Bands, Bongs, BBQ’s, Horror, and Tour Tales: An Interview with Sewercide
Shootin’ shit with Tobi from Australia’s Sewercide following their killer debut album and crazy first US tour!
After years of pushing through more than their fair share of the trials and tribulations that many young metal bands face, 2016 has proved to be a huge year for Melbourne road warriors Sewercide. These young Aussies unleashed their ripping debut full-length album (reviewed here), got signed to TovH label of the year Unspeakable Axe Records (interview here), and made their way across the Pacific for an ambitious inaugural US tour. Tobi (Vocalist/Bassist) from the band was a total mad dog and spent a bit of his time in between tours answering some questions for us about the band, the road, and the metal way of life.
Lacertilian: How the fark are ya mate?
Tobi: Not too bad, just staying busy and working my ass off paying debts and whatnot post tour.
Sickest and shittest moments during the US tour?
Shred!
This tour had its fair share of ups and down, through every shitty moment we encountered, every bad experience we endured, there was always the light of friendships and good times at the end of every dark tunnel. Whether it was consolidating long friendships over many a beer and copious amounts of weed whilst gambling, or just raging hard to a sick band. I am sure everyone had their own personal favourite tour moment, for me the worst moment was the 22hr bus ride from Phoenix to Dallas, that shit suuuuuucked. There are so many great moments that I will cherish forever and it’s hard to choose. but partying in Philly with the sickest cunts, getting drunk and high till the wee hours of the morning gambling in eternal sick cunt Mike Simps basement turned bar, or when we got to smoke weed with Matt from Dark Descent while watching Undergang jam with the Spectral Voice and Deathwound zine legends! Both those memories are ultimate, along with many others!
Tell us about the mad dog known as Jerrod..
This fukken unholy beast quit his job on two days notice to drive a bunch of Aussie cunts around his country and rose to the challenge gallantly and with great force! Seriously I can barely put into words how fukken special this cunt is, very few people that I have met in my life have displayed the outright maniacism of a true warrior like Jerrod, and the pure dedication to the underground… and total madness! ABSOLUTE FUKKEN MAD CUNT!
Do you have a fave track to play live?
Personally my favourite track to play live is “Acrimoniously Disharmonized”, the cannibal blasts at the start are just too damn headbangin’.
[Track 5 on the bandcamp embed above]
“One of our guitarists didn’t get let into the country, our driver flaked less than week before the tour was meant to start, we flew a buddy from Detroit to help us drive, caught a 22hr bus ride from Phoenix to Dallas, bought a car, had to replace radiator and thermostat on said car, slept in a wallmart parking lot and last night we played our first show in Florida.” (excerpt from Sewercide’s Facebook page)
Who’dya reckon is the craziest band you’ve played with? Which bands would be on your ideal tour?
The most profound experience I had watching a band was seeing Spectral Voice totally crush in their home town Denver for the Undergang tour kickoff, I was so high ’cause of the altitude and had been looking forward to seeing that shit live since that show got announced…fukken blew me away, supreme heaviness! Fuck man getting to tour with Cannibal Corpse would be absolute! Best fukken band on the planet!
Say you wanted to show them the real Australia, would you want the shows to be pub gigs or backyard barbys?
Dude, Cannibal at a backyard show would be probably the best experience of my life hahaha! The best shows to play here are DIY spots for the most part. With the exception of a few killer venues, for the most part it’s always way funner and a much more personal show to play non-venue shows.
What was the first thing you did after returning home? What did you miss most?
SMOKING A FUKKEN CONE IN ONE RIP!
Hahah, I can relate to that one big time! What’s your standard bong choice – Glass, Ceramic, or grotty Orchy juice bottle?
I don’t really get a choice in bongs, hahah! We are broke as fuck, I mean ideally who the hell doesn’t want to fuck with a glass-on-glass double chambered motherfucker of a bong?! In reality, what I rock my lungs with is just a simple plastic tube duct taped to a repurposed glass spice jar. It ain’t much but it gets the job done and that’s all I care about at this point.
YES DUDE! Man, we went through all 3 states in the US where it was legal, and stepping into those places is insane. The cunts behind the counters have gone to like weed college or some shit ’cause they know everything about everything there is to know about weed, hahaha. We made sure to get well stocked up on all sorts of different strains and potencies before we left Colorado, and the subsequent venture out into the desert headed to the west coast got very “interesting” at times, haha.
Which Aussie tucker do you think would have the best chance of becoming regular on a US menu? Conversely, did you try any grub over there that you think needs to be brought back here?
I’m not sure what Aussie “food” would break in the US market, but I can tell you that if you aren’t having Vegemite on toast for breakfast at the very least once a week you are fucking up. MAN! The vegan mac’n’cheese pizza me and Jerrod had in Salem (MA) was INSANE.
Agreed on the Vegemite! We had a metal crazy German chick stay at our house a few years ago and when I cooked up some scrambled eggs for a hungover brekky she asked for Vegemite instead of salt. I’d never heard of this before but she said her parents did it, and now I don’t have scrambled eggs without it. As a mad stoner, do you have any unconventional combos of food you’ve discovered which make top notch munchies?
