than to kill ears, minds and speakers. A lot of these dickbags I mentioned are still lurking around forums today and talking lame shit about Enbilulugugal. I see this as complete victory on our part as they’re still obsessing over how “false” and “untrue” to the “scene” we are. Fuck scenes man, get a dog up ya all of you. Fuck off. As for Chernobog… Nebiru and I wanted to do something different and less noisey at the time (2001) so we recorded the “Nuclear Bloodbath” EP. It ended up being (almost) just as noisey and fucked up as Enbilulugugal so it really could have been an Enbilulugugal release. This is all history now though and there’s no changing the past. I was quite proud of the Chernobog demo though because Unsung Heroes Records, a long time favorite underground label of mine, decided to release it. It was quite an honour.
I know – although you have to tell us if it still true – that members of Enbilulugugal are active in various other bands and projects. Can you name them and tell a word or two about them as an introduction for those who want to delve deeper?
Many members with many other projects. This could take up 5 pages of your zine, so I’ll just give a brief description of everything. KumSlinger has been in a bunch of bands in his 20+ or some shit years of playing music. He and Davillian currently have a Thrash project called Scapegoat that originally formed and recorded a couple demos in 1993. They reformed and are recording a full length album now. Alcoholonomicon aka Reverend J.R. Preston has a shitload of projects. Tjolgtjar being the main one. He plays an original form of Psychedelic Black Metal/Rock with this project and I highly recommend anyone check his countless albums/demos he’s released in the past 15 years. Another is a project that is currently on hold, BLOOD CULT. This is Redneck Black Metal. Does anymore need to be said??? Some of his others include Xexyz (8-Bit NESBM), Pyfyxfyru (Black Noise), Bloodwoods (With Matt from Woodlands Edge playing Death Metal)…. FUCK IT, you get the point. No offense to any of the other members reading this, but if anyone really cares, you can get on the internet and check out our page on The Metal Archives. Thanks for understanding and sorry for the aggression folks.
Due to a lack of interest you created your own label to put Enbilulugugal’s releases out (and also some other, as I see). Along the physical releases (although limited editions, as discussed briefly above), you follow the tradition of many artists offering free downloads of your material. Can you explain this attitude? What is the response of the audience?
I’ve always been against making any profit with music that doesn’t take a whole lot of money to produce in the first place. So when we release something, I’ve always just thrown it online for free and charge as close to actual cost for a physical copy as possible. The response to this has been pretty great. If we tried to make money off this garbage (enbilulugugal), we’d have no fanbase at all and only a handfull of people in the world would actually own any of this crap. As for Dipsomaniac Records, I don’t want to profit off other’s music either. So I do the same as I do with Enbilulugugugugal. On the bandcamp and archive.org pages, there have been more downloads than I ever imagined there would be. Blogs follow my pages and post almost everything when it comes out for others in the World who might not find it on my sites. So it’s pretty fuckin cool to know you’re helping out a band and maybe they have a possibility of getting signed to a better label.
With the new record out, what do you occupy your mind with these days? Anything already planned in the form of next release? I know the cover artwork is already there (and it’s amazing!) I have to say it would be really interesting to see you performing the new album…I can imagine quite a conceptual scene…
Occasionally I do my fuckin’ Electronic Noise shit under the name Static Goat. Just a few online releases with that and some super limited CDR’s. This is what I do to occupy my mind when my throat is bleeding from smoking too many cigarettes and I’m unable to vomit out some Enbilulugugal vocals. But nobody cares about that so lets get back to the other subject nobody cares about. Enbilulugugal has a couple of splits planned with Gribberiket from Norway and Moon from Australia. As well as about two albums worth of new drum tracks we need to do something with courtesy of newest member, TheBoogeyman. There are really no plans for any sort of concept, other than GoatSerpent worship. Possibly a continuation of The Day After, maybe. We don’t put much thought into any of it till it’s about to be released, usually. The Day After was something new for us. A Double CD Edition of NOIZEMONGERS FOR GOATSERPENT is planned to be rereleased by Crucial Blast at some point. All the tracks will be remastered, or maybe it should be called Mastered since they were never really mastered in the first place. Should be killer if it ever comes to be before we all become radioactive dust in the upper atmosphere. That cover art you mentioned was done by the great Luciana from Romania, she does great work and I want the noise to be up to par with her artwork, whenever that comes to be.
In our discussion you have mentione following no politics in your music. What was the reason to do a cover of Anal Cunt song for the AxCx tribute album? Seth Putnam was quite a politician there :-)) That just begs the question – do you count AxCx among your influences? Any other musical inputs we might be familiar with?
We covered the Anal Cunt song because a friend of ours from Mai Lai Productions was going to release an A.C. tribute tape at the time (which never came to be as far as I know). He asked us if we wanted to and of course we were highly influenced by Anal Cunt’s “music”. Eventually, 9 years later it finally got released on another A.C. tribute via digital download by Popsakal Records. If you’re wondering why we picked this particular song (I Hope You Get Deported), NO… Enbilulugugal is not a racist band. None of us are racist in any sense of the word. This song was picked purely for the riff used and we were so high on marijuana (Which happened to be brown weed straight from Mexico) at the time we didn’t even think about the problems covering this song could cause. Luckily we never got any shit for it and nobody seemed to notice. As I said, A.C. was a definite influence. The biggest influence on the Noisecore side would be Gonkulator. Others (for me at least) would include Sore Throat, Stench of Corpse, W.B.I. and some others. And after that stupid rant, I noticed I didn’t even answer your question about politics. just, FUCK POLITICS.
Can you name 3 bands or releases you consider most important in forming your musical backgrund, be it noise, black metal or other genre?
Gonkulator, particularly the “Satan’s Burial Ground” CD is the biggest “Noise” influence for me. As well as everything Sore Throat ever did. As far as the musical background throughout my life, been listening to music (Classic Rock mainly) since the womb. Metal since before I could masturbate and some of my all time favorites include Mercyful Fate, King Diamond and King Diamond/Mercyful Fate. In my 20’s I started getting into old and Underground Country Music such as Those Poor Bastards, Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams SR. and III and shit tons of others. I like sound, so if it sounds good to me I’ll listen to it.
Slowly coming to the end of this short interview, for those interested, what can you offer them as a merchandise? I have read something about t-shirts being done…are they already available?
Years ago when Noizemongers was released we had shirts made. Those are long sold out and I’ve just been too broke to get more made. If I suddenly strike gold or find a label to get merchandise made, it’ll be fuckin killer. Until then, people can bootleg their own merch all they want. And some do. I don’t care as long as they don’t try to make profit off of it. As if they could… The ultimate dream would be to get Logo Fez hats, Flip Flops and Grannie Panties made. Fuck it.
Any final message, contact information…?
Many fuckin thanks for taking the time to interview Enbilugugal, and I’m sorry to any of you that made it this far and IJaind, ijdin ijfyetw ijijgok ihagqtttata. hfihaihdijgnk, hihgiuhuhuhuhuhm okaokijfum jfijhauhg, ijfbbavv, Email: enbilulugugal@yahoo.com Websites include: www.enbilulugugal.com www.dipsomaniacrecords.com enbilulugugal.bandcamp.com dipsomaniacrecords.bandcamp.com No snail mail anymore, I forgot how to write.
Bandcamp: https://enbilulugugal.bandcamp.com/
Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/enbilulugugalkreationsz
Dipsomaniac Distilleries: https://archive.org/details/dipsomaniacnetlabel
