[avatar =”James” size=”50″ align=”left” /]
About a week ago, Mel and I had the opportunity to chat with the legendary guitarist and founding member of Decapitated. This was quite a big thing for me, I’ve been a fan of the band for over 7 years now and never thought I’d get a chance to chat to him, let alone meet him!
Huge thanks to Sarah at Nuclear Blast for organising, Vogg for his time and Mel for recording this.
You’re Currently on tour with Sylosis, how’s the tour been going so far?
It’s been going really well. We’re currently on our third show of this tour and the first two shows have been amazing. Sylosis have been kicking ass every night and it’s a great package in my opinion. We actually just came back from a tattoo place called Rock’n’Roll. We’re good friends with the guys there and we really recommend it!
The most recent Decapitated album came out around 18 months ago. What’s the response like when you play these new songs in the set?
The response has been amazing. I think this album is probably our best album for songs that are really good live. We’re playing 5 songs from the new album on this tour and I really enjoy playing these songs live. The crowd’s reaction has been amazing to them as well.
Decapitated’s music is know for being really technical. What would you say is the hardest stuff to play?
The songs that we aren’t playing at shows! No, I’d say that the first album has some of the hardest songs to play. We have to come back to those songs at some point as we have fans that keep shouting for us to play them. But no they are really hard to play as I’m effectively playing solos all the time. It’s still quite a melodic album but has a lot of technical playing.
Given that it’s been 18 months since the last album, have you started working on any new material?
Not really. I’ve started brainstorming a couple of ideas and I’ll have a lot of time to work on some music as we had to cancel our tour with Soulfly due to Visa issues. We still have some more shows to do but once those are done, we will start working on the new album and we’ve got the studio booked for December to start doing drums.
Given that you are the main songwriter in the band, do you have any input on the lyrics or do you leave that to the other guys?
Not really. I tend to focus on the music as I always have and ‘Rasta’ (Rafał Piotrowski) writes the lyrics. He’s been doing a really good job with those lyrics and we’re going to be keeping the current arrangement.
As we spoke about before this interview, you’re now using Ibanez guitars. So what is your current live gear?
Yes, I’m currently using two Icemans from the Ibanez custom shops. I use EVH 5150 heads and EVH cabs, as they sound awesome. I also use analogue pedals and don’t use anything digital. I don’t even use a wireless system, as I just prefer the analogue sound.
Tonight in the set as you said you’re playing 5 songs from the new album. Is the set predominantly focused on the newer stuff or are there some older songs in there?
I would like to play more songs from the older albums but we need to practise that stuff more. It’s mainly because it’s a totally different vibe from when I was playing it with Vitek and also because it’s really hard. We’ve got songs from the newest album and most of the others but none from the first and third albums. We’re celebrating our 20th anniversary next year so maybe we will give songs form those albums an outing soon.
My final question for you now is what advice would you give to a new band?
Be smart and ionate about what you do. Also try to understand exactly what you are doing and get other people who have more experience to give you advice and help you avoid mistakes. Practise hard as well and try not to drink or smoke too much!
Thank you very much for your time today Vogg. It’s been an absolute pleasure!
Thank you sir!
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