Most of the food we eat I think would be considered unconventional to some hahah. Me and Tom have shared a pretty strong bond over the years via sauce bread. Simply pour ketchup over square bread, fold, and enjoy (Hot Tip: add Smith’s crinkle cut original chips for maximum pleasure).
Ahhh, the old chip sanga, can’t beat it! Immortalized In Suffering was a bloody ripper of an album, was there much of a theme connecting the songs at all? 
Thanks heaps dude! It is the end product of many months of bongs, sweat and beers. There isn’t a cohesive theme behind it all if you mean like all the songs are linked in a common story, more so I believe the album is just a testament for us for having made it through so many rough times and still prevailing, and having a product which we are so personally involved and invested that we are all very proud of. It is an ode to the underground, a display of resilience and overcoming adversity as individuals, and as a group that’s why we named the album Immortalized in Suffering because all our hardest times, the ones that almost broke us, are the ones that made this happen and of course nothing is actually immortal but as long as we are on this planet it will be, and that’s all that matters to us.
You guys used a couple of movie samples during the album, including one from The Exorcist series. Which film series do you think is the most metal?
I’m not sure about which is the most metal but I can tell you that the 3rd is fucking phenomenal, while you should completely ignore and not watch the second one which is a huge stinker. Of course though, how could you go past the original? It is absolutely untouchable and to this day is disturbing, plus if we are talking most metal… Sadistic Intent – Morbid Faith, c’mon!
What do you reckon is the best Aussie flick?
Fuck that’s a hard question. We have a long history with some pretty crucial movies, you can’t really go past the Mad Max movies, all 4 (yes cunt, ALL 4) of them are so sick! My personal favourite though would have to be either Body Melt or Bad Boy Bubby both those movies are fukken mental good!
Turkka Rantanen’s album art for Immortalized In Suffering was a great throwback to that early 90’s death metal style, how did working with him come about? Did you give him any directions as to what you were after for the cover?
Working with Turkka was so sick, easily one of the most easy to deal with and talented as fuck artists out there still to this fukken day! We have had this artwork for a while originally commissioning it as part of a split that fell through a while back, and then we were going to use it as the cover for another split but ultimately felt that it was best suited for the cover of our LP, I mean fukken look at it?! Sooooo sick! It was a long time ago so I don’t remember exactly how everything went down, but I am 80% sure we gave no directions and his sick twisted mind produced a sketch that we couldn’t help but approve!
Say you cobbas were asked to do a cover track for a tribute album of one of your fave bands, which track would you choose and why?
Ooo good question! If it ever happened it would be fukken sick to cover “Existence” by Sadistic Intent or “Funeral for the Deceased” by Necrotomy, both those songs are total jammers!
Sewercide have had to go through a few lineup changes already, were there ever any times when you thought you’d have to pull the plug on it?
So far, not including times we have had to replace members for a particular show because someone couldn’t make it, we are at 12 different lineups in 6 years. Hahaha, shit has been hectic and finding the right maniacs to join us in our crusade of death has been hard and there have definitely been times where you wonder if it would just be easier to drink yourself to oblivion and work a job for the rest of your miserable life, but those moment are few and fleeting. This band has been our lives for the last 6 years, spending every moment thinking about what to do next, practising, jamming and to give it all up because of a bit of hardship is bullshit, grow a back bone and carry yourself with integrity! There used to be a time when people dedicated their lives to this shit, where the fuck have all the maniacs gone?
Any news about the upcoming split you mentioned? Will it be through deadset legends Unspeakable Axe Records?
Our good mate Demonskull has released our split with Seattle ultra-homies Of Corpse, and that shit is almost sold out, so if you want a copy hurry the fukk up and buy that shit off the Demonskull Records big cartel! After that we have a split coming out with the good cunts Cemetery Filth which will feature the first song we recorded with the album lineup, and yes, it will be coming out through the legends at UAR! TOTAL SUPPORT! We also have a split with QLD sickos OCEAN OF ZERO which has been in planning for years now!
Which albums have been kicking your arse this year?
Church Of Disgust – Veneration Of Filth
Blood Incantation – Starspawn
Krypts – Remnants Of Expansion
Defeated Sanity – Disposal Of The Dead//Dharmata
Wormed – Krigshu
City Hunter – Knife Protocol
Stillborn Fawn – Norn
Nice! Starspawn has been very well received around these parts, and that upcoming Krypts rules. Haven’t heard those last two though, will have to check them out. Now, let’s say you’ve come down real crook after a big night sinking tins and you don’t feel like listening to metal, what do you spin?
Lately I have been getting into a lot of old 70’s and 80’s Euro movie soundtracks as well as some other cooked shit like that, Alessandro Alessandrini’s Prisma Sonoro and Mort Garson’s Plantasia are always on heavy rotation.
Finally, is there anything you wanna say to the dirty dunny dwellers reading this?
Never give up, never surrender. Support the underground forever.
Show your support for these champs by heading over to their bandcamp page and picking up a copy of Immortalized In Suffering if you haven’t already, while you’re there you can thrash your way through ALL their previous releases as they’re Name Your Price, and drop them some well-deserved dap/to keep up to date with the band on their Facebook page.
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