“Benighted” Interview by Keith Clements
Greetings from Metalheads Forever Magazine, how are you guys doing?
Julien Truchan (vocals): I am super fine! Thanks! So impatient for the new album to be released and start touring again! We are in the middle of the promotion right now and just revealed our first videoclip for the song “Reptilian” which is really disturbing and gore… Let’s see how long it will stay online before there are complaints! Ah ah!
“Necrobreed” your new album is scheduled for this year, do you have a release date?
Yes, it’s planned on February 17 for Europe and February 24 for US.
How is “Necrobreed” going to be, can we expect something like the predecessor “Carnivore Sublime”?
I would say that Necrobreed is way more intense than the previous one, more vicious too. This new album is like the audio version of an horror movie talking about the depths of schizophrenia. The concept is inspired with the true story of one of my schizophrenic patients who thinks he can be pregnant and has hallucinations about giving birth to children at his home who are not there anymore the day after. So Necrobreed is about a schizophrenic man who stitches dead animals to his belly and when he feels the warmth of the infection burning, he thinks he gave them life again, cut the stitches off and give them a place in his house, building his own-bred-dead-family. This new album contains the most effective tracks we never made, with lots of creepy atmospheres that make you feel uncomfortable before diving you in the most pure and free brutality we love so much! Necrobreed tells a story with the background of our death metal roots mixed with all our personal influences from black metal to extreme grindcore.
“Carnivore Sublime” sounds more of a death metal album rather than the previous albums which was more of Deathcore, what is the reason for this change?
The first reason would be that we never want to make the same album twice! It’s important for us to bring something new in our music each time keeping our death metal spine and use all our personal influences to make it rich and varied. And in this case, line-up changes have been an unexpected opportunity to bring fresh blood and new ideas to make it sound unique and new but of course respecting and serving the Benighted musical identity.
France has seen a lot of terrorist attacks, what are the safety measure do you undergo before doing a gig?
I don’t pay attention to this kind of risk, I don’t want to. We won’t stop living our lives for a bunch of idiots who can appear anytime anywhere and kill innocent people. They don’t deserve such an attention, the best way to answer is to keep on having all the fun we can and enjoy what we do.
There has been a lot of change in the line-up over the years, how does things work out, do you find any difficulties with change in band members?
It’s always difficult to change a band member, but fortunately so far, it was for a better good! For example the last change was when Kevin left the band to play in Abbath and we welcomed Romain Goulon (ex-Necrophagist, Disavowed…) who brought his amazing drumming possibilities to the new album! It definitely wouldn’t be so extreme without him! Each time there’s a change, it asks for work of course and it’s sometimes hard to stay motivated but at the end it was more than worthy!
“Benighted” is formed back in 1998, over the years how successful do you feel you are since the day you started the band?
Ah ah! I remember when we were still rehearsing in my father’s garage, dreaming about all these bands we are still fans of today like Napalm Death, Aborted, Dying Fetus… And now we are great friends with some of them, making lots of touring around the world. We are very proud of all we’ve been through during 18 years and what we became today! We never lost our authenticity and we are still making the music we want to play, spilling our guts on stage and having such good times with our fans and friends!
What are your plans to make “Benighted” known to the world, Social media plays a big part, but what are the ways you reach the globe?
In my opinion, the best way is to tour and prove yourself on stage! I think you really can consider a band’s value when you see it live. It’s so easy to cheat in studio or fake how famous you are on social networks nowadays. I am still very old school about this. Season of Mist are already making a very good job for us in terms of promotion and distribution! What we want is to meet people who support us and show them what we are capable of. We will start the promotion with a French tour right after the album is out, then we have this European tour with our brothers Wormed and Unfathomable Ruination, Russian dates, a lot of festivals this summer, then an Indian tour at the end of the year and finally a Canadian tour preparing for beginning of 2018! Can’t wait!
“Change” is something that we see all the time in Benighted, what’s the reason for keep this change going on in the band musically?
We will always keep the same death metal roots which makes Benighted music and like the story in each album, we want things to be personal and unique each time. We don’t have to work too hard for that, we always have some new crazy ideas coming to our deranged minds! Ah ah!
Thanks for the time, It was really a pleasure talking to you, do you have a message for the fans?
Thank you very much for this interview! We can’t wait to come show you how Necrobreed sounds on stage! Thanks a lot to everyone who support us and keep on spreading the sickness!
Keith Clements / MHF
