Chton was formed in Trondheim, Norway, back in 1999, but we all had backgrounds in other bands before that. Two of us came from a dirty and primitive black metal band, and the other two came from a pure old-school thrash band. All of us were heavily into death metal too, and that's the direction we wanted Chton to take. We wanted to create stuff that was brutal and aggressive, but still was drenched in darkness and had a certain sinister atmosphere - without any overly melodic leadguitars and blankets of synths. 

We usually just say we play death metal, but when we need to be a little more specific we say we play dark and brutal death metal. As for influences and bands that has inspired us, that's always a challenge to list. We've all been listening to all sorts of metal since we were kids, so bands like Slayer, Motörhead, Bathory, Judas Priest, Celtic Frost, WASP etc could be mentioned, but as for more genre-specific stuff I guess I could name Immolation, Morbid Angel, Darkthrone, Vader, Entombed and so on.

Because they've heard us and enjoy our shit.

We recorded our first demo "First blood" in 2001, but our vocalist back then chose to quit just before the recording, so it remained instrumental and was never released officially. Our first official demo was released in 2002, and got us signed to Retribute Records. That 2002 self-titled demo held just two tracks, "Book of Black Earth and "Crawling Chaos", and before we went on to record our debut album for Retribute Records, those two demo-tracks appeared on a split-cassette with Supreme Lord from Poland (on Time Before Time Records) and on multiple compilations around the world.

We released our debut album "Chtonian Lifecode" in 2004, and got a lot of good feedback from our peers and from press. The BBC Radio1 legend John Peel played several tracks from our debut on his show, and we got namedropped by the infamous namedropper Fenriz of Darkthrone. We were proud that we got joined by Attila Csihar (Mayhem) and Frediablo (Gorelord/ex-Necrophagia) on guest vocals, and we did a lot of gigs to support the release of the album.

Many years went by, and many bandmembers came and went, but we kept a steady pace jamming and creating new stuff. In 2006 we recorded three tracks as a promo for labels only called "Death Awaits", which was the only recording with our former drummer Vegar Vyl (Keep of Kalessin/Gorgoroth). As a little preview before our sophomore album "The Devil builds" that was released by Godeater Records in September 2012, we did a digital only split-single called "Screaming for Death" with our comrades in Cleaver. That's about it at this point in time, I guess. Right now it's "The Devil builds" full force!

 

We've played a lot of gigs throughout the years, and we've shared a stage with bands like Morbid Angel, Behemoth, Mayhem, Amon Amarth, Zyklon and many more. We feel our music really comes to form in a live-setting, as that is where the aggression and energy can be unleashed for real.

This is hard to answer. The music should speak for itself, and that should really be the only reason ... but that's quite the cliché, I guess. We're not just another second-rate copycat that try our best to clone other bands. We're comfortable within the frames of the death metal genre, but we've never felt limited by it. We try to make crushing music, and maybe someone hears our stuff and feels the same way. 

We've got a few gigs lined-up, and it seems we'll get a chance to bring our freakshow a few places we've never been in the near future. We'll also try to start writing more songs for a new album very soon, to try to keep the gap between releases from growing as it has in the past. We've got some killer songs more-or-less finished allready, so we're excited to focus on this and spread more disease and devestation to willing listeners.

Our latest album "The Devil builds" can be heard at streaming-services like Spotify and WiMP, and can be found in all major digital stores. We've also made a video teaser featuring excerpts from several songs from the album, so it's out there for those who wanna check us out. If you don't find "The Devil builds" at your local metal merchant, you can go to facebook.com/GodEaterRec to see a list of distributors and find your local pusher. You can also visit us at facebook.com/chton666, twitter.com/chtonband and youtube.com/chtonband

October 2012