vampyres, decadents, freaks, starlight reflected in the gutter.BANDS- I am a journalist by Hunter S. Thompson's definition.'Jounralism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch all for fuckoff and misfits- a false doorway to the backside of life'.Genres preferred- Industrial, EBM, Darkwave, Metal, Emo, GothCybercide
Interviewed by Katya at Resolution, Whitby 10/07In the decaying grandeur of the Resolution, Whitby; I corner Cybercide in their hotel room for a grilling on their renowned live show, vampires, the trouble with singers, bodily functions and being the ‘Dolly Parton’ of EBM!S- Spike, James Marsden cloned synths player.
E- Eddie, Vocals, writer
K- Kat, free lance rock writerThe ImageK– The most amusing thing I’ve read about you guys thus far described you as ‘Two blondes fashionably dressed’.
E- (laughs hysterically) Is that running?K– It’s like you’re air hostesses or something.
E- (Laughs more raucously that before)K– Did you object to the image at all?
E- (continues laughing) I’ve gone red now. Air hostesses? Isn’t that Screaming Banshee Aircrew?K– No that’s from me. But can you comment on the image because we’ve already established that you only originally spoke to Spike because he’s blonde?
E– Kind of yeah… I just heard that the way you just heard it (laughs). Considering the gay blokes he’s been hanging around with in the bar!K– I wasn’t going to ask that but I could do…
S– What if I’m gay?K– No but if you were bothered by all the attention?
S- No...I don’t actually get any gay attention.
E– Someone said that we’ve got a bit of a big gay following, I don’t know any big gay people (chortles). Let’s face it, I’d rather be loved platonically than hated by ‘em.K– So you’re like the Madonna of EBM (cackles)?
E- (in a camp voice) No Dolly Parton! I bumped into Rob and the image was very striking. I had this idea at the time to do something with EBM and all the clichés and images. Hell its been done to death in pop with all trite manufactured rubbish but they had the right idea. Think about what you’re going to do at the end of the day, don’t just make it up along the way. So I asked him if he could play an instrument.
S- (interrupts) I said I could play the drums and you said that was completely useless. So I said I’ve been playing the piano since I was four…
E-So I had a keyboard player yeah. Bu the image thing we kind of fell on it by accident, it was just the idea that a lot of the clothes went together.
S– Dude, you had red hair down to about half way down your arms when I met you.
E– Yeah I know but that soon went.The SoundK– In the past you’ve commented on the present levels of snobbery with respect to originality. In which case why do you think you’ve been so well received?
E– I think deep down everyone actually likes the stuff that was written a long time ago. You go into a club and if someone plays early VNV it will fill the dance floor. Yet you can play some new stuff and it will be completely dead. The new Apoptygma and VNV is so far removed from what they were doing. In 1999/2000 EBM had its hey day just before it turned into future pop. It was what we all really liked and got us into the electronic scene in the first place.
It’s also because it’s melodic and you have a lot of these music scenes burning themselves out because the next thing is to be harder and louder and nastier. There’s only so far it can go before it becomes boring.K– So are people who believe you’re trying to be VNV just stupid?
E– I wouldn’t say they’re stupid but we have the same producer...hello! There might be some similarities from that.K– But did you seek out that sound actively?
E– Any synth you go through the presets, that just happen to be it! And the rousing chorus thing , well I did that in ‘Voices’ and every other band I’ve been in.
S– You get it in every genre, you get it in trance. I mean a lot of my stuff has to do with that since that’s what I was into originally.
E– Especially since he’s lent me some CDs (laughs). In the last year I’ve discovered trance, trance is so cool!
S– Because EBM is trance with some miserable goth singing over it!The AlbumK– Why did it take so long to get the album together?
E– Singers!
S– Singers! We’ve gone through about six singers.
E-Most of them were so short that you didn’t notice! The main one John was a lovely guy. It was disappointing that he had to leave but you can understand when you’ve got a child, you know marriage and responsibility.K– We’re you choosing singers by height and not by hair? Or what was the criteria?
S– People who can actually sing which was the problem after John left.
E– We tried for a very long time and had gigs booked. Especially playing Carnival of Souls two months after John left.K– When did this decision come that you thought you’d do a bit of DIY?
