interview with Fetus Grinder
How is it that you started playing music? Vince and Kevin were in another band together during University in Vancouver, BC. The
What are your names? / Who plays what? / How old are you? Kevin Emms, Vince Yu and Alex Reinbergs, and we are all 27 and 26 years old at the time of this interview. We were 19- 23 during the active years of the band.
Have you had other previous members? Nope just this power trio.
Did you make music even when you were Young? All of us played music of some sort as youngsters. Piano lessons and what-not, but the metal started for all of us in our teenage years.
Where are you from? We all met at University in Vancouver. Vince is from North Vancouver BC/Hong Kong, Kevin is from Calgary AB/London UK, and Alex Reinbergs is from Toronto Ontario.
What inspires you? We were inspired by old-school American death metal. We wanted to be as gross and offensive as possible while keeping it true. Big inspirations for us were bands like Cannibal Corpse, Suffocation, Autopsy, Carcass, and more grind-y stuff like Skinless and Misery Index.
How have you developed since you started with the music? By the end of our tenure we were much faster and more brutal, and our songwriter became less thrashy and more complex.
Do you have other interests of work outside the band? Vince currently works for the company that puts on the cruise "70 000 Tons of Metal", Kevin is the brewmaster at Granville Island Brewing Company in Vancouver and Alex teaches English in Korea and travels.
Are you looking for a label, and what are your thoughts around that? Maybe if/when we come back, someone would like to help us put out our releases! When we were active we were fine creating our own content and not pursuing a label. DIY!
What made you decide to make this music? This music is really fun to play. Regardless of your instrument, you get to go bananas. It is also fun to be as offensive as possible.
What are your songs about? Abortion, gore, horror, and real life atrocities put into song form - such as the Argentinian plane crash cannibalism incident, the infamous 'pain olympics' video, etc.
Who does the composing and writes the lyrics? Songwriting was done by everyone - Vince and Kevin together in the jamspace and occasionally Alex writing on his own, and most of the lyrics were written by Alex.
Do you start with the music or the lyrics? Music first!
Do you compose in a certain inviroment? It was a moldy, dingy basement.
Have you done any covers live? Our most popular cover was "Scream Bloody Gore" and we also did a version of "Keep on Rotting in the Free World"
What language do you sing in? English
What are the least and most people to attend one of your gigs? Least would be the members of the other bands. At our best gigs we were playing theater shows with touring bands, so a few hundred people.
What ages are most of your concert attendants? Always legal drinking age. 19 and up to 50. Average being 25.
Do you always play the same songs live, or do you vary? Some hits were usually in the set list, such as "Into the Blender", "Morning After Kill", "Hatchet Versus Genitals" and "Acid Epidural Infraction" but we changed up the set list all the time.
Do you have a regular place you play live often? We were active during the golden age of the Cobalt - a metal/punk bar in Vancouver that changed ownership and became a hipster bar in 2009. Now the scene is focused at Funky's.
What was your first gig like? Raw but fun.
What was your latest gig? Our last gig was a Christmas gig, played as a reunion show when Kevin returned from brewing school in Scotland and before Alex left for Korea. Good time.
Have you had to cancel a gig? Never! That looks bad.
What do you think about people downloading music instead of buying records now a days? As long as people get to listen to it. All of our music is available for free at https://fetusgrinder.bandcamp.com/So go get it!
