MECHANICAL PARASITE
Hello, we have just met before your concert in the underground club „Saturator” in Warsaw, so tell me first of all about Mechanical Parasite’s members.Stanislav: Hi, I’m Satanislav, guitar player.
Kuba: Drummer
Adam: Guitarist
Monika: Bassist
Jędrzej: Vocalist
All right, let’s start with „immortal” question - about the story of your band. I realise that a lot of bands hate such questions in the interviews, so please answer me to hopefully having it quickly behind us ;)
Satanislav: I hope Adam will help me in answering. It all started with me buying a charger for the guitar multieffect. When I was coming back from the music shop I met Adam by chance.
Adam: That’s right, we met near our University and we talked about the fact that we both had long hair and about playing guitar together. Since that time we started to think about forming a band.
When did it happen exactly?
Satanislav: That was around October 2007.
Long time ago... I understand that since that time you looked for other members of your band? I see that your crew is bigger than the common thrash metal band?Adam: That’s true. We were and we still are guitarists, and we looked for other members, for other musicians. We had some problems with finding interesting people to play with because our University (Warsaw School of Economics) is not very "metal” . We talked to every student we met who had long hair. We met Jędrzej at one of our classes, he had (and still has) long hair ;) so we started to talk. He told us he was not a musician, but that he could sing. After our class we went to the nearest car park and Jędrzej sang King Crimson ‘s „Epitaph”. After his outstanding performance we all knew that he would be our singer.
So, at that moment your band had three members. Who was next to come?
Satanislav: Some time earlier we had found a bassist, at a party in the dormitory.
What about the drummer? I live in the big city like you and I know that finding a good drummer for metal band is not so easy...
Satanislav: I played drums for a few months. We were practicing, we covered Iron Maiden, Metallica, The Cranberries...
Adam: Satanislav played drums just temporarily, we were still trying to find a professional drummer. We posted announcements at the University that we were looking for a drummer, and one beautiful day a friend got us in touch with Kuba. And yeah, in the beginning we played covers, including Cranberries.
Cranberries’ tracks in thrash versions?
Satanislav: No, we played it straight, maybe a little bit heavier. We also did Metallica’s „For Whom the Bell Tolls” and some of the most famous Black Sabbath songs, „War Pigs” and „Paranoid”. In other words: the classics ;)
So while the time was floating you composed own tracks?
Satanislav: Yes, our first song was thought up by Adam, it’s called „Mechanical Advance”. We took our name from the first half of this title, after adding "Parasite”.
You have just anticipated my next question about the name...
Adam: One day, after a rehearsal at the Bem Forts, where our band was born, we started to think about a name for our band. One of our ideas was „Parasite”, but „Parasite” was already taken by a thrash band.
Satanislav: „Parasites” and "Parasite” both.
Adam: The second option was to name our band after our first track, so we connected both ideas and that’s how „Mechanical Parasite” came into existence ;)
I understand that after practising for some time you became very good in playing covers and your own stuff. The consequence of this was your first concert, wasn’t it?
Satanislav: It’s a funny story, that. One day we had a rehearsal without the full team . When we left the room we met a group of beer-bearing metalheads and they asked us: „Hey guys, are you the ones who have just finished playing? You wanna play a real concert?” At that time we weren’t prepared to play before an audience yet but once we learned that the concert would take place in a month and a half we decided to play! Those were very intensive 6 weeks. Later we were relieved to hear that the concert would be postponed by a few weeks.
Where did you play this concert?
Satanislav: In the No Mercy club in Warsaw.
You play progressive thrash. In Poland we haven’t got a lot of prog-bands, progressive music is a niche in Poland. How do you manage to combine all of this together?
Adam: Thrash was always the starting point for us and in the beginning we wanted to play pure thrash. But very fast we evolved towards progressive thrash and today we play simply whatever we feel like playing. While we always begin with a thrash riff and tempo, we try to improvise and go beyond thrash...
Satanislav: By changing the time signature for example...
Jędrzej: Or adding a flute solo.
Do your private (and no-metal) music fascinations influence Mechanical Parasite’s sound?
Adam: As far as I am concerned, yes, they certainly do. E.g. in one of my tracks, which we haven’t played live yet, the beat was taken from drum’n’bass music, since I’m interested in d’n’b as well. In the track „White Rocks” one can trace folk influences, like the flute and flamenco chords. Our vocalist also meddles a lot with the music, he came from a progressive-death background.
Jędrzej: I’m interested not only in progressive-death, I also like classic prog-rock from the seventies. My interests branch out into hip-hop as well. When I compose a track, I try to weave something interesting into it, I don’t want to write typical hackneyed pieces.
Satanislav, what about you?
Kuba: Stas is the most old-school among us, and he tries to look after us so that we don’t go off the deep end with progression, but he keeps an open mind to all proposals.
Satanislav: That’s right. Other than thrash I like heavy metal, speed metal, though that’s almost as heavy. I like hard rock too and the Polish band SBB when it comes to prog. I like old-school underground gangsta rap as well, but I don’t let it influence our tracks.
You played during the Warsaw’s Concert Tribute to Ariya and you played three Ariya’s tracks...
Satanislav: That’s true, we prepared three tracks for that concert.
Jędrzej: Satanislav is a very active member of the Polish Aria Fanclub and he urged us to get involved. We played three very classic Aria track and it turned out pretty good I think.
Did it take a lot of time to work with these tracks?
Jędrzej: No, not really. We chose rather easy ones.
Vilcin Today /9.01.2011/ was your 3rd concert...
Kuba: Yes... We were a little disappointed with the club, but I wouldn’t talk about it, bad acoustics, nevermind. We waited very long to get in, that wasn’t very nice or professional, and so we didn’t have time for a sound check. We played as the first band, so we just got onto the stage and played.
And what about people’s reaction?
Satanislav: Worse than at the previous concerts, but not so bad, I think.
Jędrzej: There wasn’t a lot of atmosphere, some people were a bit pissed off over the situation.
OK. let’s talk about your records. Have ever thought about recording your tracks in professional studio? Are you going to prepare demo or full lenght album?
Kuba: Yes, first of all we would like to record a demo, it’s too early for a full length CD. We’re thinking about a demo, we’ve already got material for it, but we’re still looking for a good place to record.
How many tracks?
Kuba: Standard demo length, five tracks. Maybe an extra bonus, like an intro.
Are you going to include covers that you played at the beggining?Kuba: No, rather not. We prefer to play covers at gigs - but we’ll see.
Have you got concerts plans for the nearest future?
Satanislav: Not yet, but we are looking. We will probably play no earlier than in March or April 2011, because we have a finals now. Today’s concert was a bit of a surprise, so we squeezed only three hardcore rehearsals in a few days before – but we pulled it off...
Kuba: Now we’re thinking about the recording and waiting for concert offers, and after the finals we’re going to continue looking for opportunities. We are still students, we haven’t got a lot of free time...
I understand, I was a student too. OK, let’s go back to the beggining of our interview, we talked about all men from Mechanical Parasite, but we didn’t mention anything about your colleague – bassistess. Where did you find your fantastic bassistess ?
Monika: It all began with the guitarist Adam, who is my boyfriend ;) When former bassist left Mechanical Parasite, the guys offered me to play bass in the band. And here I am today ;)
Great, congratulations guys! Thanks for interview, I keep my finger crossed for Mechanical Parasite, keep in touch !!!
Mechanical Parasite: Thank you too, bye !!!
Interviewed by Vilcin
January 2011