It is Friday night. The promotional show for O.H.’s debut album titled “Justice” is about to begin. I, vocalist Joro and drummer Bambi go in front of the mandatory place for interviews with bands that play in The Box – the MRF headquarters. The dudes explain what they can about the band. And what I get around to asking…
- You are releasing an album. Tell me about it – how long did it take to record, where, when, how?
Joro: The album is titled “Justice” and consists of 11 songs. We recorded it in Sub Zero Studio for three or four months or something. Then we sent the recordings to Mastervargas – some dude from the USA. He did the mastering. We are quite satisfied. We did what we intended to.
- I was interested why does a band that has existed for 10 years no releases its debut just now?
Joro: The problem was purely a financial one. I will not say how much the album cost us to make but it is a four-digit number. And the first digit isn’t 1. But at a certain point things grew enough and we managed to do it.
Bambi: It was really hard to do but it worked out.
Joro: We did things in steps, one at a time. First we gathered money to organize things and make the recording. Then we gathered money for mastering, and then for CDs and lastly we gathered cash to pay for the covers. There was no way we could have come up with it at once and this did slow us down.
- And why is it named “Justice”? Just a song from it that you really like or there’s a deeper meaning?
Jore: We live in Absurdistan and this is the main thing that is missing. This is something I talked about with a friend last night. If a policeman rings my doorbell at the middle of the night I am not opening the door for him. Because it is not going to be a policeman but someone else. And it is definitely the main thing that is absent in this country. It is what we are surrounded with, no matter if we are at work, on the street, anywhere you like. Our style suggests an extra dose of aggression so this topic suits us well.
- You also shot a video for that song if I am not mistaken?
Joro: Yes we did. We shot it with this dude from Fault. Misho is his name. We did shoot the material but now someone has to master it and this costs money. So we wait. We expect it to be done in a month or so. It will not be something mind blowing but we are trying to extract the maximum from what we have.
O.H. don’t open their doors to policemen at night…
- For the nine years O.H. has been active I think only Kiki has stayed since the original lineup?
Bambi: I and Kiki stayed. In the beginning it was just fun. Quite a few people went through the band but I don’t find the point in listing them all now. It is around five or six people. We always had trouble with bass players.
- There was this moment a few years ago when the band clearly shifted its sound towards a more direct and hardcore sounding direction. This was pretty much when Joro joined – did he bring that with him?
Bambi: That was sometime in 2006-07.
Joro: When I came the vocalist was the only missing link in the band.
Bambi: We had some songs prepared back then and he just came and sung over them. Then we continued further in that direction.
Joro: They had instrumental tracks ready and I screamed over them. And from there on we got into this somewhat different direction. But it is not something I myself brought to the band.
- Do you still play some of the older songs?
Bambi: This night we will play a song from our fists demo – 2001, just to make a clear comparison for the people at the show what the band was about then and now. We will play a brand new song right after that. And there is the song “Nightmare” from that demo that we still play but after having re-worked it a bit. It was one of the best songs from that period so we didn’t want to leave it behind.
- Besides this show in Sofia now, do you have some plans for upcoming shows in other cities?
Joro: For now we are only planning. We have ideas.
Bambi: We have ideas, we are working on it, but we do not know when it is going to happen.
Joro: basically after this show e will be taking a bit of a break. Then step by step we will start organizing something. We will play like 6-7 dates in different cities. This will most likely happen when the video comes out as well, so it will work out just fine.
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