April 10th, 2013 | E-mail interview by NINa | Submit for an interview | detailed review | Read other Fabryka interviews

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NINa: The style of your music ranges between metal and industrial. I haven't heard many Industrial Metal bands hailing from Australia but I love Jerk, who unfortunately quit many years ago. Do you consider it a curse or a challenge to make industrial metal music in Oz these days?

Travis: If I had to choose I would say it is more of a challenge. We all love the style and music we play and we know there is a huge audience out there in Australia who love this. It's just a matter of getting it out there to them. It's hard to fit us in with other bands when playing live shows here but it works for us as we stand out a lot more and are not your typical metal band or standard industrial band. With the Internet available to everyone it has made what we do lot easier to get our music out there. I would not say it has been easy it has been hard work but has helped reach people that would have been possible without it. In the last year or two we have noticed a few industrial metal bands forming in Australia and they all are really amazing bands. So who knows what's in store for this style of music here in the future.

NINa: You have four new songs available to stream online but you also play local gigs and your tour kicks off in two months. What can you tell us about the main concept behind your debut album, The Demon Calling scheduled for release in May this year?

Travis: The new album is a lot darker than our previous work. To be honest I don't think this was a planned thing. Playing and listening to faster and heavier bands I think had a slight influence on this. There is a huge mix on the album some faster tempo songs and some slow. They all have the same Witchgrinder sound and we are all very happy with. The first single and clip that will be released The Demon Calling via our web page and YouTube in the next week or two is very fast, heavy and dark. I think with this track the idea was to shock people a little. The clip scares us and we were in it! Hahah. The idea to release this first was to show them what and where we can actually go with our music. We are hungry and very focused at what we are doing now. Why not show people.

NINa: Your tracks cover horror story themes, with topics from Zombies to Jack the Ripper. Have you always preferred a narrative approach to song writing? Have you had interest in tales of Horror before forming Witchgrinder or is Horror a theme of the band itself?

Travis: Me personally have been reading horror comics and watching horror movies since I can remember. If you walk into my bedroom it looks like you're walking into a video store. Shelves and shelves of old VHS horror and sci-fi movies and hard. I have always been fascinated by this and find if you look into the stories enough they are always based on something that is actually going on in the real world. There is always some kind of truth hidden in there. I thought this was a perfect thing to theme the band with. People want to be entertained. With our show and style of music I found writing about personal feeling or other things just didn't work. I want people to take a break from the normal problems and stress of their everyday life when listening to our music. Forget everything get excited. Let loose and come along for the ride.





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