E– About two or three weeks beforehand. We had auditions from people who were worse than bad.
S– We had a rehearsal studio and sat there and people came in seeing what we do as a group. You know if you get someone new who can work with you.. We figured that Eddie is the worst person to work with ever...he really is. (laughter) But I manage to do it for some reason.K– Seriously?
E– I tend to revise songs and revise songs and revise songs and revise songs. I do find that it is very much black and white. I’ll either work with someone or I won’t and I’ll usually know within the first five minutes.K – How do you know so quickly if you don’t mind me asking?
E– I can only work with people who’ve got good talent. It’s very difficult to work with people who don’t understand what you’re aiming for at the end of the day. These bands who say we don’t quite fit into this genre, we’re a bit of this and that. It’s an incredibly arrogant thing to say ‘oh we are pioneering something’.
But I’m always open to suggestion and I admit that I’m wrong on many occassions.
(general background laughter. To Spike) This is going to be printed you know. You want to find another singer, it’s not going to help!K- (To Spike) Can you sing?
S– Fuck no!
E– I don’t like singing and I never wanted to be the singer. The hardest bit of it is that I’m doing an instrument that isn’t mine. The amount of singing lessons I’ve had to go to. Have you any idea how stupid you feel going ‘La la la’?K– Yeah, my experience of singing lessons involved walking around a room barking like a dog.
E– I would have paid good money to see that! I had the sound of music treatment but it was kind of if I didn’t sing at Carnival of Souls, we would have ended up falling down the toilet straight away because you can’t cancel a gig.The Live ShowK– What are the classic ingredient to the Cybercide live show?
E– The audience. We feel like they’re our mates. We’ll have a beer with anyone who’s got the time to recognise us in the street.K– Or pay?
(general laughter)
E– Not necessarily. Well that’s the worst bit because I’m always the one who’s driving.K- (To Spike) I don’t believe you don’t throw up.
E– No he doesn’t throw up but you hear that head board making some odd noises when you’re in the next room! I tell you what, if you’re a drummer your rhythm is right off.
(Spike blushes)
You look like a cigarette!K– So you don’t object to glo-stick wavers.
E– No!K– Brilliant!
E– I’m a fucking glo-stick waver.K– Me too!
E– We don’t care if they’re goths or if they’re metallers or if just sort of techno kids.
S– That’s why we did it really and I feed off the audience...
- (interrupts) Sorry I can’t take you seriously. You’re talking about feeding off the audience and you look like a stinking vampire!
(everyone falls about)
E– That’s quite quick! That’s how he got the nick name Spike because he looked like James Marsden.K– Ah...we know that.BackgroundK– We know that Eddie was in bands before e.g. ‘Voices of Masada’ but what’s yours Spike?
S– I’ve played as a classical musician.K– I’m assuming you guys don’t actually write out manuscripts?
E– Well actually we do..K– You do! That’s amazing.
S– Playing percussion in an orchestra gave me the confidence because it’s incredibly exposed, with timpani you’ve just got one guy with huuuuuuge things going BOM BOM BOM! And one time my parents decided we going to take the timpani home and have them in the living room, scaring the hell out of the cat.
E-(raucous laugh)K– Was it under the drum?
S– Ye..es.
(All laugh)
E– You didn’t think to look...it’s like bonfires and hedgehogs. You’re wrong man!
S– I didn’t know! I just was in BANG and MEOW! And at the next rehearsal the whole horn section did exactly what the cat did.
E– Leave the room at head height!The AlbumK– Did the funding initially come from you guys with the artwork etc?
E– We all worked really hard but we’re happy with the result. Think about it 10-20 yrs down the line when you’re sort of ugly old farts. Actually you don’t have to go that far down the line.
S– You don’t!
(Laughter)
E– But I think it’s just insulting these days as a lot of bands… I won’t name any names, who just rehash the same song for half the album. Who’s artwork is pretty poor and hasn’t been thought through and the mixing is terrible. If someone’s gonna pay £10 for a CD, well they could be earning minimum age so that’s pretty much two hours work after tax. These people are effectively your friends and are showing you a mark of respect and you owe it to them to do the best job you possibly can.
