01) Hi, Zoltan. Thank you for your time and making this opportunity for the interview. How are things in Sectioned? Any news?
Zoltan: Hi there. Thank you for the interview. Things are quite good at the moment thanks, we are getting ready to record soon. I cannot really say when because we are all very busy but we have a lot of new material waiting to be recorded. We are also trying to get Purulent Reality out on vinyl as well, hopefully it will happen this year.
02) Regarding your history, before the debut album you had recorded only one promo. I know it may sound weird but when listening to your debut album ‘Purulent Reality’ the arrangements are so mature and deliberately brought ‘to life’ that it is almost impossible that this is an album of almost ‘newcomers’. I know that each of you have ‘musical past’ so this is the time of confession hehe.
Zoltan: Haha, OK. Well M and Ryan (the drummer on the demo) are and were from Dimentianon respectively and I had been in Frost and so had Roland. Csibi, the bass player has been in the scene for a long time too. I wrote all the music and M wrote all the lyrics. That was the first time I tried to write complete songs to be honest. I did not want anyone telling me what was death/black/thrash metal and what I could use and what I could not as that had been the case before. I just wanted to write good metal you know without being narrow-minded with melodies and solos in every song.
03) And btw. why did you decided to move from UK to USA and relocate band there?
Zoltan: Huh… I moved to Hungary then to Holland and from Holland back to Hungary then to New York. I simply wanted to do it because M and Ryan were there and I thought it was going to be a good opportunity to play live as most of the members would be in the same city.
04) What about the lyrical themes then? When most of the bands are delivering cunt shredding brutality, explore war themes or mostly horror/gore/porn stuff you do different stuff. Of course I found there some tragical, death subjects but it is so confusing even to see the titles like ‘A Lonely Grasp Of Winter’ or ‘Loneliest Man’. I think we need a lot of explanations here! Hehe
Zoltan: I’ll let M take this question over as he writes the lyrics. All I’d like to say is I love his lyrics because they are not cliché or anything you would expect.
M: they really revolve around how people can act, think, and what they believe. the true evil of man so to speak sometimes as well. the themes you mention a lot of bands explore are very cool and i enjoy a lot of bands with such lyric themes. however i like to write stuff more reality based however not put across in a blunt manner more poetic where it makes you think and still has that element of mystery and escapism that we all crave in underground music and especially underground metal.
a lonely grasp of winter takes place a year after the actual situation with both the before and present time being the period of winter. and it talks about how one can loose time or a moment in the mind because they blacked out at this moment in time, however something is drawing them back to a place they were a year ago, though they have no recollection of anything. just a feeling if you will. And in this case it refers to a human taking a life of another [which the reason is never explained] and it is now 1 year later he is drawn back to this dreadful place for reasons unbeknown to him at the time until at the end of the song the reality hits the individual. this is a fact of human nature and the human mind. we black out and can do horrible acts to one another.
loneliest man is about the serial killer "the ice man" who in my view has to be one the scariest man to ever exist in the 20th century. however i watched a documentary with my girlfriend about him and i just took a different take on it. and as i saw him being interviewed the man seemed truly alone. and i do not mean that in a sad depressive way type of thing however more in a way that because he felt so alone or nothing, he was able to take human life as easy as how one thinks of just getting something to eat. it was just a part of who he was because he felt nothing and had no human compassion or empathy. also this was the reason he was able to keep this from his wife an kids. he just did not really care. though he might have cared for them in a way. there was just no deep feelings in the man. he was cold and alone and that was just the way it was. again this is just my view and does not state any facts. however i truly believe this to be true to some degree.
05) The music of Sectioned is mainly directed to fans of old school Death Metal. The mixture you’re playing of various sharp melodies combined with very heavy guitar sound plus on top of that we have very good solos of yours... It is a lot to offer as only old school don’t you think?
Zoltan: Thank you. I consider myself as a rhythm guitar player so I am glad you like the solos, I am trying to do my best with them, haha. I do not sit in my flat and play scales or finger exercises for hours and hours and most of the solos are improvised but the main melodies are always the same so people would recognise them, hopefully haha. I do think Sectioned has more to offer than old school death metal but you will hear that on the next album. We did not want to do old school death metal “exclusively” and direct it to certain people only it would have been rather narrow-minded. I think people say old school because we do not play this new technical shit triggered up to the nose, playing 65748 notes in 4 seconds and in 45/34.5 time signatures. Death metal, because most of the riffs are death metal riffs but you can also pick out thrash, heavy metal and doom riffs too. We just call it metal, simple as that.
06) How come that vocals and drums were recorded in two different studios in USA while guitars and bass parts you recorded in Netherlands?
Zoltan: I was living in Rotterdam at that time and Robin, who kindly helped us out on bass is from England so he came over to Rotterdam to record the bass and I obviously recorded the guitars there as well. M and Pete (drums) both live in New York so they did their parts over there and then they sent their tracks to us so we could work with them. We mixed the album in Budapest.
07) So to close the subject of studio and sound you achieved, are you satisfied with the ‘Purulent Reality’ or would you change something today?
Zoltan: I would always change something, haha! That is the way it is though, I am used to it. I would not change anything music-wise at all. I would change the drum sound, you cannot really hear the toms but that is about it, oh and raise the bass a bit more at certain parts. Now you got me going haha. We were satisfied with it over all though because it cost us nothing and Thomas Weber who mixed it had about 5 days to do it so we felt sorry for him really. He went through like 2 packs a day while he was doing it haha.
