LIVE ‘N LOUD MEETS MASS MURDER MESSIAH
As we covered the Heavy MTL festival this summer, we met up with a few bands to know more about them and what was coming up for them.
Here is our interview with: Jef (guitar) & Sam (drums) from Mass Murder Messiah
(Interview by Karine Juteau / Photo by Nour Haik)
Mass Murder Messiah is a 5 pieces band from Montreal, labeled as a Rockcore band. The band was formed in 2009 but their popularity is growing pretty fast. The members of Mass Murder Messiah are : Captain Jef (guitar and vocals) also a member of the well-known band Anonymus, Bizier (bass) also member of Reanimator, Vince D (guitars and vocals) ex-member of R.I.P. Bloodstained Memory and Insicion of which, J-M (vocals) and Sammoth (drums) were the founding members.
LNL: How was your show today?
Jef: It was really good! We were one of the first bands to play today and half an hour before the show, there was no one in front of the stage… We were starting to have some doubts that it we will actually have people show up, but magically, people came and it was full!
Sam: Good! I would have never expected that at all. If someone would have told me that there will be fans singing along and knowing our lyrics, I would have ever believed it!
Jeff: It was fun!
Sam: Really fun, really good show!
LNL: You just released your first full length, tell me more about it.
Sam: We are really proud of it, the sound is really good. We are currently over the 4 000 downloads! Making it available for download was the best way for us to reach new fans and the proof is the crowd from today. If we wouldn’t do that for free, people would have never talked about us, it wouldn’t have created a buzz on internet! Yes, we did lose money that way but all in all that was the best way!
LNL: Do you have any plans now that you just played at Heavy MTL?
Sam: We will let Anonymus record their album for the moment; they are going in studio mid-August I think…
Jef: Yes, mid-August!
Sam: We will let Anonymus finish their album and after that we will take arrangements with Anonymus depending of their schedule. That’s the thing having a guy in 2 bands! (laughs) But of course, we knew about it when we first started with Mass Murder Messiah!
Jef: That’s the thing with having a guy in 2 bands and in a band that’s really popular! We have to compromise, there is no choice.
Sam: I will work on the merch and will book some shows. There will be some new projects for sure!
LNL: Let’s play a little game here. Name the first thing that comes to your mind if I say:
“Montreal”
Sam: Hockey (laughs)! hmmm Also, “crowd”! The crowd is hard to convince here, but it’s a really good crowd when they are convinced!
Jef: Montreal… Why going away from it! I did many cities and many countries in my life, I would say even though it’s too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer, we are good here and people don’t know about it. And also, there is a metal band community that’s here in Montreal! We help each other and play together. In other countries, they seem to be in competition, nobody talks to each other and even seem to hate each other at times!
“Heavy”
Sam: Mass Murder Messiah!
Jef: Drummer with no head! Problems between musicians, guitarist that plays too loud and lunatic bassist, gay singer, that’s what’s heavy (laughs)!
“Live”
Sam: Stress!
Jef: It’s hot! (Laughs) Sweating like pig!
Sam: Honestly, Live is the reward of all your efforts. This is the short period while you are on stage that you realize why you worked so hard. I don’t have problems to comprehend bands like Metallica, Rolling Stone and Ozzy that are still doing that because seriously, the adrenaline rush, the cheesy word “love” that you receive from the crowd is just amazing; there is nothing compare to it.
“Loud”
Sam: Mass Murder Messiah! Metal standard!
Jef: Heavy Metal, Hardcore, it has to be loud if not, it’s boring.
“Internet”
Sam: Best friend of musicians and worst enemy of the musicians.
Jef: I would say, in the same optic it is the best invention of the last century and one of the worst! Now, people can listen to us in Japan and Russia and we don’t even know about it and we can tour in Europe because of th Internet; but on the other hand, teenagers that think that life is Facebook, they are not able to talk at all in person. Internet is just huge!
LNL: If you had an advice to give to a new band what would it be?
Jef: Don’t think that you will make money, forget about it. Doing music is like playing hockey or paintball: don’t expect to live from it, if you do it, do it because you like it, if you do it for the bad things, you are not going to be able to do it that long! If you don’t like it stop it.
Sam: I am the better proof of that in my first years; I just wanted success and it failed. After that, we started Mass Murder Messiah and my attitude changed and today, I am here and things are good for us! An advice would be that there are no limits, no more later than last year I was in front of the stage at Heavy MTL watching Hatebreed telling myself “I want to play next year”, and here we are! I think we have good relation with evenko and I think they appreciate us and they know that we’ve worked hard. It was hard work, I was constantly on the phone, it is a job really. It’s like Jef, he spend many years practicing to become a better guitarist, many hours on the Internet to find studio techniques, etc. If you sit on your ass and wait that it comes to you that will never work, forget it you will stay in your garage all your life. You will play in front of your friends all your life and the day that you will do a show a little bit further than home you will realize that nobody is there… That’s a big reality check.
Jef: We can do 20 hours on the road to play for a couple of hundred bucks and sell 50$ of merch but we definitely do it again the following day because we are passionated by it. We don’t hunt, we don’t play hockey and we don’t play paintball, we play music and we love it.
Sam: It’s not easy, you have to work hard; people have to see that and also see that you are serious. You have to practice a lot, make double effort, there is no limits and do it for the good reasons.
The discussion just continues on other subject and it turns out that we were talking about Billy Talent about the fact that some people didn’t wanted to come because Billy Talent isn’t a metal band.
Jef: I have to say something about it, the metal world doesn’t understand that 1. Billy Talent is writing songs 2. Really f*cking good songs and 3. They are F*cking good live! The festival was really well done, if people didn’t want to see Billy Talent, there where other shows on other stages that they could have seen!
Sam: Just the people that didn’t come to see Mass Murder Messiah; they didn’t understand a thing! (Laughs)
LNL: Thank you so much for your time!
Sam: Thank you!
Category: Interviews