S– The other thing is that if it’s a decent CD it gives them a reason not to download it off the internet.
E– We’ve got a couple of tracks on our website for free download. The remix kit is going up there so people can have fun with it. There’s one sample at the beginning of ‘Further’ no one realises! I spent the whole morning outside my house, I’d saved up all the cardboard for about four weeks and made it really unmanageable chunks. In a long line of recycling rubbish down the street. So that the bin men could pick it up and chuck in the lorry while I’ve got a microphone there.K– That’s fantastic!
E– Yeah…(deadpan) He said it was rubbish.K– ‘Isolate’ sets a very different pace on the album and female vocals; are we going to be seeing more of them?
E– I think quite possibly if they fit with what we want to do.
S– It was ideas I came up with which Eddie turned into a song . As opposed to a lot of the other ones which are written by Eddie so that’s what makes it a very different feel.
E-The problem is without the vocals, it is so hypnotic and introspective, you fall asleep halfway through!
S– The bleeping itself is the drums. If you listen to the stuff that’s on the album and also when we play live; there’s extra stuff. The string stuff is basically my input to it. Listen to the other tracks, most of the stuff written is Eddie.
E– But quite a lot of them happen on guitar. They start out as sort of goth tracks and we do have goth version of the various songs that make people do a double take. You get the other snobby lot, that say ‘Oh electro music, you just push a button and it does it all for you’. Not quite and they’d probably dance to it in a club if the drum pattern underneath wasn’t four to the floor and if it was Fields of the Nephilin style guitars. What they don’t realise is that its changed from plonk plonk plonk to bleep bleep bleep.
S– If someone wants to decide whether its live or not. I will sit down at the piano and play ’Brave New World’.LyricsK– Talking lyrics, who writes them?
S– Both of us, Eddie tends to do more of it because he’s much better at bad goth poetry.
(Eddie laughs)K– The ’Ben Hur’ quote, who chose that?
E– Er...I did. The reason being the whole song ’Faceless’. The fact that when we’re dead no one remembers what we look like and I think it was the Mission who said that ’names are for tombstones baby’.K– So what’s with the anti-war stance?
E– ‘Underfire’ is from a guy I knew who did a tour of duty in Afghanistan. I won’t name him but he was telling me what happens when you shoot someone and they basically die of suffocation. It was so shocking, I actually went away and was reading a lot of the war poets from WW1. I was stunned that we’re not stupid and yet we’re allowing this to go on.Cover VersionsK– Are you going to play ‘Rebel Yell’ tonight?
E– Originally we did it as a joke! Don’t get me wrong, we like Billy Idol, he’s a good old punk singer and he made punk quite interesting in the middle of the ‘80s and sort of brought it back to accessibility.
– That’s the thing with covers, its got to be in the style of the band that’s doing it. Else there’s no point.
E– You want to sort of set yourself apart from the busker in the street really!
S– We’re never going to do VNV covers or Covenant covers or anything like that because they’re so similar.
E– Well early VNV! They’ve all moved onto something different now.
S- I was thinking we could do some Oasis or something…
E– No! I never liked that shit the first time round.K– How about ‘Song 2’, Blur?
S– Yeah possibly (Eddie pulls face)...Eddie doesn’t like the idea (giggles).
E– But it has to be a song we like as well though.
S- ‘Chop Suey’!
E-’Bella Legosi’s Dead’.
S– I mean if you’re going to play the original, you might as well put the CD on the juke box and walk away or jump around and pretend!
E– We know a couple of bands who do that!
S– I don’t fucking mind!
E– When he plays a bum note, the whole song turns into bum notes.K– I’m sort of done with the questions so good luck for tonight and can you burp and fart at the same time?
S– I don’t know, can you burp and not fart?
E– I’ve been in the same room when he’s been drinking Guinness and it’s not nice!
SatanSpace.com - Evil, Satanic, and Horror picturesA London band in need of a frightening female vocalist- Similar sounding to frontlady of Flowing Tears but also capable of squealing like a pig and other amateur dramatics...GUTS- Those in need of original sinful attire add you internal organs to my page. Found in the soon to be deceased Stables Market, Camden Town on a Friday. All garments handmade via my genuine Victorian black and gold Singer sewing machine. //break//