Got-A-Nerve?

12/19/2009 | Started out with a sonic bang (maybe unexpected by the band) TO KILL are now one of those names the Italian hardcore scene must be most proud of.
The Romans are really a bunch of hard-working and passionate dudes who really believe in hardcore as a means for raising some consciousness among the kids on issues like animal and human rights. TO KILL is to honesty as Xs are to straightedge; you just can’t imagine one without the other. And they put 110% in what they do showing that the line-up problems they faced recently are not gonna keep the band in hold.
Waiting for the new album (the guys are now recording new stuff which will be included in the follow-up to 2008’s “When Blood Turns To Stone”) we talked about a host of topics like the new EP Maelström, their appearance at this year Fluff Fest and much more with singer Josh. Ok, read on and make sure to check the guys out on their upcoming Euro tour with Shai Hulud and Endwell.

GAN!: Your new EP “Maelström” is finally out. Mind talking about it?

Josh: Yeah it's finally out and it's awesome. The old full length was out since a year and before releasing a new one we wanted to release some new tunes to keep everything active, so we were thinking of what we could do and we had in mind the idea of releasing an EP. We decided to make a benefit release since the fight for animal rights is an issue that is vital for us from the beginning and Sea Shepherd seemed the right organization to devolve the benefit to. In the ep there are 2 new tunes and an old song re-recorded plus a final spoken word by Greg Bennick from Trial.

GAN!: Trial’s Greg Bennick make a guest appearance on this EP with a spoken word piece. How this collaboration come about?

Josh: Trial is definitely one of the bands that influenced us the most since day one. Even before putting To Kill together we were all huge Trial fans. Plus Greg is one of the most awesome and solid person we know and we felt like: alright, he has an awesome voice, his way of talking and expressing concept just catch you and touches your heart plus he is really hot, so we asked him to make a guest in one of the song and to record the spoken word and then came out what you can hear in Maelström.

GAN!: Beginning of your career you guys got the chance to play famous Hellfest. Any plans to do a full U.S. jaunt or overseas dates in the near future?

Josh: Yeah our first show outside of Rome was in US. It actually wasn’t in Hellfest but in the same town. It was a new years party and we were sharing the stage with band such as Path Of Resistance, Champion, Most Precious Blood, Bane and many more. 2 days before we played with Verse and Have Heart when they were at the very beginning. Those 2 shows were really good of course especially if you consider that we were just starting the band. We don’t have any plans to go in the US so far, we know we would love to but I guess it would make no sense to go by ourselves. It would be just way too expensive... we'll see what the future holds...

GAN!: In your view what are the main differences (if any) between Euro hardcore and USA HC?

Josh: I always felt like in the European HC scene the politics and ethic had a bigger influence than in the American scene. Beside that nowadays it's hard to say cause it's hard to define the HC scene. You could play 3 different shows in the same city with 3 different type of bands and the people will be always different so it's hard to say. American bands often say European shows are better, but I don’t really know. Every time I was in US I saw pretty good shows and I also met really amazing people while travelling. Same thing happened in Europe. so well...no clue!

GAN!: You guys just played at annual Fluff fest. How did that go? I know it’s not your first time, how does it feel like for you to play this festival?

Josh: It went awesome. Yeah it was actually the third time and it was great. We headlined the Friday and I have to say I was really nervous about that. We played so many shows in so many places and I’m ok most of the time. I just usually can’t wait to play and I’m excited. But this time I was nervous the whole day. It was like playing our first show again. It was a really hard day but while we were playing I felt so good and the show was great it was just awesome. I guess you need to feel like this every now and then.

GAN!: From what I learned checking your myspace out you guys are still without bass-player. Who have been filling in thus far and how do you manage to keep the band going anyway? How this affects your band?

Josh: First we had some friends filling playing bass. But in the last months there is a guy that is becoming one of us. His name is Fausto and he plays also in a band called Hardway. He is not from Rome but from Trento and he is just awesome! We are being extra careful before making anything official cause we are seriously like a family and we want whoever will end up playing with us to be part of this and also to have similar point of views of us towards a bunch of things. We are really happy about the way how things are developing with Fausto and who knows...see you in the next episode ;)

GAN!: Since the very beginning it’s not a secret that To Kill fight for the rights of animals and support worldwide pro-animals organizations like PETA and other groups pro-earth and humans rights. This new EP is a benefit to rise money and support Seashepherd (an international non-profit, marine wildlife conservation organization -www.seashepherd.org). How this project come about and what are your expectation on this?

Josh: We have always been supporter of this group at a personal level but the support that you could give as a single broke HC kid is not much but the visibility you could give them with a band and the support you can give trough a benefit is totally on another level.
The ep is going pretty good. After the first 6 weeks we were able to donate 900 dollars which is a pretty good result I think.
We will keep pushing it and promoting this organization cause we think they really need support.

GAN!: I remember To Kill got a lot of hype from the start. What was your initial reaction?

Josh: To be honest we didn’t expect To Kill to go so good since the beginning. We started cause we wanted to have a band together just cause we were really close friends and played in other bands before...we didn’t know what would have happened, we just knew we wanted to make experiences together and it turned out that those experiences in the end were a looooot!

GAN!: Many hardcore bands don’t stay around for a long time.
What keeps To Kill rocking after all these years?

Josh: I guess this friendship behind just being musicians and the fact that we really love to do this is what kept us around for so long. Sometime it's exhausting sometime it seems like everything goes in the other direction but then you think about playing, you think about meeting awesome people on the road playing awesome shows and having fun and everything else just doesn’t count and you just can’t find a reason to quit.

GAN!: I guess you guys ticked most of the items in your “things to do” list, right? What else you wanna achieve with this band?

Josh: I have to say that every time we said "how cool would it be to ...."in the end pretty much always happened...we still have some dreams, you always need to have dreams or things get boring;) some are secret but I think the desire of keep travelling and seeing the world, having fun together and simple old stuff like this is something that never gets old.

Check: myspace.com/tokill

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Category: Interviews
Posted by: marcs77