Bludgeon – Chicago's Death Sledgehammer

Bludgeon's debut album – "Crucify The Priest", was a solid slab of death metal that resembled the impact of a sledgehammer to the forehead , the band's long awaited second studio release – "World Controlled", is more like a truncheon to the balls, it still hurts like hell, but it wont kill you. The band's vocalist and guitarist – Mark Duca, took the time explaining the shift from the debut album's death metal to the current one's thrash/hardcore direction, and also gave his opinion on the current state of things in the US.

Hey Mark, why is the new album called "World Controlled"?

Its because we are controlled by governments, by the "powers that be", they follow us using video surveillance, tap our phones, keep records of everything that we do, that is a "World Controlled".

Do you refer specifically to the current Bush administration?

Yea, that's a definite yes; this administration has been doing unimaginable things with regards to our right to privacy, more so than any previous administration.

Back to the new album, its very different than your debut – "Crucify The Priest", that album had a different cover style, a different band logo, and different music, was that change intentional?

Yea, we wanted to go in a different direction this time, we wanted somewhat of a more approachable album, its still brutal, still heavy, but I guess its more "crowd-friendly". "Crucify" was a brutal death metal album, it was heavy as hell, had blast beats, this one is more thrash oriented, it has more groove.

Your vocals also come off as quite different.

I worked a lot on the vocals this time, it's not a simple death metal growl, it has more color and more texture. I don’t really plan in advance how will an album sound, but that's the direction that the album took off to, and I'm very pleased with it.

It reminded me at times of such bands as "Exhorder".

I cant say that any other band was an influence on me when writing the stuff, I usually cut myself of any external influences when writing a new album, I try not listening to any kind of music so it wont find itself in the music that I write, so I cant really say I was influenced in any way by another band, I like doing my own thing.

Another thing that might have influenced the change in the band is the line up change since "Crucify".

Yea, well, Chewy and Eric left because they just weren’t into it anymore, I don’t like using that old "musical differences" horsehit but I guess that's what it was. So I got the new guys, and I'm very happy with the way things are right now in the band, it's again a family kind of thing, there's a good vibe.

Do you write all of the material for the band?

For the existing two albums, yea, but in the next album I think that will change and we will have output from everyone, in this album I may have written the material but the guys change and contribute stuff in the studio, if they think a riff should sound different, or a vocal line, then we change it, its very much a group thing.

Since moving into a more approachable kind of music, did you consider also using clean melodic vocals, as many metalcore bands currently do?

No, that's not my thing, I like the music and the vocals aggressive as hell, that's what I like, I'm not saying that might not be used in the future, if one of the guys in the band would want to use some backing melodic vocals or something, we'll consider it, but I'm not gonna do that. I don’t have anything against those bands that do so, the metalcore bands you mentioned, but we don’t do the same thing.

Is there a message behind the band's uncompromising brutality, musically and lyrically?

I want people to wake up, I want those listening to understand what's fucked up with this world and wake up. Our music is also a way for me to vent my own frustrations and anger, but I hope the people coming to our shows do the same; I want them to vent the steam during our shows so they can go on after that and feel happy.

Are you live shows are extreme as your music?

Definitely! After a show I usually cant move my neck from all that head banging, my voice comes off as a whisper, I'm a wreck. We give everything we have at the shows.

What about current touring, do you have any summer festivals planned?

We have some stuff planned, but nothing official yet, I can't wait to get on the road and start doing it, that's why I'm in this, for the shows. It's been about 6 or 7 months since we toured, we had to record the new album, the guys needed to learn the old stuff, but now we're ready and can't wait for it to happen.

I noticed that the new album was not released by Metal Blade, who released "Crucify", why is that?

The new album is distributed by SPV Records, I can't say I understand exactly how it works but that's something that our label, Magic Circle Music planned up, and they wanted to get us better distribution, get our album to be sold in more places. I don’t really know how well that's going as of now, but I know we've been getting a lot more reviews and doing more interviews so I guess its working fine.

You hail from Chicago, is there an active metal scene there?

Yea, we have quite a lot of Death metal bands here, as well as metalcore, we don’t enough decent radio station that plays metal, just one, and that's fucked up, all you get on the radio is crap like Brittney Spears, and that's not even music man!

I know, it’s the same here in Israel; all you get on the radio is mainstream crap.

That's shit, I don’t even call that music, you can see those guys lip-synching when supposedly doing a "live" show…I hope that will change sometime…