interview with Scumfusion
What´s the name of your band? Scumfusion
What made you call the band "Scumfusion"? Napalm Death has always been a massive influence and especially the first two ND albums. The name was born out of respect for ND's "scum" album, mixed with the word "confusion", resulting into Scumfusion.
How was the band formed? It was born in the middle of creating "tracked metal music" (form of computer programmed music) in the summer of 2000.
Can you tell about your band? At first it was one man band (Antti), until in 2003 another tracked metal pal Taito joined as lyricist and vocalist - only one EP was created with that lineup, in 2003. Then the band went into hiatus (studies, work, etc matters) until Antti asked another longtime music friend Timo to join in early 2006, replacing Taito.
Where are all band members from?/Who does what in the band? Both Antti and Timo are from Finland. Antti does composing, plays guitar and programs drums and occasionally writes lyrics. Timo writes lyrics, plays bass, sings and plays drums. On latest release "Lost constellations" there's third member listed as AnTiDroid for drums = combination of drums programmed by Antti and cymbalworks recorded live with real drums by Timo. Before "Lost constellations" the drums were always 100% programmed.
What was the ambitions of the band when you started? Just to have fun while creating extreme grindcore. At first it wasn't scifi themed, there was no theme - scifi theme crawled in bit by after 2006.
Could you explain your music to someone that haven't heard you? Yes. It's scifi grind.
Where was your first gig? Scumfusion has always been 100% studio project band.
Who writes your songs?/Who writes the music who writes lyrics? Antti does all the composing. Both Timo and Antti write lyrics.
Who has the best humor in the band? That must be the drummer that does not exist.
What's good/bad with the band?/What genre do you feel you are? The best thing is certainly the artistic freedom. We can do things exactly the way we like, since we aren't signed and have always released all our music for free online. What genre? One word answer is grindcore. More definition? Death metal influneces thrown in. Occasional punk/crust influences appear as well.
Why did you pick that particular style?/What are your songs about? Grindcore has always been something that Antti has liked - and Timo is no different in that matter either. Though grindcore is just one form of music we like and Scumfusion is one project band out of many. The songs are about scifi tales, space fiction, inspired by scifi movies & books - combined with post-apocalyptic visions (as inspired by Fallout games) and occasional zombie movie influences can be spotted, too.
Do you write your own material or mainly covers? We mainly write our own material. We have done some covers just for fun at some point, too. Latest release has nothing but original songs.
Have you made any albums?/If yes what are they? Full of hell (2000), The awakening (2002), Menacing EP (2003), Under exoriant light (2006), a Lossidian threnody (2010), Garage grind days & Z-files (2010) and Lost constellations (2013).
Do you have any clips on YouTube? Yes, several selfmade clips done with humorous attitude, here's for example a little 'second life' experiment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmYfwRZUygU You can find other Scumfusioin related videos by checking that user's other videos if interested. There's separate playlist for Scumfusion, too.
How old are you?/What got you started in music? We both date back to 1970s. I (Antti) remember liking music since ... as long as I remember. Music became very important on my 10th birthday when I got the present I had hoped to get: double tape deck / small portable stereo. Around the same time I started liking heavy rock and especially NWOBHM bands.
At what age did you start playing? Hard to say, I (Antti) used to toy around with family's acoustic guitar very early on. I got my first electric guitar when I was 17 years old and first bass when I was 16 years old. Though I started properly getting into playing guitar only in late 1990s. I don't consider myself as a technical player, more like destructive player.
What year was the band started? In 2000.
What are the plans for the rest of the year? Currently we are still enjoying the satisfaction that "Lost constellations" brought us. Actually quite probably some other studio music project's turn next, to keep things interesting.
What are your goals with your music? To make the best possible scifi grind album we can. Extreme music combined with spacy soundscapes and some good scifi tales. To improve as a musicians.
When did you decide to go all in for the music? Music is not our work; it's our hobby. We both have our dayjobs to keep us getting paid - we get nothing (but joy) from creating & releasing music.