08) As for cover art... How do you see it? Is that the vision of ‘purulent reality’ of yours? Or just a picture that is enough old school and nightmarish? Or maybe there are some hidden metaphores or symbols?
Zoltan: It is a painting that Raul Gonzales painted for us. I told him my ideas and I asked him to use his imagination and ideas as well. That was what he got and we were amazed. It looks proper death metal and symbolises life to me personally so it fits with the album title perfectly. We had some problems with it when it came to pressing shirts because it was so detailed though.
09) You as a main composer of the band lyrics writer must answer to a question of your influences. Both music and lyrics...
Zoltan: My influences… It could be anything really, anything I see or read online, anything I read in books or just everyday’s life you know. If you meant bands then they are: Death, King Diamond, Forbidden, Autopsy, Obituary, Mercyful Fate, Cannibal Corpse, Judas Priest (Painkiller), Halford, Candlemass, Grave, Rise (CA), Immortal, Cancer, (early)Pestilence to name a few.
M: Anything we find interesting to be honest. and i really feel that we do take influence from Chuck of death as well. Chuck was a leader and would never follow and from leprosy on he really started to get away from typical lyrical themes and they were so interesting and so well done. and the band is a big fan of his work especially Zoltan and i. And it was not intentional however it just came to me one day these lyrics i am writing may not be a direct influence from chuck however i could see the influence. Also King Diamond is another one who has influenced the lyrics with the story telling effect which the man is brilliant at writing and this was something i noticed immediately when i would use objects in the lyrics like dresser and stuff in "my love of decay". that is so king. he always names objects and shit in his lyrics and it helps tell a story and in a more creepy way and again Zoltan and i are big fans of him.
10) I asked previous question because your music apart from being brutal is also deeply infected with genres like old Thrash or Heavy Metal. Also for example last track is a little bit Doom/Dark... So what is going on with all these ideas?
Zoltan: Yes, well… They are just there haha. I cannot and do not want to control it. I was actually thinking about doing a side project where I would use these riffs I could not put into Sectioned and I remember Pete was like, hey dude we should just put these into Sectioned. I was thinking about it and said why not, we can do whatever we want, if half of the song will have doom or black metal riffs and the other half has death metal so what? If some people do not like it that way then tough, there are thousands of bands out there so they should move on and stop whining.
11) Your roots are Hungarian, do you still observe the scene in there? How do you see it progressing? Any good bands to recommend? I must say that the last album of Gutted totally erased me!
Zoltan: No, not really following it to be honest. I have a lot of friends in that scene though so I am informed through them. Oh yes, there are a lot of good bands there, no doubt about that and people should check them out. Remorse, Bedlam, Moby Dick, Angerseed, Frost, Gutted, Christian Epidemic, Morbid Carnage, Aetherious Obscuritas, Ahriman, Forest Silence, Orom, these are bands I really like. We were meant to play a show with Gutted actually but unfortunately the singer had had a stroke and they had to cancel the show. I hope he is all well and back in the scene now.
12) How often do you play live? If anyone would like to book you for a live gig what are you conditions? And with whom would you like to share the stage the most?
Zoltan: We do not play that often because of the distance between us but we would like to do more though. Well, we are easy going and quite flexible, we are not egos, we all do this for music and to keep our underground spirits alive. We will not make a living out of this so we do not take the piss when it comes to the terms and conditions bit haha. We would share the stage with any bands really as long as they are good obviously and metal and that is the main thing. I would not want to play with nu-metal bands or egos. I would like to share the stage with King Diamond, Slayer, Testament, Accept, Cannibal Corpse etc. that would be amazing. If anyone is interested in booking us then send an e-mail to: sectioned.metal@hotmail.com or cultm@msn.com
13) Death Metal music nowadays has changed a lot. We see lots of bands that are under the same banner but their music seem to be even opposite to each other. There is plenty of sub-genres like, brutal, slam, technical, progressive, blackened, some bands mix their music with grind or grindcore, on top of that all there even bands influenced by jazz or completely weird non-metal sounds. How do you see that? I mean where do you see the end of it, the line that shouldn’t be cross or bottom of the whole genre?
Zoltan: To me there are two categories within metal: good and bad. If I like something I do not care what you call it, I like the music not the label of it. If you said for example Rise – Divine Aeternum album was blackened death metal I would still like it as much if you said it was black metal or death metal. I really do not care about it and does not make a difference to me at all. I guess you need to label them for marketing purposes. I think getting influences from non-metal music is quite interesting and it could sound amazing if it is done well. I love jazz so anything good with jazz in it rules and I am sure Pete and Csibi back me up here haha.
14) Ok, its time to finish it. Future plans?
Getting the vinyl out this year and then releasing the second full length early 2012ish and definitely doing more shows.
15) Thank you for your time Zoltan. Wish you good luck with Sectioned. Hope we will be able soon to hear and feel again the hellish suphur from your music.
Thank you it’s a pleasure and yes, the new album will be heavy, it is a promise. We’d like to say thank you to everyone for their support and help, we truly appreciate it. I’d like to thank people who were there for me (and did not judge me based on gossip) for their support, it means a lot to me.
interview by Waldemar 06/2011
