Insanity Alert Hellfest Interview

On Sunday 23^rd Of June, Donk and myself got to sit down with Insanity Alert through their label, Season Of Mist, to chat everything and anything.

This is how it went.

Kev – You are from England?

Donk – Yea we are yea, we are from Leeds.

Kev – OH WE PLAYED THERE, DAMNATION!

Don – TEMPLE OF BOOM!

Donk – OH! The best venue ever!

Kev – We have one of the best stories of Damnation history. Ah probably not but in my head it’s pretty great, we really had a blast.

Tom – Ha, awesome, so, did you enjoy your set today?

Don – Yea absolutely, we were super nervous

Kev – I was super nervous!

Don – I play drums and I had shaky hands. We have never played a stage this size before! It was pretty early so we didn’t know what to expect!

Kev – And we really over did it last night, something we specifically said we wouldn’t do!

Tom – We got drunk last night and didn’t mean to!

Donk – Have you tried the Skoll?

Kev – Yea!

Tom – It taste like lemonade

Don – That sounds dangerous haha!

Kev – I’m from Holland so I’m a bit of a cheap fuck and at one point we realised we got some drink tickets and we found out that we couldn’t just get a small beer but you could actually get a pitcher for the same thing! So i think ‘we have all them!? It’s free!’

Donk – Whaaaat?!

Tom – That’s awesome!

Kev – The plan was to go back to the hotel at about 9 or 10pm and then at 1 o’clock I was watching kiss, I was like UUURRGGGHH (simulates drunk talk). Very professional!

Don – But we really enjoyed it! (going back to their set)

Donk – You had so much energy, you might not have felt like you had but I was taking photos down the front and you had so much energy, the adrenalin must have been kicking in.

Don – Absolutely!

Kev – To be able to do what you love on the stage like that, and in front of, I mean at first I was afraid that maybe people would be weird at this but if you were not already interested in this (us) you would not have been there at 11 o’clock. From the stage it looked really ball shrinking big! I didn’t realize we were on the television either! So after the show I went down to say hello to some friends and I turn round and see the other band and I’m like ‘WHAT THE FUCK!?’ so I go ask this girl like, were we also on this thing? And she was like (in a high pitched female voice) ‘yes I took many photographs!’ and you could see me spitting on myself and rubbing it in, I was like ‘oh my god’.

All – Laughing

Tom – You played Aaargh festival yesterday was it?

Don + Kev – 2 days ago!

Tom – 2 days ago! What was that like?

Kev – It was almost the beginning of the end!

Tom – Ha, oh right..

Kev – Yea really, it’s proper German metal festival, have you ever attended some of those?

Don – really nice!

Donk and Tom – Nope.

Kev – It’s really nice, really low profile. This was a farm, it’s really like for people that love music. The people that are there, the people that work there and the bands. I dunno low profile sounds negative. It’s just a smaller festival. That’s where actually the demise started, cos it was actually the plan just to play the show and then hang out a little bit and then 2-3 hours later leave but that didn’t happen and we arrived at the hotel at 2 o’clock in the morning! Ha, Dave our guitarist fell from the stage as well!

Don – During the set! Ha!

Kev – Normal people break a leg or hit their head but he, of course he hurt his hand!

Donk and Tom – Ooooooh no!

Don – It was his left hand! (Fretting hand)

Kev – So yesterday we went to the Hellfest doctor and yea until this morning, until we came to the stage, we was not sure if he could play. Because we have one guitarist and if he cannot do it….

Don – All his fingers are blue and swollen and he wasn’t sure if it was broken or not!

Kev – Aaargh Fest almost destroyed Hellfest for us! Haha.

Don – Yesterday night we was really really nervous, we were already here and his hand was really blue.

Kev – 5 Ibuprofen and a strong will, fucking William Wallace of thrash man!

Donk – He didn’t miss a beat either though, he played really, really well!

Kev – He’s an amazing musician and you know probably in any other situation there would have been a lot of shows where you’d have said ‘we’re very sorry but (we can’t play)’. Everyone understands this, if you cannot play your guitar what’s the use of you being up there but his was not an option to cancel! This is the last Slayer show. There are 8 of our favorite bands on one stage and we get to open shit up! This cannot be, we have to do whatever. You can puke or you can lose your hand.. Which he probably will haha so we’re hiring haha!

Tom – I had a quick look online and it seems like you guys never stop gigging! I thought you were in the middle of a tour but it seems like every weekend, every other week, it’s just constant!

Kev – Yea! It’s one of the advantages of being from central Europe and we love it! Basically, what else should we do on the weekends? If we keep getting people to come party with them, we do it. We drive a lot. We drive back from Toulouse. We drive almost all the way back from Copenhagen. Do you guys know kilometers?

Donk and Tom – Ha yea, I think!

Kev – Ha aah I’m just kidding with ya! Some weekends we do some 3/4000 kilometers!

Tom – Wow!

Don – Normal drive back on Sunday is like 2200 km and Monday we start working again!