Is it easier to get your inspiration from older bands or from bands more modern? Certainly the older bands give the best inspiration. Early Napalm Death (though modern ND is great, too), early Disharmonic Orchestra, early Brutal Truth. Though that doens't mean there wouldn't be great modern day grindcore bands as well. Bands like for example Rotten Sound, Magrudergrind, Coldworker, ... or the one and only Nasum (RIP Mieszko).
What are your sources of inspiration? Musically speaking the bands mentioned above. Lyrically speaking scifi movies & books, space / scientific news, Fallout game series.
What's the first step when making a new song? It used to be about first creating drumbase for a song and then riff around the drums, but nowadays a riff might come first and saved for later use. It works both ways.
How do you feel about the downloading of music instead of buying albums? Downloading feels pretty much the same than tape copying / trading used to be in the 1980s and still in the early 1990s. Personally when I download an album that I like, I buy the album soon afterwards. If I don't like what I hear, I won't buy it and I'll delete the downloads too. I don't see a big difference when comparing to how I used to go into local record store in late 1980s and ask the clerk to play this and that LP for me ... then listening the LP with phones. If I liked what I heard, I saved some money (as a teenager, see) and bought the album. If I didn't like the album, I didn't buy it.
What would be your dreams for the band? If we keep enjoying what we do - the dream is to keep doing it. To have time for it.
Besides your own music, what genres and bands do you listen to? From metal music everything goes if it's a good band. To list all the bands would fill the internet. Other than metal music, ambient, dark ambient, desert ambient, electronica, EBM, drone, space music, meditative music, classic music.
What would be your greatest fears for the future? Let's just say that fear is the mindkiller.
Have you been part of any other projects?Antti: Cauterized (death metal), Mood:Doom (doom metal), Focus Minus (dark ambient) and several other own projects
Timo: Mood:Doom (doom metal), Phantomorph (dark ambient), Pathos Gazette (death/grind), Defeated (doom metal), Brutopia (d-beat/hardcore), Tuhkaus (d-beat/hardcore), Epätasavalta (crust/punk)
Name 2 of your own songs you like at the moment? Harvester of planets, interstellar realism. Both are smooth, flowing grind ballads.
What drives a band that isn't all that famous and renowned to try to make a living on their music and to keep playing? Well on the other hand we have never tried to "make a living" with our music as was stated earlier so we don't have that kind of pressure about the matter. On the other hand what makes us keep doing it, is simply the love of creating music and enjoying it as a creative hobby.
Do you have any webpages? Very simple site at www.scumfusion.com - where you can download all our releases for free, and see the few key links into some related places (blogs, online streaming, etc).
Any pearls of wisdom for all other bands out there? If you truly enjoy & love what you do, keep doing it. It will reward you in one way or another.
Would you like to add anything else? Greetings to all the grind maniacs out there and ... special greetings to the former members of tracked metalscene.
How do you view the musicindustry of today? It's going through massive changes, it's hard to predict how it will work in the future exactly, but it will still have to go through massive changes, I'm sure. Snowball effect still going on, as started by them interwebs.
What are the biggest obstacles for a band? For a traditional bands the obstacles are these days quite ... a many, I think. Having rehearsal place, competition for getting contract, getting enough gigs, advertisement issues, etc. On the other hand you can nowadays record very professional sounding music at your very own home studio with rather small expenses. Very small expenses depending on your setup / equipment. So while in distant past just recording a demo with acceotable sound was both hard and expensive - nowadays you can record basicly pro quality releases (not just demos) at home if you really set yourself for it.
What Won't you spend money on? Cheap guitars. Gibson SG was a turning point.
What do you feel a band should spend their money on? Good enough instruments, perhaps home studio equipment - depends on band's goal.
Do you have anything to add? Thanks for the interview. I think it's the first ever anyone has conducted for Scumfusion.
