This time I conducted an interview with an prominent example of the UK underground community named Kat "Shevil" Gillham!
Hell-O. My name is Kat "Shevil" Gillham, I'm a 41 year old vocalist and drummer from North East England and I play in a few bands that play various heavy styles namely Winds of Genocide, Uncoffined, Lucifer's Chalice, Enshroudment and Thronehammer which you can read about in this interview. I have also been writing for a couple of well known music magazines over here in England for a while (Terrorizer Magazine and Iron Fist Magazine)as well as in the past year contributing reviews and interviews to the legendary german Voices from the darkside Zine website. Winds of Genocide are located in Durham. Can you tell us more about this city, how many citizens are living there and what about a metal/hardcore-scene there ?
It is a very scenic, ancient historic city with a beautiful majestic cathedral (which dates back to 1000's) and castle (which dates back to the 11th Century) lots of old churches, winding narrow and cobbled streets and vennels (an old english word for dark narrow passages), great picturesque river walks and is surrounded by lots of open countryside and old woods that go on for miles.
It is a small rural university city so the population is a continuing flux and mix of locals and students and roughly has an urban population of 48,000 people.
The city was well known for its vibrant and very active HC scene in the late 80's / early-mid 90's especially with some now legendary gigs taking place here at small intimate venues also the legendary HC band Voorhees(who my younger brother has been involved with / played drums for ) originally come from this city and surrounding area.
The metal scene has never been too big here and a lot of the metal bands that have been based in this city and surrounding immediate local area that have actually made a name for themselves worldwide and got record deals and music released worldwide are bands I have formed and have/been involved with although there are a few other metal bands from the Durham area who have also made a name for themselves and got their music and albums released worldwide such as Horrified, Warfare, Holosade, Armortura.
We are currently writing material for the 2nd album which has a title but I can't reveal anymore at this point in time.
We have a very strong and very well recieved debut album to follow up so we want to make sure our 2nd album is just as strong if not stronger in musical content, I think that is very important...we don't want people to go "I preferred the debut album" we want to write a follow up that will make people go "I prefer this to the debut album"!!
If I remeber correct, you found a member for Winds of Genocide via looking through the window of a an aprtment seeing there a Wolfbrigade / Wolfpack-poster on the wall and so the contact to this foreign person started ?? I rember about reading something like this some years ago…
Haha. Yes that was in September 2008! It was actually a Skitsystem sticker on my bedroom window! I live in a ground floor flat on a fairly busy street in the city and Linus the now ex-Winds Of Genocide drummer was walking past my place at like 10.30pm..I had my living room blinds quite open so you could see inside and I hear this knock on my window and I see this guy and I'm thinking "who is this fucking idiot?!" and this guy who knocked on my window is like "Urrrr hi...I saw the sticker on your window. I like that band too..can we talk!" So I went to the front door and I immediately recognised his Swedish accent as I had spent a lot of time over there in Sweden especially in Stockholm in the past...so I asked him in Swedish "Are you Swedish" and he said yes..he initially wondered if I was as the first thing I said at the door was in swedish but anyway we ended up going to the local pub around the corner from here and we soon realised we had a mutual love for both old death metal and black metal aswell as crust / d beat punk!!
At the time I mentioned that the band I had formed a couple years earlier (Winds Of Genocide) in early 2006 was struggling to find a drummer and bassist, and he said he could play some instruments so I was thinking "great! This is the kinda guy we need in the band"
He initially joined on bass but after only one rehearsal in late 2008 with Linus on bass and not much progress the other guy we had on drums flaked on us in early 2009 and didn't turn up to a rehearsal then Linus said "Ohh I can play drums too...." And that was it, in the first rehearsal with Linus behind the kit we wrote our first 2 songs "Doomsday Soldiers" and "The Arrival Of Apokalyptic Armageddon" and continued writing and rehearsing regulary as a 3 piece minus bassist until September 2009 when we met Dan our bassist who was at the gig that we played minus a bassist and he was like "You guys need a bassist" and literally a couple weeks or so later he was in the band!
Linus played drums for us from early 2009 until late 2011 and played on "The Arrival Of Apokalyptic Armageddon" EP and the split with Abigail from Japan. He was a gift from the svensk käng punk gods!! Even though he had to leave the band officially in 2012 he has remained a very good friend.
I had actually been speaking with one of the guys in Thronehammer about doing a band together about 10 years ago but due to various reasons that band/project never happened. Fast forward 10 years later and I got a message on facebook from the same guy (the guitarist Stuart West) saying the vocalist had to leave his band and would I be interested in doing some vocals for them so I was like "Yeah...why not, send me some music to check out!" So he sent me the tracks they have written for the debut album and also a track for a split 10" release, I was given the songtitles that they'd already came up with and full freedom with lyric writing and vocal arranging for all songs and I recently entered the studio and did my first vocal recording for them for a split 10" with Lord Of Solitude from New Zealand which will be released on Church Within Records, a german based label.
