Frozen Blood – “…labels asking if the demo or EP was going to be released soon and I told them very soon, but in reality I didn’t have anything…”

If you visit our fanzine regularly, you should be aware of the fact we have a soft spot for Death Metal from South America, especially Chile. “It is all riff-heavy, riff-oriented and riff-driven. Yet, due to the use of some eerie sounding keyboards or other sound effects, it doesn’t sound like the umpteenth band doing the Old School thing”; a well-described phrase to introduce Frozen Blood towards our readers. I’m firing a couple of questions at Sick Stabber, the multi-instrumentalist who is forming Frozen Blood alongside Devoured of Christian Souls, the vocalist. As it is a just formed act, let’s start at the beginning…

The band started last winter when there were many days when it was raining non-stop, I decided to start composing with my guitar and an old Casio keyboard for the drums and crazy sounds, then I drew the cover of the zombie with the spear through his skull and the band’s logo, it was all very fast, then I asked my friend to record the vocals and we scheduled a session in the studio, it was all very fast, I wanted to do something classic and totally self-managed, so I took care of everything, music and the cover.

The main idea was to do something brutal, no more no less, write violent lyrics without fear of judgement, clearly in metal it won’t be frowned upon but if I made my mother in law listen to the band’s songs she would probably have a heart attack, murder, perversion, revenge, stabbings, dismemberment and rottenness, there was nothing too far fetched, this is simple, it’s old school Death Metal. Influences could be Mayhem’s ‘Deathcrush’, the old Cannibal Corpse, also at that time I was listening to a lot of Spectral Voice so that’s where the idea of the clean guitars came from.

Concerning Old School Death Metal, which releases you consider as fundamental?
For me, the fundamental ones are: ‘Several Survival’, also ‘Seven Churches’, ‘Tomb of the Mutilated’, ‘Deathcrush’, ‘Slowly we Rot’, there are also many others but I think mainly these would be important influences, the classics always will be.

We’d like to hear everything about your debut release ‘Revenge’…
So far these are the editions that have been made and I do not think I will accept more because there are already many and the idea is not to saturate the market hahaha:
Dry Cough (UK): Tape
Diabolical Summoning (Chile): Tape
Death in Pieces (Mexico): Tape/Cd
Frozen Screams (USA): Tape
Excarnation (Brazil): Cd
Adirondack Blackmass: Vinyl.

The truth is that some labels talked to me and I wrote to others, it was a lot of fun because first I recorded the promo single “Revenge” and uploaded it to youtube through the Death Madness channel and it was immediately well received, I think the keyboards gave it a different touch and made people like it, and the rest is fun because the only song I worked with time and without rushing was Revenge, after I uploaded it to youtube they started to contact me from fanzines and labels asking if the demo or Ep was going to be released soon and I told them very soon, but in reality I didn’t have anything, just some riffs, most bands record all the guitars of the whole songs, I recorded one song at a time complete (guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, vocals).

This was my rather experimental system: Monday we were scheduled to go to the studio, then on Sunday I would write the guitar riffs, and the drums, bass, keyboards were just in my head, on Monday on the way to the studio which was a 3 hour bus ride I would write the lyrics, and in the studio we would meet my friend and he would record vocals and I would record the instruments, basically that’s how it was with all the songs, I didn’t have much to think about, shit like “Will this be a good riff? “Is this going to be a good song or a bad song?”. All those questions and insecurities just didn’t exist, we knew this was going to be good shit and we liked to experiment with something like that, making the songs practically less than 24 hours before recording them.

Talking about the cover, I decided to use a different one for the full Ep, we had the impaled head so thinking about doing something different I thought about drawing something new, so my idea was to make an altar of some sick psychopath, some place where he worshipped his dead under his machete, I made a collage with images of real dead and drew over that, the original image is very Carcass style but I thought it would be better if it was a drawing, I did all this on the ipad and I think the result was really good, then I thought: “The head looks great for the tape editions and the altar will be perfect for the Cd or Vinyl”, finally the labels have released the tapes with both covers hahahahahahahah, I think it’s better, each edition is different from the other, there are collectors who have all the editions so far and in fact frozen screams released a special edition with toy body pieces, just for freakies.

The lyrics are mainly about killing people, I could make up a lot of things to seem more erudite in gore or psychopath movies or books, most of the songs are simply an escape of sick thoughts that we all have sometimes but we repress them because clearly it would not be right to go around killing everyone who crosses you, if I am a fan of horror, only one song has a true story, “Castración Violenta” is a story that happened in the 90’s here in South America, it was the story of a murderer who only had in his record other murderers, violators, drug dealers, his only goal was to kill these scumbags, he killed more than 15 people and it was proved that some of them he tortured to death, others he castrated while alive, all of them he dismembered and buried in the forest, then in jail he killed many others until he was finally killed, a good guy.

As said, you have released ‘Revenge’ on tape. Are you a collector yourself?
Personally, I only collect vinyl, and only if it’s something that blows my mind, I don’t buy shit that I won’t listen to, I like rock in general, jazz and many things, the cassette is a great format, unfortunately over time it loses quality, but I respect a lot the nostalgic of the format, I have friends with great collections of tapes but they don’t listen to them hahahahahah, I think it sucks to have something that you will not listen to, anyway, the vinyl of Revenge will be released at the end of the year in USA by Adirondack Blackmass.

What are your aspirations for your band’s future? Have you already penned any new songs?
So far we are focused on the ‘Revenge’ editions, we have to sell that material first before we think about something new, I think next year we will record the new material but for now we want to focus on this work.

If my information is correct, you aren’t (actively) involved with other acts and/or projects at the moment. Is this correct?
The truth is that we both have other active musical projects, we each have our own band and frozen blood is a separate project.

Are you connected to the music scene in any other way?
I consider myself a songwriter and I also work as an illustrator for some bands, it’s fun to be making logos or illustrations that are later printed in zines or demos.

Could you mention other bands from your region of Chile of which our readers should be aware of and explore?
Sure! Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of Chilean bands, the classics are already well known so I’ll recommend Chilean bands you should listen to: Sepulcrum, Suppression, Phantasmagore, Ripper, Horrifying, Rotten Tomb, Ancient Crypt, Mortify and Inanna. Totally recommended.

Also do you have favourite labels you always keep an eye on when they announce a new release? Any favourite printed / online zine
I really like what 20 Buck Spin does and also the special editions that good johnny does in Frozen Screams, one of my favorite illustrators lately is the Colombian julian mora, he does some really disgusting paintings, and to be honest we were recently interviewed by a Polish fanzine called Wydawnictwo Psycho and together with this one it has been the longest and most interesting interview we have answered, it shows when the interviewer has really researched the band and listened to the music in depth so good for you guys and good for the bands.

Thanks for your kind words! For me a great way to end this interview. Is there something I’ve forgotten to ask you which you would like to mention?
I would like to thank again for the interest in the band, to all the metal fans that have listened to the EP and have enjoyed it with some good beer, we can only say that the next work will be in the same line as this debut, we will just have fun as we did with ‘Revenge’, that’s what it’s all about, enjoy the music in our own way, from the underground, from the rotten graves, without looking for fame or money, just enjoy the metal.