A lot of time has passed since Eufobia’s debut album, “Cup of Mud”, came out. A great deal of this time was filled by numerous concerts in Bulgaria and other places (mostly other places, though) , but lately the band lacked any activity. And as I was sitting there thinking how a good band like that most probably broke up due to the usual reasons, the duded announces the upcoming release of their second offering – “Insemination”. And Niki (vocals, guitars) is good enough to fill me up on what has been going on with the band lately…
- You have your second album on the way, tell me about it – when and where did you record it?
- We began working on our new album in the end of 2008 but unfortunately things dragged a bit. We recorded it in Stain Studio in Sofia with Deso Velchev (who has worked with Fyeld, The Revenge Project, Last Hope, Crowfish – the author). It will be out in January for sure. Probably in the middle of the month. We aren’t really sure when this will happen in Bulgaria, though. But what’s sure is that we do have a date from our tour with Negura Bunget towards the end of January here. And by then there will be an album ready for sure. I cannot guarantee that it will be available at stores at this time but people will be able to buy as many copies as they want at the show.
- Looking at the title, “Insemination”, and the names of half the songs (hmm, here’s a few – “Vibrator”, “Never Innocent Again” and in that context “Blindfold” and “Pissing Squad” also receive e different meaning – the author) I get the impression that it will be quite an erotic album…
- Eroticism is a quite old topic for Eufobia. This is basically the concept of the band. We sneak in a social lyric or two from time to time too. But sex is an important thing and should not be underestimated. And in regards of the porno themes in this album – the lyrics were quite erotic even before but apparently we hid it better. If you have time to pay attention to the metaphors you’ll see that sex was a major theme in “Cup of Mud” as well.
- You had a naked woman on the cover after all, although she was drawn.
- I’ll let it be known that there is something similar on the new cover too, although a bit stranger. It’ll have teeth.
Eufobia giving you the dark look while thinking of insemination.
- The cover has been done by some dude who has painted for some quite serious bands before (mentioning Obituary and Megadeth is enough, isn’t it? – the author). How did you get in touch with him and what is the idea behind the artwork?
- Ever since we signed with the Romanian label Axa Valaha we don’t have to get in touch with anyone. They do it for us. The dude is named Costin Chioreanu and I have been a fan of his for a while now. He has his own studio Twilight13 Media. He does some quite serious work. He heard the album and became really enthusiastic about working on its cover. We already have received a working version of the cover and it is awesome. I hope that people who buy this will like it as well. They might buy the CD for the cover alone, to be honest.
- You say that the album will be releases by Axa Valaha – who are these people and what have they done so far?
- The organized our club tour in Romania a few years ago and after that we have met at numerous shows here and there. They are more of a booking agency. They have organized shows for Sinister, Cannibal Corpse, God Dethroned, Rotting Christ, Suffocation, Misery Index, Lividity and many others. But the label also releases a lot of Romanian bands and definitely has the resources and experience, needed to put out a good release. There was this really popular band in Romania – Avatar, whose manager now works for us. And the man definitely knows what he is doing.
- Looking from the outside in it seems that you worked really well with your former management by Distributor of Pain – they organized shows fro you all over Bulgaria and they were the ones that brought you to Romania in the first place. So, why change them?
- Yes, they did take us out there but from that point on all that we have done has been organized with the aid of our Romanian friends. We could say we are really displeased with the management because next to nothing was done for us for quite some time now. Especially since the tour with Onslaught and Carnal, in Bulgaria there was nothing happening around us. And if it wasn’t for our Romanian friends who organized shows for us and invited us to play festivals, this band would have been dead. And we really thank them for that. We play a somewhat weirder type of music that isn’t that well accepted in Bulgaria for some reason. No bad feelings – we aren’t making a demonstration for in front of the fans, we don’t want to provoke anyone or say something – it is just that we found a country that is not our own and where we are very well accepted. We are really happy when we play in Bulgaria and things turn out good. But especially our present management has organized some quite serious tours for us and we have a lot of playing ahead of us in Eastern, Central and Western Europe. I hope that things work out just fine here as well. People who listen to similar music just have to be a little bit more open minded.
“Hey, look! Someone dropped 50 cents!”
- You have mentioned that the band started out as nu-metal. Is anything from that period still present in Eufobia now?
- No, absolutely none of that is left now. In the moment we are absolute death metal, although a somewhat different kind of it. What’s interesting is that we include some motives from Bulgarian folklore music that surprisingly aren’t that much liked in Bulgaria. But as much as we have some experience in other countries where people are more open minded this is something that does impress the audience. And maybe this is why we got noticed by a label abroad – because we are different. In the first album there were songs like “Believer” that featured some really crooked melodies. In the new one there’s plenty more of this. Almost every song is in some compound times common for Bulgarian folklore and there are all kinds of melodies and things that get stuck in your consciousness.
- “Pissing Squad” however is way more of a straightforward track that doesn’t really have such moments. Why did you pick it for a single and a pilot video?
- That’s just how it turned out. We simply like the song a lot. But this is actually our second video that we shot. We did a video for “Justine” – that’s another song off the new album. But we really don’t know what the fate of the video will be. The label didn’t really like it and there is a high possibility that we will be filming a brand new one for that song. Anyway – Justine is a character from a book by Marquis de Sade. The book by the same name is something that later became the ground for Eufobia’s philosophy. The b and was born at the time when I discovered the author through exactly this book, but the song was born way later in its present shape and form. It is about this chick that has a lot of things happen to her and she is really pure and innocent, but the things that do happen to her aren’t exactly that pure…
- She gets fucked a lot?
- Hard!
- And does the video happen to be something like Rammstein’s last one then?
- No. We shot it in some crypts. The reason we and the label didn’t like it that much is because it didn’t capture the essence of the song. It was just people chasing each other in shit. There were a lot of interesting things that happened and it was fun to do. But yeah, basically one of the things that we weren’t lucky enough for it to work out well were the videos. The one for “Pissing Squad” also was supposed to have some extra scenes in it but we had trouble and it was left unfinished.
- Well, again looking from the sides, and from the point of view of a lot of bands here in Bulgaria, despite saying you don’t really have many fans here, this contract you have and the upcoming tour makes you look quite successful…
- Well, the good connections we have we owe to the great reception by the Romanian audience and the fact that we did play there for some time. To some extent people over there stopped perceiving us as a foreign band, especially in some parts of Transylvania. It is the most natural thing for us to have a Romanian label release our albums after we have become a part of their scene to a certain extent. And if a Bulgarian band wants to be in our place they should not make the mistake most bands do of having too much of high requirements and pretentions at first. Especially in the beginning it is important to decide what you want to give to this music, instead of what they want to receive from it. If someone thinks that you can make a profit from this – they have got the wrong idea – everything is total rock’n roll. There are thousands of bands across the world. If a band wants to win people over in some way, especially abroad, it should have something of its own, something that makes it recognizable. Because if you make music that is exactly like the one the local bands make… people will just listen to their local bands instead.
The pics are taken from the band’s MySpace profile. The one at the top is by The Other Side.
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