Ist heavy and doomed!! The split is called "Vampire Bites" and both bands have written horror / horror film themed songs, our track is about vampires and vampire curses...its all very hammer horror lyrically which is totally up my lyric writing strasse!!
Watch out for it! Our song for it is called "Hammer, Stake And Cross"
I will record the vocals for the full length album in the not too distant future (but can't divulge any more info regarding that at the moment). All rehearsing for that as was done for the split track will be done at home listening to the songs.
There are plans to play live in Germany and mainland Europe later in the year and I will go across before the shows to rehearse in person with them. I love what they are doing and the songs they have wrote so its all very exciting!
Do you prefer doing vocals (as in Winds of Genocide) or playing drums, or doing both as in Uncoffined (which is a rare combination, as a prominent example I think to Chris Reifert from Autopsy) ? And do you prefer playing doom metal or the more extreme death metal / crust stuff as in Winds of Genocide?
I enjoy all...I love being out there onstage as just a vocalist but I also love handling both drums and vocals at the same time (which I currently do in Uncoffined and another doom/death project Enshroudment) and I also love just playing drums (which I do in Lucifer's Chalice)
I love doom, death and crust / d beat / käng punk in equal measure...I don't think I could pick one style as a favourite over another I enjoy all styles for different reasons same goes for my various duties in the bands I am currently involved with.
Yes, but its purely print based thesedays for that magazine. Those online band of the week blogs were a lot of fun to do from 2010-2016.
Furthermore you do a blog / fanzine called „A blog in the northern sky“. So I think you are very busy with scene-activities. Can you tell us more about this zine?
That blog has been kinda dormant and very unactive over the past few years as I was doing so much regular print work and online work for both Terrorizer and Iron Fist Magazine.
That blog was initially started to post up the full interviews I did for Terrorizer as all interviews were edited for the magazine.
You are a long experienced part of the scene. What do you think was better in the past, in the pre-internet era ? On the one hand I think there was some more magic and mystery, but on the other hand a lot oft hings are more easy and comfortable these days…
Both the past and present scenes have good sides and bad sides, advantages and disadvantages.
I do miss the personal touch of hand written letters, snail mail, demo / tape trading, print fanzines etc. but it is much easier to get your band name and news etc. out there via the internet and social media and I fully embrace the internet and social media as a means and platform to promote my own bands and our music / activity.
There of course was more mystique and magic in the old days as you had to work much harder to hear new bands and access their music and the anticipation and excitement when waiting for new tape trading packages or new music/fanzines through the mail was really something special and a lot of days in the early-mid 90's was like death / doom christmas, coming home from school or waking up to a small mountain of letters and packages that had arrived, now everything is just a click away...that does take away some of that old school magic.
I got to witness the rise of the UK and worldwide death metal and doom metal scenes and saw bands live in their early / pre-album days such as Anathema, My Dying Bride, Cradle Of Filth, Solstice and that was a very exciting time to be involved with death and doom metal...I was only in my mid-late teens in early-mid 90's so it was all super fresh, exciting and new. I feel very fortunate I got to see a lot of bands back then in their early and classic days.
Same goes with crust punk bands like Doom and Embittered, I saw them in mid 90's for the first time...I also saw Embittered rehearse a lot as my younger brother Michael who I mentioned earlier also played drums for them for a while. Those guys in Embittered first introduced me to that scene and quite a few crust punk bands back in mid 90's.
Yes of course: Live Burial, Horrified, Vacivus, Prolefeed, War All The Time, Armortura, Decontrol, Hellripper, Coltsblood, Dawn Ray'd, Grave Miasma, Cruciamentum, Avenger, Alehammer, Repulsive Vision, Rot In Hell, Agnosy to name some
Please list your 20 all time favourite records !
Black Sabbath "Vol 4"
Metallica -"Kill 'Em All"
Slayer -"Show No Mercy"
Venom "Welcome To Hell"
Celtic Frost "To Mega Therion"
Iron Maiden "Killers"
Motörhead "Overkill"
Kreator "Pleasure To Kill"
Autopsy "Mental Funeral"
Unleashed "Where No Life Dwells"
Dismember "Like An Everflowing Stream"
Grave "You'll Never See..."
Bolt Thrower "IVth Crusade"
Winter "Into Darkness"
Amebix "Arise"
Trouble "Psalm 9"
Candlemass "Ancient Dreams"
Wolfpack "A New Dawn Fades"
Cathedral "Forest Of Equilibrium"
Paradise Lost "Lost Paradise"
The last words are yours!
Thanks for the great interview and interest. Much appreciated.
Ride Upon The Wings Of Armageddon...