Kev – I don’t work though, I fuckin hate work!

Don – yea me too bruth!

Kev – Our bass player has a son. This is not our job, this is our absolute passion and hobby. I love to be at home, I love my own bed but the fact that we get the chance to play so much is fantastic!

Don – Absolutely and we released a new record early this year so that’s why we have to, and want to!

Kev – These are very comfortable chairs by the way (sarcasm). Hope Phil Anselmo has the same chairs!

All – Laughs

Kev – We’re on the same label, which should give us some sort of advantage, probably not but the hope dies last! Since I was 15/16 years old, I’ve been a super fan of this dude!

Tom – How have people reacted to the new album? Positive?

Kev – Yea! It’s our first time on Season Of Mist. We did two albums on a really small underground label before so in that order it probably is the bestselling. But yea, how do they say in America? Haters gonna hate! The thing is, we realise we are not the first band to do this (our music), we realize we are not trying to invent a new Prodigy, crazy sound. We just wanna play hard thrash. We love punk, we love hardcore, we love grind, we love dbeat and yea we’re just four guys having fun and trying to make weird titles and play hard shit. There is a lot of people that say fuuuck, this is a horrible band why are they even allowed to play here? And then some people say like this band is really like the best thing ever. I think this is better than being in the middle of it, people like yea.. that’s cool..

Tom – Oh yea definitely, definitely! How was the writing process for the new album? It’s got like 20 odd songs on it? That’s quite a lot of songs!

Kev – We stole a lot!

All – *laughs*

Kev – Better to steal it than make it yourself and its worse than the thing you could steal ha I had a bit of an bathroom problem during the writing process..

Tom – bathroom problem….?

Kev – Yea not to really go into it too deep, but I had a problem down there and I was not feeling too well. Basically I couldn’t eat because I didn’t want to go to the toilet!

Tom – Aaaaah right ha!

Kev – But yea, yea we worked a lot with demos. We had a lot of song titles written down because I write everything down that I think of when I’m stoned. I gave them some of the stuff and they imagine the riffs under it, send me some midi files..

Don – Dave our guitarist…..

Kev – Who’s dead haha

Don – Who’s dead haha he’s a working machine and he comes up with many riffs and ideas!

Kev – He’s super boring in general. We go see Obituary without him, he doesn’t go to concerts ha!

Don – He and I, we do a lot of the music and after Kevin’s problems..

Kev – Everything is good now…

Don – ..we get everything arranged with lyrics but Dave and I did most of the music. 

Tom – What’s your favorite track off the new album?

Kev – Mine is Death By Wrecking Ball

Don – I really like The Body Of The Christ Is The Parasite

Tom – How is it different from previous albums?

Donk – Does being on a bigger label make a difference?

Kev – They didn’t really influence it that much. For most bands that put out a first record, we had ages you know years, and that’s why the first record, most of the time, is the best record. Maybe the second one when they take some stuff that they already had ideas from the first one and sorta perfect it. From a lot of bands, first record. It’s debatable, first/second (is the best). So we did the first and the second and we just came back from our first big night liner tour with Hatebreed and for us, it’s also like today, an opportunity that bands from small towns and unimportant country’s don’t get too often. After that we went straight into the studio and I er had my little affair!

All – Laughs.

Kev – It was different from all the rest but also similar because we didn’t really try to make a different record, we just tried to do what we did before but put a little extra on it. What we though was funny, we make it more funny. What we thought was super annoying, we’ll do it more annoying!

Don – The only thing we actually knew was we wanted to have a black and white cover. We had very coloured covers before and that was the idea to have it black and white. It’s so great, I really really like it.

Kev – He’s really a death metal/black metal artist (Mark Riddick, RIDDICKART) that’s why we thought it was so funny. He made this whole thing and he’s like, yea maybe you should have a pizza slice, so somewhere in the middle he added this small pizza slice! Which for him was super funny because he does really serious stuff, dark and black. But a good dude! Super friendly too for an American haha!

Tom – So, just some quick fire questions!

Donk – First thing that comes into your head!

Tom – Favorite album?

Don – Ride The Lightening

Tom – Favorite food?

Don – Eeeeeeeeeeeeer Burritos!

Tom – And best place in the world? Just to either go on holiday or chill out!

Don – Gili Air, Indonesia!

Donk – same for you Kevin! 

Tom – Favorite album?

Kev – First one from The Ramones (Ramones, 1976)

Tom – Favourite food?

Kev – TACOS! But vegan tacos!

Tom – Best place in the world?

Kev – Paris

Tom – Why Paris?

Kev – Its my favorite city, I don’t know why. I am from Rotterdam and ten years ago I moved to Austria. I always loved Paris, I’m gonna move there some day when I have actually some money ha because without money it’s not so much fun, well for a few days.

Tom – Well, that’s it guys!

Kev – Only three? That’s fucking lazy! Haha

All *laughs*

Again a big thank you to Heavy Kevy and Don Melanzani for the chat, it was great and also a big thank you to Jessica from Season Of Mist for the hospitality.